Relief pitcher Hirokazu Sawamura is in a good place, having watched his career spiral out of control until he found the mental space he needed to rebuild it with the Lotte Marines and Boston Red Sox, and is once more looking to a brighter future.
"I've been able to find extra space in my life," the 35-year-old said recently at Chiba's Zozo Marine Stadium east of Tokyo. "Physically, I have no room for error, but emotionally, my life feels relaxed and calm."
Through Saturday, Sawamura was 4-2 with two saves and a disappointing 5.40 ERA this year for the Marines following two seasons in Boston in which he went 6-2 with a 3.39 ERA.
Sawamura, the Yomiuri Giants' top draft pick in 2010, found success first as a starter and later as a top closer until his career crashed in 2017. He finished the 2020 season, however, in impressive fashion with Lotte after the Yomiuri Giants dumped him in a midseason trade for a relatively unaccomplished minor league infielder.
He might not have seen the trade as a golden opportunity, but Sawamura landed with a team that was eager to use him. He then energized the Marines' home park by striking out the side in his one-inning debut.
"I hadn't pitched well on the farm team, I doubted I could even contribute. I was in a stretch where no matter what I tried I didn't get better. For a long time, I was wondering what I should do," he said.
"(With Lotte) there were people who believed in me."
Current Marines manager Masato Yoshii, a former MLB pitcher, was then a Lotte coach whose inclination, Sawamura said, was to give struggling pitchers chances to shine with games on the line.
"Yoshii-san will throw players who appear lost into games we are winning. When they succeed, they are infused with passion and a sense of what they are capable of," Sawamura said.
The pitcher's first brilliant moment with Lotte did not erase his anxiety, but after 22 games of reasonable success, his closest friends convinced him to try playing in MLB despite his own uncertainty.
"Go to America, really?" Sawamura questioned. "Even though I'd...been effective for two or three months, I doubted my own ability to compete in America. But on the other hand, I thought I had to go at least once."
It proved, however, to be a revelation from the way even MLB's biggest stars strived to be better, and how communication in a multicultural clubhouse could be so profound. And though he pitched in 104 regular seasons games for Boston as well as three in the postseason, it was these other areas he was keen to discuss.
"There are these unbelievable players, everywhere, driven to be better," Sawamura said. "It made me think how much I wanted to be better, too, wanted to do things the way they did, see if I could imitate what they did."
"It dramatically increased my desire to improve myself."
Beyond striving to be better on the field, Sawamura said he was bowled over by the way teammates and coaches interacted on a meaningful level, taking extra care to listen and communicate.
"(MLB thinking) is different," he said. "What is common sense but a set of assumed values? But people there grow up in various environments. They're not all the same."
Coming out of Japanese baseball culture, a traditionally top-down seniority-based world where players are assumed to understand one another because of their ostensibly homogeneous backgrounds, this was something new, but in retrospect obvious.
"Even family members fight," Sawamura said. "Even between colleagues, teammates, lovers, it is ridiculous to think we perfectly understand one another. One must listen and think about the meaning of what is said to you, and then you have a meaningful conversation."
"I found that was true in baseball with AC (Red Sox manager Alex Cora) and my other teammates as well, and me too, that something someone says to you can move your heart. It was amazing."
Sawamura got a taste of that when he began interacting with Yoshii in 2020 with Lotte, where -- after Boston released him -- he returned this season, partly on account of the skipper.
"There are those in MLB who are exceptionally good communicators, and Yoshii is like that, too," Sawamura said. "The way he listens, the way he puts players first is very much like how it was in America."
Sawamura is wary, however, of telling Japanese players they should do something different because that is how it is done in MLB, although he expressed envy at how easy it was for older MLB players to learn from younger ones.
"To get better, you learn, even by going to less experienced players. Even established players wanted me to teach them how I threw my splitter, and no one is embarrassed by doing so, no one in America is concerned about how that might look to others," he said.
When Sawamura was traded in 2020, a former Giants star suggested Yomiuri had turned its back on the pitcher. But Sawamura said he has no room for bitterness.
"I don't have even the slightest bit of negative feelings about the Giants or the Red Sox. I myself am still kind of a mediocre individual, and there are many things I regret," he said. "I now have the mental space to see things that way."
"Coming back (to Japan) I didn't feel I had much margin for error. But little by little, I find myself not looking back, but looking forward."
