On the night Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks captain Seiichi Uchikawa reached the 2,000-hit milestone, one of the the first items on public broadcaster NHK's 9 p.m. national news program was a breathless retelling of the first NPB home run hit by Kotaro Kiyomiya, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters' prized rookie.
Kiyomiya dominated the sports news cycle that night, rendering Uchikawa a secondary event. The next morning, it was Kiyomiya's face peering out from newspaper stands in the Tokyo area (with almost no mention of Uchikawa on the lead pages), and it was Kiyomiya guests on TV morning programs fawned over. If there was ever a bad time to join one of NPB's most celebrated clubs — only 51 players have reached 2,000 hits in NPB — Uchikawa found it.
The attention Kiyomiya is drawing simply doesn't leave a lot of time for the spotlight to shine on anything else, even on a player as well-regarded as Uchikawa.