Sample Player Profile Page

WAKAMATSU, DON


Nickname:	N/A	Position:	MANAGER
Home:	North Richland Hills, Texas	Team:	Retired
Height:	6' 2"	Bats:	R
Weight:	200	Throws:	R
DOB:	2/22/1963	Agent:	N/A
Birth City:	Hood River, Oregon	Draft:	Reds #11 - 1985 - Out of Arizona St. Univ.
Uniform #:	N/A		Reds #11 - 1985 - Out of Arizona St. Univ.

YR	LEA	TEAM	SAL(K)	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	OBP	SLG	AVG
1989	SL	BIRMINGHAM		92	287	45	73	15	0	2	45	7		32	54			.254
1990	PCL	VANCOUVER		62	187	20	49	10	0	0	13	2		13	35			.262
1991	PCL	VANCOUVER		55	172	20	34	8	0	4	19	0		12	39			.198
1991	AL	WHITE SOX	$100.00	18	31	2	7	0	0	0	0	0		1	6			.226
1992	PCL	ALBUQUERQUE			167	22	54	10	0	2	15	0		15	23			.323
1993	PCL	ALBUQUERQUE			181	30	61	11	1	7	31	0		15	31			.337
1994	AA	OKLAHOMA CITY		1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	1			.000
1995	PCL	TACOMA		9	32	3	5	1	0	0	6	0		2	8			.156
1995	EL	CANTON			143	16	38	10	0	4	23	0		17	21			.266
1996	SL	PORT CITY			70	10	22	4	0	2	9	1		4	11			.314

PERSONAL:
Wakamatsu is not just the great-grandson of a Japanese dairy farmer, but also one of the few Asian-Americans to play in the Major Leagues. However, Don only played 18 games in the majors, for the 1991 Chicago White Sox. The implications of his heritage first struck him when a government check arrived in the mail in the late 1980s, his father�s share of reparations for the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s. Wakamatsu�s father, Leland, was born in the Tule Lake camp in California, just south of the Oregon border.	�I didn�t understand what the check was for,� Wakamatsu said. �You don�t study that stuff in school. My grandparents never talked about it. I remember my dad�s reaction, that it was all too little, too late.� Don's paternal grandparents, James and Ruth, lost their home when they reported to Tule Lake, the largest camp. Ruth worked in the mess hall; James was a carpenter.

After the war, Wakamatsu�s grandparents and their children moved into a pickers� cabin, then a converted barn. James started to build a house nearby out of salvaged panels, which he bought off a truck from a man who said they came from the barracks of an internment camp, perhaps even Tule Lake. They live in that house to this day.	Wakamatsu�s grandparents grew pears, apples, and cherries to supplement their incomes. James worked in a mill, Ruth in a fruit-packing plant, putting in 30 years at their jobs. They can hardly comprehend that their grandson makes his living from a game. (Hugo Kugiya-NY Times-12/25/08) Indeed, two walls in Don's grandparents' home are made from the lumber of an internment camp's barracks. They're the walls that imprisoned Japanese families from 1942 to 1945. They're the walls that gave the Wakamatsus shelter once they were free.

Don's parents taught him to appreciate his diverse heritage. His father, Leland, is the son of James and Ruth. His mother, Sandra, is Irish. Leland and Sandra were high-school sweethearts and lived four miles apart in the hilly town of about 6,000 near the Columbia Gorge. The parents taught their son the family's two greatest traits: hard work and humility. Leland was an ironworker; Sandra was a dental assistant. They followed the example of James, who worked in a hardboard mill, and Ruth, who worked at a fruit-packing plant. As a kid, Don relished the opportunity to roam between the two dissimilar households of his Japanese and Irish grandparents.	"I'd eat rice at one house and bacon and eggs at the other," he recalled, laughing. He never felt different. He turned his multicultural upbringing into an asset, displaying a rare ability to relate to everyone. Besides being a great athlete with professional baseball aspirations, Don had a reputation as the friendliest guy in the room.

"He's been that way all his life," said his father, Leland. "Even when he was a boy, he'd love to be around old people and talk up a storm." The family never discussed their internment along with other Japanese Americans during World War II. Leland's parents didn't bring it up to him, so he didn't bring it up to his children. The silence ended sometime in the late 1980s when a 20-something Don observed his father's reaction to opening a government check.	Leland, who was born in the Tule Lake internment camp in California, realized it was a reparations check. He flipped it to the side and muttered something in disgust. It piqued Don's curiosity. "If you didn't live it, you have to do some digging to find out what happened," Don said. "I didn't learn about internment in history class, that's for sure." Still, he tiptoed around the topic until about five years ago. He befriended baseball historian Kerry Nakagawa and learned about Japanese Americans who played baseball in the internment camps.

Don knew his education wouldn't be complete until he questioned his grandparents about it. So he cornered his grandmother (in 2007). After a few hours of listening, he left with anger, pride, and compassion coursing through him. In 1942, during World War II, the Wakamatsus were kidnapped from their Hood River home, put on a train downtown and shipped to a camp in Portland. The crime: being Japanese. They were among the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans detained after the attack on Pearl Harbor.	It began a three-year vagabond voyage. From Portland, they went to California. From California, they went to Arkansas. From Arkansas, they went to Colorado. Ruth sits next to her daughter, Judy Wols, as she recounts the terrifying time. Judy was 2 when they were interned. "We were given a cot and an army blanket for each one in the family," Ruth says. "There were potbelly stoves in the middle of the place. Every time the bell rang, we knew we could go to the mess hall to have our meals."

She remembers the barbed-wire fences and the guards who spied on them from a tower. She remembers the crammed shower room and the shoddy dentistry. "The only thing the dentist did was pull teeth," she says. "They never did fillings or anything. If you needed some major dental work, you weren't going to get it." For a while, Ruth washed dishes to make $12 a month and help the family afford snacks and meals in the mess hall. James worked as a carpenter. Ask Judy if she can recall anything from that era, and she shakes her head no.	"It was not a place for kids," Ruth said. "No place to play. Just barracks." Counting the extended family, nine family members were interned. When they were released in 1945, some of them stayed in Colorado. James and Ruth were eager to take their kids back to Hood River. Ruth had lived there her whole life. James was from Orting in Pierce County, the place his parents settled after leaving Japan, but they moved to Hood River soon after.

After internment, they wanted to return to their home. Only it wasn't theirs anymore. Their property had been leased to another family. So they stayed with a friend, in a picker's cabin, and picked apples for a year until their land was given back. That complication was merely the tip of their strife. "It's kind of hard to talk about because the Caucasian people didn't want us to come back," Ruth said. "My sister-in-law and I went shopping downtown, got a cart, filled it up with food, and a man said, 'We're not trading with you.'	"There was no place to get a haircut. We did all of our hair-cutting for the men at home. The Caucasians didn't want us to come back to Hood River, really." It was the worst time of their lives, only Ruth minimized it. To this day, she's unwilling to succumb to all the pain. "Not too bad," she says of the 1940s. "We had some real nice friends." (Jerry Brewer-Seattle Times-4/05/09) Wakamatsu and his family arrived in Hayward, California when he was in seventh grade. His father, Leland, oversaw the structural steel crews that built many of downtown San Francisco's most prominent buildings, including the Embarcadero Center and Moscone Center.

"My biggest influence was my father, because he taught me about making my own decisions," Wakamatsu said. "He was always there for me and the biggest thing was he was going to work every day at 5 a.m. and he never missed a day. That's a pretty good example." Wakamatsu helped out with some construction work in the summers, but he also began to play baseball, beginning with a Japanese community association Little League team. Then he wound up on the all-star baseball squad sponsored by Oakland furniture store owner Sam Bercovich, a team that produced other major leaguers such as Joe Morgan, Curt Flood and Frank Robinson. Ray Luce, who coached that team, was another key figure in Wakamatsu's early years.	Then Wakamatsu went to Arizona State, where he was a three-time all-conference catcher - and where he played alongside Barry Bonds for three years. "It was one of those love-hate things," Wakamatsu said. "I loved watching the things he could do and I hated lockering next to him. That was more jealousy about what he could do and how easily he handled the pressure. He was so gifted so early." (Susan Slusser-SF Chronicle-2/17/08) Don was a fan of Johnny Bench. He wanted to play like the Reds' catcher.

Wakamatsu was taken in the 11th round of the 1985 draft by the Cincinnati Reds, but he struggled to adjust to wood bats and became known as a defensive specialist. While in the White Sox organization, he wound up catching knuckleballer Charlie Hough during camp, and when Ron Karkovice was out with an injury, Hough requested that Chicago bring Wakamatsu up. All nine of Wakamatsu's big-league starts came with Hough on the mound. "It's been a funny career," Wakamatsu said during 1992 spring training. "I was a good player in college and became a mediocre or sometimes terrible player in pro ball."	Don, who is half-Japanese, embraces his heritage. He took a year of Japanese in college and said he still hopes to learn the language one day. He graduated from Hayward High School in California. He played football, basketball, and baseball at Hayward High, including the school's last undefeated football team. As a sophomore, he and teammate Jack Del Rio both caught, but the following two years, Wakamatsu was behind the plate and Del Rio became a pitcher and outfielder. Both went on to face each other as catchers for opposing Pac-10 schools, Wakamatsu at Arizona State and Del Rio at USC.

"Obviously, I'm very happy for him and very proud of him," said Del Rio, who played football for the Trojans, played in the NFL and then was the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. "To see Don rising through the ranks of baseball is great. From the time we were growing up, I knew he was very passionate about baseball, very dedicated to being the best player he could be and now the best coach he can be." Don and his wife Laura were married in September 1989. They have three children: Jacob, Lucas, and Jadyn. Don is a working man's player. Like so many of us, he just wants to improve the way of life for his family. Of the Major Leagues, Don said, "You have to see yourself making it. That's something you have to see -- is yourself, there in the Big Leagues. The longer it takes, the harder it is to see it."	Eventually, Don wants to coach in Japan. He studied the language for a year in college at Arizona State, where he helped the Sun Devils reach the College World Series. He is a year shy of getting a college degree, but hopes to someday finish. After the 2007 season, Don visited his grandparents in Hood River, Oregon, for three days to ask them questions about their past. He knew they'd been relocated to the Tule Lake internment camp during World War II, but not much more. "I asked them about the camps and living in the barracks," he said. "They said, 'This house is made of barracks.' I said, 'What?' When they were let out of the camp, (former inmates) were allowed to buy the buildings, so my grandparents bought two, put them together and added windows. "How ironic - they had 48 hours to relocate, they were imprisoned for years and then they chose to live the rest of their lives in the same buildings. And they'd never talked about it before. I've only heard my grandparents speak a couple of sentences in Japanese in my life because they didn't want to speak it when they got out of the camp."

Don has a dog, a border collie/German shepherd named Asia. The family also has a pet rabbit, whose name is Dexter. Don's daughter, Jadyn, walks the rabbit on collar and leash. His wife, Laura, submitted to son Luke's request to buy a rabbit. "He's a really good dad," Laura says of her husband. She says he built a fence around an area of the backyard so Dexter could run around. He is a handyman/fix-it guy. Don has a healthy diet, with very little junk food, if any. He might have a glass of wine when they go out for dinner, but there's no booze in the house.	The healthy approach extends to the mind. Wakamatsu prefers reading to TV, and his favorite books are the ones about the mental approach to baseball. Wakamatsu has one bad habit�he chews tobacco. "He tries not to do it in front of the children," Laura said. "Our daughter is working on him to quit." Don likes to go fishing in his free time. And on an off day on August 31, 2009, he caught a 17-pound king salmon off a Puget Sound shoreline on the Kitsap Peninsula. It took him 15 minutes to land it. That afternoon, Mariner Mike Sweeney cleaned the fish, and it became part of the clubhouse dinner. For Wakamatsu, fishing has been a passion since childhood. And it's a perfect balance to the high-pressure job of being a major-league manager. His passion for fishing started as a kid when his family lived for two years in Bremerton while his father helped build a skyscraper in Seattle.

"We used to go for lingcod and salmon in [Puget Sound] when I was really small, but most of the fishing I've done was down on the Columbia [River] or in the Bay Area," Wakamatsu said. "I remember fishing on the Trinity River with my dad and uncle, and we didn't catch anything. We were walking away upstream and a guy comes in right behind us, fly-fishing and pulled four fish out of there." TRANSACTION REPORT 1985: Wakamatsu was drafted by the Reds in the 11th round, out of Arizona State University. October 7, 1993: Don refused assignment to the minors and was granted his release.	October 29, 1993: Wakamatsu signed with the Rangers. 1995: Don signed with the Mariners' organization. But he was released near the end of April at Triple-A. He then signed with the Indians' organization. December 1995: Wakamatsu signed with the Brewers' organization, but they released him in April 1996. June 1996: He signed a minor league pact with the Mariners organization.

BATTING:
Don has never been much of a hitter. More than anything else, it was his bat that kept him from staying in the Majors. Like most catchers, he was slow as a runner. Don's glove is what kept him in the game. He was a good defensive catcher -- especially adept at catching knuckleball pitchers like Tom Candiotti. And in 1991, the White Sox brought Wakamatsu up just to catch Charlie Hough.

FIELDING:
MANAGERIAL/COACHING TRAITS In 1997, when Wakamatsu was Manager for Peoria (MWL-Angels), he incorporated several novel ideas. The most intriguing? Each game, Wakamatsu would pick a player not in the lineup and make him manager for the day. Before the game, the player would help Wakamatsu go over the scouting report and fill out the lineup card. During the game, the player would have to give signs, put on plays, and make pitching changes. Buck Showalter, then Arizona's manager, was impressed by what he saw of Wakamatsu's work in the minors. He remembered him when he got to Texas and hired him as bench coach.	"For me to turn over spring training to someone - well, that tells you what I think of him," said Showalter, a notorious control freak. "I'll tell you what: Don's sharp as a tack and he has great organizational skills. He's in tune with the modern methods of baseball, but Wak also makes people feel comfortable. He smiles easily. He doesn't take himself too seriously, but he takes the job seriously. He's confident and he'll ask why; he's not just going to take everything on faith. He'll say, 'I think there's a better way to do things.' "If you drew up a blueprint for a bench coach, you'd come up with Wak. He gives you an opinion; he doesn't sit on the fence. I called Billy Beane and said, 'I just wanted to tell you that, with Wak, you're a better team today.' He fits them to a T. He'd be a good fit for anyone."

Don is an ethical guy, but he's not too stiff or structured. He smiles and laughs easily. He is also a good listener. Wak can be intimidating to people who don't work hard -- people who are not sincere. He can see through a phony; he knows what is real. Dan learned how to do things the right way in 17 years in baseball's minor leagues, first as a vagabond catcher and then with increasing levels of responsibility as a coach, manager and coordinator. "Being with 10 different organizations, you get to see good and bad," Wakamatsu said. "I've been with managers that you learn just as much what not to do (as what to do). I just try to keep an open mind and just try to remember as a player what it felt like. Not just playing, but how you were treated.	"That's probably my biggest advantage, playing 12 seasons with seven different clubs. Remembering what it felt like and how organizations or managers treated me." Angels' manager Mike Sciosia has know Don for a long time, and are impressed with each other. "Scioscia taught me as much as anyone about motivation, dealing with players," Wakamatsu said. "And the aggressive style. When he has the guys to do it, it's a lot of running, bunting, hit-and-running. He did a great job of defining expectations, both for the team and for individual players. Not a big rules guy, but pretty simple in getting guys to understand what it takes to prepare to play the game and play hard. An extremely strong presence in the clubhouse."

"Wak's baseball IQ is off the charts," Scioscia said. "We would throw stuff out there and talk about baseball situations, and Don was always right there in the middle of it.

RUNNING:
POST-PLAYING CAREER POSITIONS In 1997, Don became a minor league coach in the Diamondbacks' Arizona Rookie team. But a month into the season he became the manager of the team, replacing Brian Butterfield, who took on the role of expansion scout. In 1998, he was Manager for High Desert (CAL-Diamondbacks). He was named the California League Manager of the Year for that year. In 1999, Wakamatsu moved up to manager for El Paso (TL-Diamondbacks). In 2000, Don moved to the Angels organization as Manager for Erie (EL). November 5, 2002: The Rangers named Wakamatsu as their Bench Coach. Don joined Buck Showalter's coaching staff for the 2003 season.	In 2007, Don accepted the offer to be 3rd base Coach for the Rangers under new manager Ron Washington. He also coached the catchers. October 23, 2007: Wakamatsu moved to the A's, becoming Bench Coach for manager Bob Geren. November 19, 2008: Don was named Manager of the Seattle Mariners. August 9, 2010: Wakamatsu was fired by the Mariners as Manager.

CAREER INJURY REPORT:
May 1993: Don went on the D.L. He was back in action two weeks later. July 1993: Wakamatsu was sidelined for the rest of the season when he underwent elbow surgery. April 1994: He went on the D.L. at Oklahoma City (AmAssoc-Rangers) for the rest of the season.