The Ultimate Sports Fan

Japanese American farmer is big support for Arizona Diamondbacks

By Sam Chu Lin
Special to AsianWeek

As the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team takes to the field at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, Ariz., 73-year-old John Sakata, a semi-retired produce executive, beams with pride. Not only is he cheering for his team to win another World Series, he is happy that he has had the opportunity to play a small role in making that dream come true.

Thanks to his help, the defending champions play on one of the best fields in the country. The stadium has a retractable roof, and temperatures that soar past the century mark are kept outside on any given day.

When this reporter first spotted Sakata in the audience seated with Diamondback general managing partner Jerry Colangelo, someone described him as, “that Japanese man is a rich executive who flies into Phoenix from Japan each week to watch the games. He’s probably an investor in the team.”

Sakata laughs when he hears that story. What is true is that Colangelo and Sakata have been friends for more than three decades.

“I’m just a poor dirt farmer who just loves sports,” he exclaimed.

Colangelo called upon Sakata and his knowledge of produce and farming in selecting a hybrid Bermuda grass for use in Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix.

As he was about to begin his freshman year in high school, Sakata contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for two years. At war’s end, he lost a kidney. He never went back to school and began working in the produce business, specializing in mixed vegetables and eventually winning a partnership in the Phoenix area. Despite his physical challenges, Sakata never gave up.

Sakata was so involved he became a booster or sponsor for both the Arizona State University football team and the Phoenix Suns basketball team, often traveling with the NBA stars to San Diego and Los Angeles or Houston and Dallas. Sakata and Colangelo both met one another in those early years and quickly cemented their friendship.

“From the first time that I met John,” Colangelo commented, “I knew he was unique. He was a guy who couldn’t do enough for you. And I found early on, if you tried to reciprocate, he was always one-up on you, because he would never let you get the upper hand in that sense. And as I got to know him and to know his personal life and the things he went through as a young man, I came to the conclusion he could have been very bitter when he got to that Y in the road. Yet he went the other way. He became one of the most generous, kind, caring people that one can imagine.”

When a drive got underway to bring a major league baseball team to Phoenix, local business people and political leaders pointed to Jerry Colangelo as the best man to get the job done. He was only 24 years old when he became the youngest general manager in the NBA. Colangelo called on Sakata with his knowledge of produce and farming to work with the University of California at Riverside to find a grass that would grow under the tough conditions of the Valley of the Sun.

“I knew he would take it very much at heart to give him the responsibility of coordinating what we would do with the grass in this ballpark,” Colangelo stated. “John has lived in the valley for so many years. If anyone knows anything about the ground and what it can produce and what it would take to have green grass with the conditions that we have with the retractable roof, who better than someone like John Sakata.”

And it has been good business for the Diamondbacks. A hybrid Bermuda grass was initially imported from Mississippi and is now grown with a special mixture of sand on a ranch east of Scottsdale.

“Every year in February we put in new sod for the year,” Sakata summed up the results. “This new sod has held up very well.”

As Sakata joins Colangelo each week at their seats between home plate and the Diamondback’s dugout, both men are cheering for their team to repeat last year’s performance. Sakata says outfielder Luis Gonzalez is his favorite player and he is impressed with the way reliever Byung-Hyun Kim’s teammates supported him after he suffered two losses to the Yankees in last year’s World Series. He says the victory was an unforgettable experience.

“Jerry called me one night and told me to go to the jewelers and get measured for a World Series ring,” recounted Sakata. “It just floored me. It’s the same ring as the players, but it doesn’t have as many diamonds on it. I’m very proud of it. I was honored that Jerry would give me one.”

Colangelo noted with a degree of satisfaction: “I finally got him a little bit on that one. He was choked up when I told him I wanted him to have a World Series ring. I know he wears it proudly.”