AsianWeek » A ‘Giant’ Impact on The Asian American Community

A ‘Giant’ Impact on The Asian American Community

By: Peter J. Swing, Apr 03, 2008

Tags: Sports |

SAN FRANCISCO — There will always be a special place for the San Francisco Giants in the hearts of Asian American Major League Baseball fans, no matter what team they root for (yes, even the Dodgers). In 1964, the Giants drafted Japanese pitcher Masanori Murakami, who became the first foreign-born Asian player to play in the major leagues — the Asian American Jackie Robinson. Although Murakami played for only two years due to contractual obligations with his team in Japan, he played with the best ball players in Giants’ history, among them Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Gaylord Perry and All-Stars Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda.

This season, the Giants will bring back the 63-year-old Murakami to the mound. But instead of pitching fastballs, the Giants will commemorate him and his significant contribution to Asian Americans during Japanese Heritage Night in May. The Giants will also honor the pitcher with a limited edition Masanori Murakami bobblehead with pre-game ticket purchase.

The Giants are also making a tremendous effort to outreach to the Asian American community by supporting the S.F. Hep B Free campaign, a citywide initiative to make San Francisco the first hepatitis B-free city in the nation. Hepatitis B is a hundred times more prevalent in Asians than in non-Asians.

In light of these statistics, the Giants have agreed to champion the campaign’s public awareness efforts during their team’s Asian Heritage Week on May 12 to 16 with a public service announcement by left-fielder Dave Roberts and tickets with a percentage of the proceeds donated to S.F. Hep B Free. Each night that week, S.F. Hep B Free volunteers will be in the Giants’ Community Clubhouse behind home plate to provide educational materials and brochures about hepatitis B. The major outreach effort will conclude at the fourth annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration in Japantown, where Roberts and Luigi Francisco Seal, the Giants’ mascot, will promote hepatitis B screening, testing and vaccinations. In its first year in 2006, the Asian Heritage Street Celebration tested 536 fairgoers, the largest one-day hepatitis B screening event ever conducted in San Francisco.

“We know that hepatitis B is an important issue affecting the Asian American community,” said Staci Slaughter, the Giants’ senior vice president of communications. “We are pleased to be a part of the S.F. Hep B Free campaign and want to help any way we can.”

For more information on the Giants’ Asian Heritage Week and pre-game ticket purchase items, visit sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com and click on “Special Events”
under the “Tickets” tab.

……….

For more information on the S.F. Hep B Free Campaign and Asian Heritage Street Celebration, contact AsianWeek Foundation administrative coordinator, Thanh Huynh, at
thuynh@awfoundation.com or (415) 321-5865, or visit
sfhepbfree.org and asianfairsf.com.

Comments

It is desperately needed for more Asian Pacific Americans to participate in sport, entertainment, media, government, public services, music, etc.

We are underrepresented and whether one becomes a writer, coach, stage supporter, star. We need each and everyone of us to be out to drum up the noise.

Sport is a big business and lucrative income. Besides, it gains national or international attention, integrate to America. I think every API needs to nurture their children to become tomorrow’s leader and country’s public figure.

–EL on Apr 04, 2008
Dear EL:
Whereas I believe I understand your viewpoint and the points you make above, I have a few “buts”::
First, APAs have never been absent from the enlistments you cite, only unacknowledged or underappreciated.
Second, the “name” and “fame” you seem to be addressing resides more in the hired “praise singers” than in either merit OR accomplishment. Note that James Wong Howe is more properly appreciated by his peers than Anna May or Sessue by theirs.
Third, you are absolutely correct in that money is the lingua franca here, and how absurd therein. Millions for the few at the top, peanuts for the sandlot guys, if that.
This last is part and parcel of the LIE that is part of the so-called “American dream.” Bear-Stearns is today’s Enron, but instead of a jail term, the perpetrators go home with literal millions. The entire system is rotten, literally, and those who embrace it are doomed to the superficial siren call of “fame” and “fortune.”
As a far too “Americanized” “peer” of ethnicity?, I, for one, prefer the musings of Chuang-tze or, maybe more practically, the “wisdoms” such as they are or may be, of the mythical Lao-tze, the Old One, whose strictures in the I Ching, after literal millennia, still make more “sense” than today’s absurd “values.”
Had I a “child” today, I would, surely, worry about the state of the schools, the violence rooted in the “values,” or lack thereof in the community itself, but I would also try to point out to the young mind and spirit that mere position and profit are less than the golden mean.
The true test is internal, the true goal the “personal best” and NOT the meretricious models paraded before us with boring and banal posturings.
“Reality” today is “virtual.”
I prefer the ambivalent realities of the Tao.
Frank Eng
P.S.: As for “leaders” and “public figures,” would you actually encourage ANY child, much less your own, to emulate, say, a “George Bush”? God! I hope not. That idiot still insists that we send more cannon fodder into that UNholy war, even as he cuts back the care and assistance for those already maimed and returned.

–Frank Eng on Apr 04, 2008

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