First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami (best books for 8th graders .TXT) 📗

was the same age as me. He was killed in a car accident in the U.S. in 1989. In 1989 I was living in Rome, writing a long novel. So I didn’t learn of his death, at age thirty-nine, for quite some time. Italian newspapers, as you can imagine, weren’t going to report on the death of a former Hanshin Tigers outfielder.

This is the poem I wrote.

Outfielders’ Butts

I enjoy gazing at the butts of outfielders.

What I mean is, when I’m watching a slow-going, losing game

From the outfield seats by myself,

How else can I enjoy myself besides staring at the outfielders’ butts?

If there’s some other way, I’d sure like to know.

I could talk the night away

About outfielders’ glutes.

The Swallows’ center fielder John Scott’s*1 butt

Is beautiful beyond measure.

His legs are ridiculously long

And look as if they’re suspended in the air.

Like a bold metaphor that makes your heart sing.

Compared to this, the legs of the left fielder, Wakamatsu,

Are incredibly short.

When the two players stand together

Scott’s butt is about at the level of Wakamatsu’s chin.

The Tigers’ Reinbach*2 has a butt

So symmetrical you can’t help but love it.

Just one look and it all makes sense.

The butt of the Hiroshima Carp’s player Shane*3

Is deeply thoughtful, cerebral.

Reflective, you might say.

People really should have called him by his full name,

Scheinblum.

If for nothing else, then to show respect for that one-of-a-kind butt.

I was about to list

The names of outfielders whose butts

Are not what you’d call attractive—

But decided I’d better not.

After all, you have to consider their mothers and siblings, and wives

And kids, if they have any.

.

As a Yakult fan I did once watch a Hanshin Tigers vs. Swallows game at Koshien Stadium, the Tigers’ home stadium. I happened to have an errand that brought me to Kobe and I had the afternoon free. I saw a poster at the Hanshin Sannomiya station advertising a day game at Koshien Stadium and decided it’d been far too long since my last visit to Koshien. It had been over thirty years, in fact.

Katsuya Nomura was the Swallows’ manager back then. This was when players like Furuta, Ikeyama, Miyamoto, and Inaba were at their peak (a happy time for the team, now that I think of it). So, naturally, the following poem wasn’t included in the original Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. I wrote it long after that collection was published.

I didn’t have a pen or any paper on me that day, so as soon as I got back to the hotel, I used the stationery in the room to scribble down this (sort of) poem. A memo that just happened to take the form of a poem, I suppose you could call it. My desk drawer is full of memos and fragments of writing like that. They don’t actually serve much purpose, but I keep them nonetheless.

An Island in the Ocean Current

That summer afternoon

I searched for the Yakult Swallows fans’ section

In the left-field bleachers at Koshien Stadium.

It took a long time to find it,

Since the section for the Yakult fans was a tiny area

only five yards square.

All around, on every side, were crowds of Tigers fans.

It reminded me of the John Ford movie Fort Apache.

The small troop of cavalry led by the obstinate Henry Fonda

Were surrounded by a huge mass of Indians that blanketed the ground.

The cavalry was cornered, backs to the wall.

Like a small island in an ocean current

They bravely raised a single flag in their midst.

Now that I think of it, when I was in elementary school

I sat in these very seats, watching Sadaharu Oh, a high schooler then, play.

This was the spring national high school baseball tournament

When his school, Waseda Jitsugyo High School, won.

He was their star, batting fourth.

The memory of that day is so very clear in my mind,

As if watching it from a backward telescope.

So far away, yet so very close.

And right now I am surrounded by fierce Indians in pinstripes,

And under the Yakult Swallows’ flag I raise my plaintive cheer.

I’ve been away from my hometown for such a long time, and

My heart aches here

On this tiny, solitary island in the ocean current.

.

At any rate, of all the baseball stadiums in the world, I like being in Jingu Stadium the best of all. In an infield seat behind first base, or in the right-field bleachers. I love all the sounds, the smells, the way I can sit there, just gazing up at the sky. I love the breeze caressing my skin, I love sipping an ice-cold beer, observing the people around me. Whether the team wins or loses, I love the time spent there most of all.

Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that’s what’s the most valuable.

The first thing I like to do when I take my seat at the stadium is have a dark beer—a stout. But there aren’t many vendors selling dark beer at the stadium. It takes time to locate one. When I finally locate one, I raise my hand and call out. The vendor makes his way over. A skinny young guy, undernourished looking. He has longish hair. Probably a high school student doing this as a part-time job. He comes over, and the first thing he does is apologize. “I’m sorry, but all I have is dark beer,” he says.

“No need to apologize,” I say, reassuring him. “I mean, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone selling dark beer to come by.”

“Thank you,” he says. And cracks a cheerful smile.

I imagine this young vendor will have to apologize to lots of people this evening. “I’m sorry, but all I have is dark beer,” since most people at the stadium probably wanted regular lager. I pay him for the beer