Baseball Is Just Baseball ─ The Understated Ichiro

During a game between the Mariners and A's in Oakland, fans in the right field bleachers taunted him with racial epithets and threw quarters and ice at him. A man who hit Ichiro in the head with a quarter stood and took a bow. Afterward, asked what happened, Ichiro said--according to the translator, Ted Heid--"Something came out of the stands and hit me." Ichiro immediately said something to Heid, who said, "I must correct my previous interpretation. Ichiro said, 'Something came out of the sky and hit me.'" Asked how much money he collected, Ichiro said, "I couldn't tell if it was rain or money coming down." Asked if something like this had ever happened to him in Japan, he said, "Of course it happened there. Any time you come in as a visiting team, things fall out of the sky. The gods once threw an aluminum can at me."

"Baseball Is Just Baseball is an ethereal joy unto itself." --James Norton, Flak Magazine

"This book is deliciously wonderful. It looks nice, it feels nice, and it is filled with nice things."--Powells.com

"There's a scene in Downtown 81, wherein a hooker asks Jean-Michel Basquiat if he'd 'like to go out.' Basquiat replies, 'I'm already out.'...If, like me, you [find this remark] funny and clever, then you'll probably dig Shields's little book."--Mike Seely, Tablet

"Shields has located a charming narrative inside the roar of Ichiro Mania."--James Martin, FFWD Magazine

"Through his introduction and quote selection, Shields turns Ichiro's comments into Eastern wisdom, revealing a person who values Zen qualities such as simplicity and harmony and who revels in challenge, not achievement." --ESPN.com Insider

"David Shields's. . . . sense of postmodern irony is so advanced that I cannot be sure whether or not he is serious." --Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times