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It was still just late April when Nomura showed up, and the Orioles were doing pretty well. We were 12-10 on the season -- after finishing third for the past three consecutive years, behind the damned Red Sox -- and the Goddamned Yankees. But there had been a gradual improvement of the club for the past several years, and we felt like this year, it might be possible to contend, after a decade of losing seasons.
Last year had been only the second time since 1997 that the club had finished over .500 -- and that just barely. But if our young pitchers could come through, I thought it was going to be a pretty competitive ball club.
The Traveling Secretary brought Nomura to my hotel room around 3 p.m. on the second day of our three-game road series with the Mariners. In another 90 minutes, it would be time to head for the ballpark. It would be up to me to get the new guy out of the hotel room and onto the team bus -- with or without the language barrier.
"Sam Bailey," I said to Nomura, pointing at my own chest. I extended my right hand, and he looked at it for a moment, and then shook it. "Welcome to the Orioles," I said.
"Shigeonomura." Nomura said.
I didn't know what the hell that meant, but he smiled when he said it, and after a minute or two I realized that he had told me his name -- it just sounded a lot different when he said it.
This wasn't going to be easy. I gave him a little nervous salute and hoped he'd take it as a gesture of attempted friendship.
"Coca-cola?" I asked, gesturing at the room's refrigerator.
"Coca-cola! Yes," Nomura said, in understandable English.
OK! Maybe this was going to work out all right. I got him a Coke, grabbed a chair, and pointed to the bed farthest from our position in the room. "Yours," I said, pointing to him and to the bed. "Yours."
"Shigeonomura!" he said, pointing to his own chest and then to the bed.
"Si!" I said. Then I realized that my high school Spanish probably wasn't going to be of much help. But it was the only foreign language I knew anything about.
Two more days went by, we left Seattle for Oakland, and still no translator. Turns out the club was looking for somebody in Baltimore, figuring that a local man would be best, since he'd be home for half of the season with the club. But Japanese interpreters were in pretty short supply in Baltimore. They were trying the universities and calling around.
I thought they might have better luck in nearby Washington, D.C., but nobody was asking me for advice.
I was smiling at Nomura a lot, and trying to convey a friendly attitude, but we didn't do much talking. The guy was intelligent, though, and he understood what the problem was. I got pretty good at gesturing things like "time to go eat." It was either that or making a pitching motion and pointing to the door -- "time to go to the ball park."
Three games in Oakland -- I got into one of them in the fourth inning after the A's had blasted our starter, Rob Murray, for four runs with nobody out in the home fourth. He left with the bases loaded and I only let one more get in -- the run charged to Murray -- before we put them down with a double play and a pop-up. I stayed in until two were out for Oakland in their seventh inning, when Warren pulled me in favor of a lefty. No decision for me, up or down, but I'd done well and felt good about it.
Nomura still hadn't been called upon at all, but the next game -- our first in the Angels' park in Anaheim -- was going to be his first outing as a starter.
Paul Warren managed to convey that fact to Nomura on the plane on our way to Los Angeles, and I thought the kid was showing some nerves that night in the hotel room. The next morning, the nerves were still evident.
"Want to go out?" I asked Nomura. It was around 11 in the morning and our departure for the game was still more than four hours away. I don't think he really understood me, but he came along, anyway. I hailed a cab and asked the driver which was the closest, USC or UCLA. The cabby took us to UCLA's campus and I gestured to Nomura to follow me.
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