Longest-Working Baseball Player, and MM on USSR and LBJ

横浜ベイスターズの工藤くんが今日１日の試合に先発した。ノムラさんを抜いて実働27年の日本新記録を達成。同い年の工藤くんがノムラさんの記録を抜いたことに感慨を覚えもする。子供の頃、ノムラさんはすでに南海ホークスの監督兼捕手兼４番だった。工藤くんは西武にいた新人の頃、「クドちゃんで～す」と言って、石毛、秋山らといっしょにテレビに出てた人。来年、クビになったら、アメリカも韓国も台湾もある。もっと長く続けてほしい。

“From Third World to First”をもう少しで終わる。

*

My meeting with President Mikhail Gorbachev was postponed several times because he was caught up in a series of intense discussions on the next step into a market economy…

[Gorbachev] was uncertain what his next step should be to solve almost insoluble problems. I thought to myself that he had made a fatal mistake going for glasnost… before perestroika…, that Deng Xiaoping had been wiser doing it the other way around. Gorbachev looked composed, calm and sincere when he said that each nation was unique and no country must dominate another militarily. He said the Soviet Union was engaged in perestroika, grappling with the question of choice, the choice of political and economic reform, and how it should proceed…

It was a miracle, I said, that the transformation of the Soviet Union was so peaceful. If he could get through the next three to five years without violence, he would have scored a great triumph…

As we walked out of the Kremlin, I marvelled that such a decent man could reach the top of so evil a system… It was a stroke of good fortune for the United States and indeed the world.

In my discussions with China’s leaders I discovered their totally different view of Gorbachev as a superpower leader who had listened to the siren call of his enemies. He should have been on guard when his enemies’ media praised him… Therefore, when the American media referred to Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji as China’s Gorbachev, Zhu quickly distanced himself from anything that might be seen to be like Gorbachev… [The Chinese] saw him as having dismantled the Soviet Union empire in a way that the CIA would have been proud to have done. (pp. 496-498)

*

[In October 1967, immediately] after the welcoming ceremony, [Lyndon] Johnson had a one-on-one session with me… He was relieved to find someone from Southeast Asia and near Vietnam who understood, sympathised and quietly supported what he was doing [in Vietnam].

Johnson was very direct. Was the war winnable? Was he doing right? I told him he was doing right but the war was not winnable in a military sense. He could prevent the communists from winning. This would allow a Vietnamese leadership to emerge around which the people would rally. It would be a victory because that government would have the support of the people and it would be non-communist. I had no doubt that in a free vote the people would vote against the communists. He was cheered, if momentarily. (pp. 507-508)

I wanted to call on President Johnson. Bill Bundy was surprised that I wanted to see a lame duck president and not the president-elect (Richard Nixon)… It was a forlorn and melancholy Johnson I met. He said he had put everything he had into Vietnam. His two sons-in-law were in the armed forces and both had served in Vietnam. No man could do more. I left a disconsolate Johnson. (p. 514)