黒田には今年も15勝以上期待。
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/sports/baseball/kuroda-a-soft-spoken-veteran-seeks-advice-from-outgoing-wells.html?ref=baseball&_r=0
ニューヨーク・タイムズはすぐに見られなくなるので、ハードコピーが必要。
As Kuroda Enters What Could Be His Final Season, Wells Is an Unlikely Guide
By DAVID WALDSTEIN
Published: March 17, 2013
TAMPA, Fla. — An unlikely friendship was forged in front of Hiroki Kuroda’s locker Thursday morning when the quiet and clean-cut Kuroda invited the gregarious and tattooed David Wells to pull up a chair.
Wells, a spring training instructor for the Yankees, was already speaking with Kuroda’s neighbor, Andy Pettitte. When he saw Kuroda approaching, he moved to get out of the way, but Kuroda asked him to stay and visit.
They began by speaking in rudimentary English, but Kuroda’s interpreter soon came over to facilitate the discussion between the baseball odd couple. One is right-handed, the other left-handed. One is known for his quiet professionalism and rigorous conditioning, the other for making bawdy jokes and pitching with a generous physique.
But both have had solid pitching careers and share a passion for baseball.
The conversation began with the right-handed Kuroda asking the left-handed Wells about his age, and from there it evolved into a general conversation about pitching philosophy and technique.
“David Wells was a great pitcher,” Kuroda said through his interpreter, “and I wanted to know how old he was when he stopped pitching.”
It seems to be a main topic on the 38-year-old Kuroda’s mind as he enters what could be his final season in the majors. Then again, if he follows Wells’s path, it will be far from his last. Wells pitched until he was 44, spending 21 years in the major leagues.
“He was in awe because of the age factor,” Wells said of Kuroda. “I said, ‘You’ve got six or seven more years; you’ll be just fine.’ He said, ‘Noooo.’ But I told him he can do it. I told him, ‘Let them rip the jersey off your back.’ ”
Kuroda asked if that had happened to Wells. He admitted that it had, saying he was forced to retire after the 2007 season when no team would make even the minimum offer to him. “I couldn’t even get a minor league invite for 2008,” Wells said. “I wanted to play because I still had the desire.”
Kuroda shares that desire, at least for now. The Yankees re-signed Kuroda in the off-season to a one-year, $15 million deal, and he said he had not made up his mind about when to stop pitching or if he would return to Japan to pitch in 2014. There has been speculation that Kuroda will finish his pro career where it began, with the Hiroshima Carp of Japan’s Central League.
“It all depends on how I perform this year,” he said. “That will determine what I do next year.”
If Kuroda is curious about ways to prolong his career, he has some compelling examples at his disposal, like the 43-year-old Mariano Rivera and Pettitte, who will turn 41 before the All-Star break. Kuroda spoke with them last year about their longevity and their desire to keep pitching.
Wells followed a far different path, with a hard-living lifestyle that reached such heights, he said, that he pitched his 1998 perfect game “half drunk.”
In his playing days, Wells tended to stomp his way through the clubhouse, engaging with everyone he saw, whereas Kuroda often sits quietly at his locker. Wells noted that the language barrier and cultural differences might account for much of the seeming polarity between them.
“They are a little more proper than we are,” Wells said of Japanese players. “Americans are a little more outspoken. Well, not all of them are. The good majority of us are. We wear our emotions on the sleeve a lot more than other countries.”
Kuroda and Wells never overlapped in the majors. In a sense, Kuroda actually replaced Wells with the Los Angeles Dodgers: Wells spent his last few weeks as a major leaguer in Dodger blue, going 4-1 with a 5.12 earned run average in seven starts in 2007. Wells was released after the season, and a few months later, Kuroda arrived.
In five seasons — four with the Dodgers and one with the Yankees — Kuroda has compiled a 57-57 record with an impressive 3.42 E.R.A. Last year, he won a career-high 16 games, against 11 losses, and compiled a 3.32 E.R.A. in his first year in the American League East.
Wells was one of many who were impressed.
“The last four years he was probably one of the most underrated pitchers in the game,” Wells said. “I told him that’s a good thing. I said being underrated like that and not having all that pressure and all the focus on you is good. You’re going out, doing your job and winning 15 games a year. That’s beautiful.
“I hated when they started talking about me like that. In 2000, I had 15 wins at the All-Star break, and they were all comparing me to Denny McLain.”
And therein lies one more difference between Wells and Kuroda. Few would ever compare Kuroda to the talented, brash and trouble-plagued McLain.