The Book of Nomo - Chapter 6 - Ichiro and the resurrection
TOKYO — It is not too much to say that had there been no Nomo, then Irabu, Hasegawa and Yoshii would not have tried their hand in the MLB. Nor, for that matter, one could argue, would Ichiro Suzuki, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka or Shohei Ohtani have been able to make the leap. As Hiroki Kuroda, the former Carp pitcher, told reporters in 2008 when he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers, “If it hadn’t been for Nomo, it would have been very difficult for any of us to be here.”
It was because of Nomo that the “voluntary retirement” clause was discovered, which then gave way to the establishment of the posting system which gave players nearing free agency a chance to go to MLB a year or two earlier than the free agency rules allowed them to. Shinjo and Ichiro, the first Japanese position players in MLB, as well as Matsuzaka and Ohtani, among others, were able to take advantage of this system and leave Japan early.
All of them might want to send Nomo a thank you note.
It should be noted here that in the late 90’s, the voluntary retirement option, or “Nomo Clause” as it was also known, was still available to Ichiro. Although NPB officials had taken pains to eliminate that clause, they had also neglected to inform the MLB of their actions, as required by the NPB-MLB Working Agreement. Thus, in the eyes of the MLB Commissioner’s office, at least, voluntary retirement remained a perfectly legitimate way for Japanese players to go to MLB. Indeed, in 1998, Alfonso Soriano, another Don Nomura client, a 19-year old infielder from the Dominican Republic, had used the Nomo Clause to declare his independence from the Hiroshima Carp, where he had toiled unhappily on the farm team, and announce his intention to negotiate with big league teams.
A brouhaha between the two countries ensued, but in the end, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig declared Soriano’s action to be acceptable and criticized NPB for arbitrarily changing their rules without notifying MLB as was required by their existing 1967 Working Agreement. Soriano went on to sign with the Yankees and the ’67 Working Agreement was scrapped soon thereafter. In December 1998, the Posting System was created, whereby a player who wished to go to MLB could declare his intention and his team would “post” his name and take secret bids from MLB teams for the right to negotiate with said player for his services.
Thus, the option of the Nomo Clause had legally been open to Ichiro up until December 1998, but, unlike Nomo, he chose not to take advantage of it. He made it known that he thought the way of Nomo and Don Nomura was not the proper way to do things. Instead, he said he felt obliged to stay with Orix for as long as his manager Akira Ogi wanted his services. He owed Ogi, he said many times, for Ogi’s having faith in his unusual batting style. A previous manager, Shozo Doi, had said that Ichiro’s batting form would “guarantee failure” and he kept Ichiro on the farm team for much of the first two years. But when Ogi took over in 1994, he recognized Ichiro’s potential and stuck him in the starting lineup from Day One, an act of faith to which Ichiro responded by setting a new single season record for hits with 210. A year later, he led Orix to a Japan Series championship — and in the process, helped residents of Kobe, where the BlueWave was based, recover from the psychological shock of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Ichiro won seven batting titles in a row, a Japan record and three straight MVPs also an NPB record. But every time he inquired about going to MLB, Ogi demurred.
“Not yet,” he would say. “I need your services, as long as I am manager of the team.”
Finally, a year before Ichiro was eligible for free agency, Ogi gave his blessing and the Orix front office gave their star permission to leave for MLB. But, it was not exactly a selfless move, as it was also clear, that with Orix having only one year left until he fulfilled the requirements for free agency (which had been reduced to nine years by league powers), the only way Orix was going to get any compensation for losing Ichiro was to post him. And so they did, with Seattle paying $13 million for the right to negotiate with Ichiro, and Ichiro, in turn, agreeing to a three-year deal worth $12 million.
Ichiro’s loyalty to Orix and what he believed was the proper way of doing things wound up costing him two or three extra years of play in the MLB and, perhaps a few slots in MLB record books.
But then, it took a certain kind of character, and a great deal of courage, to do what Nomo had done. Said one NY Yankees official who greatly admired Nomo, “Nomo is the only Japanese player with enough balls to challenge the system. If it hadn’t been for him, nobody else would have gone. He opened the door for everyone.”
The Ichiro signing was the one of the biggest sports stories of the year — both in Japan AND in the United States. He was the first everyday position player and everyone on both sides of the Pacific was waiting to see how well he would do. Could he cut it they wanted to know. The Mariners issued 160 media credentials to Japanese reporters during spring camp (as opposed to 10 for non-Japanese), and those 160 reporters who intently covered everything from the number of Ichiro’s batting practice swings to what types of rice balls his wife made for him and how many of them Seattle second baseman Bret Boone would eat. NHK began televising his exhibition games (open-sen) daily. In the span of the month of March, NHK gave Ichiro more game exposure in a month than most players get in their entire careers. NHK had also wired Seattle’s Safeco Field so that Mariners home games could be broadcast live back to Japan using a special high-definition TV format.
The extent to which reporters covering Ichiro went was reflected in one spring training game, when Ichiro stood at first base while teammate Mike Cameron trailed in the count with one ball and two strikes. Ichiro started running to second, but Cameron swung and missed and Ichiro was caught stealing for the third out of the inning. After the game, a Japanese reporter asked an incredulous Cameron, “Why did you miss the ball when Ichiro ran?”
The season had not even begun and yet Seattle’s resident star centerfielder had already been reduced to the status of a supporting player for the import from Japan.
Before the regular season had even started, Seattle players had grown weary of answering questions about Ichiro, although none went to the extent of Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who joined the team in 2002. He had grown so weary of being asked by reporters about his famous teammate that he put a sign on his locker, in both Japanese and English, that read, “I will not talk about Ichiro. Thank you.”
Among those initially skeptical that Ichiro could succeed was Seattle manager Lou Piniella. He thought Ichiro too small and too slight to take on the MLB fastball. In the beginning, after watching Ichiro hit the ball to the opposite field day after day, he said, “Let’s see you pull the ball to right field.” Ichiro, who had merely been going through his own set preseason routine of hitting everything to left than gradually shifting focus to center and right field, showed he could do that as well. He slammed four hits to right the next game and Piniella was convinced. However, Piniella also advised Ichiro to drop his pendulum leg swing and also to stop hitting the ball in the air. Instead, he said, “Chop the ball down on the ground, take advantage of your superior speed. You’re one of the fastest men in all the MLB, start using your legs.” Ichiro did as he was asked.
Ichiro sailed through spring training, his opening day debut, in which he got two hits, including a perfect drag bunt single, that surprised everyone and helped the Mariners achieve a come-from-behind victory. The game was one of the most widely covered events in Japanese sports history. It was front page news in the sports dailies, with colorful pitch-by-pitch charts of each at-bat. NHK telecast the game twice, once live in the morning, one taped in the evening, while other channels ran special documentaries about Ichiro. It was a pattern that would continue all season, as Ichiro found himself on top of the batting average leader charts, and reached a fevered pitch during All-Star time when he received more votes than anyone else. Seattle would win 116 games before being eliminated in the playoffs and Ichiro would win the AL MVP award. By the end of the season, TV ratings for Yomiuri Giants games had plummeted to 15%, while attendance at Orix games had dropped 40%.
He was also hailed by the American media, as a throwback to the 19th century heroes like Wee Willie Keeler (a man who held a record of eight straight seasons with 200 hits— a record which Ichiro would eventually break). He would make the cover of Time, Sports Illustrated. ESPN and HBO would do features on him.
Also gaining some attention was Shinjo, dubbed “Spaceman” by Japanese fans, who turned down a five-year $12 million contract with the Hanshin Tigers to sign a deal for $400,000 with the Mets to become their fourth outfielder. Sales of MLB memorabilia featuring Ichiro and Shinjo surged. Thousands of Japanese signed up for tours to the U.S. to see these players in MLB uniforms.
Credit Nomo for all these changes.
By this time, not many people were paying attention to what Nomo, the man who had unleashed the wave of Japanese baseball talent on MLB, was doing. Although he had not exactly disappeared from the scene since his release by the Mets, after being traded there by the Dodgers, it certainly seemed as though he had.
New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine had been extremely upset with Mets General Manager Steve Phillips in March 1999, when he discovered that Phillips had placed Nomo on waivers, and that Nomo had cleared. Valentine, who had been managing the Chiba Lotte Marines in 1995. had followed Nomo over the years and was happy when Nomo had joined the Mets. Valentine had continued to like and support Nomo, even though Nomo had had a terrible record in 1998 of 6-12 with a 4.92 ERA, his worst season by far in the major leagues. Valentine thought that Nomo was capable of working out his problems, which mainly centered around the loss of control of his fastball, and still pitch effectively. Valentine felt that Phillips had undermined his authority by cutting Nomo loose and that the incident was the first of several conflicts between the two men, which would eventually result in Valentine’s dismissal from the team at the end of the 2002 season, despite several impressive winning seasons, including a trip to the World Series against the Yankees in 2000.
After a tryout stint in the Chicago Cubs minor league system in that spring of 1999, Chicago released Nomo, thereby making him one of the few players to be released twice in the same season by different teams. But shortly thereafter, the Milwaukee Brewers jumped in, and after a tryout (a one game effort in the minor leagues), promised him a spot in the rotation. The Brewers manager, the volatile, gregarious Phil Garner, had been a long time fan of Nomo for his never-say-die attitude and came to like him even more during the 1999 season, in which Nomo won 12 games, lost 8 and compiled an ERA of 4.54.
“That guy doesn’t know the meaning of give up,” said Garner, midway through that season, “Some guys, you go to the mound to see how they are feeling, and you can tell by the look in their eyes that they want to come out. They might say, ‘It’s up to you, boss,’ but you know what they really want is to head to the clubhouse. However, I never got that feeling with Nomo. Every time I went out there to discuss whether or not I should take him out, he would get that look on his face. The first time I took him out, he didn’t complain. Maybe he was just being polite, because we didn’t know each other that well. The second time I did it, he made it quite clear he was unhappy. The third time, he shook his head and said, let me stay in. I had to wrestle the ball out of his hands. The guy just didn’t know how to quit. He is as tough a competitor as I have ever seen in uniform. And he just loves to play. He is a consummate professional. I wish every pitcher I had had was like him.”
Amongst his Milwaukee teammates, Nomo remained as detached as ever. When the Brewers portly closer Bob Wickman approached Nomo and tried to strike up a conversation, playfully using a term in greeting he thought Nomo would understand, “Nomomania,” the monosyllabic Nomo answered simply “No.”
The next time Wickman tried another simple phrase, “Let’s go Nomo,” which did not produce any better results. Finally, Wickman corralled Don Nomura to interpret and managed to have a conversation about Nomo’s family, which was back in Japan. Nomo confessed that he missed his family very much, and Wickman thought that that was a revelation and proof that Nomo was really human after all.
“Nice to know what’s going through his mind,” said Wickman, “I was beginning to wonder. “
Garner, for his part, liked Nomo personally, off the field, as well as on it. He understood Nomo’s taciturn manner to be simply shyness and he assigned Brewers bullpen catcher Ron Nedset, a famous party animal, to look after Nomo while the team was on the road, to see that he had some company.
“Ron,” Garner had said, “You know every bar in every town in the major leagues. I want you to introduce Nomo to them. Don’t let him stay in his room by himself, because he will just get lonely. Take him under your wing and make sure he enjoys himself.”
Neither Nedset nor Nomo would reveal details of their night life on the road, but Nedset reported to Garner that Nomo did indeed enjoy himself on their nocturnal forays and the two hit it off despite the language barrier. In fact, Nedset and Nomo became good enough friends to josh each other.
For example, when Nedset told Nomo about a surgical procedure he had had, Nomo replied with a smirk, “Why didn’t you have your face fixed as well?”
Interestingly, in a bit of baseball trivia, a teammate of Nomo in Milwaukee was Jim Abbott, the pitching star who was born without a right hand. Abbott had been a member of Team USA in the 1988 Seoul Olympics which had beaten Nomo’s Team Japan, 5-3. Both men had competed for the same spot in the rotation, but Nomo prevailed. In fact, Nomo was spectacular in the early going. He won 9 of his first 11 games, while Abbott could only manage a 2-8 record.
While in Milwaukee, Nomo also developed a fondness for the Milwaukee (mid-game) Sausage Race (a race of sausage mascots), a tribute to the northern town’s preponderance of German descendants and sausage lovers.
Despite being ineffective down the stretch, winning only one of his last six starts, Nomo won the Comeback Player of the Year award in 1999. He turned down an offer from the Brewers to return — two years at $8.5 million — as well as similar offers from the Baltimore Orioles and the Philadelphia Phillies (who each offered him three years at $9 million). Instead, he opted to go with Garner, who had just taken over in Detroit as manager, after being fired by Milwaukee. The Tigers also had another Japanese pitcher Masao Kida, which meant that at least Nomo had someone to talk to should the mood to converse with another human being strike him.
In Detroit, a city blighted by the decline of its auto industry, and urban crime. Nomo became one of the few bright spots. He had the seeming good fortune to be able to pitch in newly built Comerica Park, which had replaced the aging Tiger Stadium. Comerica was a spanking new hi-tech stadium, replete with Ferris wheel, museum and other family amusements. The field itself was so vast — 395 feet to left-center, for example — that it was nicknamed “Comerica National Park.”
In Detroit, he became the first Japanese pitcher ever to pitch an Opening Day game. Defeating the Oakland Athletics in Oakland, 7-4, pitching seven strong innings.
It was in July, while visiting Milwaukee, that Nomo sneaked into the sausage race. His manager, Garner, who gave him permission to participate, cracked. “He had to get his pre-game running in and that was one way to do it.”
Nomo, running as a Polish sausage, easily outdistanced the field, which included an Italian sausage, a Bratwurst and the Hot Dog. His distinctive thick hairy legs, which protruded from the bottom of the sausage costume, gave his identity away.
After the race, reporters asked Nomo if he might ever consider becoming a professional sausage racer.
“Maybe,” Nomo deadpanned.
The writers weren’t sure if he was serious.
Later that evening, he went on to pitch a shutout.
Nomo finished the season at Detroit with a so-so record of 8-12, with an unimpressive ERA of 4.74 (although he outperformed Kida who had an ERA of 10.12) and managed to surrender 31 home runs, the highest such total he would ever log in MLB, despite the vastness of Comerica National Park.
Once again, many people thought he had lost it — although Garner, was not one of them.
“He pitched well,” said Garner, “he could have won 14 or 15 games with some batting support and some luck. He was in the top seven in strikeouts so I don’t see how you can say he had a bad year.”
Nonetheless, the Tigers declined to pick up Nomo for another year. By the following spring, everyone was talking about Ichiro Suzuki, the sensational new player from Japan. Hardly anyone noticed when he signed a contract for $4.5 million with the Boston Red Sox.
In camp, Nomo joked that playing baseball was much easier for him now that Ichiro Suzuki was in MLB, because not nearly as many reporters were hounding him as before, which was just fine with Nomo. He said, “This way I can spend more of my own time the way I want to, without having to worry about being followed around all the time. I’m not very good at interviews, so it is better this way.”
No-hitter
However, it did not take Nomo long to remind everybody that he was still alive and serve notice that he was still a force to be reckoned with. On April 4, 2001, in his first start for the Red Sox, facing the Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore, he became the fourth pitcher in MLB history to throw a no-hitter in both leagues, defeating the O’s 3-0. It was also the earliest no-hitter in the history of MLB, the first ever no-hitter at Camden Yards, and the first Red Sox no-hitter in 36 years.
Nomo was becoming a walking history book.
Nomo used his unique hesitation windup, along with a brilliant mix of off-speed pitches and high fastball heat to set the Orioles down in 110 pitches. He walked only three batters and did not allow the Orioles to get anything close to a hit until the ninth inning, when Mike Bordick’s soft looper to center field was barely caught by Red Sox second baseman Mike Lansing.
Everyone gasped but Nomo who remained remarkably nonchalant. “I knew he’d catch it,” he said.
Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek was effusive in his praise. “I’ve always heard what a horse Nomo is and he really proved it tonight,” he said, “He got stronger and his fastball got better as the game went on. I tell you, that guy puts maximum effort into every pitch. He was just phenomenal tonight.”
Coincidentally, Dante Bichette, who played for the Rockies during Nomo’s previous no-hitter, was sitting on the Red Sox bench, and remarked on the similarity of the two epic achievements. “Once Nomo smelled he had a chance at no-hitter,“ said Dante, “he rose to another level. Somehow he turned his fastball up a notch. He did exactly the same thing he did at Coors Field.”
Pedro Martinez, the venerated Red Sox ace, was also impressed.
“He’s a cold-blooded person,” Martinez opined, “You are never going to see him scared.”
The game was notable in the annals of MLB no-hitters because NESN announcer Don Orsillo had ignored the baseball protocol that dictates that broadcasters should avoid mentioning a no-hitter in progress for fear of jinxing the attempt. Instead, he took every opportunity to remind viewers what Nomo was doing. This horrified hard core Red Sox fans, but, in fact, Orsillo had, coincidentally, called the perfect game Tomo Ohka had pitched while working in Pawtucket, the Red Sox minor league affiliate, and he had done the same thing then.
“It’s the era of channel surfing,” he explained “people won’t stay around long enough to find out what’s going on, so you have got to tell them.”
Down in the dugout, however, Nomo’s teammates had honed the time-tested tradition of leaving him alone, including Ohka, the only other Red Sox who spoke Japanese, who happened to be in the bullpen.
During the late inning, Sox reliever Rod Beck, aware of Red Sox pitch-count limits as Nomo’s pitch total approached the 100 mark, said, “if they call me in relief and he still had his no-hitter, I’m going to refuse to go.”
Ironically, only a handful of media had showed up to cover Nomo’s arrival at the Red Sox camp in Florida. All the rest seemed to be assigned to cover Ichiro. In fact, only one Japanese sports daily, the Hochi Shimbun, bothered to send a reporter to the Sox game. Yet, in a great feat of reportorial legerdemain for which newspapers in Japan are famous, they somehow managed to have a special edition out on the streets in Tokyo, mere hours after the game finished around noon Japan time.
In Boston, the next day, the headline in the Boston Globe ran, “First Japanese Star Reclaims Spotlight,” while the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley, in a memorable article, asserted that with that one game, Nomo would forever have a place in Red Sox history.
BALTIMORE - He's started just one game for the Red Sox, yet already Hideo Nomo has stepped from the pitcher's rubber directly into New England hardball lore, his name guaranteed to be remembered for generations.
But, then, that's the reward for pitching a no-hitter: Your name goes into the books, sure, but your exploits go into people's memories until the day they die. Old-timers wipe away a tear when they remember Ted Williams' final career at-bat, as do aging baby boomers when they recall the night Carlton Fisk sent a home run into the October night, during the 1975 World Series..
So when Boston’s newest Japanese import walked off the mound at Camden Yards last night after pitching the Red Sox to a 3-0 no-hit victory over the dazed Baltimore Orioles, you could practically hear those thousands of baseball fans back home, readying up the stories they'll one day be telling their grandchildren.
And while Pedro Martinez had nothing to do with the history that took place here last night, he summed up the mood of every long-suffering Red Sox fan when he said alluding to Boston’s long, historical inability to win pennants, “Maybe our fans back home will still want to jump off a bridge when the season is over. But now they'll be happy.”
It's true. Whatever happens from this point on with the 2001 Red Sox, the lead paragraph in the story of this season will surely make note of Nomo’s 110-pitch mastery of the Baltimore Orioles, an event so magnificent that by the late innings last night practically every fan at Camden Yards was screaming for history to happen.
To many people it was as if Nomo had dropped off the face of the earth and then returned. By Nomo’s next start, in Boston, against those same Orioles, Nomomania, which, according to Boston Globe sports writer Gordon Edes, had been as “passé as hula hoops and eight track cassettes,” was back. This time the stands in Boston were filled with Japanese waving placards with kanji on them, reading “Nomo Domo,” “Domo Nomo” and “Nomo No-No.”
Nomo the pioneer had shown people that regardless of what others may have thought of him, he was still in the prime of his career.
Nomo vs. Ichiro: The Usurper
When Nomo faced Ichiro and the Seattle Mariners on May 2, 2001, time seemed to stop on the streets of Tokyo. It was in the midst of Golden Week and an estimated 20 million Japanese fans tuned in to see the live broadcast, even though it was midday in Japan. In Seattle, 50 Japanese reporters had crammed themselves into the Safeco Field press box. Pancho Ito, the famed Pacific League official and national baseball commentator, called it the second most important event he had ever covered.
The first? Nomo’s debut for the Dodgers in 1995.
The Yomiuri Giants game registered only an 11% rating on Video Research that day.
Ichiro was hitting .333 going into the game, but Nomo shut him down.
Ichiro grounded out his first at bat. Nomo made a statement in the fifth when he hit Ichiro in the back with a fast ball thrown as hard as he could. It certainly did not appear to be an accident, but rather, it was a demonstration of just who was boss. Indeed, one got the feeling, watching the two face each other over the 60-foot distance between pitcher’s mound and batter’s box, that Nomo did not like Ichiro very much. The defending champion was not going to let the brash young challenger take away his crown so easily.
Nomo made yet another statement on May 25, when he shutout the Toronto Blue Jays, 4-0, on a one-hitter (a fourth inning double) and struck out 14. Although he was leading the league in bases on balls, he did not walk a batter. Many thought this game was better than the no-hitter Nomo pitched in April, but Nomo, as usual, had little to say.
“How did you pitch?” asked a reporter, who was dumb enough to pose the type of question Nomo detested.
“You saw it. You decide.”
But the grizzled ace pitching coach Joe Kerrigan was effusive. “This one was more efficient. His control was superior. He only threw 14 pitches in his longest inning. He was spotting the ball on the corners. He was superb.”
But Kerrigan and other observers also noted how much Red Sox catcher Varitek helped Nomo succeed.
Said Kerrigan, “Because Nomo’s forkball starts at the knees and dives devilishly into the dirt, batters won’t swing at it, but it requires a good catcher to stop it. Varitek, who had 14 blocked balls in the first two months of the year, did the job. Nomo did not have to worry about a passed ball when he threw his fork.”
Nomo finished the season at 13-10 with an ERA of 4 50 and struck out 220 to top the AL In the process, he had taken on the role of staff horse after Pedro Martinez went down with an injury in the second half.
When the season was over, Kerrigan who was interim manager for a time that year, delivered his appraisal of the pitcher from Japan after spending a full season with him. He called Nomo, “a noble warrior. He has more class and dignity than just about anybody else.”
But Nomo and his agent Don Nomura, annoyed that Red Sox officials were taking their time in discussing a new contract for the following season, abruptly terminated talks and announced they were going elsewhere.
It was time for the peripatetic ronin to head back on the road.
Said Red Sox GM Dan Duquette, summing up the 2001 Nomo experience, years later, “I still remember a number of things from that one year with Nomo. One was what a great job he did. We signed him to stabilize our pitching staff — and that he certainly did. He pitched a no-hitter, led the league with strikeouts, he had a good year with us, he did a good job.
“Another was that he was an established professional. I remember that the team didn’t have to employ an interpreter. Nomo may have had his own interpreter that he employed but team didn’t employ one. He had his own support system, he knew what he had to do to perform here in the States … He was reticent with the English speaking media but he was pretty accommodating with Japanese media.
“I still have the ticket from his April 4 no-hitter (against Baltimore) in my office. I think that was the highlight of his career with the Red Sox. It was the first time he pitched with Red Sox and a less experienced pitcher probably would not have got the opportunity to finish the game, because it was so early in the season. I think that was the highlight of the Nomo experience for me. It was a terrific thrill for him to come in, join the team, and throw a no-hitter. That had a lot of impact."
“Nomo also attracted a lot of new people — from Japan in particular — to follow the Red Sox. The two games against Ichiro (May 2 at Seattle and May 8 at Fenway) were a big highlight. Here you had the most established pitcher from Japan and most established player from Japan going against each other and that was really good for baseball, and for the Red Sox. The Japanese media made a big deal of the confrontation. There was such a huge contingent of the press from Japan at Fenway for the May 8 game that we had to assign additional PR staff to accommodate the interest in the media in that match up. We had Japanese speaking interns, students in the Boston area, working in the office.”
“It’s too bad we couldn’t have both of them on our team. We couldn’t reach an agreement to keep Nomo. It cost too much money. We had also bid for Ichiro’s services, but we were short. I think we bid $5 million, but our bid was less than Seattle’s.”
It should be noted here that Duquette was forced out of the Red Sox when new ownership led by billionaire investor John Henry, took over and money was no longer an issue. The 2006 Red Sox, as you may recall, paid an astonishing $51 million for the posting rights to Daisuke Matsuzaka, then signed him to six-year deal for another $48 million.
It was too bad for Boston that Henry hadn’t bought the team five years earlier.