Adam Jones: My Next Chapter

As an older guy, I honestly wasn’t ready for the level that teams practice at in Japan. In America, we work our tails off during spring training, and then when the season gets rolling, it’s basically all about the games. But in Japan, every day, every practice, is like the most focused spring training practice of the year.

There’s no fooling around. It’s all about getting better. Pitchers are doing fielding practice three or four times a week … in July. Infielders are taking thousands of ground balls even during the later part of the season. It’s baserunning drills, bunting practice, and on and on. Everything is all about trying to reach perfection when it comes to every element of the game.

So what I’d been watching Ichiro do back in the early 2000s was actually grounded in something at the very heart of how baseball is played in Japan. 

And once I arrived and began practicing with Orix, it was so much fun to immerse myself in the fundamentals of the game again. After having played for almost two decades in MLB, being able to learn and study and compare how another country does baseball was fascinating.