There was something new at Wrigley Field as this season started. Kosuke Fukudome had taken over in right field and the fans in the bleachers were welcoming the Cubs first player from Japan by wearing head scarves and other accoutrements with Japanese characters.
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It’s not as if I’d expected some sort of Zen garden, not even with the lovely new field Wrigley installed over the winter. But I was hoping for something a bit more sophisticated than I found, especially in view of the elegant way Fukudome responded to hearing his name chanted as he took the field in the first inning. There was no “look at me” sprint to the bleachers, a la Sosa, just a comfortable trot that curiously circumvented the dirt of the infield. Was it to honor some superstition, akin to the care some managers take never to step on the foul line when they walk to the mound?
But Fukudome has had an instant impact on the team if not the fans. The front of the scorecard bore a picture of Alfonso Soriano, the epitome of the stats-obsessed marquee star the Cubs always seem to have, who that night would go down with a fluke injury suffered in one of those peculiar hops he makes catching routine fly balls. On the inside, however, on the scorecard proper, was an image of Fukudome. The placement suggested the way he already seems to have become not the poster boy but the more private self-image of this year’s Cubs, leading by example with a selfless style of team-first play. Fukudome does things that don’t show up in the box score, advancing runners and making one-hop laser-beam throws to the plate to freeze runners at third base. He provided some serious opening day heroics—hitting the first pitch thrown to him over the center fielder’s head for a double, and tying the game in the ninth inning with a three-run homer—and since then he’s taken what the pitchers give him, lashing outside offerings to left field. Emulating Fukudome, the Cubs have been playing more as a team, and some of the more tangible changes—such as Aramis Ramirez taking pitches and working the count—should pay dividends as the season progresses.
