WaPo: Boswell: The Diplomat Who Touches All the Bases (RR)

That would be...Ryozo Kato: Commissioner of baseball in Japan.

“A lot of people in Japan have been green with envy. They want to know what I did to become commissioner,” said Kato, who, after a 60-year affair with the game, may have no rival anywhere in grasping the sport in both its Eastern and Western forms. Binding encyclopedic knowledge with decades of firsthand connections in the United States, Kato is unique. Not that he’d say it.

“I didn’t do anything to get the job, except I was out of the country for 6 1/2 years, so I was not exposed to scrutiny,” said the puckish ambassador, who has, out of obsession and whim, amassed an international collection of what the world crassly calls memorabilia. Kato simply describes his trove as “memories with a special meaning to me, none my favorite, but all of them stuck together, each important in its own way.”

..."If everything goes well, I’m slated to become commissioner with the appointment approved on June 18,” Kato said before leaving Washington, breaking news, at least in the Occident.

“But to be a baseball nut is different than being the commissioner,” he added soberly.