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  • Cardinals Take Care of Business in the Land of the Rising Sun (1968)

    Cardinals Take Care of Business in the Land of the Rising Sun (1968)

    Every Monday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Mark Kanter writes about the 1968 St. Louis Cardinals visit to Japan.

    During 1968, with the United States and much of the world in turmoil, the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals traveled to Japan to play baseball and sightsee. Sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun, they played 18 games over 33 days from October 22 to November 24. The Cardinals had participated in a previous goodwill tour to Japan, in 1958, when they won 14 out of 16 games. Since that time, the Japanese had become more competitive against major-league competition, and held the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers to a 9-8-1 record in 1966.

    On Tuesday, October 22, a dozen days after the Cardinals lost the World Series to the Detroit Tigers in seven games, they traveled from Los Angeles to Tokyo on a Japan Airlines chartered plane. President Lyndon Baines Johnson promoted the tour by stating that the two countries had more in common than just baseball, but that baseball does bring them together.

    While on the plane during a fog delay at Los Angeles, Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst, Commissioner William D. Eckert, and future Hall of Famer Lou Brock were photographed discussing the 33-day tour. Schoendienst was asked which pitchers he would start in the first few games of the tour. He implied that the two-week layoff after the World Series might hamper the pitchers’ conditioning and that he was still figuring out the rotation.

    Each of the Cardinals players who participated in the series received $3,000 and an additional $750 from the Yomiuri Shimbun. The latter sum was provided in yen, which had to be spent in Japan. The $3,000 would be worth about $23,000 in 2022, and the $750 in yen would be worth about $2,455. The players’ wives were very happy to be included in the trip even if each player had to pay an extra $1,500 to bring them along.

    Before their departure, players Mike Shannon and Tim McCarver said they were interested in doing some hunting while in Japan. Bob Gibson, however, was ambivalent about participating in the tour. Immediately after the end of the World Series, he received a vaccination in his arm and was complaining about having to continue pitching after the long season and seven-game World Series. His pitching arm had ached since the second half of the season and he worried that his arm might get damaged with the extra games.

    The 1968 expansion draft was held between the World Series and the beginning of the tour. As a result, some of the players participating in the tour were actually no longer on the Cardinals roster. Pitcher Larry Jaster, whom the Cardinals had lost in the draft to the Montreal Expos, was nonetheless asked to go along. The Cardinals also took Bobby Tolan and Wayne Granger to Japan even though they had been traded to the Cincinnati Reds for Vada Pinson. The trade relieved the Cardinals from having to protect both Tolan and Granger in the expansion draft. The Cardinals traded Johnny Edwards to Houston, as well, in preparation for the draft. Edwards also made the trip.

    Though they lost the 1968 World Series to the Tigers, the Cardinals had won the Series in 1964 and 1967, and were one of the premier teams in the major leagues. Nevertheless, the Japanese felt that the series between the Cardinals and Yomiuri Giants would be very competitive. An anonymous Giants player suggested that the Cardinals did not seem that formidable. The Giants did seem to have an advantage because the Cardinals had played the tough seven-game World Series but then had a two-week layoff before starting play in Japan.

    A sportswriter from the Hochi sports newspaper wrote, “I think Japanese teams can win five, maybe six, in this tour. I saw all 20 American major league teams this summer, and frankly, I was disappointed by American baseball. Many of our techniques are equal or superior – like pitching control, bunting and umpiring accuracy.” But, the writer went on to say, “[T]he Japanese game lacks the professional attitude one finds in America. … There is no sense of adventure in our game. An American runner might try to go from first to second base if he thinks he has a chance. A Japanese wouldn’t even consider the possibility. Too much chance of losing face. In a word, what we need is more ‘hassuru’ [hustle].” Daryl Spencer, the former major leaguer then playing in Japan, agreed. “The base running is terrible, and so is the coaching,” he said. He noted that players did not run out groundballs if they felt certain that they were going to be out, and that many Japanese baserunners were thrown out because they kept their heads down not knowing the situation.

    As the games began, the Cardinals started poorly, losing two of the first five. They looked lethargic. Their pitching and hitting were somewhat mediocre, probably due to having just played the seven-game World Series, not practicing much during the two-week layoff, and jet lag. The first three games were played at Korakuen Stadium, in Tokyo, on Friday, October 25; Saturday, October 26; and Sunday, October 27.

    The Cardinals beat the Yomiuri Giants by a score of 9-8 in the first game. The Giants, the Japanese champions since 1965, pushed the Cardinals to the limit. Gibson, coming off one of the greatest seasons any pitcher had in the twentieth century, gave up five hits, two walks, and four runs, all earned, in just two innings. He was nursing his arthritic pitching elbow, having taken pills just before the game to dull the pain. Wayne Granger, who was no longer in the organization, came on in relief and was the Cardinals’ best pitcher for the game. His line was three innings pitched, one hit, three strikeouts, five bases on balls, and one run, which was earned. Steve Carlton took the mound in the sixth inning. Although Carlton struck out eight batters, he allowed five hits and was wowed by a 420-foot home run that Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh pulled into the right-field bleachers.

    Carlton later credited Oh’s home run and the trip to Japan for the development of his signature slider. He told Steve Wulf of Sports Illustrated in 1994, “I knew how effective Bob Gibson’s slider was but Bob had elbow problems, so I had been looking for a way to throw the slider and minimize the wrist turn that causes elbow injuries. I had been fooling with a pitch, but in Japan, after Sadaharu Oh hit two home runs off me, I figured, what the heck. I threw Oh, a left-handed hitter, the slider. When he backed away and the ball was a strike, I knew I had something.” Exactly when this event occurred is unknown as Oh hit only a single home run off Carlton during the tour. In fact, after the opening-game home run, Oh did not get a hit off Carlton.

    Neither Gibson nor Carlton was a fan of the low mound at Korakuen Stadium. Nor would Gibson be a fan of the lower mound in the US major leagues for the 1969 season onward. Carlton complained that the mound was “almost flat compared to what I’m used to. I couldn’t get behind the ball.” After the opening game, manager Schoendienst suggested that Gibson was out of condition after not pitching since the end of the World Series.Tetsuharu Kawakami, the Giants’ manager, complained that the Cardinals were out of shape after Gibson was knocked out. Soon enough manager Kawakami would regret his complaint.

    The Giants beat the Cardinals 3-2 in the second game of the series. The Giants were led by outfielder Shigeru Takada, who had two hits and a stolen base. Takada, the 1968 Japan Central League Rookie of the Year, scored the first run of the game in the first inning when he scampered home as Akira Kunimatsu grounded into a double play started by shortstop Dal Maxvill. Giants pitchers Kunio Jonouchi and Yoshiyasu Tanebe held the Cardinals to two runs and five hits. The Giants were able to cobble together enough hits off Briles, Jaster, and Mike Torrez to win the game. Tanebe was the winner. Torrez took the loss when he gave up a game-winning single (today, it would be called a walk-off single) to second baseman Shozo Doi, with one out in the bottom of the ninth. Relief pitcher Tanebe scored the winning run. He made it on base after an unsuccessful sacrifice attempt to move Yasuharu Taki to second base. Tanebe went to second base when Torrez walked Takada. Tolan hit the only home run in the game.

    The Cardinals lost to the Japan All-Stars, 6-0, on October 27, again at Korakuen Stadium. Oh was the batting star of the game when he hit a grand slam in the eighth to put the game away for the All-Stars. Shortstop Kazuhide Funada of the Nishitetsu Lions hit a solo shot in the fifth inning, tallying the first run of the game. Pitchers Joe Hoerner, Mel Nelson, and Dick Hughes of the Cardinals were the victims of the All-Stars’ offensive barrage. Four Japanese pitchers, Mutsuo Minagawa of the Nankai Hawks, Yutaka Enatsu of the Hanshin Tigers, Minoru Murayama of the Tigers, and Fumio Narita of the Tokyo Orions, pitched for the All-Stars. Enatsu struck out seven Cardinals in three innings. He became a standout during the tour.

    The Japanese didn’t seem overly impressed with the Cardinals early in the tour. Some writers noted that the Giants would be even better once they got back third baseman Shigeo Nagashima (the 1968 Central League MVP) and center fielder Isao Shibata, who were both sidelined with health issues. “[A] Tokyo sportswriter spoke for many when he said: ‘I am disappointed in the Cardinals. There is no show, no excitement about them.’”

    On Tuesday, October 29, at Maruyama Stadium in Sapporo, the Cardinals defeated the Giants, 6-3. Joe Hague, a Cardinal prospect, hit a home run. Carlton and Granger pitched for the Cardinals. Granger was the winner of the game. Tsuneo Horiuchi was the one pitcher who pitched well for the Giants. He gave up one hit in two innings.

    After each game, the players and the coaching staff were showered with gifts like electric shavers, happi coats, photo albums, electronic equipment, and yen if they were the winning pitcher, manager, or best player. Their entourage was sometimes taken aback when presented with foods such as sushi, raw salmon, jellyfish, bean curd, and rice confections at Japanese restaurants. Sometimes, the players didn’t have a clue as to what they were eating. There were times when they could order up “American” food at their hotels. The Cardinals even met up with a number of interesting items in their dugouts, including charcoal pits and tea kettles.

    The Cardinals met the Giants again on October 30 at Miyagi Prefecture Stadium in Sendai, about 230 miles north of Tokyo. Gibson, who won the game, 8-1, was described as a “speedballer” in the Japan Times. He pitched five innings, giving up one hit, striking out six, and walking one. Jaster gave up three hits and three walks in four innings of mop-up work. Gibson appeared to be over his jet lag and inaction. Brock led off the game with a bunt single. Center fielder Curt Flood followed up with a single that moved Brock to third base with one out. Then catcher Tim McCarver hit a grounder to the pitcher, Kunio Jonouchi, who threw the ball away trying to get Flood at second. Brock scored and the floodgates opened, allowing the Cardinals to score four more runs in the frame when Orlando Cepeda, Hague, Shannon, and Phil Gagliano all followed with singles.

    The Cardinals hit a barrage of home runs in the rest of the series. For instance, in the sixth game of the tour, at Osaka Stadium, they beat the combined forces of the Giants and the Nankai Hawks, 7-1. Masanori “Mashi” Murakami started the game and pitched three no-hit innings. Murakami was the first Japanese to pitch in the major leagues. He had pitched for the San Francisco Giants in 1964 and 1965, with good results – 89⅓ innings with a 5-1 record, a 3.43 ERA, and 9 saves. He had a WAR of 1.6 for those two seasons. In 1968, pitching for the Nankai Hawks, he won 18 and lost 4 with an ERA of 2.38 and a WHIP of 1.019. Hague hit a home run for the Cardinals, while Oh hit his third home run of the series. In the 10th game, on November 7 at Toyano Stadium in Niigata, the Cardinals hit four home runs en route to an 8-1 win as Carlton and Torrez combined for a two-hitter. The only run scored by the Giants was on a home run by catcher Makoto Tsuchida. Flood (two home runs), Shannon, and Brock were the long-ball hitters for the Cardinals.

    The Cardinals became a buzzsaw from games 9 through 18 – whether they were facing the Giants, an all-star team, a combined Giants/Nishitetsu Lions team, a combined Giants/Chunichi Dragons team, or a combined Giants/Hiroshima Toyo Carp team. The Cardinals won eight and lost two games. They hit a total of 23 home runs in those 10 games and scored 69 runs to 48 by the Japanese.

    On November 8, a day off from games, some of the Cardinals players including, Brock, Cepeda, Ray Washburn, and Gibson, and coach Dick Sisler visited with Vietnam war wounded at various US military hospitals in Japan. Brock visited and signed autographs for wounded at the US Army Hospital at Camp Zama. Gibson, Cepeda, Washburn, and Sisler visited with the servicemen at Kishine Hospital while others visited Camp Oji and Camp Drake The servicemen discussed pitching with Washburn. Some Marines explained to the players that they were celebrating the anniversary of the start of the Marines. Gibson started to ask the other players and Sisler when and where the Marines had been formed. Sisler provided the date of 1775 and Washburn and Cepeda provided Philadelphia as the location. Gibson added that the Marines were started in a bar in that colonial city. Gibson suggested that his arm was hurting during the visit. After that, one of the Marines asked Gibson how his leg was feeling after being broken by a batted ball hit by Roberto Clemente in 1967. He said it was feeling good until he was asked about it.

    On Saturday, November 16, ABC’s Wide World of Sports televised the taped-delayed November 9 game against the Japan All-Stars at Tokyo Stadium. Gibson pitched five innings, struck out seven batters, walked six, and gave up three runs, all earned. He contributed offensively, too, with a single, a double, and a steal of second base. Gibson even struck out Oh twice. He did give up a three-run homer to Shinichi Eto in the first inning. Catcher Katsuya Nomura, who was the next batter, was the all-time Japan leader in career home runs at that point. Gibson got Nomura to fly out to right field.

    The Cardinals beat a combined Giants-Carp team in Hiroshima, 5-3, on November 12. Torrez pitched a complete-game seven hitter. Yoshiro Sotokoba of the Carp, who won the Central League ERA title, pitched three innings, giving up six hits, four walks, and four runs, all unearned. After the game, the Cardinals and their entourage went on a sightseeing trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. While many of the players were too young to remember the 1945 bombings, they quickly understood the devastation that that holocaust created. Commissioner Eckert (a former Air Force lieutenant general), Schoendienst, and Musial laid wreaths at the memorial.

    In Nagoya, at Nagoya Stadium, on November 19, the Cardinals defeated a combination of Yomiuri Giants and Chunichi Dragons, 3-2. Torrez and Brock hit home runs. Torrez is forever remembered by legions of baseball fans for giving up Bucky Dent’s home run in the 163rd and final tiebreaker game of the 1978 AL East regular season, which propelled the Yankees into the ALCS. The Japanese team did score once in the fourth inning off Torrez.

    Every once in a while the Japanese team would come up with a pitching gem to defeat the Cardinals. The 16th game of the tour showcased Akira Takahashi, who pitched a two-hit shutout for the Giants. Brock and McCarver got the only hits in the game for the Cardinals. Takahashi didn’t record a strikeout. He had had an up-and down career until 1968. He became the Giants’ third starter from 1963 through 1965 with middling results. In 1963 he won 14 and lost 13 with a 2.80 ERA, which was third best for the Giants rotation. After 1965 he was moved to the bullpen. However, he had a renaissance year in 1968 when he became a part-time starter. He won nine and lost eight for the Giants in 1968 with an ERA of 2.90 and a WHIP of 1.026. Interestingly, he pitched only seven shutouts in his career: three in 1963, two in 1965, and two in 1971.

    The final game of the tour encapsulated the dominance of the Cardinals hitters over the Japanese. The game was played in Shizuoka, about 90 milessouthwest of Tokyo, on November 20. Exactly 34 years earlier, on November 20, 1934, in the same ballpark, Eiji Sawamura held Babe Ruth’s All-Americans to just one run as he fanned Charlie Gehringer, Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx in succession. Although Sawamura lost the game, 1-0, the outing had made him a national hero. But the 1968 game was different. The Cardinals won, 16-9, with 14 hits compared with the Giants’ 12. The Cardinals hit seven home runs – two by Cepeda, two by Ed Spiezio, and one each by Hague (a grand slam), Brock and Shannon. The Giants hit four home runs with Shigeru Takada and Isao Shibata hitting one apiece and Oh hitting his final two homers of the series. Jaster and Granger were the Cardinals pitchers. Granger ended up with the win.

    At the end of the final game, each of the Cardinals players gave a bat to a Giants player. They swapped caps and said sayonara. This may have been when Oh gave Brock one of his compressed bats. Oh had been using this kind of bat since the 1964 season. He started to use a hand-made bat made by Jun Ishii. Ishii was looking for a harder wood and started to make his bats using the wood from a male yachidamo tree. The water and air had to be removed from the wood to ensure that it was as hard as possible. The sound of the bat hitting the ball provided Oh with a sound like no other. Bowie Kuhn, who became commissioner in 1969, barred Brock from using the compressed bat. In Japan the use of a compressed bat was disallowed after Oh retired in 1980. The bat was thought to give an advantage to the hitter because the wood is condensed. However, the research is not definitive.

    Despite the Japanese media’s pre-tour belief that their countrymen would challenge the Cardinals, the Japanese did not fare as well as they had anticipated. St. Louis won the series, 13 games to 5. The Giants, winners of four consecutive Japanese titles on their way to nine in a row, as well as the Japanese all-star teams, were thoroughly dominated by the Cardinals’ hitting – even though they were not considered a great hitting team during the 1968 National League campaign.

    The Cardinals, who hit 73 home runs in the 162-game regular season, hit 30 in the 18-game series. Mike Shannon suggested that the Cardinals would hit 300 home runs in a season playing in the smaller parks and against Japanese pitching. Up-and-coming young pitcher Torrez, who won three and lost one on the tour, hit .571. He stated that the Japanese hitters would choke up after two strikes. They didn’t go for the long ball, except perhaps for Oh. His opinion was that US major-league hitters were more often looking for the long ball.

    Oh led all of the players with six home runs. He had hit 58 in the Japanese regular season. Brock, Cepeda, and Shannon each hit five home runs and Hague pitched in with four. Oh had the most hits, 21 (he hit .356). Brock had 20 hits. Cepeda led the tour with 17 RBIs; Oh and Hague were tied with 15. Granger had four wins along with a 2.21 ERA. Torrez had a 2.13 ERA and three wins. Gibson had 20 strikeouts, followed by Carlton with 17, Granger with 16, and Hanshin’s Yutaka Enatsu with 15. Enatsu pitched great against the Cardinals. He won two games while giving up only four hits and striking out 15 in nine innings, and had a 0.00 ERA. Gibson and Carlton were relatively mediocre on the tour. Gibson won two games while posting a 3.94 ERA in 16 innings. Carlton, who won one game, had a 5.40 ERA in 15 innings.

    At the end of the tour, the Cardinals entourage felt that Oh and Enatsu were ready to play in the US major leagues. Schoendienst was effusive in his praise for both players and suggested that Enatsu was one of the best left-handed pitchers he had ever seen. He noted that Oh probably wouldn’t come to the United States because of salary demands. Oh made about $97,000 and Enatsu made about $50,000. Both had lucrative product endorsement contracts as well.

    The major leagues have had a number of Japanese players who have done very well since 1968. They players include Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui, Ichiro Suzuki, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Shohei Ohtani. Moreover, Japanese ballplayers won the first two World Baseball Classics, in 2006 and 2009. However, in 1968, the Cardinals were the Kings in Japan. Interestingly, the Cardinals had to wait another 14 years to win a pennant and participate in a World Series.

    read the rest of the article on SABR.org

    Cardinals Take Care of Business in the Land of the Rising Sun (1968)
  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 11, Masumi Kuwata

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 11, Masumi Kuwata

    by Thomas Love Seagull

    A recent poll for a TV special saw more than 50,000 people in Japan vote for their favorite retired baseball players. 20 players emerged from a pool of 9,000. Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list. Which is probably smart because I’m sure Ohtani would win by default. There are, however, players who were beloved but not necessarily brilliant, and foreign stars who found success after coming to NPB. Unsurprisingly, the list leans heavily towards the past 30 years, with a few legends thrown in for good measure.

    Over the next few weeks, I’ll be profiling each of these players. Some of these players I know only a little about, so this will be as much a journey for me as, hopefully, it will be for you. It’ll be a mix of history, stats, and whatever interesting stories I can dig up.

    For now, have a look at the list below and see how the public ranked them. I’ve included the years they played in NPB in parentheses.

    20. Alex Ramirez (2001-2013); 19. Yoshinobu Takahashi (1998-2015); 18. Warren Cromartie (1984-1990), 17. Takashi Toritani (2004-2021); 16. Suguru Egawa (1979-1987); 15. Katsuya Nomura (1954-1980); 14. Tatsunori Hara (1981-1995); 13. Kazuhiro Kiyohara (1985-2008); 12. Masayuki Kakefu (1974-1988); 11. Masumi Kuwata (1986-2006); 10. Atsuya Furuta (1990-2007); 9. Randy Bass (1983-1988); 8. Daisuke Matsuzaka (1999-2006, 2015-2016, 2018-2019, 2021); 7. Tsuyoshi Shinjo (1991-2000, 2004-2006); 6. Hiromitsu Ochiai (1979-1998); 5. Hideo Nomo (1990-1994); 4. Hideki Matsui (1993-2002); 3. Shigeo Nagashima (1958-1974); 2. Sadaharu Oh (1958-1980); 1. Ichiro Suzuki (1992-2000).

    The thinking pitcher who survived by understanding the game

    Baseball has always loved its certainties: the tall pitcher, the overpowering fastball, the obvious prodigy. Masumi Kuwata was none of those things. He was small for a professional pitcher, barely 174 centimeters tall when he debuted, reserved where others were loud, thoughtful about his craft where others relied on instinct. Even as a teenager surrounded by giants, he looked ordinary enough to be overlooked.

    And yet, from almost the beginning, baseball seemed to bend toward him.

    He was born on April 1, 1968, in Yao City, Osaka, the youngest student in his class because of his birthday*. That detail followed him everywhere. He was always smaller, always younger, always forced to compete against boys who seemed physically ahead. Instead of discouraging him, it shaped him. Kuwata learned early that survival in baseball would not come from strength but from understanding.

    *In Japan, children start school in April after turning six. Those born on April 1 begin that same April, while those born on or after April 2 start the following year.

    He began playing in elementary school. Exactly when he joined is unclear, but one moment remained vivid to Kuwata: he quit. Bullied by older players, he walked away from organized baseball for a time and spent months throwing a ball alone against a wall. His father, Taiji, devised unusual training methods built on creativity rather than repetition, such as removing all the cotton from his son’s baseball gloves so that it would hurt if he caught the ball poorly. By fifth grade, Masumi was already a primary pitcher. Teammates remembered not just velocity but control and the uncanny sense that the ball went exactly where he wanted it to.

    By middle school, opponents spoke about him with disbelief. Catcher Shuji Nishiyama, his childhood friend and teammate and future two-time Best Nine award winner, later said Kuwata threw around 140 kilometers per hour (about 87 mph) even then, but what stunned hitters was precision. The ball arrived only where the mitt was set. Years later Nishiyama would say that among every pitcher he had ever seen, Kuwata remained the greatest in total ability.

    When he entered PL Gakuen High School in 1983, he arrived alongside a player who embodied certainty itself: Kazuhiro Kiyohara, already famous for prodigious power. Compared to towering teammates and fearsome sluggers, the quiet right-hander barely stood out. Coaches initially did not expect much from him as a hitter, and he was not immediately a regular. He even told his mother he was thinking of leaving the team. Her response was simple: even as a backup, remain a pitcher for three years and finish what you started.

    What changed everything was a simple throwing drill. While other players lobbed high, arcing throws to gain distance, Kuwata fired low, direct throws nearly eighty meters. When upperclassmen told him to throw higher, he simply replied, “I’m a pitcher,” and continued the same way. Coach Junji Nakamura decided at that moment to develop him as one.

    Opportunity arrived when other pitchers faltered. As a first-year student wearing number 17, he took the mound in the Osaka tournament and dominated. Soon he was leading PL Gakuen to Koshien, Japanese high school baseball’s grandest stage.

    At fifteen years old, Kuwata became the ace of a national champion.

    The partnership between Kuwata and Kiyohara, the KK Combo, became a social phenomenon. Together they carried PL Gakuen to five consecutive Koshien appearances, winning twice and finishing runner-up twice. Kuwata compiled 20 Koshien victories, a postwar record, and struck out 150 batters while also hitting six home runs. He pitched, fielded, and hit with startling completeness, once describing batting as feeling like playing catch: move the glove, or bat, precisely to the ball’s center.

    There were moments that already hinted at the player he would become. Facing elite competition, he sometimes sensed outcomes before they happened. On one famous home run, he later said he knew the ball would leave the park the instant it left the pitcher’s hand, as if guided by something beyond calculation, what he called an unseen force rather than his own power.

    Even then, Kuwata approached baseball differently. At the time, there existed a widely discussed belief in Japanese baseball that summer Koshien championship pitchers rarely succeeded as professionals. Many arrived famous and left injured. Kuwata, undersized and already heavily used, heard those doubts clearly. Rather than resist them emotionally, he treated them as a problem to solve. If Koshien heroes burned out early, how could he last longer? He began studying training methods, nutrition, recovery, and mechanics while still a teenager, determined to build a pitcher who could survive years into the future rather than dominate briefly in the present.

    He also believed baseball contained something spiritual, but never mystical without effort. He prayed not for success but to be guided toward “the best path,” convinced that hard work allowed the baseball gods to notice you.

    The path turned complicated in 1985.

    The professional draft that year centered on Kiyohara, who openly desired to join the Yomiuri Giants. Kuwata publicly declared he would attend Waseda University instead. Most teams respected that decision and avoided drafting him.

    Then the Giants selected him first overall.

    The moment detonated into controversy. Kiyohara, watching the draft, wept openly. Rumors spread that Kuwata and the Giants had arranged a secret agreement. Protest calls flooded his family home. The episode became known as the “KK Draft Incident,” one of Japanese baseball’s most bitter controversies since the Egawa affair. The Giants seem to be involved in a lot of those.

    Kuwata denied any secret deal. He had merely decided privately that if the Giants selected him first, he would turn professional; otherwise he would attend Waseda. The decision had not been deception so much as the hesitation and confusion of a seventeen-year-old caught between dreams. Giants manager Sadaharu Oh insisted the selection had long been planned, praising Kuwata’s situational intelligence and recalling a triple play he had executed at Koshien as evidence of extraordinary baseball instinct. Still, at seventeen years old, he entered professional baseball already cast, unfairly, as a villain.

    The burden followed him into his rookie season. He was given number 18, the number of ace pitchers. But while Kiyohara starred immediately for Seibu and won Rookie of the Year, Kuwata struggled, finishing 2-1 with a 5.14 ERA. Fans doubted him and critics mocked him. He later admitted fearing he might be released within a few years if nothing changed.

    Instead of retreating, he doubled down on study. He experimented with nutrition, recovery, and conditioning when few players did, icing his arm when coaches discouraged it and expanding his repertoire one deliberate step at a time.

    In high school he had limited himself to a fastball and curveball as a personal challenge. As a professional he added a slider, then began refining a split-finger fastball he continually modified throughout his career. He even gave it a name: the Thunderball. Kuwata approached pitching like a craftsman refining tools. He studied anatomy and sports science, arguing that some commonly feared pitches were misunderstood, and insisted that understanding the body mattered as much as throwing harder.

    The results arrived quickly. In 1987, his second season, Kuwata transformed into one of the league’s best pitchers, posting a 15-6 record with a 2.17 ERA, winning the Eiji Sawamura Award and the Central League ERA title while still a teenager, helping the Giants capture the pennant. He became the youngest Opening Day starter in Giants history the following year. He won a Gold Glove, made the Best Nine, and began a run of excellence that established him as one of the Central League’s defining pitchers.

    Kuwata could throw in the low 90s in his younger days. But his success came not only from overpowering hitters but through precision and imagination. Former Hiroshima Carp catcher Mitsuo Tatsukawa later said Kuwata could do everything—pitch, field, and hit better than many position players—recalling a moment when a coach suggested intentionally walking a batter to face Kuwata, only to be told Kuwata was the more dangerous hitter. He fielded brilliantly, won eight Gold Gloves (tied for the most ever by a pitcher) and later joked that defense was his greatest skill, batting second, pitching third.

    His curveball became legendary as a pitch that seemed to rise before dropping sharply, later complemented by a slow looping version that American observers would call a “rainbow curve.” Timing, not speed, became his weapon. He manipulated rhythm the way a musician manipulates tempo, sometimes choosing to fall behind in counts to exploit a hitter’s expectations.

    By the late 1980s, the Giants’ rotation revolved around three pitchers: Masaki Saito, Hiromi Makihara, and Kuwata*. They became known as the “Three Pillars,” and each represented a different philosophy. Saito, a sidearm power pitcher who would collect three Sawamura Awards and an MVP, imposed himself on hitters. Makihara, the 1983 Rookie of the Year and future author of a perfect game, relied on rare physical gifts. Kuwata won through strategy and control. Teammates later said no single ace existed among them; the strength of the staff came from the certainty that if one failed, another would win the next day.

    In 1989 Kuwata won a career-high seventeen games and helped lead Yomiuri to a Japan Series title. Yet controversy returned in 1990 when reports linked him to improper financial relationships through acquaintances, including leaking his scheduled pitching dates, sparking media outrage and even discussion in the Diet. Though cleared of gambling involvement, he received a one month suspension and heavy fine. The incident deepened a strange divide in his public image: respected within baseball for professionalism yet viewed by many fans through lingering suspicion.

    He responded the only way he knew: by pitching. After serving his suspension, he returned with consecutive shutouts and finished second behind Saito in wins and ERA. In 1994, everything came together. Kuwata went 14-11 with a 2.52 ERA, led the league with 185 strikeouts, and won the Central League MVP award. That year culminated in one of the most famous games in Japanese baseball history: the October 8 showdown between the Yomiuri Giants and Chunichi Dragons, winner take all for the pennant.

    The atmosphere felt national in scale. Early chances slipped away amid nerves. Defensive plays and baserunning mistakes hinted at the pressure both teams felt. Manager Shigeo Nagashima committed completely, deploying his three pillars in succession: Makihara, then Saito on short rest, and finally Kuwata.

    Dragons players later admitted their greatest fear was not whether Kuwata would pitch, but when. Late innings against him felt different; the game slowed to his rhythm.

    When Kuwata entered in the seventh inning, he was exhausted. He had prepared specifically for this game, even cutting short a previous start to preserve strength, yet fatigue weighed heavily. He later admitted he felt afraid. Not of failure, but of the magnitude of the moment.

    In the eighth inning, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Kuwata’s former teammate and roommate at PL Gakuen, reached base with a desperate head-first slide that dislocated his shoulder, symbolizing the Dragons’ final push. The tying run loomed. Kuwata escaped without allowing a run.

    In the ninth, with two outs remaining, he delivered a high curveball. The batter, Tetsuya Komori, swung through it for strike three. The Giants were pennant winners, and Kuwata stood at the center of one of Japanese baseball’s defining moments. For many fans, the image that remained was not the celebration but Kuwata’s fist, clenched in quiet triumph after surviving the most pressurized innings of his career. The Giants would go on to defeat the Seibu Lions in the Japan Series, with Kuwata finally overcoming Kiyohara on baseball’s biggest stage.

    By then, public perception had changed. The player once booed for entering the league, once suspected of gambling on baseball, was now indispensable.

    Then came the injury.

    In 1995, chasing a pop-up, Kuwata tore ligaments in his right elbow and underwent Tommy John surgery. The damage cost him nearly two seasons and altered his career permanently. He returned in 1997 after surgery, no longer overpowering but determined to survive through intellect.

    Adaptation defined him. In 1998 he won 16 games and captured the league’s highest winning percentage. In 2002, at age thirty-four, he achieved one of baseball’s most improbable resurgences, posting a 2.22 ERA to win the title again, fifteen years after his first, the longest gap between ERA titles in NPB history.

    That season captured Kuwata at his purest. In one complete-game shutout, he signaled to his fielders where the final out would land before throwing the pitch that produced exactly that result, a routine fly ball to right. Teammates laughed, but it revealed how he pitched: not reacting to outcomes, but imagining them first.

    Kuwata also challenged traditions throughout his career. He opposed corporal punishment in amateur baseball, criticized excessive training culture, advocated scientific conditioning, and insisted professionalism meant preparation as much as endurance. Teammates admired his discipline; younger players called him demanding but fair. At violent, hierarchical PL Gakuen, he became known as “an angel” for refusing to participate in hazing while still holding teammates to rigorous standards. He argued that violence reflected laziness in coaching.

    Despite his excellence, he finished his Japanese career with 173 victories, short of the symbolic 200-win milestone revered in Japan. Statistics alone never fully explained him. He hit .216 with seven home runs, fielded like an infielder, and won admiration for professionalism that extended beyond the field. A lifelong non-smoker, he even pushed for smoke-free locker rooms.

    Near the end of his career, as performance declined, he pursued one final dream. In 2007, at age thirty-nine, he signed a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, aided by pitching coach Jim Colborn, who understood Japanese baseball. A freak collision with an umpire during spring training tore ankle ligaments and nearly ended the attempt before it began. Kuwata rehabbed, reached Triple-A, and soon received a call to the majors.

    On June 10, 2007, at Yankee Stadium, Masumi Kuwata became the third-oldest post-war rookie in MLB history after Satchel Paige and Diomedes Olivo. He allowed a home run to Alex Rodriguez but later struck out Ichiro Suzuki and recorded several scoreless outings. Struggles followed, and after nineteen appearances he was released. He finished with no victories and a 9.43 ERA, but by then numbers were beside the point.

    “I have no regrets,” he said afterward. How could he? He went from being the youngest kid in his class to one of the oldest kids in the majors.

    Kuwata often said, “Baseball is of the heart.” The phrase did not mean emotion alone. For Kuwata, heart meant preparation, curiosity, discipline, and respect for the game as something larger than results. Even in retirement he continued training, occasionally surprising observers by throwing sharp fastballs well into his fifties.

    He showed that baseball could be studied, shaped, and reimagined. That intelligence could compete with size. That resilience could matter as much as brilliance. That a career could contain both suspicion and redemption, injury and renewal, doubt and quiet mastery. Kuwata compared pitching to rock-paper-scissors. Control the timing of the reveal, and victory follows.

    He once said that success was not luck but effort witnessed by the baseball gods.

    Masumi Kuwata spent his career trying to become someone those gods would notice.

    And in the end, they did.

    Thomas Love Seagull’s work can be found on his Substack Baseball in Japan

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • SPRING TRAINING ON OKINAWA

    SPRING TRAINING ON OKINAWA

    By Carter Cromwell

    The outlook – mostly sunny.  The temperatures – around 20 C (70 F).  Wind – gentle breezes for the most part.  Shirt-sleeve weather.  Perfect for having a snack, enjoying a favorite beverage, and casually observing a spring-training baseball game.

    In Okinawa.

    Not in Florida, nor Arizona. Not Major League Baseball, but Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) – the wellspring of talent for Samurai Japan, winner of three World Baseball Classic titles and the favorite of many to win the 2026 tournament currently under way.

    Nine of the 12 NPB teams trained this February in the more or less tropical environs of Okinawa – the Yomiuri Giants, Hanshin Tigers, Rakuten Golden Eagles, Chiba Lotte Marines, Chunichi Dragons, Hiroshima Carp, Yokohama DeNA BayStars, Nippon-Ham Fighters, and Tokyo Yakult Swallows.  Absent are the SoftBank Hawks, Seibu Lions, and Orix Buffaloes, who train in Miyazaki.

    In addition, the Korean Baseball Organization’s (KBO) Kia Tigers and Samsung Lions and the farm club of the KBO’s Doosan Bears trained here this year, along with the Korean team in the World Baseball Classic.

    The NPB teams had workouts and games on Okinawa from February 1 until late in the month, after which they moved to the mainland for preseason games that continue until March 20.  The regular season begins March 27.

    Traveling to the other side of the world to see spring training might seem as a stretch to many fans, but the experience can be worth it.  The days are often pleasant in mid-to-late February.  Though bounded by the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea, at this time of year Okinawa lacks the heat and humidity of Florida and the dryness of Arizona.  The experience in Okinawa is more relaxed and less commercialized than MLB spring training.  There, fans won’t pay regular-season prices for tickets to exhibition games. Put another way, they won’t pay big league prices to (often) see minor league players.

    The double batting cage setup at the Fighters’ camp (photo by Carter Cromwell)

    Also, the spring training map in Okinawa is pretty compact, making it easier for fans to see multiple teams. The farthest distance between any two sites is 47 miles (76 km), which makes it very similar to the Cactus League in Arizona where the 10 spring training ballparks are all in the Phoenix area and the greatest distance between any two is also 47 miles.[i] Florida’s Grapefruit League is much more spread out, with many of the stadiums more than 100 miles apart and the longest distance between any of the two is 217 miles (350 km).[ii]

    Some observations from a week-long sojourn in Okinawa last month:

    • It was interesting to see pitchers Kenta Maeda and Shintaro Fujinami – who established themselves in NPB before playing in the United States – trying to revive their careers. The two started for Rakuten and Yokohama, respectively, at Ginowan Municipal Stadium, the spring home of the BayStars.  

    Maeda had 10-season stint in MLB but had a rough time during his two seasons with Detroit. The Tigers released him early in the 2025 season, and he then spent time in both the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees organizations.  

    Fujinami was with the Athletics and Baltimore in 2023, in the New York Mets minor league system in 2024, and began last season in Seattle’s organization before being released and signing with the BayStars, for whom he was 1-0 with a 4.09 ERA in six appearances. At all his stops, he displayed a triple-digit fastball combined with difficulty throwing strikes.

    Kenta Maeda pitching for Rakuten against Yokohama (photo by Carter Cromwell)

    Maeda pitched two innings against Yokohama, retiring the first four batters he faced before running into trouble in the second inning. With one out, he gave up a four-pitch walk, a flare single, and two RBI singles. Fujinami went three innings, allowing a run on three hits and – surprisingly – no bases on balls.

    • Hanshin Stadium, regular-season home of the Tigers, is the only NPB facility with an all-dirt infield, but all the spring training ballparks feature these. It means the grounds crew must rake around the bases and the mound after the third, fifth, and seventh innings, and they water down the entire infield after the fifth inning. At MLB ballparks, smoothing of the infield usually happens just once during a regulation-length game, and there is no need to water down the dirt areas during a game.
    • Despite these being merely exhibitions, the teams’ cheering sections were at each game, with noisemakers and cheers for each batter just like in regular-season contests.
    • The largest of the spring training facilities is Okinawa Cellular Stadium, which hosts the Yomiuri Giants.  It has 15,000 fixed seats in addition to – it is said – room for another 15,000 either standing or sitting on the grassy area beyond the outfield.  The official attendance for a game there against the Swallows was 7,400.
    • During the Giants – Swallows contest, a foul ball hit a nearby seat and bounced off a young boy’s face. Interestingly, the alert mom made sure to grab the ball before attending to her son, who, fortunately, did not need medical attention.
    • It’s always interesting to see import players here. Bobby Dalbec, once a top prospect for the Boston Red Sox and now 30, is in his first year with the Giants.  He singled in his only at-bat against the Swallows.  Another MLB alum – Trey Cabbage (Angels, Astros, Pirates) – is in his second season with Yomiuri.  He was 1-2 in the game.
    • A contest between the Marines and Dragons included ex-MLB players such as Miguel Sano (Twins, Angels), Gregory Polanco (Pirates), Jason Vosler (SF Giants, Reds, Mariners), Orlando Calixte (Royals, SF Giants), and Andre Jackson (Pirates, Dodgers). Polanco also spent three years with the Yomiuri Giants, and Jackson two seasons with the BayStars. In this particular game, Sano hit a long home run to right-center field in his first at-bat.  
    • Luke Voit, who played for five MLB teams over seven seasons, is back with Rakuten after a successful half-season in 2025 in which he hit .300 with 13 home runs in 67 games. He’s the team’s primary first baseman and sometimes designated hitter.
    • Each NPB team is allowed to have as many as four import players on the active roster at any one time.
    • A number of key players were not in Okinawa, instead playing for Samurai Japan as it ramped up for the WBC that began in early March: pitchers Hiromi Ito (Fighters), Taisei Ota (Giants), Yumeto Kanemaru (Dragons), Atsuki Taneichi (Marines), Hiroto Takahashi (Dragons), Shoma Fujihira (Golden Eagles), and Koki Kitayama (Fighters); catchers Seishiro (Sakamoto (Tigers) and Yuhei Nakamura (Swallows); infielders Shugo Maki (BayStars), Kaito Kozono (Carp), and Teruaki Sato (Tigers); and outfielder Shota Morishita (Tigers).  
    • Teams in the U.S. nowadays rarely take infield before a game, but it remains a staple of all the Japanese teams. It’s just one indication of their focus on fundamentals, and it’s entertaining to see them go through it so crisply.  Infield ends with a foul popup to the catcher, and the fans always cheer when he catches it.
    Rakuten Golden Eagles infield drills (photo by Carter Cromwell)
    • As mentioned earlier, there is not as much commercialization of spring training here, but one can still find the usual caps, jerseys, and other paraphernalia for sale.  Most of the food is outside the stadiums under tents or in food trucks, rather than inside.  You’ll find corn dogs, but also yakisoba, takoyaki (octopus balls), bento boxes, curry rice, yakitori (grilled chicken skewers), and long potatoes. Other options include gyukatsu (fried beef cutlet) rice bowls, edamame, ramen, and more.  
    • In the Marines – Dragons game, the Marines pitcher struck the leadoff hitter in the head with his first pitch in the bottom of the first inning and was immediately ejected.  An NPB rule calls for an ejection whenever a batter is hit in the head with a pitch, regardless of whether it was intentional.
    • One will see quite a few players with three-digit numbers on the backs of their uniforms.  Those designate players on the farm teams.
    • During workouts, one can observe players practicing tagging up on fly balls.  Hitters also practice fouling balls off, a skill that helps them stay alive on two-strike counts.  These are “small” things that can make a difference between success and failure. 
    • The teams also utilize two cages side by side during batting practice.  Hitters in one work on pulling the ball, while the batters in the other practice going to the opposite field.
    • Outfielder/designated hitter Franmil Reyes, who appeared for four MLB teams, has hit 57 home runs the last two seasons for Nippon-Ham. The Fighters’ spring training home is in Nago and right next to the ocean. During one batting practice session, Reyes launched seven home runs into the water – a different take on the “splash hit” made famous at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. 
    • Teams often will work out in the mornings and then have intra-squad games in the afternoons.  It’s surprising to see how many fans come to see what might seem like mundane workouts.  At the Fighters’ camp, large crowds stood by the fence just to watch pitchers go through fielding practice.  
    • When workouts are over, fans hoping for autographs will rush to line up at gates they know players will be exiting through.  Many of the players comply.
    Rakuten pitcher Masaru Fujii signing autographs (photo by Carter Cromwell)

    Away from the ballparks, there are other attractions that are worth one’s time.  Okinawa has more history than many realize.  Often, Westerners think of Okinawa only in terms of World War II or the many current U.S. military installations there, if they think about it at all.  

    Okinawa was officially annexed by Japan in 1879 when the Meiji government forcibly abolished the Ryukyu Kingdom, deposed the king, and established Okinawa Prefecture. This finalized years of increasing control by the Satsuma Domain, which had controlled the region as a vassal state since 1609. 

    Consider the following:

    • Churaumi Aquarium – one of the top tourist attractions in Okinawa, featuring whale sharks and one of the largest aquarium tanks in the world
    • Shurijo Castle – completed in the 15th century, it was the royal residence for the king and his family, and it also functioned as the government house of what was the Kingdom of Ryukyu prior to Japan’s takeover.
    • Okinawa World, a theme park featuring a massive natural cave, a craft village and snake museum
    • Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum & Cornerstone of the Peace, established in 1975 next to the spot where the World War II Battle of Okinawa ended
    • Kokusai St. & Makishi Market
    • Tsushima-maru Memorial Museum – Dedicated to a Japanese passenger/cargo ship that was sunk by the submarine USS Bowfin during World War II, while carrying approximately 1,800 passengers, including many schoolchildren
    • Surfing is a year-round activity on Okinawa, but it’s recommended only for intermediate to advanced surfers because of shallow, sharp coral reef breaks. Newbies who often fall from their boards will get their feet cut by the coral.

    [i] https://www.springtrainingconnection.com/distances.html

    [ii] https://www.springtrainingconnection.com/distances.html

  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 12, Masayuki Kakefu

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 12, Masayuki Kakefu

    by Thomas Love Seagull

    A recent poll for a TV special saw more than 50,000 people in Japan vote for their favorite retired baseball players. 20 players emerged from a pool of 9,000. Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list. Which is probably smart because I’m sure Ohtani would win by default. There are, however, players who were beloved but not necessarily brilliant, and foreign stars who found success after coming to NPB. Unsurprisingly, the list leans heavily towards the past 30 years, with a few legends thrown in for good measure.

    Over the next few weeks, I’ll be profiling each of these players. Some of these players I know only a little about, so this will be as much a journey for me as, hopefully, it will be for you. It’ll be a mix of history, stats, and whatever interesting stories I can dig up.

    For now, have a look at the list below and see how the public ranked them. I’ve included the years they played in NPB in parentheses.

    20. Alex Ramirez (2001-2013); 19. Yoshinobu Takahashi (1998-2015); 18. Warren Cromartie (1984-1990), 17. Takashi Toritani (2004-2021); 16. Suguru Egawa (1979-1987); 15. Katsuya Nomura (1954-1980); 14. Tatsunori Hara (1981-1995); 13. Kazuhiro Kiyohara (1985-2008); 12. Masayuki Kakefu (1974-1988); 11. Masumi Kuwata (1986-2006); 10. Atsuya Furuta (1990-2007); 9. Randy Bass (1983-1988); 8. Daisuke Matsuzaka (1999-2006, 2015-2016, 2018-2019, 2021); 7. Tsuyoshi Shinjo (1991-2000, 2004-2006); 6. Hiromitsu Ochiai (1979-1998); 5. Hideo Nomo (1990-1994); 4. Hideki Matsui (1993-2002); 3. Shigeo Nagashima (1958-1974); 2. Sadaharu Oh (1958-1980); 1. Ichiro Suzuki (1992-2000).

    The unlikely star who learned what it meant to carry Hanshin

    Some players arrive in professional baseball destined to be stars due to their size or abilities or knack for performing in big moments. Some were already on the national stage due to legendary performances in high school tournaments or breaking records in university leagues. And still some other players grow into greatness slowly enough that, even while it is happening, nobody quite realizes what they are watching. 

    Masayuki Kakefu was not supposed to become “Mr. Tigers.”

    The men who carried that title before him had all entered professional baseball as celebrities. Fumio Fujimura was a Koshien* hero. Minoru Murayama was a national collegiate ace. Koichi Tabuchi arrived as the prince of university baseball, already famous for hitting home runs before he wore a professional uniform. The title belonged to players who were known long before they reached Hanshin.

    *Koshien refers to the high school baseball championship tournament that takes place every summer, held at Koshien Stadium, which is also the home of the Hanshin Tigers.

    Kakefu was different. He had reached Koshien once as a second-year student, but by his senior year there were no professional offers. He was small for a power hitter, 168 or 170 centimeters (around 5 feet 7 inches for my fellow Americans), and few scouts imagined him surviving in professional baseball. It is almost impossible, knowing what came later, to imagine that the boy who would eventually hit 349 home runs was once considered an unlikely prospect.

    His path opened only through chance and persistence. Through a connection to Hanshin’s Motoo Andoh arranged by his father Taiji, who had coached amateur baseball, Kakefu was allowed to participate in Hanshin’s autumn camp, effectively as a tryout. Manager Masayasu Kaneda saw something others had missed and insisted the young infielder be kept close to the first team. The Tigers selected him in the sixth round of the 1973 draft, not as a future centerpiece but as a hopeful project.

    After Kakefu’s rookie season, during a gathering with team officials, his father made a simple request: “Masayuki has been trained to endure anything. Please give my son a chance to become a regular.” It was a simple request, but it captured something essential. Before Kakefu became known for power or popularity, he had been prepared to withstand difficulty. That would prove to be his defining trait.

    Even after being drafted, nothing came easily. He was not taken to the main spring camp in Aki City and instead remained behind at Koshien with the leftover group. When he first watched the regular players train, he later recalled that everyone looked like monsters. Koichi Tabuchi in particular seemed enormous, “like he was two meters tall*,” and Kakefu wondered whether he truly belonged in that world. Unsure of himself, he asked Tabuchi whether someone with such a small body could survive as a professional. Tabuchi answered simply: professional baseball was interesting precisely because even smaller players could become great. Then he handed Kakefu one of his own bats. The words and the bat became treasures.

    *About 6’7” for my American friends.

    When he signed, he did not yet have a uniform number. Only later was he handed number 31. Stories would eventually claim the number combined Shigeo Nagashima’s 3 and Sadaharu Oh’s 1, or symbolized working three times harder to become number one. Kakefu laughed at those explanations. “All after-the-fact,” he said. It was simply the lowest number available. But he intended to make it his own.

    Opportunity arrived by accident. During an open-season stretch, injuries and personal absences forced the Tigers to summon him from the minors. Used first as a pinch hitter, he produced results immediately, then continued hitting when given a start at shortstop. Against expectations, he made the Opening Day roster. Chunichi Dragons pitcher Senichi Hoshino later remembered facing him early and noticing a violent full swing that produced a sharp foul tip. Even in an ordinary groundout, Hoshino felt instinctively that this was a future star.

    Strong performances earned him a roster spot, and by his second season he was locked in a fierce competition at third base with first-round draft pick Noriyoshi Sano. Endless defensive drills under coach Andoh pushed him to exhaustion: he once fell asleep during practice and was sharply reprimanded. Nothing about his rise was smooth. Errors came, confidence wavered, and his rookie numbers were modest at best. Yet he kept working. Even after nights out, he returned to the dormitory and swung a bat on the rooftop until one or two in the morning. Practice, he believed, was the only thing he possessed that others could not take away.

    By 1976, only his third professional season, now a little taller at 175 centimeters, he broke through with a .325 batting average, 27 home runs, Best Nine honors, and the confidence that came from finishing ahead of Sadaharu Oh in the batting rankings. At twenty-one years old, he became the face of a phenomenon. “Kakefu calls” echoed through Koshien Stadium. Banners bearing the number 31 appeared in the stands. Young fans and women in particular were drawn to the shy young player whose gentle smile disappeared the moment he stepped into the batter’s box, replaced by an intense, almost feral focus. A song titled “GO! GO! Kakefu” was even released, and the excitement surrounding him became known as the “Kakefu Fever.”

    Then came 1978. Tabuchi, the third Mr. Tigers, was traded away at the end of the season. Soon afterward he phoned Kakefu with advice that would follow him for the rest of his life: “Finish your career in the striped uniform.”

    Suddenly the responsibility of the franchise shifted. Kakefu did not ask for it, but he felt it immediately. When he struggled, newspaper headlines blamed him directly. When he struck out four times, his name filled the front pages. “Hitting and becoming a headline anyone can do,” he later said. “But becoming the headline when you fail is different. That’s when I understood what Tabuchi had been carrying.”

    In 1979 he responded with 48 home runs, breaking Fujimura’s long-standing franchise record and winning his first home run title. Yet the transformation required reinvention. Kakefu had been a gap-to-gap batter by nature. Now he was expected to be a slugger in Koshien, a park hostile to left-handed power.

    He engineered power through mechanics. By striking the ball millimeters underneath its center, he created spin that allowed the hamakaze, the sea breeze at Koshien, to carry drives toward left field. “Home runs are something you aim for,” he believed. “A single is often just a missed home run.”

    Of course, there were drawbacks to his transformation. The swing demanded violent rotation from his lower body and placed enormous strain on him physically.

    His rivalry with Giants ace Suguru Egawa soon became the defining confrontation of the era. Kakefu believed a cleanup hitter’s duty was to defeat an ace’s best pitch. Egawa’s rising fastball represented the ultimate risk. “You either win or you lose,” he said. “That’s the job of the fourth batter.” Their duels became the centerpiece of the Tigers-Giants rivalry.

    Fame, however, carried darker consequences. During slumps in 1980, fans shouted for him to return to Chiba. Harassing phone calls arrived at home and even letters containing knives were mailed to him. Newspapers, as they tend to do, speculated about trades. The pressure broke his trust in people outside a small inner circle.

    After injuries disrupted 1980, he returned in 1981 and made a radical decision. He abandoned the pursuit of home runs and returned to being what he believed he truly was: a line-drive hitter. He hit .341, rediscovering joy in baseball.

    He later described that season as a return to his original self and to the hitter he believed he had always been. But fans were dissatisfied. A supporter once asked why he had hit “only” 23 home runs.

    “I realized then,” he said, “if I didn’t hit home runs, I wouldn’t be forgiven.”

    So he changed and rebuilt his swing once again. The results were immediate: home run and RBI titles in 1982, another home run crown in 1984, and the elegant opposite-field blasts became known as the “Kakefu Arch.”

    More than statistics, he embraced durability. Advice from Japan’s ironman Sachio Kinugasa convinced him that the fourth hitter must appear every day, to endure in front of fans whether succeeding or failing. From 1981 through 1985, Kakefu played every game, anchoring the lineup without interruption.

    After years of shouldering expectations, the moment he had been preparing for finally arrived in 1985. Coming off of consecutive 4th place finishes, it was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Yoshio Yoshida, in his second stint as manager, described it as laying a foundation, and few were imagining a championship. That changed early in the season at home against the hated Yomiuri Giants.

    Randy Bass launched a towering home run toward the backscreen. Kakefu followed calmly with one of his own. Akinobu Okada completed the unforgettable sequence with a third blast to nearly the same spot. The three consecutive backscreen home runs felt like an announcement. Something had changed.

    Suddenly, Hanshin’s lineup was dangerous. Bass dominated pitchers, Okada broke out, and veterans like Akinobu Mayumi stabilized the offense. At the center stood Kakefu, the longest-tenured Tiger, redefining the cleanup role. Sometimes he forced pitchers to face Bass, sometimes he extended innings, and sometimes he accepted walks instead of chasing glory.

    Hanshin hit a league-leading 219 home runs and captured its first pennant in twenty-one years before winning the franchise’s first Japan Series title. Yoshida later credited victory to having the best cleanup hitter in Japan. Kakefu, hitting fourth every game, combined power with patience, drawing league-leading walks while driving in runs and protecting teammates in the lineup. At thirty years old, in his twelfth season, Kakefu finally experienced the reward that responsibility had promised.

    The celebration revealed his personality as much as his performance. During the beer-soaked victory party, teammates found him smiling while sitting inside a ceremonial sake barrel, drenched but joyful. It was a rare glimpse of playfulness from a player otherwise known for seriousness and responsibility.

    But men called Mr. Tigers rarely live peaceful careers. In 1986 a hit-by-pitch shattered his wrist and ended his streak of 663 consecutive games. More injuries followed—shoulder, back, hand—and the powerful swing that had defined him and carried the franchise began to fade. He later admitted something inside him changed after that first fracture, as if the tension that drove him loosened all at once. Criticism returned. Doubt followed. Personal struggles and declining performance marked his final seasons, and by 1988, still only thirty-three, he knew the end had come.

    Other teams offered opportunities to continue playing. Even Shigeo Nagashima suggested rebuilding quietly before returning. But Kakefu remembered something Tabuchi had told him years earlier after being traded: never take off the striped uniform midway. Kakefu chose to retire as a Tiger.

    His final appearance at Koshien came in October 1988 against Yakult. He started, as he had so many times, batting fourth and playing third base. The symbolism was unmistakable: the role remained even as the body no longer could. In his last plate appearance, he drew a walk. The opposing catcher reportedly urged him to swing, to give the crowd one last moment, but Kakefu did not. He accepted first base quietly.

    He left with 349 home runs, 1,656 hits, a .292 average, three home run titles, an RBI crown, seven Best Nine selections, six Golden Gloves, and ten consecutive All-Star appearances. Yet numbers alone never explained his meaning.

    I asked Trevor Raichura, a social media content creator who occasionally serves as an interpreter for the club, why Kakefu still means so much to Tigers fans. He didn’t hesitate. Kakefu had not arrived as a prodigy but as a late draft pick who forced his way into the lineup. He practiced relentlessly, played dependable defense, and appeared every day. Trevor noted that Randy Bass later said his own success depended on hitting in front of Kakefu, a reminder that the cleanup hitter’s role was not only to shine but to make others dangerous. He never celebrated at an opponent’s expense or carried himself as larger than the game, and when injuries shortened his career, fans saw not decline but sacrifice: a smaller player who had spent every ounce of himself generating power in a ballpark that rarely rewarded left-handed hitters. In that sense, Kakefu’s legend rests as much on how he played as on what he achieved.

    He once refused an offer to change his number to 3 out of respect for Nagashima, insisting that 31 should become his own identity. Later he said numbers should live on players still competing rather than be preserved in tribute. Baseball, to him, belonged on the field.

    Masayuki Kakefu never hit a walk-off home run in regular-season play. It feels oddly fitting. His career was less about single dramatic moments than about sustained responsibility and the daily weight of expectation carried through effort and endurance. He was not born a star, nor was he destined for greatness in the way earlier “Mr. Tigers” had been. He became one through relentless work, adaptation, and acceptance of a role larger than himself.

    For years, when Hanshin fans looked toward the batter’s box in moments that mattered most, they saw number 31 standing there, shoulders squared against impossible expectations.

    Because once he accepted what it meant to be the cleanup hitter of Hanshin, there was nowhere else he believed he could stand.

    Thomas Love Seagull’s work can be found on his Substack Baseball in Japan

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • 1966: The Dodgers Return to Japan

    1966: The Dodgers Return to Japan

    by Andy McCue

    Every Monday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Andy McCue focuses on the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers tour of Japan.

    By 1966, the bloom was coming off the chrysanthemum of Japan tours by major-league teams. Rebuilding US-Japan relations was less worrisome as the Japanese economy surged and Tokyo proved a stout ally for American fears about Russian and Chinese policies in Asia. Concerns about whether the tour would make money thrust themselves into the picture. The strain of major-league pennant races made more players reluctant to travel, and the lure of “exotic” Japan had dimmed.

    The changes showed up between the lines for the first time as an American team barely outlasted its Japanese rivals. Still, the 1966 tour provided the venue to regularize the official relationship between American and Japanese professional baseball.

    It had been a decade since the last Dodgers’ tour of Japan. That had been a Brooklyn Dodgers team that had just dropped a seven-game World Series to the New York Yankees after defeating them the previous year. This time it was a Los Angeles Dodgers team, which had just been swept in the World Series by the Baltimore Orioles a year after winning it all. The hoped-for match between the American and Japanese champions, a consistent hope of the Tokyo promoters, was thwarted yet again.

    The tour followed in the wake of a contentious battle between the San Francisco Giants and the Japanese Pacific League’s Nankai Hawks over pitcher Masanori Murakami. Murakami, whom Nankai lent to the Giants for American-style training, proved such a sensation that the Giants called him up late in the 1964 season. He pitched so well that they refused to return him to Nankai and kept him for the 1965 season. The Japanese team thought the two clubs had a gentleman’s agreement, the Giants thought they had a binding contract for Murakami’s services. After much negotiation and bitterness, he had returned to Nankai for 1966

    The bad feelings over Murakami hovered in June 1965 as the Yomiuri Shimbun withdrew its offer to sponsor a tour that fall by the Pittsburgh Pirates. For the Japanese newspaper, sponsoring a tour was a commercial venture and “[t]he Pirates are unknown in Japan and we did not want to risk going into the red,” said Kanzo Hashimoto, head of the company’s promotions department.

    Commissioner Ford Frick was holding to the contract he had worked out with the Japanese in 1955. Under that agreement, a major-league team could visit every two years, with the selection alternating between the National and American Leagues. The Pirates had been the first team to volunteer for the 1965 trip, Frick said, so they were chosen. The last team to visit Japan had been the Detroit Tigers in 1962, and the 1964 trip had been postponed because Tokyo was hosting the summer Olympics that year.

    Yomiuri, which also owned the Yomiuri Giants, Japanese professional baseball’s dominant team, turned to the Dodgers. Walter O’Malley had been steadily building a relationship with Japanese professional baseball in the years since his team’s 1956 visit. Japanese players and coaches had been hosted at spring training in Vero Beach as well as in Los Angeles. Dodger instructors, including Al Campanis and Tommy Lasorda, had made spring-training visits to conduct clinics in Japan. The newspaper executives knew the Dodgers would be a strong draw.

    Frick was annoyed at Yomiuri’s end run to the Dodgers and The Sporting News editorialized that it would not work. But by the spring of 1966, O’Malley and Toru Shoriki, president of the Yomiuri Group and its Giants, were negotiating terms for the trip. In a little over a month, the formal invitation was announced. A few weeks later, baseball owners approved the tour, rubber-stamping Yomiuri’s end run. Both the Dodgers and Shoriki’s Giants had been champions in 1965, and the matchup offered promising opportunities for promotion and to see how much Japanese professional baseball was progressing.

    Clouds appeared on the tour’s horizon even before the formal invitation. Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills, the prime offensive engine of a team that did not score well, was planning a career as an entertainer when his baseball career ended. The 33-year-old had permission to arrive a week late at 1965 spring training while he toured Japan playing his banjo and singing. But, general manager Buzzie Bavasi claimed he had revoked that permission during salary negotiations. Hard things were said on both sides before an agreement was reached for a $35,000 raise to $80,000 for 1966.

    Wills’s negotiations were overshadowed that spring by the revolutionary holdout of Dodgers aces Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Drysdale’s appreciation of his value had been sparked by an offer from Japan of a $500,000 multiyear pact in late 1965. Frick threatened both Drysdale and the Japanese for a move he said would break Drysdale’s contract and jeopardize both the pitcher’s future and Japanese baseball’s relationship with the major leagues. The offer’s detail and whether it was real were never revealed as Drysdale chose to try to increase his salary and stay in the United States.

    In two innovations anathema to baseball owners, and especially Walter O’Malley, Drysdale and Koufax held out together and hired an agent. They asked for three years, with $200,000 annually for Koufax and $150,000 for Drysdale. Drysdale had earned a reported $75,000 in 1965, with Koufax slightly less. At first, Bavasi and O’Malley scoffed. But the hurlers hired an entertainment industry agent and began to work on deals for their own Japan tour and for movie studio and television contracts. The first movie opportunity fizzled, but Drysdale and Koufax ultimately appeared as actors. The leverage had its effect. Eventually, Koufax signed for $125,000 and Drysdale for $110,000.

    But the ripples went further. New Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller watched the holdout closely and pointed to the inequities of the process and the value of agents as he educated the board of the Players Association to the problems and the opportunities of negotiations. Within the Dodger organization, it gave Koufax and Drysdale much more freedom from management dictates. They would use that power to decline to accompany the team to Japan that fall.

    As the season progressed, there were increasing signs that other Dodgers were not enamored of the trip. The 1966 season was a grueling pennant race. The 1965 World Series winners led the league for only one day before gaining first place permanently on September 11. Their lead was never bigger than 3½ games. The season came to a close in a rain-splattered East Coast trip that included multiple doubleheaders. The Pittsburgh Pirates were not out of it until they lost the second game of a twin bill on October 1. The San Francisco Giants were eliminated only when Koufax won the second game of the Dodgers’ doubleheader in Philadelphia on October 2, the last day of the season. “Thank God it’s over,” said Koufax, echoing the sentiments of his teammates.

    The team’s exhaustion was clearly exhibited in the four-game World Series sweep at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles. The Dodgers’ offense managed only four runs in the four games.

    All this played into existing disenchantment with the Japan trip. As early as June, Phil Collier of the San Diego Union was reporting that Koufax, Drysdale, catcher John Roseboro, and outfielder Ron Fairly, the team’s player representative, were balking. “All we know is what we’ve read in the newspaper. The club hasn’t told us a thing,” Fairly told Collier. O’Malley had done all the negotiations with Shoriki without consulting the players. By August, Maury Wills’s name was added to the reluctants’ list.

    The front office brought pressure and most players fell into line. Ron Fairly said it was made clear to him that he would have to go. Wills tried to beg off with a sore knee. He’d twisted it beating out a bunt in July but had played on what was feared to be torn cartilage for the rest of the season. On the day he twisted his knee, he had 30 stolen bases. He would steal only eight the remainder of the season and had to be hypnotized to be willing to endure the pain from the knee and the raw patches on his legs from sliding. He too was told he had to go, but was promised he would play minimal amounts. Wes Parker told Walter O’Malley he had been to Japan before and wasn’t interested in seeing it again. Besides, he was sore and tired after the season. Parker was allowed to join Koufax and Drysdale with the stay-at-homes. Don Sutton, who had arm trouble surface in September, was held back on medical advice.

    The pitching situation was a severe blow as the Dodgers left California. Koufax, Drysdale, Claude Osteen, and Sutton had started 154 of the team’s 162 games. Only Osteen was on the trip, and manager Walter Alston suggested he was tired as well.Pitching had carried them to the pennant, giving up three runs a game, more than a run lower than the league average. Meanwhile, the offense was scoring 3.7 runs a game, third worst in the league. The Dodgers would face Japanese teams with the same anemic offense but a heavy sprinkling of arms from the bullpen and their minor-league system.

    The players who did go each received $3,000 and the equivalent of another $750 in yen from Yomiuri. The players talked of buying cameras and other electronics.

    The team left on the trip under a cloud of skepticism in the wake of the World Series. Typical was the Los Angeles Times’s Frank Finch’s story previewing the trip: “Having endeared themselves forevermore in the hearts of Marylanders with their peaceful visit to Baltimore last weekend, the Dodgers depart today for a goodwill tour of Japan.” Snide references to the World Series would populate headlines and stories throughout the trip.

    The team stopped in Honolulu for two exhibition games against teams of local major and minor leaguers with Bo Belinsky and Don Larsen brought in to provide the pitching. The Dodgers won both handily.

    While with the Dodger party in Honolulu, Commissioner William Eckert discussed a deal with his Japanese counterpart, Toshiyoshi Miyazawa, to cover future trips to Japan and, he hoped, avoid the disagreements that had clouded the Pirates’ proposed visit and the Dodgers’ eventual trip. They tentatively agreed that no team could visit Japan more than once in a six-year period and “no two teams from the same league can visit Japan more than two years in succession.”

    In Japan, expectations were high. “United States-Japan Battle of Champions” headlined the Yomiuri newspaper amid talk of a “real World Series.” The American military’s Far East Network announced it would broadcast most of the games. The 80-person Dodger delegation arrived in Tokyo on October 20 to the expected lavish greeting and a full slate of social events as well as ballgames. O’Malley blamed Koufax’s absence on a sore arm and said Drysdale had to attend to “business interests.” Asked by reporters if he foresaw a Japan-US International Series, O’Malley said, “I don’t see how you can prevent it. Japanese baseball is progressing admirably and the ballplayers are skillful. The public will demand it.” And, asked if the Dodgers would make a special effort to beat the Japanese champion Yomiuri Giants, O’Malley said, “definitely so.” Added Alston, “We’re on a four-game losing streak and want to win here.”

    The next day, Eckert presented Shoriki with a bronze plaque bearing an engraved message and signature from President Lyndon Johnson. After handing the message to Shoriki, Eckert also presented him with a World Series championship ring. It was the first World Series ring ever presented to a person not connected with a team participating in a World Series. “I myself and other Japanese concerned would like to further continue to promote Japan-U.S. friendly ties and contribution to peace, through baseball,” Shoriki said. The Dodgers worked out at Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium in anticipation of the next day’s opener.

    Game 1: October 22, Tokyo

    The Dodgers started the tour with a bang, 21 hits including six homers in a 16-5 drubbing of the Yomiuri Giants. Willie Davis and Jim Lefebvre hit two homers apiece while Tommy Hutton and Osteen each hit one before 40,000 people at Korakuen. Yomiuri provided a 7,000 yen ($19.44 in those days) reward for each home run. The game story noted that the 21 hits were four more than the Dodgers had managed in the entire World Series. Outfielders Toshimitsu Suetsugu and Akira Kunimatsu each had two hits to lead the Giants. The Giants had wrapped up a Japan Series championship over the Nankai Hawks on Wednesday October 19, while the Dodgers had not played a serious game since October 9.

    Claude Osteen, Walt Alston and Willie Davis during the 1966 tour of Japan (Robert Fitts Collection)

    Game 2: October 23, Tokyo

    The Giants evened up the series as left-hander Akio Masuda shut out the visitors, 5-0, allowing just three singles. Another crowd of 40,000 saw Suetsugu provide the key hit with a triple. “We were just no good today,” said Alston. “The boys just couldn’t touch the Japanese southpaw. He had a sneaky fastball plus a good assortment of other pitches.”

    The defeat echoed loudly in the United States the following Saturday (October 29). ABC had sent Red Barber to Tokyo for its weekly Wide World of Sports. The segment reported on the Dodgers’ tour and focused on Masuda’s gem. He “made the Dodgers look like sleepwalkers, groping blindly and mechanically on the road to nowhere,” wrote Arthur Daley in the New York Times.

    Game 3: October 25, Sapporo

    The Dodgers returned to the victory column with a 3-1 win over the Giants at Maruyama Stadium in Japan’s northernmost major city. Despite a steady rain, a crowd of 30,000 watched left-hander Kazumi Takahashi, who was chosen to start because of his similarity to Masuda, give up run-scoring hits to Maury Wills, Lou Johnson, and Willie Davis. Davis’s RBI was aided by Sadaharu Oh’s error. Katsutoyo Yoshida drove in the Giants’ run. In an incident that would echo for several years, Wills sprained his injured knee rounding third base when a rain-soaked patch of grass gave way. He was immediately replaced by pinch-runner Tommy Dean.

    Game 4: October 26, Sendai

    The Giants evened up the series yet again, mowing down the Dodgers 13-6 at Miyagi Stadium before 32,000 fans. The 13 runs set a record for the most tallies by a Japanese team against an American professional club. Jim Barbieri gave the Dodgers an optimistic start with a leadoff home run, but Yukinobu Kuroe matched him in the bottom of the first. The Dodgers’ second featured four runs on a parade of singles, but it was the bottom of the second that proved decisive. The Giants pounded Osteen and young Joe Moeller for six runs on five hits and two walks with two outs. Dodger minor leaguer Leon Everitt gave up another four runs in the seventh inning.

    October 27 was a travel day and the Dodgers stopped in Tokyo on their way to Osaka. While there, Wills asked Walter O’Malley’s permission to return to the United States for medical treatment on his knee. O’Malley, already missing Koufax and Drysdale, refused. Wills said he had been promised he would only have to play a couple of innings a game but had played almost full games early in the series. He decided he needed to go and jumped on a flight to the United States.

    O’Malley was incensed. “As the captain of the team, a higher degree of devotion to duty was expected of Maury,” the owner said. Then, adding a subtle threat about Wills’s post-playing future, O’Malley added: “I thought this particular boy showed evidence of having executive ability, and so did others.” The Wills story would come to dominate US coverage of the trip.

    Game 5: October 28, Osaka

    After a travel day, the Dodgers faced off with a team of players chosen from the Giants and the Nankai Hawks, champions of Japan’s Pacific League. (The Giants were champions of the rival Central League.) Alan Foster, who had spent the 1966 season with the Dodgers’ Albuquerque farm club, shut out the Japanese team 5-0 in front of 19,000 fans at Osaka Stadium. Utility infielder John Kennedy contributed two home runs. (He had hit three during the regular season.) The game featured the Dodgers’ first meeting with Murakami in Japan. In his two years in the National League, Murakami had pitched 13 innings against the Dodgers, giving up only one earned run. For Nankai in 1966, Murakami had gone 6-4 with a 3.08 ERA. That day in Osaka, he gave up three runs in 1⅔ innings, including one of Kennedy’s blasts and another by Barbieri.

    Game 6: October 29, Nishinomiya

    The Dodgers’ bats livened up in a second game against an all-star squad, winning 7-1 in this Osaka suburb. Jim Brewer, Bob Miller, and Phil Regan stifled the Japanese team, while Lou Johnson and Tommy Davis contributed their first home runs of the tour. The crowd of 30,000 at Nishinomiya Stadium saw the Dodgers frustrate the All-Stars by turning four double plays.

    Game 7: October 30, Osaka

    The Dodgers got a measure of revenge against Masuda, their nemesis in the second game, as Dick Stuart and Nate Oliver reached him for home runs to key a five-run ninth inning and a 9-7 Dodgers victory at historic Koshien Stadium, home to Japan’s annual high-school tournament. Murakami started the game and pitched 3⅓ shutout innings, but the bullpen could not hold the lead. The All-Stars had taken the lead by beating up on Joe Moeller and Ron Perranoski for four runs in the seventh inning. Phil Regan and Nick Willhite restored order and shut out the Japanese team for the rest of the day. John Kennedy also homered for the Dodgers, while Teruyuki Takakura of the Nishitetsu Lions hit one for the All-Stars before 43,000 people.

    Game 8: November 1, Toyama

    The Giants rejoined the campaign in this seaside resort city and the Dodgers prevailed with a 5-2 victory. The score was tied 2-2 in the top of the eighth inning. Akio Masuda was brought in yet again, but pinch-hitter Dick Stuart drove in a run and Al Ferrara singled to drive in two more. Phil Regan shut down the Giants in the eighth and ninth for the win at Toyama Stadium before 23,000 fans.

    November 2 was a travel day and the Wills story was thickening. In Tokyo, an “embarrassed” O’Malley said he would be meeting Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato on Friday and “try to explain and apologize for Wills.” O’Malley sought to frame it as a larger issue: “The United States is more or less involved in this loss of face caused by Wills’ defection.” O’Malley felt his long commitment to developing baseball as an international sport and building close ties with Japanese baseball was being undermined by Wills. The US government had not officially sponsored the trip but President Lyndon Johnson had sent a message of encouragement to the team.

    Wills, meanwhile, was proving elusive. He had gotten off his US-bound flight at a refueling stop in Honolulu. The Dodgers’ team physician, Dr. Robert Kerlan, said he had not heard from Wills. The shortstop/musician was soon spotted playing his banjo with Don Ho at Duke’s, a Honolulu night club, and at other spots around the city.

    In Japan, four groups of Dodgers visited four US military hospitals in the Tokyo area. The cultural and social obligations of the tour demanded time nearly every day with receptions, cocktail parties, golf outings, visits to tourist sites, and other diversions taking up the Dodgers’ between-games time. It was not a restful vacation.

    Game 9: November 3, Tokyo

    It was a Dodger homer barrage in an 8-5 victory over the Japan All-Stars as a crowd of 39,000 celebrated the Culture Day holiday at Korakuen Stadium. Ron Fairly hit bases-empty and three-run homers while Jeff Torborg and Jim Lefebvre slugged two-run shots. It would prove the high point of the trip, with the Americans now 7-2.

    Game 10: November 5, Tokyo

    After a day to reflect, the Japan All-Stars regrouped for an 8-2 win before 34,000 at Korakuen Stadium. Shinichi Eto of the Chunichi Dragons started the parade with a two-run homer in the first. The Giants’ Sadaharu Oh, who had led the Central League with 48 homers, contributed two more round-trippers. Jim Lefebvre’s bases-empty homer was the only protest by the Dodgers. “Too much Eto and too much Oh,” said Alston. “The barnstorming major leaguers never looked more listless,” wrote Pacific Stars and Stripes sports editor Lee Kavetski.

    Game 11: November 6, Tokyo

    The next day the Dodgers played at Korakuen Stadium before 34,000 people including Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako. The team was not up to royal scrutiny, losing 11-3 to the Japan All-Stars. Alan Foster’s first pitch was deposited in the left-field stands by the Giants’ Shigeo Nagashima. Yukinobu Kuroe of the Giants and pitcher Tetsuya Yoneda of the Hankyu Braves also homered. Ron Fairly and John Roseboro homered for the Dodgers. After the game, the Dodgers emerged from their dugout to tip their caps and wave to the royal couple, who had never seen a visiting American team before and had not been to a Japanese professional league game since 1959.

    Eckert and O’Malley made their visit to Prime Minister Sato. During a five-minute meeting at Sato’s official residence, the Americans presented a baseball with O’Malley’s signature and a pass good for all major-league games for the 1967 season. They also presented O’Malley’s apologies for Wills’s absence.

    “The Dodgers may have drawn blanks elsewhere, but they are diplomatic successes in Japan,” reported the Los Angeles Times’s Frank Finch. “No matter where they go, to a shrine, a restaurant or a ball park, they are besieged by the friendly grins of red-hot baseball fans. The official badge issued by Walter O’Malley to the touring troupe is like an open sesame. People who can’t read English instantly recognize the familiar ‘Dodgers’ name in its script form. ‘Doh-jars,’ with the accent on the second syllable, is one of the most popular words in Tokyo, Sapporo, Osaka, Sendai, Nagoya and other cities where the team has appeared.”

    Wills was still in Honolulu, although Bavasi, who was also in Hawaii on a cruise, said he thought the shortstop was in California. Wills was reported at a Democratic fundraiser starring Sammy Davis Jr. but brushed aside any questions about the situation. Kerlan said he still had not heard from Wills. Bavasi said there would be no discipline until all the facts were known. He said a post-World Series examination had found there was no need for an operation, but that if something had happened subsequently, Wills should be seeing Kerlan. “If he’s off playing the banjo somewhere, he must think the banjo is more important than baseball,” Bavasi said.

    Maury Wills attempts to turn a double play against the Yomiuri Giants (Robert Fitts Collection)

    Game 12: November 8, Okayama

    The combined Yomiuri-Nankai team returned as the Dodgers’ opponents and fell 10-2. Ron Fairly and Nate Oliver hit home runs, but the Dodgers’ biggest contributor was John Roseboro with a double, two singles, and four RBIs. The 20,000 fans in Okayama Stadium saw the Dodgers score six runs, including Oliver’s home run, in the ninth inning to blow the contest open.

    Game 13: November 9, Hiroshima

    The Japanese opposition was now a team combining the Giants and members of the hometown Hiroshima Carp. The teams played to a 10-inning 10-10 tie before 18,000 at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium. Earlier in the day, a 25-person Dodger delegation had placed a wreath on the site of the atomic bomb’s impact. The game was called because of the need to meet the travel schedule. The Dodgers built an early lead, 10-4 after seven innings, but the home team rallied with six runs in the eighth and ninth innings off Claude Osteen, Phil Regan, and Ron Perranoski. “Something is wrong with Osteen,” said Alston. “He just can’t seem to hit his stride on this tour. With 10 runs, we shouldn’t have had any trouble.” Dick Stuart, with two, John Kennedy, and Jim Lefebvre hit home runs to build the Dodgers’ early lead.

    Game 14: November 11, Kumamoto

    The series moved to the island of Kyushu, the Dodgers’ first move off the main island of Honshu. The opponent at Fujisaki Stadium was a team combined from the Giants and the Nishitetsu Lions, based in the nearby city of Fukuoka. Alan Foster and Ron Perranoski held down the locals while Jim Lefebvre produced two run-scoring doubles to propel the offense. Foster limited the Japanese to one hit until he tired in the eighth inning. With the 6-3 win, the Dodgers’ record stood at 9-4-1. They would not win another game.

    Game 15: November 12, Fukuoka

    The teams moved to Fukuoka’s Heiwadai Ball Park and the Japanese shut down the Dodgers, 4-0. Joe Moeller gave up all the runs in the first four innings. It was the National League champions’ fifth loss of the tour, the most by any visiting American professional club.

    Game 16: November 14, Kokura

    Moving to the northern tip of Kyushu, the Dodgers dropped a 3-1 game to the Yomiuri Giants, moving their record to 9-6-1. Eighteen-year-old Tsuneo Horiuchi of the Giants held the Dodgers to six hits before 20,000 at Kokura Stadium. In the third inning, Dodgers starter Nick Willhite walked two batters before Sadaharu Oh came to the plate. Oh blasted one over the fence, but then was called out for passing the runner who had started at first base, limiting the benefit to two runs. The Giants’ final run scored three innings later when Akira Kunimatsu doubled in Oh. The defeat left the Dodgers’ record against the Giants at 3-3.

    Game 17: November 15, Nagoya

    Now facing a combined team from the Giants and the Chunichi Dragons, the Dodgers dropped their third in a row before 28,000 at Chunichi Stadium. Home runs by Sadaharu Oh and Toshimitsu Suetsugu powered the Japanese team. The Dodgers’ third loss in a row marked the first time an American team had suffered such a streak.

    Also that day, the Japanese government awarded O’Malley its highest honor for a non-Japanese – the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, recognizing his efforts to foster Japan-United States friendship through professional baseball.

    The Dodger wives felt rewarded as well. The spouses of Tommy Dean, Bob Miller, Ron Perranoski, John Roseboro, Dick Stuart, and Jeff Torborg had made the trip and seen the sights and the cultural performances. And done some shopping. “I must have visited and bought out every department store in Japan,” said Sue Ellen Perranoski. “I bought a pearl ring, Christmas cards, kimonos, toys and a truckload of other things.”

    Game 18: November 16, Shizuoka

    The tour, the worst by an American club in the history of the exchange, wound up with a 7-3 loss to the Yomiuri Giants, a game mercifully ended after seven innings because of darkness at Kusanagi Ball Park. It was the Dodgers’ eighth loss (9-8-1 overall) and their fourth straight defeat. Both were records for futility by an American team. For those viewing the tour as an international World Series, it meant the Giants had prevailed 4-3. The Giants jumped on Joe Moeller for four runs in the first inning and never looked back. The 21,000 in attendance saw Sadaharu Oh hit a grand slam, which would have been his third game in a row with a homer (and sixth for the series) except for his baserunning blunder in the 16th game. Al Ferrara homered in the Dodgers’ three-run sixth. Akio Masuda started and closed out his work with 3⅔ shutout innings.

    The post-mortems started immediately. Giants manager Tetsuharu Kawakami said the series clearly showed that the gap between Japanese and American professional baseball had narrowed.

    Comparing the 1966 tour to the one a decade earlier, he said, “We have learned a lot since then. Our baseball is at least 50 percent improved. Our bunting is better, the base runners are smarter now, and we play more inside baseball like the Americans.” Others were not so encouraged. Tokumi Matsumoto, a columnist for the Mainichi Daily News, quoted a fellow Japanese baseball writer: “It is obviously dangerous for the Japanese to believe the 9 win-8 loss-1 tie result indicates the Japanese pro ball standard is almost equal with that of the major leagues.”

    Dodgers manager Walter Alston said he was sorry over his team’s performance and offered specific praise for Oh, Masuda, and Horiuchi. He said he felt Japanese hitters, especially for power, had improved more than their pitchers since the Dodgers’ 1956 trip. Both managers noted that the absence of Koufax and Drysdale had had a big impact on the tour.

    After a day of relaxation and shopping on the 19th, the Dodgers’ charter plane left for Los Angeles on the 20th.

    For the Dodgers, the consequences were coming. Some came directly from the tour. Others had been pending over the season.

    The Dodgers party was still in Tokyo when the biggest blow fell. On November 18, Sandy Koufax announced that he was retiring. He knew he could keep competing and winning, but he also knew he risked permanent damage from an excruciatingly painful elbow that required extensive treatment before and after each start. O’Malley, still in Tokyo, wished him well.

    As baseball’s Winter Meeting started on November 28, Bavasi started other planned changes. Former batting champion Tommy Davis, who had been on the trip, was traded to the New York Mets for the second baseman the Dodgers thought they needed – Ron Hunt. Three days later, the inevitable consequence of the Japan trip fell into place. Wills was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Bob Bailey and Gene Michael. Wills eventually had left Hawaii and visited Kerlan in Los Angeles. Kerlan said the knee was no worse than it had been at the end of the season. He prescribed extended rest, which had been the basis of Wills’s request to miss the Japan trip. Bavasi said this was the only time Walter O’Malley had forced his hand on a baseball decision. Wills, evidently forgiven, returned to the Dodgers in 1969.

    The remake of the Dodgers’ roster would not work well. The team fell into the second division for two years and wouldn’t win another pennant for eight years, or another World Series until 1981.

    Walter, and later Peter, O’Malley worked hard to improve and deepen relations with Japanese baseball. Yomiuri sent the Giants (and 21 Japanese reporters) to Vero Beach for joint spring training with the Dodgers in 1967. The Giants, or individual players, returned many times in the future and other Japanese professional and college teams would come for spring training. The Dodgers did not return to Japan until 1993, but these decades-long contacts were instrumental in the Dodgers’ ability to sign Hideo Nomo when he became the first major Japanese star to join an American major-league team in 1995.

    The agreement between the two commissioners had sparked Japanese dreams that they were evolving toward parity with the US major leagues. The relationships the O’Malleys and the Dodgers forged with Japanese baseball were instrumental in giving them the opportunity to sign Nomo, and effectively confirm Japanese baseball as a second-tier operation as its major stars could dream of better salaries and the satisfaction of competing successfully at the highest levels of professional baseball.

    ANDY McCUE, a former Board President of SABR, won the Seymour Medal for Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball’s Westward Expansion. He is also the author of Baseball by the Books: A History and Complete Bibliography of Baseball Fiction and Stumbling Around the Bases: The American League’s Mismanagement in the Expansion Eras (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). He holds a master’s degree in Chinese history.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    1966: The Dodgers Return to Japan
  • DEVELOPMENT OF BASEBALL IN SAUDI ARABIA

    DEVELOPMENT OF BASEBALL IN SAUDI ARABIA

    by Carter Cromwell

    Probably few are aware of it, but baseball has a history in Saudi Arabia. Until recently, though, it was like an old, rarely perused book that had long gathered dust in the attic. 

    Not many know that Americans brought baseball to Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s when companies began searching there for oil, which was finally discovered in 1938. Then-king Saud even attended a game in 1954. Children of expat employees of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) played baseball in Dhahran, whose team advanced to the Little League World Series 23 times before interest slackened for a number of years. 

    The 1954 game attended by King Saud
    (Photo courtesy of Nayef bin-Humaid)
    The 1954 game attended by King Saud
    (Photo courtesy of Nayef bin-Humaid)

    But now there is an effort to update the story for a larger audience. Much is yet to be written, but people from the governmental level on down are working to change the narrative. 

    In part, this reflects the pivot toward sports that some Middle East countries have made in recent years, the Saudi-sponsored LIV Golf Tour and Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup football (soccer) tournament being two examples. It also fits with Saudi Vision 2030, the goal of which is to increase diversification in the country economically, socially, and culturally. 

    The Saudi Baseball and Softball Federation (SBSF) was established in late 2019. Baseball United, the Dubai-based professional league that played its initial regular season late last year, is working with the federation to develop the sport, and the Dhahran Youth Baseball Association (DYBA) is rebuilding a program that had gone into decline.

    It is unquestionably a long-term project, but it’s happening.

    Nayef Bin-Humaid is president of the Saudi Baseball and Softball Federation. He lived for 10 years in the United States, mostly near Washington, D.C. His interest in baseball began when he would go with friends to games of MLB’s Washington Nationals. After returning to his home country, he eventually landed in a government job with a project for Vision 2030.

    “I was approached in December 2019 by the Saudi Olympic Committee, which was interested in establishing a governmental body supporting baseball,” Bin-Humaid said. “That would feed into one of the pillars of Vision 2030 in terms of expanding sports activities in the country and, more importantly, expand the game for Saudis.”

    Nayef bin-Humaid
    “Photo courtesy of Nayef bin-Humaid”

    Bin-Humaid was elected president of the federation and got to work immediately, only to be delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

    “We started in January 2020, and our first order of business was to find out who was playing the game in Saudi, who wants to play, and what could we do to expand the game within the country,” he said. “We started by going into American and Japanese communities, as well as others that we thought might include people who were interested in baseball. Though baseball is not that popular here, we were surprised to find that there were Saudis who loved the game, wanted to participate, and follow MLB teams closely.”

    Covid-19 soon hit and put a lot of efforts on hold, but the working group was still able to develop a plan and the necessary steps. It connected the Saudi federation with the Asian Baseball Federation and the World Baseball Softball Confederation, while also obtaining seed funding from the Saudi Ministry of Sport. 

    “That enabled us to hire some employees, kick-start a marketing campaign, and get a few other things in motion,” Bin-Humaid said. 

    Jean-Michel Mayeur came on as technical director of the Saudi federation in 2024. The native of France has a long background as a player and coach, directing a baseball academy in Montpellier for nearly 20 years. 

    “I’m excited because I understand the potential here, but it’s going to take a while to develop,” he said. “It’s a big challenge. The main focus now is grassroots development.”

    Bin-Humaid echoed that, saying, “We’re definitely working to develop at the grassroots levels. We’re very lucky to have someone like Jean-Michel who loves the game, is great with kids, and has run an academy. He took on the challenge of coming to a foreign country with the game in its very early stages and help put together a development plan that we can take to schools.”

    The efforts currently focus on a number of areas, including:

    • Working with schools to get baseball instruction into physical education curricula so that more Saudis will be exposed to the game
    • A partnership with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Japan’s top professional league to bring some young Saudi players to clinics there
    • Integrating Baseball5 programs into school curricula as a pathway to baseball
    • Establishment of Saudi national teams in baseball, softball, and Baseball5
    • Staging tournaments
    • Working to develop leagues, so players can get consistent competition

    “We’re working hard to get baseball into schools,” Mayeur said. “Getting people interested early on is key. First, we need to teach physical education teachers how to teach baseball. The goal is to have classes during the school days and then after-school activities involving baseball. Baseball5 should help people get interested, too, since you don’t need a ton of equipment or have to train pitchers.”

    Joan Bonhaure, Karim Mejri, and Jean-Michael Mayeur

    Mayeur also noted the need to establish academies; train coaches, players, scorekeepers, and umpires; organize tryouts and tournaments; build more fields that meet regulation standards; establish leagues; and … well, a lot of stuff.

    “The list is long,” Mayeur acknowledged, “but we’ve made progress. We’ve established national teams in baseball, softball, and Baseball5, and having the partnership with the BayStars is really nice. We have four Saudi kids, ages 13-16, there to get instruction and observe the pro team’s practices. We hope to send more in the future, and also have some Saudi teams go there to compete against high school players.”

    Owen Reid of Reid Baseball is an independent consultant who conducts clinics in various countries, many of which – such as Tunisia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan – are not on the baseball map. He started holding clinics in Saudi Arabia in 2016 and made more than 30 visits before moving there with his family early in 2025.

    “I’ve seen the game shift from being a novelty to an option, and now it’s more and more becoming an opportunity for families and Saudi kids eager to challenge themselves with something new,” Reid said. “It’s still true that most of the players I work with are expats, but I’ve seen encouraging growth in the number of Saudi ballplayers. And what excites me most is retention.  Once they try it, they often stay with it. Curiosity is turning into commitment.”

    Bin-Humaid said, “We have around 1,000 registered players in the country now. We focus on kids who are interested and show potential. We monitor them and work to keep them in the game, even when they go abroad to university and play. We’ve taken some to camps in places like eastern Europe, France, and the Dominican Republic, in addition to Japan. We hope to carry the torch for advancement of the game in western Asia.”

    He added that there are now baseball coaches in about a dozen high-level private schools, since physical education classes in public schools mostly focus on football (soccer). 

    For his part, Reid has increasingly worked with coaches, as well as players, and said, “By equipping coaches in Saudi Arabia with the tools, language, and standards to create positive baseball environments, we multiply the impact. The more educated and empowered coaches are, the more impact they can have on the next generation of people and ballplayers.”

    Under the terms of its partnership with the Saudi federation, announced in March 2024, Baseball United has the right to establish franchises in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam. Baseball United will help promote the game across the region, develop local talent in Saudi Arabia, and design training programs and curricula for players, coaches, and umpires at both the amateur and professional levels. The league will also look to host future tournaments and league games in Saudi Arabia.

    Kash Shaikh, who will leave his role as chairman and CEO of Baseball United effective March 1, has led the organization since its inception four years ago.  He has a personal connection that helps drive his interest in bringing baseball to the region – he lived in Dhahran for three years while his parents worked in the oil industry, and he played Little League baseball there.

    “For the longer term, we have a 15-year partnership to bring baseball to Saudi. This is the most under-developed region as far as baseball goes, so we’re doing as much as possible to help the sport grow. We’re helping with the Saudi national team program – we put a team on the field last fall for the Baseball United Arab Classic. We’re also helping from a resource and financial standpoint, as well as bringing expertise to the training and curriculum programs.”

    Bin-Humaid added, “Baseball United has made a significant commitment to developing the game here. They sponsored one of our tournaments, which involved people from various embassies in Riyadh, and they also committed to sending expert coaches and trainers when we need them.”

    Mayeur also sees Baseball United’s participation as a positive: “The partnership is huge. We need to make baseball fashionable for the kids. Once they get teams in Saudi, it will give people a reason to come watch. We need that kind of thing to push development.”

    Bin-Humaid also noted the importance of the long-standing baseball community in Dhahran. 

    “Luckily, we connected with the baseball community in eastern Saudi – the Aramco people in Dhahran,” he said. “The coaches, parents, and kids there are very much into it.”

    Erich Sutterlin (third from left) and teammates from the Saudi Arabia national team. Photo courtesy of Erich Sutterlin

    Erich Sutterlin, president of the Dhahran Youth Baseball Association (DYBA) and a school teacher in the Aramco community, added, “The federation identified us as an entry point for finding baseball talent in the Kingdom. Several of our players participate in international tournaments under the auspices of the federation and the Saudi Committee. We’re separate from an organizational standpoint, but our players benefit from being involved with their teams.

    “The relationship with the SBSF has led to some interesting developments such as a Baseball5 club at our school, which has helped introduce the game to players from countries that don’t have strong baseball backgrounds,” Sutterlin continued. “And the SBSF has visited schools and encouraged the Saudi players in our leagues to invite their friends so they can learn about baseball.” 

    Getting more Saudis playing the game is a major part of the federation’s mission, of course, and there has been some progress in Dhahran. Sutterlin said that a 12-U team played in a tournament in the Czech Republic in September 2025, finishing second out of 12 teams, and a 15-U team comprised of expats and Saudis competed in a tournament in Italy in November. He noted, however, that “the expat and Saudi kids here don’t go to school together, so it’s more of a challenge to get the Saudis to play. The ones that do participate are often children of ‘mixed’ parentage.”

    Still, there is progress. As Reid remarked, “I see Saudi families returning season to season and ballplayers coming back to the field each time I return to Dhahran.”

    Glenn Makechnie, Sutterlin’s predecessor as head of the DYBA and a geologist with Aramco, said that there are Saudis playing in every age group, and also on the travel teams. “They’re still in the minority, but we’re inclusive of kids at all skill levels, not just the more interested ones. Recently, one team had 11 different nationalities among the 13 players.  And while the number of Saudi participants is low, some of our best players are Saudis.  There are some on our 12-U and 15-U travel teams who are performing very well. 

    “We also collaborate with the Little League in Qatar, which is very active and hosts regional tournaments. Two American high schools there have programs, as well.”

    This comes after baseball interest in the Aramco community trended downward for more than a decade. After the long period of success from 1983-2011, the Dhahran Little League team was shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, which was more competitive. That, combined with a shrinking expat population at Aramco that reduced the pool of potential players and baseball-savvy parents, resulted in less success and dwindling interest in attending the Little League tournament. 

    After the 2017 season, when the program struggled to get nine players to fill out an all-star team, the DYBA’s board of directors let the association’s Little League charter expire. Overall participation fell off, and the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the decline.  The program was completely shut down from the spring of 2020 until the fall of 2021.

    The DYBA Little League just after playing Chinese Taipei in the 2025 Asia-Pacific & Middle East Tournament in South Korea.  Photo courtesy of Erich Sutterlin

    “When we tried to reboot after Covid, we could barely field two teams for a 12-U kid-pitch division,” Makechnie said. “It’s taken a monumental effort from all involved to grow the league back to where it is today. We’ve had great support from parents internally and from external resources such as the SBSF and Reid Baseball.”

    Makechnie said there are parallel programs within the Aramco community – youth baseball supported by Aramco and a chartered Little League initiative that “intertwines with the youth baseball program.” There are approximately 260 young people playing on the various teams, including T-ball, and there are 20-25 girls playing softball, with some of the latter also involved with baseball. In addition, there is a new senior league that utilizes pitching machines, rather than live pitchers. “There aren’t enough older people who can pitch,” he said wryly.

    “We’ve really had to re-think our goals and organizational structure to create meaningful baseball experiences for all our membership,” Makechnie continued. “Even though the North American expat population is decreasing, overall baseball participation is about the same. That’s good in a way, but it also means we have fewer baseball-savvy people helping, so we’ve had to get creative. We’re probably the most unique baseball organization in the world.”

    Now, interest is expanding again, although it hasn’t reached the levels of two or three decades ago. Saudi Arabia returned to international Little League action at the 2025 Asia-Pacific & Middle East Tournament in South Korea, though it failed to advance from pool play. 

    Reid has partnered with the DYBA since 2016, putting on multiple clinics each year, and he worked with this year’s Little League team.

    As for the future, there is a need to continue building more fields, as well as establish leagues. There are perhaps 15 fields in the country now, including several at the Aramco facilities in Dhahran. About half are private, and not all meet regulation standards.

    For the sport to grow and evolve, Reid sees the need for greater access within communities – i.e., more leagues at multiple levels – continued development of coaches, additional facilities that are multi-use and adapted to the hot climate, a clear league structure that provides pathways to greater competitive levels, and role models and greater visibility for the game.

    “The foundation is there, and baseball here continues to build momentum,” Reid said. 

    Bin-Humaid said, “We’re committed to keep pushing forward. We will participate in the Asian Games in Qatar in 2030, and we’ll be the host nation of the Asian Games in 2034. By then, we want to have a team that not only participates but competes.”

    Mayeur added, “We just need time and exposure. If we can show baseball to kids, we can get them interested. We just have to keep going, and things will happen.”

  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 13, Kazuhiro Kiyohara

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 13, Kazuhiro Kiyohara

    by Thomas Love Seagull

    A recent poll for a TV special saw more than 50,000 people in Japan vote for their favorite retired baseball players. 20 players emerged from a pool of 9,000. Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list. Which is probably smart because I’m sure Ohtani would win by default. There are, however, players who were beloved but not necessarily brilliant, and foreign stars who found success after coming to NPB. Unsurprisingly, the list leans heavily towards the past 30 years, with a few legends thrown in for good measure.

    Over the next few weeks, I’ll be profiling each of these players. Some of these players I know only a little about, so this will be as much a journey for me as, hopefully, it will be for you. It’ll be a mix of history, stats, and whatever interesting stories I can dig up.

    For now, have a look at the list below and see how the public ranked them. I’ve included the years they played in NPB in parentheses.

    20. Alex Ramirez (2001-2013); 19. Yoshinobu Takahashi (1998-2015); 18. Warren Cromartie (1984-1990), 17. Takashi Toritani (2004-2021); 16. Suguru Egawa (1979-1987); 15. Katsuya Nomura (1954-1980); 14. Tatsunori Hara (1981-1995); 13. Kazuhiro Kiyohara (1985-2008); 12. Masayuki Kakefu (1974-1988); 11. Masumi Kuwata (1986-2006); 10. Atsuya Furuta (1990-2007); 9. Randy Bass (1983-1988); 8. Daisuke Matsuzaka (1999-2006, 2015-2016, 2018-2019, 2021); 7. Tsuyoshi Shinjo (1991-2000, 2004-2006); 6. Hiromitsu Ochiai (1979-1998); 5. Hideo Nomo (1990-1994); 4. Hideki Matsui (1993-2002); 3. Shigeo Nagashima (1958-1974); 2. Sadaharu Oh (1958-1980); 1. Ichiro Suzuki (1992-2000).

    The Controversial Slugger who Never Ruled a Season

    Japanese baseball has produced many great hitters, but it has produced very few figures like Kazuhiro Kiyohara.

    From the beginning, Kiyohara was never simply a player. Before he was a professional baseball player, before he was a slugger or a symbol or a problem, he was already famous. He was famous in a way that made the rest of his career almost beside the point, in the way that only a high school baseball star could be. He arrived carrying more narrative weight than any teenager reasonably could, and for a long time he appeared strong enough to carry it.

    Until he wasn’t.

    This is not a story of wasted talent. Kiyohara’s numbers make that argument impossible. More than 500 home runs. More than 1,500 runs batted in. Over two decades in uniform. Championships in both leagues. He remains one of the most productive hitters Japanese professional baseball has ever known.

    And yet his name does not rest easily.

    In the mid-1980s, Japanese high school baseball revolved around a single axis, and that axis ran through PL Gakuen High School. Every summer, every spring, the cameras found the same faces, the same uniforms, the same two players whose names were already inseparable. They were called the KK Combo, a pairing so complete that it functioned as a unit rather than a rivalry: Masumi Kuwata, the ace pitcher, and Kazuhiro Kiyohara, the star slugger.

    Kiyohara arrived at PL Gakuen as a prodigy with a body that already seemed finished. He was large, broad, powerful in a way that made adults uneasy. As a freshman, he was handed the cleanup spot and treated as such. That alone told you everything about what the program believed him to be.

    From his first summer, Kiyohara’s presence at Koshien felt preordained. He did not simply appear in the tournament; he seemed to belong to it. His bat made a sound that separated itself from the noise of the crowd, and his home runs did not merely sneak over fences or ride the wind. They soared through the air. By the time his high school career ended, he had appeared in five consecutive Koshien tournaments* and set a record with thirteen home runs.

    *PL Gakuen qualified for the summer tournament in his first year, and for both the spring and summer tournaments in his second and third years. Japanese high school lasts three years.

    As a first-year player, PL Gakuen won it all. As a second-year, they reached the final and lost. As a third-year player, the pattern repeated. Kiyohara was productive in those runs, but he was never unaware of the comparison standing beside him. Kuwata, smaller, calmer, relentlessly precise, pitched complete games, dominated opposing lineups, and carried an aura of control that Kiyohara himself seemed to envy.

    In interviews years later, Kiyohara admitted as much. He did not want to be the second name. He wanted the order reversed. He wanted “Kiyohara and Kuwata,” not “Kuwata and Kiyohara.” Power alone was not enough to make that happen.

    By his final summer, something snapped into place. Over five games, Kiyohara went 10-for-16. Over the final three games, he was nearly untouchable, blasting five home runs and turning every at-bat into an event. In the championship game, he hit two more, prompting the call that would trail him for the rest of his life: “Is Koshien made for Kiyohara?”

    He was not simply good. He was supposed to be good.

    That distinction mattered. When the Yomiuri Giants, the team of national narrative, passed on him in the draft and selected Kuwata instead, the moment was framed not as a baseball decision but as a disruption of his identity. Kiyohara cried openly. His tears were later read as entitlement or weakness, but they were merely the normal response of a teenager whose future had been narrated for him by adults, and then suddenly revised.

    Kiyohara would say that the pain never left him, that the shock of that moment stayed with him no matter how many home runs he hit or how many championships he won. His mother* told him to stop feeling sorry for himself and prove them wrong. He listened. He just never forgot.

    *At PL Gakuen, first-years weren’t allowed sweets. His mother, trying to sneak comfort into a place where comfort was prohibited, hid caramel candies in the toes of socks.

    Instead of Tokyo, he went just outside of it to Saitama and the Seibu Lions. And almost immediately, he became something else again.

    On April 5, 1986, in the second game of the season, he stepped to the plate for just the second time in his professional career. He was eighteen years old. The stadium was full, the expectation already unreasonable. The pitcher was Shuji Fujimoto of the Nankai Hawks, working toward what looked like a complete-game victory.

    Kiyohara turned on an inside fastball and sent it screaming into the left-field seats.

    As he rounded first base, he leapt into the air. Not the restrained hop of a veteran, but a full-bodied jump, the kind you make when something you have imagined for years suddenly becomes real. The Lions lost the game 4-2, but it didn’t matter. The home run swallowed the night whole. Fujimoto, still the winning pitcher, walked into the postgame interview and muttered, “I won, but…”

    After the opening blast, reality arrived quickly. Pitchers adjusted. Night games under unfamiliar lights exposed timing issues. He went hitless for stretches long enough that whispers began to circulate about a demotion to the minors. Coaches debated it openly. Mori listened and declined.

    Instead, he waited.

    By midsummer, the waiting paid off. Kiyohara’s swing slowed down just enough to find its shape. His hands stayed back. His balance improved. The results followed in waves. In August, he hit over .320. In September, over .360. By October, he looked unstoppable.

    By the end of the season, the line looked unreal: .304 average, 31 home runs, 78 runs batted in. Rookie of the Year. The most home runs ever hit by a Japanese rookie. Attendance surged. Merchandise exploded. Television found a new face. Seibu’s patience with him, especially during his early struggles, proved decisive.

    For a brief moment, he was not “the uncrowned king,” not “the problem child,” not a symbol of anything larger than himself. He was Kiyoma, a nickname that captured youth, novelty, and something almost cartoonish in its brightness. He lived in the Seibu dormitory, his small room filled with gifts from fans after road trips. His monthly allowance was modest. His favorite meal was champon, a noodle dish, from the Ringer Hut near the dorm, eaten with teammates who treated him less like a prodigy than a younger brother who happened to hit the ball very far.

    The Lions won relentlessly and celebrated loudly. Robert Whiting once described a championship celebration that looked less like Japanese baseball tradition and more like controlled chaos: beer sprayed, cake smashed into faces, teammates dumped into barrels of sake, Kiyohara wearing a Ronald Reagan mask while pouring alcohol on a cameraman. Fans loved it. One woman said the Giants were too proper, too dull. The Lions, she said, were interesting. Kiyohara was the youngest player on the team and spoke like he belonged to no hierarchy at all.

    But even during those years, something was already slipping. During the 1987 Japan Series, Seibu was one out away from defeating the Giants. Kiyohara was at first base and he was crying. Not after the final out but before it. His legs shook. Teammates yelled at him to focus. He later said the tears came without warning, that once he took the field his body gave way. When the final fly ball settled into an outfielder’s glove, Seibu celebrated another title. Two years earlier, the Giants had passed on him. Now he was beating them on the sport’s biggest stage, as the cleanup hitter for a team that had become a dynasty almost overnight. The tears were victory and vindication tangled together, indistinguishable.

    From 1986 through the mid-1990s, the Lions captured league titles with such regularity that seasons began to blur together. Eight league championships in nine years. Six Japan Series titles. A dynasty for a franchise that had been an afterthought for nearly two decades.

    Kazuhiro Kiyohara stood at the center of it.

    He was not alone. Koji Akiyama ran the bases like a man late for something important. Orestes Destrade brought a foreigner’s blunt force to the middle of the order. Behind them, the pitching staff turned games into negotiations between balls and outs. But Kiyohara was the constant cleanup hitter who arrived first and stayed longest.

    From the outside, the numbers piled up neatly. Twenty-one consecutive seasons with double-digit home runs, beginning his rookie year. Thirteen straight seasons of twenty or more. Sixteen total seasons clearing that mark. Walks in bulk. Balls crushed to all fields. Hits absorbed by his body—196 of them, more than anyone in league history. Twelve walk-off home runs. Twenty walk-off hits. Eleven grand slams.

    He led the league in on-base percentage twice. He won Gold Gloves at first base five times, more than any Pacific League first baseman had before him, and contemporaries would later say that, at his peak, he was the best defensive first baseman in Japan. Jim Allen once put it plainly: Kiyohara saved more runs with his glove than people noticed because they were too busy watching his bat.

    And yet, for all of it, the major individual titles never arrived. No batting title. No home run crown. No RBI title. Not once.

    On paper, Kiyohara was one of the most productive hitters in the sport every year. In memory, he was something more complicated. He was the cleanup hitter for a dynasty who never ruled a season outright.

    Even Sadaharu Oh framed it this way: Kiyohara, he suggested, was too versatile for his own good. A hitter who drove the ball to all fields would never pile up the kind of pull-heavy totals that win home run titles. From Oh’s perspective, power requires commitment. From Kiyohara’s, a home run was simply a perfectly struck hit that kept carrying.

    Free agency turned him into the center of gravity of Japanese baseball. The Tigers were willing to say they would change their stripes to get him. Shigeo Nagashima told him to leap into his chest and even floated the idea of handing over number 3, a gesture Kiyohara understood was too heavy to accept. But he accepted the Giants uniform. It was, finally, the dream.

    In his first season, the numbers were solid: 32 home runs, 95 RBIs. On paper, it looked like the continuity of his Seibu years. In reality, it felt like insufficiency. The batting average dipped. The strikeouts climbed: 152 of them, a Central League record at the time. Each miss drew commentary. Each slump fed the idea that the player who once looked unstoppable was now fighting gravity.

    The criticism poured in. Too heavy. Too slow. Too emotional. Too indulgent. He had piercings in his ears. His skin was permanently tanned. His body looked different than it had in Seibu. He didn’t fit the Yomiuri aesthetic.

    There were moments when it almost worked. Early in the season, he shared the field with Kuwata again, this time as teammates. When Kuwata returned from injury, Kiyohara hit a home run in his comeback game, the two of them standing together afterward like an echo from another life. For a brief instant, the story felt complete. KK, reunited.

    But nostalgia does not protect you from fastballs inside. He tinkered with his swing. He altered his stance, his weight training, his body composition. The more he tried to adjust, the further he drifted from the hitter who had once trusted himself to react rather than plan. His body grew heavier. His legs betrayed him. Knee pain became chronic. Seasons fractured into stretches of usefulness interrupted by injury and recovery.

    In early March of 2000, in cold, wet conditions during an exhibition game, he tore a muscle in his leg. For the first time in his professional life, Kiyohara opened the season in the minors. The reaction from above was brutal. The team’s owner remarked that the Giants’ chances of winning had improved in his absence.

    And yet, something unexpected happened.

    When Kiyohara returned in July, the atmosphere at Tokyo Dome had changed. He was no longer announced as the centerpiece of a championship machine. He was introduced as a pinch hitter and when his name was called, the stadium rose. Fans sang. They cheered not because he would save the team, but because he was still there. A home run in his first game back triggered something close to collective release. Even when he failed, the applause remained.

    But still, the relationship with the Giants frayed. His body could no longer support the version of himself he needed to be in Tokyo. Playing time shrank. In 2005, he refused a high-five from the bench after a home run, a small act of defiance that became a large symbol. Not long after, the Giants told him he was no longer part of their plans.

    The dream ended quietly. In a parked car, alone, he cried. The call that changed things came from Akira Ohgi.

    Ohgi, already gravely ill, had taken on the thankless task of leading the newly merged Orix Buffaloes, a team born from contraction and resentment. He believed stubbornly that stars still mattered, that baseball owed something to memory and spectacle. He called Kiyohara directly.

    “Come home to Osaka,” he said. “Let me give you your last stage.”

    Kiyohara hesitated. His body was failing, his confidence was fragile. But Ohgi kept calling, speaking not of contracts but of responsibility and unfinished business. When Kiyohara finally agreed, it felt less like a comeback than an acceptance. Ohgi, tragically passed away before the 2006 season.

    When he hit a walk-off home run in May 2006, he spoke afterward not about himself, but about Ohgi and the fans.

    “This might be the happiest home run of my career,” he said. “It didn’t feel like it was just mine.”

    His body, however, would not cooperate. Knee surgeries followed. In 2007, he did not appear in a single game, the first such season of his professional life. He decided 2008 was going to be the end.

    His final game came in Osaka. Sadaharu Oh managed the opposing team. Ichiro watched from the stands. In his final at-bat, he struck out, swinging hard, fully committed.

    Afterward, with his two sons beside him, he apologized to the fans, the media, and the game itself.

    “I wasn’t always strong,” he said. “But I gave everything I had.”

    Oh took his hand and said, “In the next life, let’s be teammates. Let’s hit home runs together.”

    For a moment, improbably, it felt like closure.

    He left with 525 home runs, fifth all-time, without ever leading the league. Twenty-one seasons with double-digit home runs. Records everywhere. A shape no one else quite matched.

    But after baseball, everything fell apart.

    His marriage ended amid reports of domestic violence. He was arrested in 2016 for possession and use of stimulants. The trial revealed years of addiction. He admitted to using drugs after retirement, denied using them as a player, and spoke of emptiness, of having no next step. He was convicted and given a suspended sentence. His Hall of Fame candidacy was withdrawn. His finances collapsed. His health deteriorated. His arrest shocked the country not because it was unimaginable, but because it retroactively contaminated everything people wanted to believe about him.

    Kazuhiro Kiyohara will never be a clean legend. How should baseball remember someone like him?

    Thomas Love Seagull’s work can be found on his Substack Baseball in Japan

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • What Can MLB Teams and Fans Learn from the KBO About Playoff Byes?

    What Can MLB Teams and Fans Learn from the KBO About Playoff Byes?

    by Tim Sokol

    Since the latest shakeup of the MLB playoff format that created the first-round bye in 2022, there has been discussion every fall about byes, rust, and time off. There are many people who are absolutely convinced that a bye is actually a negative for you, because it causes your bats to go cold and hurts your chances in the following round. When teams with byes struggled in 2022 and 2023, this position was (supposedly) vindicated. And even without a bye, there was a lot of concern and comments about the 2025 Dodgers being rusty following their long layoff after the NLCS. Of course, that worked out fine for them in the end.

    After four years of this new format, we still do not really have a large enough sample size to draw any firm conclusions. However, something that often goes unmentioned in this discussion is that we have other top level professional leagues to look at. We have decades of data from the KBO, which makes heavy use of byes in their playoff system. (NPB and Taiwan’s CPBL also use playoff byes but they come with additional caveats and it wouldn’t be fair to compare them to MLB.) Throwing in the last 20 years of Korean baseball, we actually do have a reasonable sample size. Here’s what we’ve got:

    In MLB, teams with the first-round bye are 9-7 so far. That’s obviously a positive record, but it’s a small sample and nothing definitive.

    In the KBO, however, we have a much more telling story. The league uses a stepladder style playoff where the #3 seed gets a single bye, the #2 seed gets a double bye, and the #1 seed gets a triple bye straight to the finals. Over the past 20 years, teams with a triple bye are 9-2 (the triple bye was added 11 seasons ago), teams with a double bye are 15-5, and teams with a single bye are 11-9. If you want to reduce that to a binary bye/no bye, then teams with byes are 35-16. And when combined with MLB results, they are 44-23.

    What this tells us overall is that byes clearly are an advantage; in raw numbers, teams with a bye are far more likely to win a series than those without. The team that had a bye straight to the Korean Series is 18-2 in the last 20 years. This seems to go against our intuition that a bye would not help your performance. In say, American football, it makes perfect sense that being physically rested and having an extra week to prepare your X’s and O’s would be a sizable advantage, but in baseball nobody really believes it works that way. And I don’t think that’s actually what the data is telling us here. Don’t forget that the higher seeded teams that earned the byes are, naturally, the best teams. In other words, the best teamin the KBO is 18-2 in the last 20 Korean Series. I don’t interpret this excellent record of teams with byes as proof that they make you play better; rather I interpret it that byes have more or less zero impact on your play and thus the series usually just goes to the better team regardless of byes, time off, or alleged rust.

    As an aside, I’d also like to posit that even if rust proved to be a real statistical concern, it is still almost certainly advantageous to have a first-round bye. Real playoff series are not a coin flip, but for simplicity’s sake we will call playoff series 50/50 in this example. Let’s say that “rust” knocks your chances of winning the Division Series from 50% down to 40%. That’s still a 40% chance of reaching the LCS. If you do not have a bye and have to play the additional round, you have a 50% chance to reach the DS and then a 50% chance to reach the LCS from there, which is only a 25% chance to reach the LCS overall. So, unless you think rust is an almost insurmountable disadvantage, you’d still try your luck with the rust over having to play an extra round.

    The KBO data strongly suggests that the “rust disadvantage” is nonexistent. But what about the former and current players who have complained about rust and are adamant that it is a real disadvantage? Are we supposed to just ignore them because math says so? I don’t think this is a healthy approach to any baseball problem. Instead, we should consider the differences in approaches between the KBO and MLB. In Korea, teams play practice games during their layoffs. And if you have a 20-day long triple bye, you might play a lot of practice games and run an almost mini-Spring Training during that time. The pitchers keep their arms loose and the hitters maintain their rhythm by playing in exhibitions and having more in-depth practices than what you would normally do during the regular season. I don’t know what goes on inside a KBO team, or an MLB team, but I know that whatever the Korean teams are doing to prepare during a bye is working, and it’s also nothing that can’t be replicated in North America. 

    Major League Baseball is no longer insulated the way it once was. All thirty clubs have contacts in the KBO and could find out all they could ever want to know about what a typical KBO top seed is doing to battle rust. It is worth noting that since the original furor of those first two years, most MLB teams have started scheduling their own practice games during byes, and so far it seems to be getting the job done. But as long as the concerns exist, particularly among your own players, clubs should be looking to do more preparation to fully eradicate those concerns. That might mean more physical prep, or it might mean literally showing them the data and convincing them that it’s not worth worrying about as long as they prepare properly.

    In the end, the case against the bye is dead in my mind. It is something that is very much worth playing for in the regular season, and any concerns about rust can be fully mitigated with proper preparation. If I were a team in the Dodgers’ situation where you have a full week off after the LCS, I would consider trying to play some practice games during that time too. There is no need to use any real pitchers, but you can keep your bats, gloves, and brains in rhythm against minor leaguers. To me, this is a case where both North American fans and teams would do well to pay attention to the wider baseball world. For the curious fan, this debate about playoff rust is a question that has already been answered abroad. And from a team’s perspective, it is a problem that has already been solved by somebody else. 

  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 14, Tatsunori Hara

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 14, Tatsunori Hara

    by Thomas Love Seagull

    A recent poll for a TV special saw more than 50,000 people in Japan vote for their favorite retired baseball players. 20 players emerged from a pool of 9,000. Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list. Which is probably smart because I’m sure Ohtani would win by default. There are, however, players who were beloved but not necessarily brilliant, and foreign stars who found success after coming to NPB. Unsurprisingly, the list leans heavily towards the past 30 years, with a few legends thrown in for good measure.

    Over the next few weeks, I’ll be profiling each of these players. Some of these players I know only a little about, so this will be as much a journey for me as, hopefully, it will be for you. It’ll be a mix of history, stats, and whatever interesting stories I can dig up.

    For now, have a look at the list below and see how the public ranked them. I’ve included the years they played in NPB in parentheses.

    20. Alex Ramirez (2001-2013); 19. Yoshinobu Takahashi (1998-2015); 18. Warren Cromartie (1984-1990), 17. Takashi Toritani (2004-2021); 16. Suguru Egawa (1979-1987); 15. Katsuya Nomura (1954-1980); 14. Tatsunori Hara (1981-1995); 13. Kazuhiro Kiyohara (1985-2008); 12. Masayuki Kakefu (1974-1988); 11. Masumi Kuwata (1986-2006); 10. Atsuya Furuta (1990-2007); 9. Randy Bass (1983-1988); 8. Daisuke Matsuzaka (1999-2006, 2015-2016, 2018-2019, 2021); 7. Tsuyoshi Shinjo (1991-2000, 2004-2006); 6. Hiromitsu Ochiai (1979-1998); 5. Hideo Nomo (1990-1994); 4. Hideki Matsui (1993-2002); 3. Shigeo Nagashima (1958-1974); 2. Sadaharu Oh (1958-1980); 1. Ichiro Suzuki (1992-2000).

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 14, Tatsunori Hara

    The man asked to follow Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima

    For a long time, Japanese baseball kept asking the same question.

    No, not who is the next great player, but something much harder, and much crueler:

    Who comes after giants?

    Sadaharu Oh had just finished rewriting what power meant. Shigeo Nagashima had already become something more than a ballplayer—he was posture, gesture, spirit, shorthand for what it meant to be Japanese. Together, they were not simply stars but a system. ON was the Yomiuri Giants’ and, by extension, Japanese baseball’s center of gravity.

    When they were gone, pro yakyu didn’t just need a hitter.

    It needed a successor.

    So when Tatsunori Hara arrived, the nation decided, almost instantly, that he would be the one.

    Hara had been trained for baseball since he was three years old by his father, Mitsugu, a famously strict high-school and college coach. He starred as a third baseman at Tokai University Sagami High School, then at Tokai University itself, where he won two Triple Crowns in the Metropolitan League and became the most polished amateur slugger in the country. He helped Japan win bronze at the 1980 Amateur World Series. He hit. He smiled. He looked the part. In his senior year of university, he further fueled expectations of being the second coming of Nagashima by hitting three home runs in a single game at the Meiji Jingu Baseball Tournament.

    Most importantly, he wanted to be a Giant.

    In the fall of 1980, the Yomiuri Giants were in turmoil. Nagashima had been dismissed as manager. Oh had retired. Fans protested. Newspapers, owned by the Yomiuri group, were boycotted. The franchise needed stability, and it needed a new face.

    At the draft, four teams competed for Hara. New Giants manager Motoshi Fujita drew the winning lot.

    People inside the Yomiuri building reportedly embraced. Newspapers ran banner headlines speculating whether Hara might even inherit Nagashima’s sacred number 3. He didn’t, but number 8 would soon become just as recognizable.

    From the moment he signed, Hara was not treated like a rookie. He was treated like a hero. Magazines followed him through spring camp, staged photo shoots, even placed him on horseback in the mountains. A cheer song, Our Beloved Big Brother Tatsunori*, was released on vinyl before he had played a professional game. Teenage girls wrote in to say they had switched allegiances to the Giants because of him. More than ten thousand fans showed up just to watch him practice. The team expanded its public-relations staff to manage the crowds.

    *It’s roughly “the big brother everyone admired” but I’m sure someone else has a better translation.

    With an established third baseman already in place, Hara prepared to play second and spoke earnestly about becoming something new, a large infielder who could hit home runs from a position that did not yet ask for them. He took notes obsessively, writing down how pitchers attacked him, what he swung at, what he should have done differently. When coaches suggested rest when he was sick, or when he was exhausted, he refused. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “I can do it.”

    The criticism arrived anyway. Nine games into his career, despite hitting safely in six straight, the phrase appeared: weak in the clutch. It would follow him for the rest of his playing life.

    But his first professional season in 1981 was, by any rational measure, outstanding. He hit .268 with 22 home runs, won Rookie of the Year, and helped lead the Giants to a league title and Japan Series championship. He hit a walk-off homer in April that sent fans spilling onto the field. He was promoted relentlessly on television, in magazines, and in advertisements. Marriage proposals arrived at the team office. Film studios called. He was voted Japan’s top male symbol of the year.

    The Giants had found their prince.

    And almost immediately, people began asking why he wasn’t a king.

    Hara followed his rookie year with equally impressive performances. Thirty home runs became routine. In 1983, he hit .302 with 32 homers, led the league in RBIs, won MVP, and captured a batting Triple Crown of his own kind: average, power, authority. It should have been the coronation for the new king.

    Instead, it became the high-water mark.

    He never again led the league in a major offensive category. He was always near the top, productive and present, but rarely first. Other sluggers outpaced him: Masayuki Kakefu, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Randy Bass. He made the Best Nine and won Golden Gloves but that wasn’t enough. And because Hara wore the Giants’ uniform, and because he was supposed to be more than merely excellent, closeness to greatness was interpreted as a failure.

    The criticism followed a familiar script: he wasn’t clutch enough; he should have hit forty home runs; he smiled too much. The expectations had been inherited, not earned and, therefore, impossible to satisfy.

    No one captured the tension better than Warren Cromartie, Hara’s American teammate in the 1980s. In his book Slugging It Out in Japan with Robert Whiting, Cromartie described Hara as the Giants’ “glamour boy,” endlessly promoted, endlessly photographed, endlessly scrutinized.

    Hara, according to Cromartie, endured constant extra practice, endless instruction, and relentless attention from coaches who believed that precision mattered more than instinct. He complied with everything. If told to sleep in the batting cage, Cromartie joked, Hara would ask whether he needed a futon.

    Cromartie believed Hara was overcoached, overexposed, and ultimately constrained by the very system that needed him so badly. Hara wanted to swing freely. He wanted to simplify. But the Giants, like Japanese baseball itself, wanted obedience and control.

    And Hara, above all, wanted to be worthy of the uniform.

    That desire reached its breaking point on September 24, 1986.

    The Giants were chasing Hiroshima for the pennant. Hara had already hit a career-high 36 home runs that season. During a game in August, he had injured his left wrist in the field. Painkillers allowed him to keep playing, but he later said he could only swing at sixty or seventy percent.

    In the ninth inning, with two outs and a runner on base, Hara came to the plate. On the mound for the Carp was Tsunemi Tsuda*, the Fiery Closer, pitching with full force, as he always did.

    *Tsuda tragically died in 1993 at the age of 32 from a brain tumor. He was inducted into the Japanese Hall of Fame in 2012.

    Hara knew holding back was safer. But he also knew restraint was unacceptable for a Giant.

    Tsuda came in hard. Hara swung as hard as he could. The ball went foul. There was a sharp cracking sound at contact, and Hara knew immediately.

    The bone in his wrist was broken.

    Years later, Hara said that was the swing that ended him as a hitter*. He said he never truly found the same feeling again. And yet, he never regretted it.

    *He hit .300 with 30 home runs for two consecutive years in 1987 and 1988, but if the man himself says he was never quite the same, he was never quite the same.

    “Even now,” Hara said, “I think that swing was my best one.”

    That sentence tells you everything about Tatsunori Hara.

    After that moment, even if he was never quite the same, he was never quite absent. He moved to the outfield. He continued to hit 20-plus home runs year after year. He adapted. He endured.

    And in 1989, when the Giants needed him one more time, he delivered the hit that would define his reputation more than any criticism ever could.

    In the Japan Series against Kintetsu, Hara went 18 straight at-bats without a hit. He was struggling. He was hurting. He was, once again, being questioned.

    In Game 5, with Yomiuri trailing the series 3 games to 1, the Giants loaded the bases. Kintetsu’s Masato Yoshii intentionally walked Cromartie to face Hara instead.

    Hara hit a grand slam.

    The Giants won the next three games and the championship. Although Hara struggled throughout the series and finished with only two hits, both were home runs—the grand slam in Game 5 and a two-run homer in Game 7—and he drove in six runs in total, surpassing even series MVP Norihiro Komada* in RBIs.

    *Komada was the first player in NPB history to hit a grand slam in his first plate appearance. He ended his career with 13 grand slams and one of the coolest nicknames ever, “Mr. Bases Loaded”.

    The decline came quietly. Achilles tendon injuries mounted. Playing time shrank. By the mid-1990s, the Giants were entering a new era, one of Hideki Matsui, free-agent stars, and a different kind of power. Hara was not only no longer the future: sometimes he was no longer even the present.

    And yet, something curious happened.

    As expectations fell, affection deepened. Older fans who had lived through the ON era often measured Hara against memory and found him lacking. Younger fans, those who had never seen Nagashima play, who knew Oh only through numbers, saw something else. They saw the cleanup hitter who took the licks meant for giants. The star who was told, year after year, that thirty home runs was not enough. The man who kept getting back up even after injuries knocked him out.

    In a role that demanded perfection, Hara survived by being human. His imperfections made him accessible. When he began to fade, the applause grew louder. Not because he was still great, but because he was still there, because he had persevered.

    In 1995, Hara retired after fifteen seasons. In his final game, he hit one last home run. At the ceremony afterward, he spoke about the Giants’ cleanup hitter as a sacred role, one that no one could claim lightly.

    “My dream ends today,” he said.

    “But my dream has a continuation.”

    That continuation arrived in the form of authority.

    As a manager, Hara won nine league titles, three Japan Series championships, and led Japan to victory at the 2009 World Baseball Classic. The system that never fully trusted him as a player eventually handed him everything.

    Even then, the burden of symbolism did not lift. In 2012, long after his playing days had ended but in the midst of his second managerial stint, reports surfaced of an extramarital affair from his playing days and of hush money paid years later under pressure from men later identified as having ties to organized crime: the yakuza. Hara admitted to the core facts and apologized publicly. The courts ultimately ruled that the reporting was substantially true. It was messy and uncomfortable.

    In the end, Tatsunori Hara did not become Nagashima. He did not become Oh. He became something else: the man who carried the weight between eras.

    To some, he will always be the prince who never became a king. To others, the superstar who was never free. But perhaps the truest version is this: Tatsunori Hara was Japanese baseball’s most successful act of containment. Loved loudly, corrected endlessly, and trusted completely. He did not break under expectation. He lived inside it, smiling for the cameras, swinging when allowed, and carrying the quiet burden of being exactly what Japan wanted him to be.

    History is cruel to its heirs.

    Thomas Love Seagull’s work can be found on his Substack Baseball in Japan

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • No Alibis: The Detroit Tigers’ 1962 Tour of Japan

    No Alibis: The Detroit Tigers’ 1962 Tour of Japan

    by Andrew Forbes

    Every Monday morning we will post an article from SABR’s award-winning books Nichibei Yakyu: Volumes I and II. Each will present a different chapter in the long history of US-Japan baseball relations. This week Andrew Forbes focuses on the Detroit Tigers 1962 visit to Japan.

    For the Detroit Tigers 1962 was a year to forget. They finished the season in fourth place, 10½ games behind the pennant-winning Yankees, with 16 fewer wins than the second-place 1961 Detroit club. The best the Tigers could muster in 1962 was second spot in the United Press International baseball experts’ poll of the season’s “No. 1 disappointment,” a single vote behind Roger Maris, who followed up his historic Babe-besting homer total with “only” 33 in 1962.

    As the Yankees and Giants were renewing hostilities in a rain-soaked World Series, the tired and disappointed Tigers limped off to Asia for a monthlong goodwill tour. As foul weather blanketed the Pacific, a coterie of Tigers trainers, wives, the traveling secretary, and team owner and President John E. Fetzer accompanied a scaled-back squad (just three outfielders and a nine-man pitching staff), first to Hawaii, where they squeezed in two games, and then on to Japan. The schedule called for excursions to Seoul and Okinawa before 17 matches against the best competition Japan could offer. Commissioner Ford C. Frick had planned to join the traveling party in Honolulu, but was held up stateside while inclement weather and stingy pitching stretched the World Series out to seven games over two weeks.

    The Tigers touched down in Tokyo on October 18 and participated in a press conference before heading off to the Imperial Hotel. On October 20 the players, executives, and wives were the guests of Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira at a cocktail party thrown in their honor. The Americans were formally introduced by Yetsuo Higa, the Hawaiian businessman who, along with the Mainichi newspaper corporation, was instrumental in planning the tour. Tigers President Fetzer gifted Ohira a set of silver cufflinks fittingly adorned with the heads of tigers.

    Commissioner Frick, having finally joined the group in Tokyo, revealed to the press the secondary – or perhaps even primary – reason for his presence, telling the Associated Press that he would meet with Japanese baseball officials to codify regulations surrounding the movement of players between the United States and Japan. “Before I leave we hope to agree on a definite set of rules under which American players can come to Japan,” Frick said, perhaps unintentionally signaling his belief that no Japanese player would ever be skilled enough to play pro ball in America.

    After successful tune-ups in Okinawa (where they “whipped a servicemen’s team,” 9-0, largely on the strength of Jim Bunning’s five no-hit innings) and Seoul (beating up on an all-star team, 8-0, thanks to a three-run shot by Bubba Morton), the Tigers returned to Tokyo and prepared to begin competition against Japanese squads.

    But the Detroiters would not be at full strength. Much of the Tigers’ trouble during the regular season could be chalked up to injuries, with starter Frank Lary (sore arm), outfielders Al Kaline (broken collarbone) and Billy Bruton (sore leg; broken jaw), and first baseman Norm Cash (broken finger) all missing significant time. By the time the team landed in Japan, Bruton was still unable to play, and Kaline was touch-and-go due to torn ligaments in his foot suffered during one of the games at Honolulu. The injury “definitely has slowed me up,” said Kaline. “It’s a real tough problem. But I’ll play with it taped up and do the best I can.” Given the injuries, and the fact that only three regular outfielders made the trans-Pacific journey (with Rocky Colavito remaining stateside to be by his wife’s side as she battled illness), manager Bob Scheffing would be doing a lot of juggling.

    On the eve of the slate’s first game, the Tigers made their first public appearance, taking in a night of entertainment at the Nichigeki Theater in downtown Tokyo. The players and their wives enjoyed a two-hour show by the Nichigeki’s dancers before the boys donned happi coats and took the stage. Scheffing introduced his players to the crowd, and each was presented with a bouquet of flowers. The appearance concluded with the athletes tossing rubber balls into the crowd; those who caught select balls adorned with a Tigers logo would be admitted to the next day’s game free of charge.

    The next afternoon Jim Bunning took the Tokyo Stadium mound for the Tigers in front of 27,000 spectators, including Crown Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko. After the ceremonial first pitch was handled by Japanese Foreign Minister Ohira to US Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer, the Tigers wasted no time providing their starter some run support. Detroit’s hitters roughed up Daimai Orions starter Tomoo Wako, who did not make it out of the first. The Tigers put up eight runs in the opening frame, including a three-run homer by Jake Wood, to cruise to a 12-1 victory. Bunning contributed 5⅓ perfect innings before giving up four hits and giving way to reliever Terry Fox.

    Neither the Tigers nor the Orions came away unscathed, however. In the sixth inning, Detroit first baseman Norm Cash was struck behind the ear by Daimai lefty Shoichi Ono’s errant pitch, necessitating a hospital visit for X-rays, which showed no lasting damage. “I hope to play tomorrow,” said Cash. And Kaline reaggravated his foot injury in the first inning, toughing it out until the sixth when he was replaced by Bobo Osborne. Meanwhile, in the other clubhouse, Orions manager Mitsuo Uno was relieved of his duties by club President Masaichi Nagata. In his two years as manager, Uno had led Daimai to a 132-136-4 record and a pair of fourth-place finishes, so his employers may simply have seen the lopsided loss as the final straw.

    Scheduled games on Sunday against the Yomiuri Giants and Monday versus a combined team containing members of the Orions, the Kokutetsu Swallows, and the Taiyo Whales were washed out by rain, but the layoff allowed Frick and his officers to hammer out an agreement with their Japanese counterparts. Meeting at the Imperial Hotel, Frick, Tigers owner Fetzer, and AL President Joe Cronin sat down with Japanese Commissioner Yushi Uchimura, Pacific League President Fujio Nakazawa, and Central League President Ryuji Suzuki to formalize a deal that would “prohibit direct trades between Japanese clubs and American players, and vice versa by American major league clubs and Japanese players, without the commissioners’ approval.” In Frick’s view, the pact promised “smooth relations” across the Pacific, though it would take only two years for the commissioner to be proved wrong. The 1964 dispute between the San Francisco Giants and Nankai Hawks over the contract status of lefty reliever Masanori Murakami led Frick to write Uchimura decreeing that “all agreements, all understandings and all dealings and negotiations between Japanese and American baseball are cancelled.”

    The Tigers players also kept busy during the rainy days, as pitcher Phil Regan gave a Bible reading at Kawasaki Baptist Church, while Bunning, Cash, Scheffing, Kaline, and Dick McAuliffe, along with Hanshin Tigers pitcher (and Central League MVP) Minoru Murayama, appeared on the NHK-TV program My Secret.

    The Tigers – including Cash, recovered from his beaning, and Kaline – returned to the field after the two rainouts to face the recently crowned Japanese champion Toei Flyers at Korakuen Stadium. The Flyers outhit and outpitched Detroit, and played sharper defense. Knotted, 3-3, after nine innings, the game was declared a tie in keeping with an agreement struck at the tour’s commencement that forbade extra-inning games. Scheffing, however, complained that he would “prefer to let these exhibition games go into extra innings to settle it one way or another.”

    Things got worse the next day as the Tigers met the Yomiuri Giants in a makeup of their washed-out game, and the Giants “took a liking to the slow curves of right-hander Phil Regan,” and held on for a 3-2 win behind starter Minoru Nakamura, who tossed a complete game. “We have no alibis,” said Scheffing, whose squad now had only one win to show for their first three games in Japan. “We weren’t hitting and their pitcher had good control.”

    It was likely with some relief, then, that the Tigers greeted the opportunity to escape Tokyo and begin the road leg of their excursion, alighting first in Sapporo, where they handled a team consisting of Orions and Giants, 6-2, behind the bat of Bubba Morton and the pitching of Don Mossi. Thence to Osaka did the Tigers fly, where their game against the Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium was rained out. But the visit did allow John Fetzer to invite their namesake club to their 1963 spring-training camp at Lakeland, Florida, with the American Tigers picking up all expenses accrued in the United States.

    Scheffing’s distaste for tie games might have been a factor in the decision to enter extra innings the next day, a Sunday afternoon at Nishinomiya Stadium. The Tigers and a mixed team of Japanese all-stars were tied, 3-3, after nine, but Detroit exploded for four runs in the 10th, with Flyers rookie hurler Yukio Ozaki the victim.

    Events in Nagoya on November 5, though, might have had the Tigers wishing they’d banked a couple of those runs, as Chunichi Dragons outfielder Shinichi Eto slugged two homers, added a pair of singles, and reached on an error, and the All-Stars (composed of Dragons, Giants, Orions, and Kintetsu Buffaloes) downed Detroit 6-4. Hank Aguirre surrendered five of the All-Stars’ runs, including Eto’s homer on the first pitch of the afternoon. If there was good news for the Americans it was that Billy Bruton’s jaw had healed to the point that he was able to pinch-hit – just in time to strike out to end the game.

    Said Scheffing, “Japanese baseball is a lot better than we were led to believe before we came over here.”

    Blasts by Cash, Kaline, and McAuliffe helped matters on November 6, when improving weather allowed Detroit to play Hanshin in Osaka after the earlier postponement. The American Tigers cruised, 11-4, with Cash contributing four RBIs. Chico Fernandez and Mike Roarke chipped in homers to help the Tigers blank the Nankai Hawks 3-0 on November 7. It appeared the Tigers were beginning to recall that they had led all of big-league baseball in home runs in 1962 with 209. The pleasing trend continued in Tokyo, as Detroit added four more homers – including another apiece for Cash and Kaline – to best a Swallows/Orions/Whales squad, 13-8, in a contest called in the top of the ninth due to darkness. At Hiroshima, homers from Cash, Kaline, and McAuliffe were more than enough to overcome the amassed strength of a Hiroshima Carp/Hankyu Braves/ Hanshin Tigers/Daimai Orions team, 8-1, with Jim Bunning going the distance for Detroit.

    For all their power, the Tigers had not yet hit a grand slam on Japanese soil. Norm Cash fixed that on November 10 at Fukuoka, against a side made up of Orions and Nishitetsu Lions. The clout helped Detroit come from behind to win, 6-4, improving the visitors’ record to 8-2 with a tie.35 The fireworks continued at Shimonoseki against the Taiyo Whales, as Detroit strolled to a 10-0 win that featured homers by Morton, McAuliffe, Cash (his sixth in seven games), and catcher Dick Brown.

    The big hits kept on coming after the Tigers landed in Shizuoka to face a team of Giants and Orions. Kaline notched another homer, and Bobo Osborne’s grand slam in the top of the ninth put the game away for Detroit, 12-7, with the last half-frame called due to darkness. Osborne’s shot was the Tigers’ 27th homer in 13 games on the Japanese tour. The ball left a mark on more than just the scoreboard; spectator Saku Masuda was gifted an autographed ball to go along with a bruise on her shoulder.

    Kaline homered yet again in Utsunomiya against the amalgamated might of the Giants and Orions, but it proved just about all the offense the Tigers could summon in a 6-3 loss, dropping their record to 10-3 with a tie – not shabby, but not the walk in the park they might have expected. Jim Bunning went seven innings but gave up four earned runs in the first and took the loss. Kaline homered again – his seventh – the ensuing afternoon at Miyagi Stadium in Sendai, and it was just enough to beat an all-star agglomeration of Flyers, Giants, and Orions, 4-3.

    An offday preceded the final games of the tour in Tokyo, but it apparently did Detroit little good. On an autumn Saturday afternoon at Korakuen Stadium, Hanshin Tigers ace Minoru Murayama, hurling for the All-Stars, turned in what Japanese baseball officials called “the greatest pitching performance by a Japanese since the late Eiji Sawamura lost a [one-run game] to Connie Mack’s All-Stars back in 1934,” a legendary outing that saw Sawamura strike out Charlie Gehringer, Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx in a row. Surrendering just two hits, Murayama became the first Japanese pitcher to shut out a visiting American big-league team over a full nine innings. The Tigers’ first hit didn’t come until there were two out in the eighth, when Mike Roarke collected a cheap single to left. “We have no alibis for losing,” said Scheffing. “We just couldn’t hit that fella Murayama.” With the loss, the Tigers joined the 1956 Dodgers and the 1960 Giants as the only major-league squads to lose four games in Japan.

    “We gotta be tired,” said Scheffing. “It’s been a tiring trip after a long regular season.”

    The next day brought only moderately better results. Once again facing an All-Japan team, the Tigers registered a 3-3 tie in a game called after 10 innings due to darkness. McAuliffe homered for Detroit; Sadaharu Oh and the Orions’ Takao Katsuragi cleared the fence for the All-Stars. When play ceased, “a band played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to close the series,” as the game marked the end of the scheduled exhibition itinerary. But officials announced one additional game between the Tigers and Japan’s All-Stars, to be played two days later, “a parting gesture of goodwill.” All proceeds of the bonus game were to be “donated to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics fund,” an “unparalleled” move, according to Japan’s Olympic Committee.

    Billy Bruton homered in the finale, and the Tigers rolled to a 7-2 win. For the purposes of the record books, however, the tour was officially over two days earlier, after the tie game, meaning that Detroit’s 11 wins, four losses, and two ties earned them “the worst record ever for a major league club coming to Japan.” The Tigers – “the big flops this year in the American League” – couldn’t even catch a break at the turnstiles; Detroit’s “total attendance of 383,370 for 17 games in Japan didn’t measure up to the 16-game attendance of the San Francisco Giants’ [441,000] and St. Louis Cardinals’ [430,000] tours in 1960 and 1958 respectively,” though in all fairness it should be noted that the Tigers battled soggy weather just about every step of the way.

    Before departing, Joe Cronin summed up what the American baseball emissaries had discovered in Japan in 1962. “The Japanese might be able to challenge American major league baseball in the next generation of players,” he told the press. “They are really something to see.

    Having been in Japan for over a month, the Tigers had seen enough. The schedule concluded, they flew home to lick their wounds, rest up, and prepare for the 1963 season.

    Continue to read the full article on the SABR website

    No Alibis: The Detroit Tigers’ 1962 Tour of Japan

  • Excerpt: In the Japanese Ballpark: Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball

    Excerpt: In the Japanese Ballpark: Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball

    Chapter 26: Bobby Valentine, Manager.

    from Off Base with Howard Cole, originally posted February6, 2026

    Because of their rich history in Los Angeles, the Dodgers (and their fans) know something about Japanese baseball. And so does the Robert K. Fitts, the author of several books on the subject. We excerpted his “Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer” ahead of Shohei Ohtani’s L.A. debut in 2024, and are happy to tell you about his latest work now. It is “In the Japanese Ballpark: Behind the Scenes of Nippon Professional Baseball,” University of Nebraska Press, November 1, 2025, $21.99 Hardcover, $20.89 Kindle.

    Fitts devoted chapters about his interview subjects from every aspect of Japanese baseball under the sun. Twenty-six of them, including a player, umpire, manager, fan, cheerleader, beer girl, data analyst, general manager, assistant general manager, commissioner, agent and team owner.

    In fact, chapters regarding two managers, both with Dodgers connections, are included in the work: Trey Hillman, who was Don Mattingly’s bench coach from 2011 to 2013, and Bobby Valentine, a Dodgers minor and major leaguer from1968 through 1972, when he was included in a blockbuster trade which also sent Billy Grabarkewitz, Frank Robinson, Bill Singer and Mike Strahler to Anaheim for Andy Messersmith and Ken McMullen.

    Chapter 26: Bobby Valentine, Manager

    Former Major League player Bobby Valentine managed the Texas Rangers, New York Mets, and Boston Red Sox as well as the Chiba Lotte Marines in 1995 and 2005–2009. He led the Marines to the championship in 2005.

    I went to Japan for the first time in the early 1980s. I was invited by Mizuno Sporting Goods because at that time I was thought to be the first player to use a Mizuno glove in the Major Leagues. In 1978 Mizuno’s master glove maker, Nobuyoshi Tsubota, came to spring training in Florida and set up a little workshop in a Winnebago he parked on the street right outside the players’ parking lot. I was riding by on my bike, and I stopped in, and Tsubota-san made me a glove. I used it from that day on. Later that season, I was going to be in the starting lineup for some reason and the game was going to be on national television. Joe Torre was our manager, and his brother Frank was the vice president of Rawlings. The game was on a Saturday, and Frank came to the stadium on Friday night. When I arrived on Saturday morning to get ready for the game, the Mizuno label was ripped off my glove! But I used it, and it was the first time a Mizuno glove was used in the Majors— or so I thought. Later, we found out that Lou Gehrig had his glove stolen during the 1934 tour, and Mizuno made him a replacement that he used when he returned to the States.

    Then in 1986 I went over as a coach on the postseason All- Star tour. My first impression was that the players looked better than I thought they would. Then in 1989 I went over as part of the Japan- U.S. baseball summit that Tatsuro Hirooka put together. I got to meet a lot of the baseball hierarchy, including Shigeo Nagashima, Katsuya Nomura, and Hirooka-san. Once again, I was impressed, especially by a young player named Hiromitsu Ochiai. So, by the time I got there in 1995 to manage the Chiba Lotte Marines, I already had a good impression of Japanese baseball. Then in that first year, I got to work with Hirooka-san. I was amazed at his knowledge and his understanding of the game. He was as spectacular a baseball man as I had ever been around. And I had been around a lot of the older baseball guys in America. I had played baseball and been a young coach on the same staff as Frank Howard and George Bamberger, and I was really close to Tommy Lasorda and Al Campanis and then later Bobby Bragan.

    In the early 1990s most Americans’ understanding of Japanese baseball was totally misconceived. It was based on Tom Selleck and Mr. Baseball— almost totally based on that and the stories that guys told from their experiences. Most of the guys were bad storytellers, and most of them had an ugly American’s perspective. I think that some of the guys who could have told the story properly were never asked, or it never got into the mainstream media, which was presenting a very opinionated and uneducated view of Japanese baseball, in my opinion. 

    There was a lot of resistance to acknowledging the baseball culture of Japan. There was still prejudice, probably hangover effects from the war. I knew some Americans who had actually experienced World War II and had a preconceived prejudice of the Japanese being the enemy. It wasn’t acceptable by my standards, but I thought it to be natural. They were very comfortable having a predetermined opinion of what the culture was and what the baseball culture was in Japan. When I went over with the Major League All-Star team in 1986, to a man they played and respected the Japanese players. They said, “Hey man, that pitcher is pretty good. Hey, this guy can hit. Hey, they’re throwing from the outfield just like we are.” There was a reckoning from those who were seeing without blinders on. 

    When I got there in ’95, Japanese baseball culture had an inferiority complex. Nearly everyone believed that it was a lesser league, a lesser brand of baseball. A lot of that was based on a size and speed comparison. There wasn’t that really fast guy, and there wasn’t that really big guy who was born from Japanese parents. So, there was that physical inferiority, but there was also just the idea of watching a championship game from the United States on TV and having it called the World Championship and then watching your championship on TV and having it called the Japan Championship that lends itself to an inherent inferiority situation. 

    The same year that I first managed the Marines, Hideo Nomo came over to the States. I always thought of that as an exchange, basically the first player coming over here and the first manager going over there. We did a crossover. What I was expecting when I got to Japan was an enthusiastic fandom for Nomo, a superhero trying to do something that no one had ever done before. But instead, he was treated like an outsider, and the fans and the baseball community, mainly the older baseball community, were pulling against him at the beginning and saying he would fail. I remember having conversations with Hirooka-san and others, and they thought he was going to fall on his face, and they weren’t really rooting for him, which I found really amazing. Or maybe, in their hearts they were pulling for him, but they were embarrassed to come out and say it in case he failed. So, I’m not sure what the true mentality of the baseball hierarchy in Japan was at the beginning of Nomomania. I know what I heard, and I know what they said, but it’s such a different culture that sometimes you have to get an interpreter to understand what’s really meant. 

    After managing in Japan, I had an even greater appreciation of the Japanese game. I always thought it was real baseball, and then I got to experience it and I was like, “Holy cow!” When I brought the Marines to Arizona to practice in the spring of 1995, I had Nolan Ryan and Tom House come out to watch Hideki Irabu throw. He wasn’t like Nomo with the whirlwind windup and the split finger that confused everyone. He was actually someone who stood out there and had a fastball better than everyone else. And he was from Japan! 

    When I was the Mets manager in 1997, I went to Shigeo Nagashima’s spring camp, which started two weeks before we did, and I asked him if he could give me a pitcher who was not going to make the Yomiuri Giants ichi-gun (main team) so that I could take him to spring training and have him pitch for the Mets. He was like, “Why would you want to do that?” And I said because I want to show the Japanese community, as well as the U.S. community, that a guy who can’t pitch for your team can pitch for mine. So, I brought over Takashi Kashiwada, and he actually pitched for the Mets and did a decent job. 

    Measuring change is one of the hardest things in the world to do. You look back twenty years, and you realize that things have really changed, right? When I came back to manage the Marines in the mid-2000s, it seemed that the decade between my two stints was like the 1975 to 1985 decade in the States when times were changing. There had been a kind of cultural swing. I think that Nomo going to the States allowed a freedom of spirit to be attached to baseball in Japan.

    In 1995 I misunderstood why I was there. I thought I was there to teach the Japanese how to play the game, because that’s what I was told when I was being interviewed for the job. They said that Hirooka knew how to play the game, but the Japanese players really didn’t. As it turned out, they knew how to play the game. They just needed someone to let them know that they knew how to play the game. Ten years later when I went back, that was my mission, not teaching them how to play the game, but letting them understand that they knew it well enough to compete at any level. But by that time, Ichiro was doing his thing, and Matsui was on the Yankees, and that inferiority complex that I thought they had was no longer there. 

    There have been several noticeable changes since 1995, both on and off the field. One of the most challenging times of my life was getting the Japanese hierarchy to understand one thing that I thought they needed to change. They thought that a hitter should always swing down on the ball and hit ground balls because they weren’t big enough and strong enough to hit home runs. I argued, “How could you say that when the guy who hit more home runs than anybody on earth was a Japanese and my size?” You don’t have to be a big guy to hit it over the fence. What you need is a good swing. 

    But even Sadaharu Oh thought you should swing down at the ball. In 1995 I had weekly debates with Hirooka-san, who was on the same team with Oh and saw how Oh developed the swing that made him hit more home runs than anybody else who ever lived. And it was a downswing. So one time, after showing me videos in slow motion and stop action, Hirooka-san brought in a wonderfully fine-tuned samurai sword and a bundle of sticks bounded by a rope. In one of the great training exercises that Oh did with the sword, they hang this bundle of sticks, and you swing the sword, and if you swing properly, at the right angle with the right velocity, you go through that bundle as though it was a piece of paper. And if you don’t, then the sword ricochets back and it might hit you in the forehead and cut your head open! They had me try it. And they were right. If you went in at the right angle, and it was a bit of a downswing with the sword, it would go through. It went through on my first attempt. Then they had me swing up at it, and it bounced off, and the ricochet almost stabbed me in my backside!

    Bobby Valentine with former MLB pitcher Masato Yoshii. Courtesy of Jim Allen.

    That was all cool, but then I needed another two months to explain to Hirooka how a sword has no weight at the end of it, and a bat has a weight at the end of it. These interpretive conversations were multiple and always the same. I said the same thing, and he would always agree that he understood what I was saying, but that he didn’t agree with what I was saying. Then finally at the end of the year, and it was one of the most satisfying moments, he said to me, “I understand what you’re saying, and I understand that you are right, but I just don’t want the players to know that.” There was so much time and effort invested into this philosophy of hitting in Japan that they didn’t want to reverse it, so they just let it be. Luckily, some of the players kind of got the message. Today, many of the hitters in Japan, and in Korea for that matter, definitely have an upswing.

    The other major change is on the field. The Japanese now have incorporated the backhand as a standard way of fielding. In 1995 there was a rite of passage for those who entered the professional ranks of baseball in Japan. You had to field one thousand ground balls at one time without leaving the field, and while fielding them if you went to your right, you had to go so hard that you got in front of the ball. That was the way you fielded. When you went to your right, you always got in front of the ball, so the ball hit you in the chest if it didn’t go into the glove. But from about 1995, some of the infielders started to incorporate the backhand, and that made a big difference in their range factor and in their ability to throw the ball across the diamond more efficiently. 

    Those are the two technical things that changed from the first time I got there. The hitting one is rather large and the fielding one is a little more subtle. By incorporating those two changes, the players now look very similar to the professional players in the States. 

    Another thing that’s changed— Japanese baseball now leans toward recovery, not only toward effort. The idea that doing more, and more was better, has changed just a little. When I got to Japan in 1995, to miss a minute of practice while your teammates were practicing, even if you had to go to the bathroom, would be frowned upon. Everyone played all the time, and there was no pitch limit. I instituted a 15 pitch-per- inning goal and a 135-per- game maximum. You would have thought that I was asking families to give away their first-born child! Suggesting that a pitcher should have a limitation on his pitches per inning and per game was unheard of in Japan. 

    While I was managing there, Masahiro Tanaka pitched twelve innings in the 2006 Koshien final that ended in a tie and then came back the next day and pitched seven innings. I mean, are you kidding me? It was some of the greatest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a badge of honor to leave it all out on the field. The idea that you had to come back and do it again the next day wasn’t necessarily part of the equation.

    A crazy example of this happened in my first year. After a game we lost, I got showered and dressed and then came out, and Hirooka, the general manager, was standing behind the batting cage, and my third baseman was taking batting practice. It’s about 11:30 at night. Sweat is pouring off of his chin, and he had just played nine innings. And the pitcher is throwing curveballs. I watched for a while because I figured, well, he needed practice hitting curveballs. And I watched for a little longer. I guess he needed a little more practice hitting curveballs. Then, I went over to Hirooka-san and asked, “So how long is he going to be hitting here tonight?” 

    And he said, “Until he can hit the curveball.” 

    Of course! I thought. There was no consideration that the next day was a day game, and it was going to be 93 degrees, and this guy had to go home, come back, and then play nine more innings. 

    That has changed. The players are not wearing themselves down as much, and that’s why I think the athletes now are bigger and stronger. They have time to recover and build rather than just breaking their bodies down through constant work.

    I have to touch on this. Somewhere it should be said, or maybe it shouldn’t be said, but it took Japan about twenty years to discourage players from smoking cigarettes. In traditional Japanese baseball culture, that was what you were supposed to do. If you looked at the back of a magazine, all the stars in the ads were smoking. And if they were smoking, you had to smoke. When I first got there in 1995, right behind the dugout there was something like a table with a grid on the top where you put your cigarette out and then just dropped it into this long ashtray. The guys would come in from the field and line up like it was buffet line, eight or nine of them smoking cigarettes. It was crazy! But that has changed as well. 

    You know that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity, but businesswise the Japanese teams had a way of doing the same thing over and over again and being very satisfied with the same result. So, when I came back in 2005, I was hired to do more than the managing. I was also there to help them transition into more of a Major League–type business, to help them run the club as a standalone business instead of an advertising vehicle for the international company that lends its name to the team.

    Akio Shigemitsu, who ran the club, was the son of the owner of Lotte, and he was only part Japanese, so he was seen as an outsider. I think that’s what gave him the idea to give Hirooka-san the go ahead to find a foreign manager. Shigemitsu-san wasn’t getting the weekly memo from Watanabe-san (the president of the Yomiuri Giants) that everything in Japanese baseball is great and don’t try to change a thing until I call and give you the go-ahead. He didn’t totally follow the marching orders. All of the interaction we ever had was at these very formal geisha dinners: private room, sitting on the floor, geisha gals pouring your sake, talking about the weather and all the other really important things that we could definitely agree on to make sure there wasn’t going to be any confrontation at this social event. But we would also talk about doing things a little differently to make the Marines a better team and business. 

    When Shigemitsu-san gave me the go-ahead to talk with people about marketing, it was marketing the mascot and the team brand. It was never marketing the players. Japanese baseball, just like Japanese culture, in my opinion, is such a closed culture. They treated baseball as an entertainment vehicle that was closed to the public. There was an idea that players should not interact with the fans. It was as if it would lower your image if you didn’t keep a barrier between the players and those who paid to see them play. I think what they wanted was the secretive, aloof, no-contact kind of superstar, the Joe DiMaggio type. But, marketing the player and promoting the player and letting the fans have contact with the player have changed for the better over the years. It’s now part of the business side that they’re trying to sell, not only the brand but also the talent. 

    Between-inning entertainment has also become part of the business. The teams always had the mascots, but now there are mascots, cheerleaders, plus other events between innings to entertain fans. Japanese teams have become more cognizant that they need the fans to have the game. At one time, the fans needed the game, so they provided the game. The mentality changed a little so that now the game needs the fans. I think they’re getting it now. It’s a different ownership situation. 

    But it was tough to change the marketing. Marketing is one of those weird concepts in Japan. People are supposed to want to buy your product, right? Having to persuade consumers is a newer concept, and baseball is one of the older and more conservative businesses there. For example, I almost needed an act of Congress to allow kids to come on the field after Sunday games and run around the bases.

    I’m concerned that NPH will become like the Negro Leagues. I tried to tell players that the good players should stay there and that the medium players should go to the States and make more money. But don’t take the stars away from their teams because that’s what MLB did to the Negro Leagues. The Negro Leagues were great leagues for their fans. The last Negro World Series was in 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson came to the Dodgers. That’s a whole story for another day, right? But that’s always my fear, that MLB is going to do that to another great league.

    I think a lot has been taken away from NPB because the players want to go where the grass is greener. They need to plant a few new lawns, and the beginning is to get new venues. You can then charge more money for suites and generate revenue from within the business itself rather than from the parent company. Then that money can be reinvested in R&D (research and development) and the minor leagues and in major league salaries and talent. 

    It looks like NPB is actually moving to do it with the Hokkaido new dome and the plans to renovate Jingu and make that into a spectacular downtown venue. The Giants are going to be forced to do something. Chiba, I hear, is going to spend over a billion dollars to build a new stadium along with Lotte and ZoZo in partnership. 

    One solution for NPB would be to increase their minor league system and their R&D. The problem with their system has been that they have eighty players in each organization. Thirty of them are basically on the ichi-gun (top team), and fifty of them are in the single ni-gun (minor league) team. The ni-gun manager has to keep sharp the guys who might come up to the big leagues as temporary replacements. Since there’s only one team, there is no room to develop young players. Sometimes, players are in the minor leagues for years without playing in a game. But they go to practice every day, five and six hours a day of practice. That’s the mentality: keep practicing, and you’ll get better. Well, I kept trying to tell them that they need to play to get better. It’s a game of playing, not just a game of hitting and throwing. Three of the organizations now have more than one minor league team, so that’s a start. 

    NPB also has to improve their feeder system. When you have four thousand high schools and eighty colleges playing baseball and then you draft only seventy or eighty kids a year, that is not forward thinking. They’ve got to spend more on developing players because there are a lot of players who fall through the cracks. Japanese kids develop physically later, and basically when they’re seventeen, they’re being judged whether or not they’re going to be a professional player. The feeder system has changed a little bit. It used to be Koshien to contract. Star in high school Koshien, and you get a contract. You’re one of the eighty players selected by a team. But now, teams are giving more opportunities for college and even industrial and independent league players to play professionally.

    Still, Japan needs to embrace the independent leagues. We have Minor League teams in the States that allow fans who aren’t close to a Major League franchise to go out and watch a professional baseball game. In Japan, there are independent league teams in all these little country towns. As in America, these should be seen as the place to go in the community. One could go to a baseball game with your kid and enjoy it and then go home without worrying about catching the last train out of Tokyo to get home. But the independent leagues haven’t built up a strong fan base. I was trying to expand the independent leagues when I was there because a stronger independent league system would produce more players for NPB. In 2006 when I was managing the Marines, I scouted independent teams, and I took a kid named Katsuya Kakunaka from an independent team in the draft. After I left, he wound up leading the league in hitting in 2012. 

    So anyway, that’s what I think NPB needs to do. They need to improve their facilities, create more minor league teams and more independent teams, and then they need to get together on what they’re doing. I think what they need to do eventually is change the baseball hierarchy. 

    And I think that’s already starting to change. And I think they should at least explore the possibility of having a division of Major League Baseball in Asia— not where teams are traveling back and forth between Asia and the United States, but where the winner of an Asian division enters the playoffs for a true world championship. Now, of course, that would change the model in Japan, and I don’t know that change is what they would really like to do. But I think that if baseball wants to expand and continue to grow worldwide, it would be better to merge and grow rather than just have MLB handpick talent and eliminate the competition.

    Of course, we have the WBC. But it interrupts the season. I don’t think that you’re ever going to get the best brand of baseball being played before the season. If it’s a true all-star situation, then I think it should be played midseason with everyone taking a break. Or it should be an Olympic sport played during the Winter Olympics. I always thought that would be the sensible thing to do, play the tournament in a dome during the Winter Olympics because it’s the off-season. 

    But you know, after winning the first one, and winning it often, I feel that Japan should get a bigger cut of the pie. I thought that they should have negotiated that from day one, but they didn’t. I felt and feel that it could be a big boost economically for the players. Also with the WBC, people will continue to say, “Oh, yeah, Japan only won because they take it more seriously. Japan only won because they practiced more before it started.” Well, if they’re going to practice more and use better players and be better prepared, which makes it a better event, then they should be rewarded economically for that. 

    My advice to American fans seeing their first Japanese game? Well, they should understand that the food is going to be better than they’ve ever had at a baseball park, so order properly: that the kegs are on legs and you’re going to get a very cold and foam-filled glass of beer that you absolutely have to have, and that you should pay attention to the game just like everyone else around you, because they won’t miss a pitch or an inning regardless of the score or who’s at the plate. The Japanese give the game that respect when they’re in the stands. There’s a better understanding of the game from the fans. It’s not necessarily vocalized or transmitted through action. If someone thinks something is good here in the States, they stand up in front of the person behind them and start yelling and waving their hands, regardless of whether the guy behind them can see. It’s a little different in Japan. But if you turn to the seventy-year- old woman to your left and ask what the count is, she’ll probably know. That should be appreciated. 

    The Japanese players will look and act in a very similar way, and they do that out of respect for the game. They feel that there’s a certain way to dress, a certain way to act when they’re on the field, a certain way to swing and miss in a very dramatic fashion. There are little moments of drama in a Japanese game that are kind of unique, but you have to know what you’re looking at to actually see them. There’s a little bit of Kabuki theater when they have a collision or get hit by a pitch or swing violently and miss or dive for a ball. Also, the idea of the count going full is respected a little more in Japan, that the battle has taken place and now it comes to this crescendo and the outcome will be on the next pitch. That’s Japanese baseball in its truest, purest form. The game is built around those moments. That’s why they love it.

    Off Base with Howard Cole is available on Substack

  • Baseball at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

    Baseball at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

    by Dave McNeely

    The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the fifth time that baseball was included as a demonstration sport, following the 1912, 1936, 1952 and 1956 Olympiads.  The 1964 games, however, were different than the games before them in that more than one game would be played.

    Until recently, most English-language accounts of the 1964 Olympic baseball events described it as a single game played between a US team made up of college players against “a Japanese amateur all-star team”.  The game was played at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo on October 11th,1964 in front of 50,000 fans and was won by the US team by a score of 6-2.  One of the US players, Shaun Fitzmaurice, hit a home run on the first pitch of the game.

    As it turns out, this account is not entirely accurate.  There were actually TWO games that Team USA played in at Jingu Stadium that day – one against a team of Japanese collegiate players and one against a team of Japanese corporate league players.  Neither Japanese team should really be considered an “all-star” team.  The collegiate team was essentially the Komazawa University team (which had just won the All-Japan University Baseball Championship four months earlier) which was fortified with seven players from other colleges in Tokyo.  Similarly, the corporate league team was the Nippon Express team (which had won the Intercity Baseball Tournament – essentially the corporate league championship – two and a half months earlier) that was bolstered by seven players from other corporate league teams.

    Rod Dedeaux, the legendary USC baseball coach, was the manager of the US team.  He’d put together an all-star team of collegiate players for a 14-game tour of Japan and South Korea that included these two games in Tokyo.  The tour was organized to drum up interest in having baseball added to future Olympics.  The team would include eight players who would go on to play in the major leagues – Mike Epstein, Gary Sutherland, Chuck Dobson, Alan Closter, Dick Joyce, Jim Hibbs, Ken Suarez and the previously mentioned Shaun Fitzmaurice.  

    The baseball team was not considered part of the official US Olympic team and was not quartered in the Olympic Village.  Neither were they allowed to participate in the Opening Ceremony.  On the plus side, however, they were not subject to the curfew that the other athletes had and were able to enjoy the Tokyo nightlife deeper into the evening.  Similarly, the Japanese teams were not considered part of the official Japanese team and also did not take part in the Opening Ceremony.  

    The Japanese collegiate team (seen above with Team USA) was managed by Akihito Kobayashi, the head coach of the Komazawa University team.  Eleven of the eighteen players on the roster were from Komazawa with another two players coming from one of the University’s Tohto League rivals, Chou University.  The other five players came from Tokyo Big Six league schools – two from Hosei, two from Keio and one from Rikkio.  All the players wore Komazawa uniforms.

    Twelve members of this team would go on to have professional careers in NPB.  Tokuji “Atsushi” Nagaike of Hosei University was the biggest name here – he won two Pacific League MVP awards (1969 & 1971) and led the league in home runs and RBIs three times each.  Shozo Doi (Rikkio) and Toshimitsu Suetsugu (Chuo) were key members of the Yomiuri Giants team that won nine straight Nippon Series between 1965 and 1973 (known as the V9 Giants).  Doi managed the Orix BlueWave in the early 1990s and is most famous (infamous?) for saying that Ichiro Suzuki would never be able to hit with that batting stance.  Taisuke Watanabe (Keio) had thrown the first perfect game in Tokyo Big Six history five months before these games.

    The corporate league team (seen above with Team USA) was managed by Seiji Inaba, the head coach of Nippon Express.  Like the collegiate team, the corporate league team’s eighteen player roster featured eleven players from their manager’s team.  The other seven players consisted of two players each from Nippon Oil and Nippon Steel Pipe and one each from Sumitomo Metal, Nippon Columbia and Kanekalon Kaneka.  All the members of the team wore Nippon Express uniforms.

    Only three of these players would have professional careers.  The most interesting story of any of these players is Shigeo Kondo of Nippon Columbia who, after an eleven-year corporate league career, was taken by the Lotte Orions in the 1971 NPB draft.  At 29 years and one month, he was the oldest player drafted, a record he would hold for eleven years until 30-year and five-month-old Norio Ichimura was drafted by the Dragons in 1982.

    With the smoke of the Olympic cauldron (which had been lit during the Opening Ceremony the previous evening) at the National Stadium visible just beyond the left field stands of Jingu Stadium, the teams held their own “opening ceremony” before the two collegiate teams faced off in the first game.  While there’s no record of whether Fitzmaurice did indeed hit a home run on the first pitch of the game, the US team did score a run in the top of the first inning.  Japan matched that run in the bottom of the inning and went ahead 2-1 with a single run in the fifth inning.  Team USA tied the score in the top of the ninth and that’s how the game ended – a 2-2 tie.  The corporate league team proved no match for Team USA in the nightcap with Dedeaux’s squad shutting out Inaba’s by a score of 3-0.

    Team USA’s tour of Japan would conclude two weeks later with a doubleheader in Urawa.  Their first game against “a selected team from Saitama Prefecture” ended in a 3-3 tie while Nippon Express got their revenge by winning the second game 3-2.  The collegiate team would finish the Japanese portion of their tour with a record of 5-2-2. 

    Baseball would not return to the Olympics for twenty years when it was again a demonstration sport for the 1984 Los Angeles games.  Unlike the previous instances, the 1984 games featured an eight-team tournament rather than a single day event.  The only connection to the 1964 games was Rod Dedeaux, who would again manage Team USA.  The Japanese team took the “unofficial” gold medal with Team USA taking silver.  The two nations would swap spots at the 1988 Seoul games, the last that baseball would be played in as a demonstration sport.  It would become an official sport at the 1992 Barcelona games.

    Note – the photos for this post were taken from the “Japan National Team Uniform Catalog”, a book/magazine published by Baseball Magazine She in April of 2020.  The baseball cards are from the author’s personal collection.

    Dave McNeely has been collecting Japanese Baseball cards for more than 25 years and has been blogging about them since 2007.  His blog can be found at Japanese Baseball Cards.