Life lesson from leading manager Nomura

Cover of “Baseball Manager Nomura, The Weak Beat The Strong”

Japanese baseball guru Katsuya Nomura / Courtesy of Book-Ocean

By Baek Byung-yeul

It has been six years since Katsuya Nomura retired as manager of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), but the 80-old-year is still regarded as one of the most influential men in the baseball-crazed country.

Nomura recorded the league’s second-most home runs with 657 during his 25-year-long career as a catcher, and appeared in more than 3,000 games as both a player and a manager, a first in the baseball world.

But it is not due to those numbers that he is so respected, rather the fact he has shown a distinctive talent for giving a fresh breath of life to struggling baseball clubs. Looking at his career as a manager, he only had two more wins than he lost, recording 1,565 wins, 76 draws and 1,563 losses while managing 3,204 games. Percentage-wise, he had a 50.03 winning record, but baseball writer Kim Sik believes Nomura’s record is one of the most prestigious feats in the NPB as it was mainly the result of the weak confounding the strong.

Kim highlights the retired baseball legend’s knack for defeating stronger teams, and how his leadership transformed weak teams into stronger ones, with his own vision in his latest book, “Baseball Manager Nomura, The Weak Beat The Strong,”

In Korea, the Japanese manager is known as a role model for Kim Sung-geun, a star manager who led the SK Wyverns of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) to win Korean Series titles in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Now as a manager of the Hanwha Eagles, Kim has been the most-talked-about baseball manager this season after lifting the worst team in four of the past five seasons up to fifth place in the 10-team league.

In his recommendation letter, Kim confesses he has read every book of Nomura to learn his secrets for winning and ways to become a reliable leader.

“Baseball is a sport where you risk failure. It is necessary to overcome failures. Nomura has claimed it is important to figure out the reasons when you fail at something. If you know the reason why you experience failure, it reduces the chances that you will fail again the next time,” he writes.

The author obviously walks a tightrope in trying to balance the tone and character of his book so it is part self-help book that is interesting to the general public, and part critical biography primarily suited for avid baseball fans. But one thing is sure: the book clearly delivers the legendary manager’s firm philosophy that everyone always starts after failing at something.