Volume 38, Number 15 · September 26, 1991
Samurai of Swat
By Ian Buruma
Slugging It Out in Japan: An American Major Leaguer in the Tokyo Outfield
by Warren Cromartie, with Robert Whiting
Kodansha, 277 pp., $19.95
Few Japanese—if any—have forgotten that dark day in October 1964, when Anton Geesink beat the Japanese judo champion Kaminaga Akio to win the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo. The Dutch giant—six foot six inches, 267 pounds—didn't just beat Kaminaga, he flattened him. And the nation wept, quite literally. Grown men, pressed against shop windows to see the fight on television sets especially provided for this purpose all over Tokyo, collapsed in tears. Geesink told reporters that coping with the Japanese crowds after the fight had been tougher than the fight itself.
Review, 3690 words
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