Japan's Gaze Is on a Star In the U.S.; Thousands Gather, Watch Nomo Pitch
For an American baseball fan, watching Tuesday night's All-Star Game was simplicity itself: pop a cold one, plop into the Barcalounger and power up the tube. For Japanese fans, though, watching the big game required sterner stuff.</br></br>Clutching umbrellas and rain slickers on a moist, muggy morning -- the first pitch was thrown at 9:30 a.m., Tokyo time -- fans by the thousands gathered on sidewalks and in public squares all over Japan to watch a fuzzy image of the game on large-screen outdoor TV sets. "I can't really say it's comfortable here," said Hideki Nomura, who was seated on the wet pavement outside Tokyo's Shibuya Station. "But what the heck -- there's no way I would miss this game."</br></br>It was worth the trouble for Nomura and other Japanese fans because the National League's starting pitcher in Arlington, Tex., was the dominant hero of Japan's pop culture right now: Hideo "Tornado" Nomo, the Los Angeles Dodgers rookie forkballer who got his start playing for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in Japan's Pacific League.</br></br>Nomo's flawless performance against American League batters in his two innings brought huge cheers from the sidewalk fans. When he left the game, one Japanese network ended its live broadcast and switched to replays of Nomo's work.</br></br>As the first Japanese player ever to make it big in the U.S. major leagues, Nomo stands out as one of the few items of good news in a year that has brought recession, natural disaster and terrorist crime to this normally safe and prosperous country. It's not surprising, then, that every game Nomo pitches is televised live to a rapt audience here -- even though an American night game tends to start shortly after dawn on this side of the International Date Line.