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One of yer best comments Diderot, and that's saying a lot.
Thanks for relaying your experiences with your Japanese friends. It rings absolutely true. Jerry Dipoto is obviously an EXTREMELY self-confident, extroverted guy and that wouldn't necessarily play well in your typical such negotiation.
That said, the Mainframe does give the hyper-intelligent JeDi credit for understanding that he'll be dealing with a Japanese contingency :- ) and he notes that no other MLB GM's were raised in Japan either. ;- ) So we could be okay.
Good reminder on the cultural difference. Let's hope that the Seattle org would blunder less often than the typical org.