First in a four-part series
It was just about the time that Chiba Lotte Marines acting owner Akio Shigemitsu declared that Bobby Valentine could run his team "for life" that things began to go sour. Until then, the former Texas Rangers and New York Mets manager had been riding a wave of success that many commentators on Japanese baseball had thought impossible for a gaijin kantoku to attain.
He had arrived in 2004 to take over a team that had not had a winning season in nearly a decade and was one of the least popular in Japan. A year later, employing a looser American-style approach to training and a charismatic, impassioned, style of leadership, Valentine steered the Marines to a Japan championship, becoming, in the process, the first foreign manager ever to win a Japan Series.