Best-selling author Robert Whiting, who wrote "You Gotta Have Wa," "The Meaning of Ichiro," and "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat," returns to top form in an exhaustively researched exclusive four-part expose on Bobby Valentine's rise and fall with the Chiba Lotte Marines.
Tapping into his deep pool of contacts and his keen understanding of Japanese society and baseball on both sides of the Pacific, Whiting provides a revealing look at the successes and failures of Valentine's first and second stints as the Marines manager, including giant missteps made by the popular American skipper.
Whiting also details the front office soap opera — incompetence, financial problems, systematic cruelty, bizarre characters — that created numerous problems on and off the field for Valentine's club.
The series will begin on Sunday (a day later in some areas), and run the following three Sundays.