The Origins of the Book
Let’s start at the beginning. How’d this project, my first book, actually come to be? I’d be honored to share with you the serendipitous sequence of events that set it into motion.
Back in the spring of 2008, I was a freshman at UC Davis, just starting out in sports journalism. At the time, I hadn’t yet begun to participate in broadcasting for the campus radio station, KDVS. I was, however, contributing to a small, independently run website called Davis Sports Deli (Fun fact: My first-ever published piece of sports writing, was a 2007 NBA Mock Draft for DSD that I submitted that June. … And yes, I did have Greg Oden going No. 1. What? So did everyone else, and he did go first overall.). For the site, I concocted a college football bowl season series, for which my brother, who was in DC attending George Washington University, and I collaborated. As our Winter Breaks approached and unfolded, we took pleasure in trying to interview as many key players as we could, preferably at least one participant before each and every bowl game.
When spring rolled around, I decided to reach out to particular starting pitchers to blog (biweekly, I believe; the once-every-two-weeks kind) for the site. I chose Tony Barnette, whom the forthcoming book is centered around, and a handful of other Double-A pitchers, purely because they’d posted impressive K-per-9 and K:BB ratios over a decent number of innings. Double-A may seem like an arbitrary level, but the reasoning went this way: These guys were ascending up the minor league ladder, yet not so far advanced that they’d be less likely to ignore my request. Long story short, not one pitcher agreed to an interview – most didn’t even respond – with one exception: Tony Barnette. He was an innings-eater in the Diamondbacks organization for the Mobile BayBears of the Southern League. I got lucky. Not only would Tony stay consistent and timely with his blog entries, but he was also hilarious, opinionated, charismatic, quirky, brutally honest and just plain interesting.
As we kept in touch over the years, the Arizona State alumnus’ story became increasingly fascinating. It was in late 2009, not much more than a year and a half after we first “met,” that Tony was persuaded by the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and his soon-to-be agent, the legendary Don Nomura, to leave North America at age 26, just as he stood at the doorstep of achieving his lifelong dream of playing in the major leagues. Japan, specifically the Swallows, was offering the young pitcher a chance to increase his salary dramatically, a chance to develop his skills on the mound, and, possibly most exciting but not as much on his mind at the moment, an opportunity to experience a completely new language and culture in a land where baseball could, on occasion, be treated as a religious experience. Naturally, we asked Tony to blog about his funniest and most memorable experiences in Tokyo, and man, did he deliver! He skillfully blogged about many amazing, fascinating topics, but certainly the most poignant post recounted his experiences on the day of March 11, 2011, when the devastating earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster infamously struck northeastern Japan.
Around this time, ahead of Tony’s second Japanese season, Yakult converted him into a relief pitcher, which in retrospect seems to have saved his career. While in grad school at USC, as part of a project for an Advanced Sports Writing class and a Magazine Writing class, I conducted interviews with Tony, his girlfriend, Hillary, his mentor and former teammate, Aaron Guiel, his interpreter and friend, Go Fujisawa, and other key figures from his story. So I produced two Tony Barnette stories of varying lengths for school, but these were purposely never published. Tony’s career turnaround as well as his growth as a person on and off the field were impressive and worth writing about. With that said, I don’t believe his story would have been marketable in the U.S. had he not been signed by the Texas Rangers in late 2015 and shortly thereafter fulfilled his lifelong dream of pitching in the big leagues. What’s more, in Arlington, he performed quite effectively as a 32-year-old rookie while his team finished with the best record in the American League.
Anyway, a couple months after Tony signed with the Rangers, I reached out, asking if he would like to turn this thing into a book (By then, we’d known each for nearly eight years.). He enthusiastically agreed. We were confident it was a tale worth telling, and I felt good about the likelihood of a North American publisher agreeing with our assessment. Ultimately and fortunately, that turned out to be the case. This exhilarating true story centered around Tony Barnette is set to be released in hardcover form on March 19, 2024.
*Feel free to contact me directly (via email at aaronfischman519@gmail.com or text) for more information on how to pre-order from me. Check back here for more content coming soon, and thanks for your interest and/or support.
The Book Is Coming!
Thank you for your interest in my first book, A Baseball Gaijin: Chasing a Dream to Japan and Back, which comes out March 19, 2024. It’s an exciting time! As we prepare for the launch, plenty new content will appear above.
Best,
Aaron
My Spring 2018 Tokyo Trip (With Pictures)
When I decided I was all in, it was late January. A few times, my friend Jonathan Santiago had brought up the idea of me joining him in Tokyo, and I always said that it would be interesting but that I wasn’t ready to commit. He made it easy for me. He found cheap roundtrip flights for me to choose from. Plus, he was already going for a defined period of time, so I wouldn’t be alone. Up until this point, Israel (for Birthright) had been my only international experience outside of North America, and that was in the summer of 2011. So, I was due for a life-altering trip. More importantly, it provided a prime opportunity to combine work with leisure, given that I’m working on my first book, which focuses on an American baseball player’s (his name is Tony) exhilarating six-year journey in Japan.
After a series of train connections and a near-12-hour flight preceding those, I arrived at Shimo-Kitazawa station by early evening on Tuesday, April 17. Located in Setagaya, Tokyo, the massive city’s southwesternmost ward, the train station wasn’t a far walk from where my travel companion and I were staying. So he met me at the station. It was still light outside, although slightly overcast with a steady drizzle falling from the sky.
