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  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 5, Hideo Nomo

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 5, Hideo Nomo

    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 Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list.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 pitcher who refused to change, crossed an ocean, and altered baseball forever

    On the night of September 17, 1996, Hideo Nomo did something that almost certainly will never be done again. He walked out to the mound at Coors Field in Denver—the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the history of of Major League Baseball, a place so absurdly hostile to pitchers that the team eventually had to store baseballs in a humidor just to keep fly balls from becoming souvenirs—and threw a no-hitter.

    The Rockies that year were dangerous. They scored nearly 1000 runs. They hit 221 home runs. Three of their players hit 40 or more, including Ellis Burks, who led the league in runs scored and slugging percentage. They also led the league in attendance. The mile-high altitude thinned the air, making breaking balls misbehave and fastballs sail. Nomo himself had an 11.17 ERA in the park going into that game. He had never won there.

    He threw nine innings. He walked four. He struck out eight. He won, 9-0.

    No other pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter at Coors Field. No one probably ever will. And that was just one night in the career of Hideo Nomo.

    There is a version of Nomo’s story that starts with the statistics, and those statistics are genuinely remarkable: 201 wins across two leagues and nearly two decades, 3,122 strikeouts, two no-hitters, a Rookie of the Year award on each side of the Pacific. But the numbers don’t quite capture what Nomo was, or what he meant, or what it cost him to become what he became.

    The better place to start is with a young man from Osaka who was told, at the age of 14, by the head coach of the top baseball high school in his city: “With that tornado windup, you’ll never make it.”

    Nomo had invented the windup himself, as a kid trying to impress his father. He figured that twisting his body and coiling away from the batter until his back faced home plate, pausing there for a suspended, theatrical moment before releasing the ball allowed him to throw harder. He was correct. He was also never going to change it, no matter who told him to. When asked about the delivery later in his career, he would say that no one had taught it to him, though he did admit that one piece of it, the hip-first drive toward the plate, came from watching Masaji Hiramatsu* of the Taiyo Whales as a boy and wanting to move like him. Buried inside the most spectacular pitching motion in baseball was a child’s act of imitation. That stubbornness, that absolute certainty about who he was and how he pitched, is as important to understanding Nomo as anything that happened between the chalk lines.

    *Hiramatsu won 201 games in his career, but his nickname was “The Glass Ace” because he missed so many games due to injuries and frequently catching colds.

    He enrolled instead at a lesser-known high school, dominated the local competition, and pitched a perfect game. One year ahead of him in the Osaka baseball scene was Kazuhiro Kiyohara, already a legend at PL Gakuen High School, already being called the greatest hitter in the country. Kiyohara later said he had never even heard of Nomo. That is how anonymous Nomo was, invisible to the very generation he would come to dominate.

    He joined a company team where he perfected his forkball with the kind of obsessive dedication that tends to separate the greats from mere mortals. The story goes that he taped a tennis ball between his index and middle fingers before bed each night, conditioning his grip while he slept.

    In 1989, eight teams selected Nomo in the first round of the NPB draft. Eight. That had never happened before. The Kintetsu Buffaloes won the lottery and signed him, with one condition written into the contract at Nomo’s insistence: they would not try to change his pitching form.

    The scouts and commentators who watched him in spring training of 1990 were not impressed. Even after the Tornado name was bestowed, the skeptics kept coming. Would he ever have real control? Could he hold up for a full season? Wouldn’t he break down eventually? In a rookie-year interview Nomo smiled faintly and said people had told him everything about his delivery was wrong. But, he added, once they actually watched him throw in a bullpen session, they tended to go quiet. After two early losses, he later recalled that stretch as the loneliest of his career; the dormitory felt like the only place he belonged. He said nothing publicly. He also changed nothing.

    His first win came on April 29 against the Orix Braves, when he struck out 17 batters, tying the Japanese single-game record, while allowing only two runs in a complete game. Afterward, rather than celebrate, he deflected entirely: because his teammates had scored so many runs, it had given him a sort of rhythm. That was the version of Nomo the public would come to know, one who was private and guarded, but also generous toward others.

    What followed was one of the greatest rookie seasons in Japanese baseball history. Nomo went 18-8 with a 2.91 ERA and 287 strikeouts, winning the Rookie of the Year, the MVP, and the Sawamura Award (the Japanese equivalent to the Cy Young) in the same breath. Oh, and he won the pitching Triple Crown. He was 21 years old. He led the Pacific League in wins and strikeouts for each of his first four seasons, a feat without precedent. The Tornado name was officially bestowed in late May, chosen by public contest from thousands of entries, arriving right in the middle of the season when he was still proving the critics wrong.

    He also led the league in walks during his first four years, and in wild pitches two times. Tornado was an apt nickname in more ways than one.

    The best part? He did nearly all of it with two pitches. A fastball and a forkball. That was essentially the entire arsenal. Shinichi Sato, who faced Nomo as a member of the Hawks, said there is simply no other starter who has ever gotten away with two pitches at that level.

    What made the two pitches so devastating was the delivery that preceded them. Orestes Destrade, the Cuban-born slugger who played for the Seibu Lions, described the experience of standing in the batter’s box against Nomo this way: because Nomo turned his back to the plate and paused—that eerie, still moment where everything stopped, just like in the eye of a storm—timing him was nearly impossible. You couldn’t sync up with it. The ball came from nowhere and went somewhere unexpected. When reporters kept asking Nomo about strikeouts, he waved them off every time: “Strikeouts are just a result. What matters is the team winning.” It wasn’t false modesty. It was the same principle he had lived by since he was a boy twisting his body in a schoolyard. “If I change my own way,” he once said, “it’s over.”

    His teammates from that era remember something else too: Nomo finished what he started. Eiji Kiyokawa, a reliever, said bluntly that Nomo was the kind of ace who pitched nine innings and left nothing for the bullpen. It wasn’t arrogance. It was a starter’s code, a sense of personal responsibility for the game he was given. He pitched 22 complete games in 1991—still the most by any pitcher in Japan since the end of the Showa era—and threw 3,996 pitches that season. Nearly four thousand pitches in a single year. Manager Akira Ohgi, an easygoing man who trusted his players and left them alone, simply kept handing Nomo the ball, start after start, around 145-150 pitches a time. Nomo, for his part, kept taking it. What else was an ace pitcher to do?

    In 1991, Nomo set the all-time Japanese record by striking out ten or more batters in six consecutive starts. What makes the streak stranger, and more revealing, is his record during it: 2-4. He struck out at least ten batters in every one of those six games, threw complete games in five of them, and lost four times. He was unhittable and yet, the Buffaloes team kept losing anyway. That same year the All-Star Game offered a rare glimpse of a different Nomo entirely. In the second game, played in Hiroshima, the Pacific League ran out of position players in extra innings and had to send Nomo up as an emergency pinch-hitter. He borrowed an Orix helmet (remember, he played for Kintetsu*) put it on, and walked to the plate grinning. He never swung the bat. Three pitches later he took a called third strike and walked back to the dugout to a roaring ovation from the full stadium. It was the most cheerful strikeout anyone had ever seen. The crowd loved it. Nomo seemed to as well.

    *Of course, Orix and Kintetsu would merge following the 2004 season to form the Orix Buffaloes. Foreshadowing, anyone?

    He later said that his loyalty to Ohgi ran so deep precisely because Ohgi trusted him completely, never meddled, never second-guessed. Ohgi gave Nomo the ball and got out of the way. That relationship, more than anything else, is what made what came next so difficult. After two consecutive second place finishes, Ohgi resigned. His replacement was franchise legend and 300-game winner Keishi Suzuki. Suzuki’s management style was the complete opposite of Ohgi’s.

    No game illustrated Nomo’s resilience more strangely than the one on July 1, 1994, against the Seibu Lions. Nomo walked 16 batters, a Japanese baseball record that stands to this day, with at least one walk in every single inning. The home plate umpire called a ball 105 times. Kazuhiro Kiyohara, who drew three of those walks, the same man who had never heard of Nomo growing up, shrugged afterward and said you couldn’t sit on any particular pitch when a pitcher was that wild; the wildness itself became a kind of weapon. The color commentator on the broadcast, former manager Senichi Hoshino, said simply that he was exhausted by the end of it. If he’d been managing, he would have pulled Nomo long ago. The patience on display, Hoshino noted with a laugh, belonged not to Nomo but to Suzuki. Nomo threw 191 pitches and finished with a complete-game win, allowing three runs. Afterward he was unapologetic but unsatisfied: “I wasn’t able to pitch my game at all.” That was Nomo. He stayed out there for 191 pitches in a game he considered a failure, and won.

    Then the relationship with Suzuki soured entirely. The manager wanted Nomo to run more, throw more, and alter his mechanics. “Throw until you die” was, by one account, Suzuki’s actual philosophy of pitcher conditioning. He told a radio audience that Nomo’s form would never hold up. Meanwhile, the front office treated its franchise pitcher with a remarkable combination of condescension and indifference, offering no salary increase after four consecutive win and strikeout titles, trying to force him into voluntary retirement rather than grant him free agency, and telling him, flatly, that he was not considered the team’s ace.

    Nomo would later say that he didn’t originally dream of playing in America. He just couldn’t play for Suzuki anymore. But the dream, it turned out, had been there all along. His locker at Fujiidera Stadium, the Buffaloes home, was covered wall to wall with baseball cards of Ken Griffey Jr., Roger Clemens, and other great American stars of the era. The training room down the hall looked the same. He had been staring at those faces for years, imagining what it would feel like to face them. When a reporter caught him in the summer of 1994, mid-rehabilitation, and Nomo told him quietly that he wanted to try the major leagues next year, he was smiling as he said it.

    The loophole his agent Don Nomura found was elegant in its simplicity. The NPB’s voluntary retirement clause said nothing about foreign leagues. If Nomo retired from Japanese baseball, he could sign anywhere in the world. The clause had never been used this way before. It was a loophole that only existed because no one had ever thought to use it and because no Japanese star had ever wanted to leave badly enough, or been brave enough, to try.

    The media was not kind about it. The conventional wisdom was that Nomo was running away, or chasing money, or both. He arrived in America with his reputation in Japan in tatters and his salary reduced from roughly $1.4 million to a minor-league contract worth $100,000. The Dodgers’ GM told him that a major league contract was not given but earned. Nomo nodded and said nothing. The strike was still ongoing when he arrived; if it dragged on, he faced the possibility of earning as little as $60,000 pitching in the minors. And this was for a man with a wife, children, and a salary back home that had been roughly 25 times that. He didn’t flinch. “It’ll start eventually,” he said. “Starting in the minors would be fine.”

    Meanwhile, American baseball in the spring of 1995 was not in a great mood. The previous season had ended in a players’ strike that wiped out the World Series. Fans were furious. Attendance was cratering. The sport had spent years building goodwill and watched it drain away in a dispute that looked, to most observers, like very rich people arguing with slightly less rich people about money.

    Into this particular moment stepped a 26-year-old pitcher from Osaka with a motion unlike anything American fans had ever seen, throwing a forkball that dropped off the table and a fastball that arrived from an angle that made no logical sense. He made his major league debut on May 2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, retiring Barry Bonds and Matt Williams along the way and pitching five shutout innings. Millions of people in Japan watched live on television, where the first pitch came at 5:33 in the morning. Only about 16,000 people were in the stadium.

    By June, the stadiums were full. Nomo went 6-0 that month with a 0.89 ERA. He pitched at least eight innings in each of his six starts. He threw back-to-back complete-game shutouts with 13 strikeouts each, a feat no Dodger pitcher had ever accomplished. He was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game, the first NL rookie to start since another Dodger sensation, Fernando Valenzuela, in 1981. His boyhood idol, Nolan Ryan, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. The term “Nomomania” entered the languages on both sides of the Pacific.

    Before the season, someone had asked Nomo what he felt he owed to Japanese baseball. His answer was not what anyone expected. “I have to do this,” he said. “If I fail, it will brand all Japanese players who come after me as failures.” He was twenty-six years old, pitching on a continent where almost no one knew his name, and he had already accepted responsibility for an entire generation that hadn’t arrived yet.

    Nomo finished the season 13-6 with a 2.54 ERA and a league-leading 236 strikeouts. He won the Rookie of the Year Award, edging out Chipper Jones. He finished 4th in Cy Young voting.

    The years that followed were the full, complicated arc of a pitcher’s life, the brilliant stretches and the injured ones, the reinventions and the setbacks. He pitched an unfathomable game in Colorado. He had elbow surgery. He was traded. He was released. He became the first Japanese-born player to hit a home run in MLB*. He bounced from the Mets to the Brewers to the Tigers to the Red Sox, and then, in 2001, he did something that almost no pitcher in history has done: he threw a second no-hitter, this one in his Boston debut, against the Baltimore Orioles. Nomo became only the fourth pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter in both leagues. He was, briefly, a star again.

    *The second was Dave Roberts. The third was Nomo’s former Kintetsu teammate Masato Yoshii, who was a big influence on his desire to join MLB. The two would be reunited on the Mets in 1998.

    He returned to the Dodgers and had two more solid seasons before the body finally gave out. His tornado windup, that beautiful, impractical, singular motion he had invented as a child and refused to surrender his entire career, was diagnosed as the source of damage to his shoulder. Without it, he wasn’t Nomo anymore. He pitched a few more years, trying, and retired in 2008 at 39.

    His place in history depends on where you’re standing. He received six votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Six. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame the same year, in his first year of eligibility, becoming the youngest inductee in history.

    Make of that what you will.

    What Nomo really did, beyond the wins and the strikeouts and the two no-hitters, was open a door that had not existed before him. Since his arrival in 1995, more than 50 Japanese-born players have come to the major leagues. Ichiro. Matsui. Daisuke. Tanaka. Ohtani. None of it happens, or at least none of it happens when it did, without Nomo going first.

    Ichiro recognized how important Nomo was. “Before Hideo came over here, everyone had an image of Major League Baseball and people looked at players over here as monsters because they were so big. We were able to watch more MLB games and were able to get an image of, ‘Maybe I can play in the big leagues.’”

    Tommy Lasorda, who managed the Dodgers for two decades and knew a pioneer when he saw one, put it plainly: if Nomo had not succeeded, nowhere near as many Japanese players would be in the major leagues today. He had the talent for it, Lasorda said, and he had the character for it. Both were required.

    When Ichiro announced in the fall of 2000 that he was coming to the major leagues, a reporter asked Nomo for his reaction. “Ichiro has to do this,” he said. The same words, the same logic, passed forward to the next man through the door that Nomo had opened.

    He invented his delivery as a boy, was told it would ruin him, and refused to change it. He found a loophole in the rules, crossed an ocean under a cloud of criticism, and proceeded to help save baseball’s relationship with its own fans at one of the most fragile moments in the sport’s history. He threw a no-hitter at Coors Field. He is, by any honest accounting, one of the most important figures the game has produced in the last hundred years, and one of the most underappreciated.

    During Ichiro’s Hall of Fame speech in Cooperstown, he thanked Nomo in Japanese, and pointed out his courage for challenging the majors.

    But before all of that, before Dodger Stadium and the All-Star Game and Coors Field, there was a final night at Fujiidera Stadium. October 18, 1990. A meaningless late-season game, already out of the standings, and yet 16,000 fans showed up just to see him. Ohgi sent him out for one batter in the ninth, a one-run lead to protect. Nomo threw five pitches, all fastballs. The last one was clocked at 148 kilometers per hour (92 mph). Strike three. The crowd erupted: cheering, clapping, beating megaphones, confetti falling from the stands. Nomo wiped the sweat from his face, stepped off the mound, and turned to bow to the crowd. Then he walked back to the press room, answered questions in his characteristically flat, unhurried way, and as he was leaving, turned back one more time. “I hope for your continued support next year!” He smiled and added playfully, “Please keep things quiet during the off-season.”

    The tornado touched down in 1990. The world of baseball was never the same.

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

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 6, Hiromitsu Ochiai

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 6, Hiromitsu Ochiai

    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 three-time Triple Crown winner who did everything his own way

    There is a word, oreryu, that you need to know before any of this makes sense. It means, roughly, “my way.” Not a better way. Not the accepted way. Just: my way. The word exists because one man lived it so completely, so defiantly, across so many years and so many people who told him he was doing it wrong, that the language simply had to make room for it.

    His name was Hiromitsu Ochiai. He was the greatest right-handed hitter in the history of Nippon Professional Baseball. He was also, for much of his career, the most inconvenient man in the room.

    He would have taken both as compliments.

    Let’s start at the beginning, because the beginning is almost too good.

    Ochiai was born in 1953 in a small town in Akita Prefecture, in northern Japan, the youngest of seven children in a family that ran a Japanese sweets shop. He played baseball as a kid, hitting crumpled up newspapers with a stick in the yard, and joining the local team in fourth grade because his older brother did, but he was never, precisely, a baseball obsessive. His childhood idol, like nearly every other boy from his generation, was Shigeo Nagashima, but what he really loved were movies. By high school, he was going to the cinema roughly a hundred times a year, sneaking into theaters in his school uniform while other kids were at practice. His attendance record was so poor he nearly failed to advance each of his three years.

    Robert Whiting noted that as a boy he saw My Fair Lady seven times and could recite whole lines from it in English, which is pretty remarkable for a man who later admitted his English test papers in junior high were left completely blank, and who failed the English section of his high school entrance exam the same way. The movies were not about English. The movies were about being somewhere that wasn’t practice.

    He was good enough at baseball that every top high school program in Akita wanted him, but he chose a technical school specifically because he’d heard they didn’t push their players around too much. When the upperclassmen still pushed him around, he simply stopped showing up. He quit and rejoined the team eight separate times during high school but was always called back before tournaments because he was, inconveniently, the best player they had.

    Toyo University came next, on a recommendation after he hit a mammoth home run at a tryout. He quit after less than a year. The freshman players were traditionally required to wash the underwear of the upperclassmen, give them massages, and light their cigarettes. Ochiai found it to be ridiculous.

    He went back to Akita, worked part-time at his brother’s bowling alley, became a serious competitive bowler, and might have turned professional except that he forgot to put his new driver’s license sticker on his brother’s car, got pulled over, paid a fine, and no longer had the entry fee for the qualifying exam. Baseball it was, then. He joined an industrial league team, working days assembling transistor radio circuit boards and playing in the evenings. He hit 70 home runs in five official seasons, and in 1978 was selected as Japan’s starting first baseman for the Amateur World Series. He hit .265/.413/.519 in the tournament, drew nine walks in ten games, and led the entire Japanese squad with 13 RBI. That autumn, the Lotte Orions drafted him in the third round. He was 25 years old. The scout’s only stated reason: he could handle breaking balls and he was the kind of hitter pitchers found annoying.

    In the minors the following year, he set an Eastern League record by homering in five consecutive games. No one had any idea what was coming.

    What was coming started almost immediately with a problem. Lotte’s manager was Kazuhiro Yamauchi*, and he took one look at Ochiai’s stance—bat aimed toward the first base dugout, stepping firmly away from the plate when he swung—and said flatly: “That guy will never make it as a pro.” The other coaches agreed. Ochiai remained in the minor league system, his talent visible to almost no one in a position to act on it.

    *Yamauchi had been a star for the Orions in the 1950s and early 1960s. He was the first player in NPB to reach 300 career home runs.

    Almost no one. A batting coach named Michihiro Takabatake had been watching Ochiai in the farm system and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t on the first team. One morning in 1980, he pulled aside a veteran who had just joined the Lotte organization and brought him down to Kawasaki Stadium to watch. The veteran was Isao Harimoto, one of the greatest hitters in the history of Japanese baseball, a man who had spent his career in title races against Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima, who had hit .319 over 23 professional seasons and finished with 3,085 career hits. If Harimoto said a hitter was good, the hitter was good.

    Harimoto watched Ochiai for a while. Then he went to find Yamauchi.

    “Why aren’t you using him?” he asked.

    But getting Ochiai onto the field was only the first problem. Ochiai was slow, and his defense was unremarkable, and when he struggled early in games, Yamauchi moved quickly to pull him. Every time Harimoto would get up from the bench, walk to where Yamauchi was moving toward the field to make a substitution, grab the manager’s belt, and say: “One more chance.” He did this two or three times. Each time, Yamauchi stopped.

    Eventually Ochiai started hitting. Once he started, he didn’t stop. In 1981, his first full season, he hit .326/.423/.629 and won the batting title. He came to Harimoto’s locker afterward.

    “I got it,” he said. “Thank you.”

    In 1982, at 28, Ochiai won the Triple Crown, the fourth player in NPB history to do so, and at the time the youngest ever. In 1983, he won his third consecutive batting title, joining an exclusive list alongside Nagashima himself. He was not done.

    In 1984, Boomer Wells was making a serious run at the Triple Crown. Ochiai, who had spent years fighting Japanese baseball’s rigid culture on his own terms, now revealed something else entirely: a fiercely Japanese competitive pride about who should win the game’s highest individual honor. He declared publicly that a foreigner should not win the Triple Crown. He chased Wells all season in the home run race. Wells even alleged his teammates grooved pitches to help Ochiai. It wasn’t enough. Wells hit 37. Ochiai hit 33. He fell four home runs short.

    He noted the result and filed it away. And then came 1985.

    Before the season, Ochiai made his intentions plain: he was going to win the Triple Crown, and he was really going to win all three parts of it. But this was not simply another prediction. When he had won his first Triple Crown in 1982 (.325, 32 home runs, 99 RBI) some critics had called the numbers unimpressive, unworthy of the title. Not a real Triple Crown, they implied. Ochiai had heard every word. Now, three years later, he wanted to win it in a way that made argument impossible. He wanted numbers that would sit boldly on the page and be beyond any criticism.

    He also told his batting coaches he didn’t want to swing a bat during spring camp. Not during practice. Not during exhibition games. He wanted to run and do fielding drills only so he could preserve his swing, keep it fresh and uncontaminated. His manager Kazuhisa Inao simply said yes. His teammates watched, bewildered. Ochiai ran and fielded and waited.

    He was otherworldly that year. In August, he hit .411 with 10 home runs and 24 RBI. In September, .409 with 10 more home runs and 27 RBI. The final four days of the season were his exclamation mark. On October 18, against the Nippon-Ham Fighters, he went 4-for-4 with four RBI, hitting two home runs in a game for the eleventh time that season. The next day, another home run, three more RBI. The day after that, a run-scoring hit in the first inning, a double in the fifth, a three-run home run in the ninth; five RBI in a single game. On October 21, in the season’s final game, two hits, two RBI, and his 52nd home run, tying Katsuya Nomura’s Pacific League record.

    The final line: .367 batting average — beating second place by 24 points. 52 home runs — beating second place by 12. 146 RBI — beating second place by 24. He had won the Triple Crown before. This time he had won it so that no one would ever say the wrong thing about it again. With runners in scoring position, he hit .492 across 122 at-bats, with 16 home runs and 98 RBI in those situations alone. The 146 RBI is still the Pacific League record. The .487 on-base percentage from 1986 is still the NPB record. The .492 average with runners in scoring position is still the Japanese record.

    In 1986 he did it again: .360, 50 home runs, 116 RBI. He played through severe back pain. He became the only player in the history of Japanese professional baseball to win three Triple Crowns. He had predicted all three.

    Here is what people who faced Ochiai remember most: he was almost impossible to fool, and not in the way you expected.

    Harimoto, whose eye for hitting mechanics was as sharp as anyone’s in the game, described Ochiai’s essential nature this way: he was fundamentally a gap hitter who had developed the technique to pull the ball into Kawasaki’s short right field porch when the situation called for it. When he saw a pitcher tiring or losing his stuff, Ochiai could shift his contact point forward and turn on the ball like a true pull hitter, completely transforming his approach within a single at-bat. Harimoto said he could think of almost no one else in the long history of the game who could do this.

    Of his 510 career home runs, 176 went to right field. Sportswriters gushed about his ability to take outside pitches the other way. A Yomiuri Giants catcher once asked him directly: “Are you aiming for right field on those?” Ochiai’s answer stopped him cold: “Don’t be ridiculous. Those are late swings. My swing path is just better than yours, so they still go out.”

    Pitchers didn’t like facing him for another reason: he was aggressively patient. He led the league in walks nine times, including eight consecutive seasons from 1984 to 1991. He led the league in on-base percentage seven times in his career. He set a record with 6 walks in one game in 1991. His career total of 1,475 walks is second only to Oh all-time, and first among all right-handed hitters in NPB history. 

    The great pitcher Hisashi Yamada of the Hankyu Braves, after a young Ochiai went 2-for-4 against him in 1980, pulled aside some younger pitchers afterward: “A great hitter just arrived. He might win a Triple Crown one day.” Then, two years later, Ochiai came to Yamada directly and asked him how to hit his signature sinker. Yamada told him: aim for center field. Ochiai thanked him. On April 29, 1982, the day Yamada was chasing his 200th career win, Ochiai hit three home runs off him. All three were sinkers. Yamada still won the game, though.

    There’s also the story about a batting cage.

    When Ochiai joined the Chunichi Dragons before the 1987 season, the club had hastily converted a gymnasium into an indoor batting center. The ceiling was covered with nets. Balls kept getting stuck up there. Players tried throwing bats to knock them down. Nothing worked.

    Ochiai watched this for a moment, then said: “I’ll get them.” Did he grab a ladder? No, he stepped into the cage, queued up a pitching machine, and began hitting balls precisely into the ceiling netting, each one landing with just enough angle and force to dislodge the stuck balls and knock them down, one after another. The Central League’s chief umpire was watching and said afterward it was like watching magic or a circus act.

    Whiting described Ochiai as someone who “hardly ever practiced, laughed at the term fighting spirit, and said he played baseball only for the money.” That is a fair description, and Ochiai would not have disputed a word of it.

    During the season, while teammates went through long pregame workouts that left them soaked with sweat, Ochiai would lounge on the sidelines. “Ten swings is all I need,” he would say. “Then a good massage and I’m ready to play.” He refused voluntary training in January after his first Triple Crown. He skipped practices he found useless. He did not see the point of exhausting yourself before the game you were supposed to win.

    This, of course, was at odds with the dominant philosophy of Japanese baseball and with its greatest exemplar. Sadaharu Oh was famous for the crippling hours he put in on the training ground, even in his final seasons. When the two appeared in a magazine interview together, Oh said he was afraid Ochiai’s example would mislead the youth of the nation. Ochiai responded, as Whiting recorded it, that he had practiced hard in his semipro days, had built his body and developed his technique but that was then, and this was now. Americans did things their own way. Why couldn’t he?

    If Oh’s motto was doryoku (effort) Ochiai said his own would be: “Enjoy yourself and get rich.”

    Leron Lee, who played alongside him at Lotte, put it plainly: “He had trouble with the media because he told people exactly what he thought, and Japanese aren’t supposed to do that.” His American teammate Alonzo Powell called him simply “an American in a Japanese body.”

    Whiting noted that writers at the time called Ochiai “The Gaijin Who Spoke Japanese.”* In a country where stardom came with expectations of humility, collective sacrifice, and visible suffering, Ochiai was bewildering. He was immodest. He talked about money. He predicted his own Triple Crowns. He won them.

    *Gaijin, shortened from gaikokujin, is the word for foreigners.

    One relationship was different from all the others.

    Kazuhisa Inao managed Lotte from 1984 to 1986, and Ochiai came to regard him as something close to a father figure in baseball. He would later say he was one of only two managers from whom he actually learned the game. The first night Inao took over, Ochiai followed the coaches out for drinks, sat down across from his new manager, and asked directly: “Are you going to run a controlled operation, or are you going to trust the players?” Inao answered simply: he had grown up in the old Nishitetsu Lions, where no one had ever been managed tightly, and he wasn’t going to start now. That was enough.

    When Ochiai was hitting barely .200 in the first half of the season and coaches were urging Inao to drop him from the cleanup spot, Inao refused. Ochiai hit over .400 after the All-Star break. There was a night when Ochiai practiced so long in the indoor cage that his fingers went numb and locked around the bat handle. From the shadows, a figure appeared, gently pried the fingers loose, and slipped away. It was Inao. Ochiai said afterward that was the moment he understood what kind of man his manager was.

    The day Ochiai won the Shoriki Award in November 2007 (for leading Chunichi to the Japan Series championship for the first time in 53 years as manager) was also the day of Inao’s death. At the press conference, Ochiai spoke about his old manager: that they had talked about baseball as equals, beyond the boundaries of their roles, and that what Inao had taught him about the pitcher’s mindset—what a pitcher fears, what a pitcher hides—had become one of his most treasured possessions.

    After the 1986 season ended, Inao was let go. The new Lotte manager was a former Orions infielder with a very different philosophy, and everyone understood that Ochiai’s days in the organization were numbered. On November 4, at a fan appreciation event in Fukuoka, Inao himself lit the fuse, revealing publicly that the Giants had approached Lotte the previous year offering anyone on their roster except Tatsunori Hara in exchange for Ochiai, a deal Lotte had turned down. Ochiai, standing nearby, went further. He said that without Inao, he saw no reason to stay at Lotte. If any team wanted to hire him and Inao as a package, he would follow wherever that led.

    The next day, before a Japan-America All-Star game at Heiwadai Stadium, he was even more blunt: he wanted to sign with whichever team valued him most highly.

    The sports papers erupted. Lotte summoned Ochiai for a meeting. Afterward, the club’s representative held a press conference and read a prepared statement: Ochiai had reflected on his remarks, recognized they lacked consideration, and regretted them. The matter was closed.

    Ochiai stood beside him throughout, wearing a thin smile. When the statement was finished, he said only: “Well, something like that.”

    Then he went home and told reporters the memo had been written before the meeting even started.

    The Giants assumed they would get him. They had been circling for a year, and they calculated that Ochiai would fall into their laps. After all, a player with a high salary, at odds with his own organization, with a new manager coming in who had no patience for him, was essentially already gone. They made offers and they waited.

    Chunichi’s new manager Senichi Hoshino had decided he would rather bleed than watch Ochiai put on a Giants uniform. Chunichi offered a package that included their young closer Kazuhiko Ushijima, still only 25, along with several other players, a package that Lotte valued more than Yomiuri’s counteroffer. On December 21, the Giants’ owner finally said he was ready to move seriously. He was two days too late. On December 23, the trade was announced: Ochiai to Chunichi. The century’s great trade, the papers called it. And so Hoshino got his man, and the Giants got to spend the next several years wondering what might have been. Ochiai would finally join Yomiuri in 1994.

    Can you imagine a player coming off two consecutive Triple Crowns being traded?

    Now in the Central League for the first time, facing unfamiliar pitchers, playing through an injured wrist for much of the year, and hitting in a pitcher’s park for home games, Ochiai saw his power numbers drop to 28 home runs. He still hit .331/.435/.602. He still led the league in doubles, runs, and walks. And then, that winter, he did something that seemed to contradict everything anyone thought they knew about him.

    He went to Chunichi’s fall camp in Hamamatsu. Out in a forest clearing, baseball’s leading nonconformist ran sprints and fielded grounders like a fresh rookie, in rigorous sessions that lasted until the beginning of winter.

    “It’s the least I can do,” he said, “after the kind of season that I had.”

    This was the man who said effort was a word he couldn’t stand.

    Oreryu didn’t mean laziness. It meant that the work he chose to do was his to choose and that no one else would decide for him what mattered and what didn’t.

    He played his last game on October 7, 1998. He was 44 years old. His manager offered him a starting spot that day; Ochiai declined, asking instead to pinch hit, the same role as his very first professional at-bat. He grounded out to first against the Lotte Orions, the team where it all began.

    The career numbers: a .311/.422/.564 line. 510 home runs, sixth all-time in NPB history. 1,564 RBI. 1,475 walks, second all-time behind only Oh. Ten Best Nine selections across three different positions—twice at second base, four times each at first and third base. Fifteen All-Star appearances, with a career All-Star batting average of .365. His 1,000th hit, 1,500th hit, and his 2,000th hit? All of them home runs. His milestone at 1,000 career games? A home run. At 2,000 career games? A home run. He was the first Japanese player to earn 100 million yen in a season, then 200 million, then 300 million, then 400 million.

    The three Triple Crowns remain his alone. No one else in NPB history has ever won three. He also took home MVP in two of those Triple Crown years.

    And yet, in 2009 and again in 2010, Ochiai fell one vote short of the 75 percent threshold required for the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One vote. Both years. The man who had done everything his own way, who had been an inconvenience and a provocation and an embarrassment to the baseball establishment for twenty years, needed one more voter to come around. In 2011, they finally did.

    There is a question worth sitting with: what would have happened if his batting coach hadn’t spotted Ochiai in the Lotte farm system, or if Harimoto hadn’t been willing to go to bat for a player he had watched for one morning at Kawasaki Stadium? What if Harimoto hadn’t grabbed Yamauchi’s belt those two or three times when the manager was ready to pull Ochiai from games before he’d had a fair chance to prove himself?

    And beyond that, what would have happened if Ochiai had simply listened?

    If, in 1979, he had flattened out his swing on command, adopted the level stroke, made himself into something the Lotte coaches could recognize and approve of. If he had conformed to the seniority culture in high school and university and never developed that fierce, private certainty that he knew better than the people telling him he was wrong. If he had stopped trusting himself at any of the dozen moments when it would have been easier and more convenient to do so.

    The answer, probably, is that we would never have heard of him.

    Instead, somewhere in Akita, a young man kept hitting wooden utility poles with a bat until the electricity went out and the neighbors complained. He watched a hundred movies a year instead of going to school. He quit baseball programs and returned to them and eventually built a swing that no coach had ever designed or sanctioned, out of pieces of other people’s technique filtered entirely through his own judgment, until it was the most feared swing in Japanese baseball.

    He said he played for money. He said spirit and effort were words he couldn’t stand. He said ten swings was all he needed.

    Then he went out to the autumn forest and ran until winter came, because he felt he hadn’t earned his salary.

    Oreryu. My way.

    It was the only way he ever knew.

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

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • The 1979 Major League All-Star Series in Japan

    The 1979 Major League All-Star Series in Japan

    by Carter Cromwell

    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 Carter Cromwell tells us about the 1979 MLB All-Stars visit to Japan.

    When a group of major-league baseball all-stars traveled to Japan in November 1979 for a series of games, it represented a shift, of sorts. Since the end of World War II, most baseball tours of Japan had been by single teams. A US all-star team had not played in Japan since the Eddie Lopat All-Stars made the trek after the 1953 season.

    The 1979 tour was dreamed up by Philadelphia Phillies Vice President Bill Giles and Cappy Harada, who was born in Santa Maria, California, to Japanese parents and at the time was director of the international division of the Major League Baseball Promotion Corporation. This was the first time the United States had sent complete American League and National League all-star teams to Japan for a series.

    The American squad was divided evenly among American Leaguers and National Leaguers and was managed by the Orioles’ Earl Weaver and the Dodgers’ Tom Lasorda respectively. The schedule ran from November 7 to November 20, with the US teams playing seven games against each other and a combined US club playing twice against a team of Japanese players.

    In the years since, the Japanese have consistently demonstrated their baseball prowess in various international competitions. But though it had made strides, the game in Japan in 1979 was still not the equal of the game in the United States, so the Japanese were eager to see the Americans play. Virtually every ticket for every game was sold in advance, with the most expensive costing $22,or about $89.79 in 2022 dollars.

    Of course, the Japanese weren’t unfamiliar with US players, since they could watch videotaped highlights of US games on television on Sundays, and newspapers and magazines in the country reported on the major leagues. An Associated Press story noted, “[Pete] Rose is at least as familiar a name in Japan as Jimmy Carter. The escapades of Reggie Jackson and the salary hassles of [Dave] Parker are followed with keen interest. Ever since American teachers introduced the game to Japan in the 1870s, the Japanese have looked upon America as baseball’s holy land – at the same time aspiring to build their own version to match it.”

    So actually seeing the Americans play in person was an exciting proposition.

    Though some like Jim Rice, George Brett, and Jack Clark had to pull out of the tour beforehand for various reasons, the US roster was loaded. It included eventual Hall of Famers Rod Carew, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Ted Simmons, Paul Molitor, and Phil Niekro. The California Angels’ Don Baylor was coming off the best season of his career, in which he had hit 36 home runs, driven in 139 runs, and was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player. Others might be classified in the so-called Hall of the Very, Very Good – players like Parker, Cecil Cooper, Lance Parrish, Larry Bowa, Bill Madlock, Jim Sundberg, Dennis Martinez, Tug McGraw, and Ken Singleton. Singleton, in fact, finished second to Baylor in the MVP voting that year after hitting 35 home runs, driving in 111 runs, and posting a .938 OPS. There was also Rose, who would be in the Hall if not for his gambling issues.

    “[Rose] is my favorite American player,” said Japanese Hall of Famer Sadaharu Oh, who holds the world career home-run record (868). “He never misses a game.”

    Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Japanese baseball commissioner’s office said the Japan team will be “playing to win.” And there was no doubt that it was a strong club. Compiled by a vote of sportswriters, it included eight players who would eventually gain induction into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame – first baseman Oh, plus outfielders Yutaka Fukumoto, Koji Yamamoto, and Tsutomu Wakamatsu, and pitchers Choji Murata, Keishi Suzuki, Hisashi Yamada, and Manabu Kitabeppu.

    Oh, of course, was the biggest name. He had even received a National Hero Award from the Japanese government after exceeding Hank Aaron’s career record of 755 home runs. Sometimes referred to as the Bamboo Bambino by the Japanese news media, he had a slash line of .301/.446/.634 over 22 seasons with the Yomiuri Giants. He drove in 2,170 runs in his career, even though the Nippon Professional Baseball season was 22 to 32 games shorter than that of the American majors.

    “I really like to watch Oh swing,” Rose said. “He picks up his front leg but doesn’t go forward until he’s ready to commit himself. He keeps his hands and his weight back until he’s ready to swing.”

    In 1979, at the age of 39, Oh had just completed his next-to-last season and had hit 33 home runs while batting .285, driving in 81 runs, and posting a .980 OPS. To many, that would have been very good, especially at that age, but Oh found it unacceptable. “I had a very disappointing year,” he said. “I hurt my side and missed several weeks. I had 33 home runs … but drove in only 81 runs. Five years ago, I had ‘only’ 33 home runs but drove in 118. And besides, the [Yomiuri] Giants finished 10½ games out this year. Very sad.”

    Other Japanese players were nearly as transcendent as Oh, though not well known to most Americans. An 11-time all-star, Tsutomu Wakamatsu posted a .319/.375/.481 career slash line, won two batting titles, and as of 2023 still held the second-highest career batting average in Nippon Professional Baseball history for players with 4,000 or more at-bats. He was the Central League Most Valuable Player and MVP of the Japan Series in 1978. In 1979 he batted .306 with an .871 OPS. Koji Yamamoto was a 13-time all-star for the Hiroshima Carp, a 10-time winner of the Diamond Glove Award, and seven consecutive seasons the leader in assists among outfielders. At the time of the 1979 series, he was coming off a .293 season with a 1.002 OPS.

    Yutaka Fukumoto played 20 seasons with the Hankyu Braves, a predecessor of today’s Orix Buffaloes, and posted a .291 batting average and .819 OPS, along with an otherworldly total of 1,065 stolen bases.

    American Leon Lee, who played 10 seasons in Japan, observed that Fukumoto “was a great base runner, too, adding, “I remember many times he would lead off a game by getting on base, stealing second, getting sacrificed to third, and scoring on a sacrifice fly.”

    On the pitching side, Choji Murata won 215 games over 23 seasons, 22 of them with the Lotte Orions. He was a three-time Pacific League ERA champion and threw five one-hitters. He had finished the 1979 season with 17 victories, a 2.96 earned-run average, and a 1.09 WHIP.

    Leon Lee’s brother Leron, who played in Japan for 11 seasons, remembered, “Choji Murata was … fabulous. He was the best pitcher I’ve seen except for Bob Gibson. In 1979, he pitched against the American All-Stars, and Ted Simmons … told me that Choji Murata was the best pitcher he ever faced in his life, bar none. That’s how good Murata was. He could throw 90 to 96 miles an hour consistently, had a great forkball, and he had this really funky windup with a high kick. I saw him throw an inside pitch that hit the bat below the label, broke it in half, and the ball had so much power that it went through the bat, hit the batter on his back leg, and rolled out into fair territory along with the head of the bat. Everybody in the stadium stopped for two or three seconds and looked. It was unbelievable for a ball to go through a bat and still have enough momentum to hit the batter in the leg and roll forward.”

    Though 1979 was a down year for Keishi Suzuki (10-8, 4.41 ERA), he spent 20 years with the Kintetsu Buffaloes and won 317 games with a 3.11 ERA and low 1.12 WHIP. He had eight 20-victory seasons and led the Pacific League in strikeouts eight times. Leron Lee learned about Suzuki very early on, the night before his first game in Japan, in fact. The team had a meeting to go over the opponents, and a scout went on and on about how good Suzuki was.

    “I said to [teammate] Jim Lefebvre that if this guy pitches like the scout says, we’re not going to get any hits tomorrow,” Lee said. “And, sure enough, Suzuki pitched a one-hitter! That guy was the best left-handed pitcher I ever faced. I faced Steve Carlton and several pretty good pitchers in the big leagues, but this guy was unbelievable. He was an absolutely fabulous pitcher who could have pitched in the major leagues very easily.”

    An interesting aside is that when he was the Kintetsu manager, Suzuki’s disputes with pitcher Hideo Nomo indirectly played a role in Nomo’s eventual signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995.

    In 19 seasons with Hiroshima, Manabu Kitabeppu was 213-141 and ranks 17th all-time in pitching victories in NPB. He was an all-star seven times. In 1986 he won the ERA title, took the MVP and Gold Glove awards and was named to the “Best Nine,” which includes the best player at each position in both the Central and Pacific Leagues, as determined by a pool of journalists. During the 1979 season, just his fourth in the NPB, he had won 17 games and allowed an average of just 1.6 walks per nine innings.

    Hisashi Yamada, Japan’s greatest submarine pitcher, was 284-166 in 20 seasons with the Hankyu Braves. His lifetime ERA was 3.18 and his WHIP a low 1.13. In the mid-1970s Yamada was the most dominant pitcher in Japanese baseball, winning three consecutive Pacific League MVP Awards (1976-1978). He was named to five Best Nine teams and 13 all-star squads, and won five Gold Glove Awards. In 1979 he had finished with a 21-5 record and a 2.73 ERA. Leon Lee said Yamada was the “toughest pitcher I ever faced in my 17-year professional career. He had great control and was never afraid to pitch inside. The biggest thing was that he completely controlled the tempo of the game and never gave the hitters time to get comfortable at the plate.” Leron Lee named players like Oh, Yamada, Murata, Suzuki, Yamamoto, and the Hanshin Tigers’ Masayuki Kakefu (also on the 1979 Japan All-Stars) among several he said could have been major leaguers.

    The schedule began on November 7 with the American League battling the National League at Yokohoma Stadium. The teams played each other again on November 8 (Kusanagi Stadium in Shizuoka), November 11 (Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo), November 12 (Seibu Stadium in Tokorozawa), November 13 (Nagoya Stadium), November 17 (Seibu Stadium in Tokorozawa), and November 18 (Yokohama Stadium).

    The NL stars won the first game 11-2 behind a 16-hit attack. The Chicago Cubs’ Dave Kingman hit a two-run homer, and Niekro picked up the win. In Game 2 the Nationals rallied from a 4-1 deficit to tie the game 5-5 on an eighth-inning sacrifice fly by Kingman. The contest was called after 10 innings because of a time limit in Japanese games.

    Game 3 went to the American League, 6-3, and the AL followed that with a 6-5 victory in Game 4 before 21,000 fans at Seibu Stadium, as Kansas City’s Willie Wilson singled home the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The National League had scored three runs in the first inning and another in the second to lead 4-0 before the AL rallied.

    After that, though, the NL had its way, winning the last three games of the series by scores of 12-9 (after trailing by 7-0), 3-2, and 7-1 in the finale on a two-hitter by Niekro.

    For the Japanese fans, though, the most anticipated games of the series were the two between the United States and Japan. A wire-service story just prior the tour noted that the US players would be “scrutinized, idolized and analyzed for what makes their game different from the Japanese national pastime of ‘besuboru.’” And there were differences. The Japanese relied more on small ball and fundamentals, and they utilized off-speed pitches more often. The Americans, on the other hand, focused more on the big inning, especially with a manager like Weaver. In addition, both the baseball itself and the ballparks in Japan were slightly smaller.

    The first game took place November 14 before 31,000 fans in Nishinomiya, a city between Kobe and Osaka. Yamamoto, of the 1979 Japan Series champion Hiroshima Carp, hit a solo home run off US starter Niekro in the bottom of the second inning to give Japan a 1-0 lead. The Americans scored twice off Yamada in the top of the third inning, but the Japanese answered quickly with three runs in the bottom of the third to take a 4-2 lead.

    The US team came back with a run in the fourth when Cooper tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly by Madlock, and the Americans got a two-run home run by Simmons off Suzuki in the sixth to lead 5-4. Bowa then hit a solo homer off Japan’s Shigeru Kobayashi in the seventh, and that proved to be the difference as Japan got an RBI single from Kakefu of the Hanshin Tigers in the bottom of the inning to account for the final 6-5 score.

    Knuckleballer Niekro pitched three innings and allowed four hits, two walks, and two earned runs before being relieved by Oakland’s Rick Langford. Nonetheless, he baffled Oh, whom he struck out twice, once with the bases loaded and no one out. Oh said, “It felt like the ball was swaying left and right. I wasn’t able to hit it at all. It was a mysterious ball.” For the Japan side, Murata held the major leaguers hitless in the eighth and ninth innings, primarily with his forkball.

    After the game, US manager Weaver said, “It was a close game. I was worried and felt relieved that we won. There was little difference today with the pitchers of either team. [The Japanese] certainly could play major league baseball.” That, of course, was 16 years before Nomo proved the point by signing with the Dodgers and earning All-Star and Rookie-of-the-Year honors in his first season.

    Yukio Nishimoto, who had managed the Kintetsu Buffaloes to the 1979 Pacific League title and was leading the Japan All-Stars, said, “The Americans are speedier than the Japanese. … I’m afraid the difference is decidedly in their favor. We’d be lucky to win two games out of 10.”

    They got one six days later.

    A crowd of 42,000 at Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium watched the Americans score single runs in the third inning (a home run by Parrish off the left-field foul pole against Japan starter Naoki Takahashi) and in the seventh (a sacrifice fly by the California Angels’ Carney Lansford) to lead 2-0. Six US pitchers held the Japanese scoreless until the bottom of the eighth inning, when Kinji Shimatani of the Hankyu Braves electrified the fans by ripping a 2-and-0 pitch from Cleveland’s Sid Monge for a three-run homer to give the Japanese a 3-2 lead. And that was enough, as Kitabeppu pitched the eighth inning and Tatsuo Komatsu of the Chunichi Dragons the ninth to get the save.

    Since the US and Japanese teams played just two games against each other, the final statistics do not represent a large sample size. For the Americans, Cecil Cooper was 2-for-3 in the one game he played, and Ted Simmons was 2-for-7 in two games with a home run and two RBIs. They were the only Americans to get more than one hit in the two games, as the team batted a minuscule .172. The US pitchers posted a 3.18 earned-run average over 17 innings and held the Japan stars to a .210 batting average.

    Virtually all the Japanese position players participated in both games, with Yasunori Oshima (Chunichi) batting .500 (1-for-2), Kakefu and Fukumoto each .429, and Hideji Kato (Hankyu) .333. On the pitching side, Murata did not allow a run in four innings while striking out five batters. Takahashi gave up just one run in four innings, while Yamada allowed two runs in three innings of work. The Japan ERA in the two games was 3.50.

    Overall, the tour was considered a success, though there was some complaining by players about the travel. One day, for example, eight buses and trains were necessary to get the group from a hotel in Tokyo to a ballpark and then to Nagoya.

    There was also some controversy when first Carew and then Rose went home early and Kingman had to be talked out of going home the same day Carew left. Japan’s Kyodo News Service quoted Rose as saying he had suffered a leg injury while going after a pop fly “and it’s been getting worse.” Rose had also arrived in Japan ahead of the others and had announced beforehand that he would not be staying until the end.

    As for Carew, American League spokesman Bob Fishel said he had injured a tendon in his right heel before the trip. Carew, however, said that the injury was just part of the reason for his leaving after playing in two games. He also felt league officials had not come through on prior commitments for endorsement and appearance income. He said he had been hesitant to make the trip but did so because of promises that he could make $40,000 to $50,000 in endorsements and appearances, in addition to the base pay of $11,000 to players on the winning team and $8,500 to those on the losing club.

    “Now I can’t help but feel that we were told these things simply so that we would say ‘yes’ to making the trip,” Carew said. “I definitely doubt that I’d ever make another. I had wanted to stay home, but they made it sound as if it was something I couldn’t pass up.”

    The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bill Madlock said, “We’d been led to believe there would be ways to pick up extra money for endorsements. It just didn’t happen.” Cecil Cooper added, “I really was disappointed. I thought we would be involved in a lot more endorsements and things like that. Only a few players got them. I don’t think I would come back.”

    The expectation of ancillary income was due in part because Rose had been to Japan the previous year with the Cincinnati Reds and had been in demand for endorsements, television appearances, and autograph sessions. Joe Reichler, who at the time helped run the Major League Baseball Promotion Corporation, was quoted as saying, “I think a lot of the players saw how well [Rose] did and figured the same thing would happen to them. [But] there really were no firm commitments along these lines.”

    Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Lary Sorensen felt that that it was “not a big issue teamwide. Maybe it was for a few of the main guys. But I was young and just happy to be there.” And Singleton said in a 2021 conversation that “it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. Some guys may have been concerned about it, and it would have been OK if it had happened to me, but it was no big deal that it didn’t.”

    In the past there had been incidents of Americans going to Japan and behaving in a rude, arrogant, boorish manner. This time, they were generally considered to be well-behaved, though interpreter Toyo Kunimitsu sometimes saw them differently, as described in Robert Whiting’s seminal book about Japanese baseball, You Gotta Have Wa.

    The [US] All-Stars were rather tacky and rude,” said Kunimitsu, who worked as translator for foreign players with the Yakult Swallows and, later, the Chunichi Dragons. “Once we were on a long bus ride [and] John Candelaria, the pitcher for the [Pittsburgh] Pirates, had been drinking a lot of beer and had to urinate. So he urinated into a bucket and threw it out the window. I was shocked. The driver was really angry. He wanted me to throw Candelaria off the bus, but finally agreed to let him stay when Candelaria said he would stop drinking beer. I saw a lot of bad examples of spoiled Americans on that tour.”

    Nonetheless, the Americans took the games seriously, and many had positive memories.

    Parker had not wanted to come on the tour because of a bad knee, but he finally agreed and played in most of the games, even playing some in center field and sliding on his bad knee. The New York Yankees’ Bobby Murcer was said to have been upset that he did not get more playing time. Kingman, usually not accommodating to the media, stood on the sidelines after the first US-Japan game and answered question after question from reporters through an interpreter. Simmons could have returned home after the last AL-NL contest, but he volunteered to stay for the second game against Japan and played the entire game.

    “To me, this was the trip of a lifetime,” Simmons said. “I really have no complaints. I enjoyed it, and so did my wife. Japan is a country I [had] always wanted to visit, and to be able to do it this way is terrific.”

    Singleton said, “It was a great trip. We were treated well and enjoyed it tremendously.” Pitcher Rick Langford of Oakland said, “It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here [in Japan].” And Sorensen and Angels pitcher Mark Clear, both newlyweds, considered the trip to be their honeymoons.

    “I was just 23, had never been to Japan and had just gotten married, so I thought ‘Wow, what a great opportunity to travel and see some of the world,’” Sorensen said. “They treated us with great respect, and the games were great because the fans were so enthusiastic. It was like going to a football game in the U.S.

    “The whole trip was an autograph session,” he added with a laugh. “Whenever we’d go out, people would point at us and then ask for autographs. For the majority of us, it was a fabulous tour, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.”

    Sorensen remembered a couple of amusing occurrences, one on the team plane. The Pirates had recently upset Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles to win the 1979 Word Series and, in the process, had adopted the Sister Sledge hit song “We Are Family” as their unofficial anthem. During a flight, Sorensen noticed Candelaria, Parker, and Madlock sneaking toward the front of the plane where Weaver was sitting.

    “They had a big boom box and blasted out ‘We Are Family,’” Sorensen said. “It didn’t bother Earl, but we all thought it was funny.”

    Sorensen recalled another time when a Japanese TV reporter was in the US dugout and providing live commentary during a game. As he was wont to do, Weaver got into a profanity-laced argument with a couple of the American umpires, and the reporter translated what was being said for his Japanese audience. However, when Weaver said something like “You’re a bleeping, bleep, bleep,” the reporter was stumped for a translation and simply repeated Weaver’s exact words over the air.

    Lou Brock, who had retired after the just-completed 1979 season, was honored after the final game for his fine career, and Lasorda gave big thanks to the Japanese, in particular chief sponsor Junichi Wada. “It was a great gift Mr. Wada gave the Japanese people,” Lasorda said. After the final game, both teams paraded around the perimeter of the stadium, and the fans came as close as possible to the field to give them a standing ovation.

    “Overall, it was a good experience,” Larry Bowa said. “There were problems with travel, and we all got tired. Going to Japan, however, was quite an experience.”

    Had the Japanese game made up some ground in its quest of equaling or surpassing the Americans? Weaver said after the first game that Japanese baseball had made tremendous improvement since his previous visit in 1971. All the players, he added, looked like potential home-run sluggers.

    Sorensen felt somewhat differently, though he could see that there was quality in the Japanese roster.

    At the time, I think the Japanese game was at the Triple-A level. The biggest thing was the size difference; we had size and skill sets that, at the time, were noticeably different. They didn’t have any (Shohei) Ohtanis then, although that’s changed over time. But there’s no question that they had some really good players, were fundamentally sound, and were very well prepared. They took the game very seriously, probably more so than we did, and they were more aggressive with small ball than we were. Skillwise, they had some infielders that could probably have been major leaguers. And while most of their pitchers didn’t throw hard, they were tough because they could throw a bunch of different pitches with different deliveries and from several arm angles.

    Singleton said he “wasn’t too impressed with the Japanese pitchers then, though they did a good job of mixing their offerings and using off-speed pitches.” He commented, “I was more impressed with them when I went back to Japan with the Orioles after the 1984 season. Since then, of course, they’ve had quite a few pitchers come over to the major leagues and do well. The two games were really competitive, though. We were more about power – the Japanese players would watch us in batting practice and were impressed. On the other hand, the Japanese played small ball really well.”

    As the Japan Times noted, “the gap that existed between American and Japanese baseball has been narrowed by the two U.S.-Japanese games.”

    Read the full version of this article on the SABR website

    The 1979 Major League All-Star Series in Japan
  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 7, Tsuyoshi Shinjo

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 7, Tsuyoshi Shinjo

    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 player who turned the diamond into a stage and never forgot whom he was performing for

    Drafted fifth round in 1989, no Koshien tournament appearances to his name, Tsuyoshi Shinjo walked into his introductory press conference with the Hanshin Tigers sporting a shaved-sides flat-top haircut and the demeanor of a man with somewhere else to be. Someone asked him about his feelings joining one of Japan’s most storied franchises, the team that played at the great cathedral of Koshien, in front of the most passionate fan base in the country. Shinjo considered the question.

    “I was more into soccer,” he said, “so I wasn’t that interested in professional baseball.”

    The room erupted in laughter—the Kyushu accent, the artless delivery, the complete absence of the expected reverence. Nobody quite knew what to make of him.

    That was, it would turn out, a feeling they would need to get used to.

    His first year in the minors he batted .074. His arm, however, was something else entirely. During a fall camp that year, Yoshio Yoshida, the legendary shortstop and former manager who had become one of the most respected baseball minds in Japan, watched the teenager throw from the outfield and told the coaching staff: that athleticism belongs at shortstop. Shinjo converted. In his first call-up to the big league club the following year, he positioned himself at an almost comically deep shortstop, far deeper than anyone played the position, specifically and deliberately, so that the throws he made to retire runners would be long enough to make people notice his arm. He was nineteen years old and already managing his own image.

    He had arrived. It just took him a little while to let everyone know.

    Here is something worth understanding about Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s career. By the counting stats, he was good but not exceptional. Across thirteen NPB seasons, he batted .254 with 205 home runs, won ten Golden Gloves (tied for 4th all-time) after moving to centerfield, and made the Best Nine three times. In three seasons in MLB, he batted .245 with 20 home runs across 303 games. These are the numbers of a capable player, a fan favorite, a glove-first center fielder who could make your jaw drop and your heart sink in roughly equal measure.

    And yet Tsuyoshi Shinjo is one of the most famous baseball players Japan has ever produced. He is famous in the way that certain athletes (think Jose Canseco, Dennis Rodman, or Deion Sanders) achieve a kind of celebrity that floats entirely free of their statistics. He is famous because he understood that a ballgame is a performance, and a performer’s first obligation is to the audience.

    His manager towards the end of his tenure with Hanshin, the great Katsuya Nomura looked at Shinjo and arrived at a memorable conclusion. “I never thought of him as a student,” Nomura wrote. “Rather than teaching him anything, I used the feeling of flattering a pig into climbing a tree.” Nomura’s method with Shinjo was simple: ask him what batting order position he wanted, put him there, and watch him perform. Ask him what position he most wanted to play, then let him try it. “Leave him alone and he motivates himself,” Nomura concluded. “He was, for a manager, an easy player to handle.”

    Nomura meant this as mild condescension. But there is another way to read it. Here was one of the most manipulative managers in baseball history, a man who turned psychology into an art form, and his technique with Shinjo was simply: give him a stage. That was the whole point of Shinjo.

    Born in Nagasaki Prefecture on January 28, 1972, Shinjo grew up in Fukuoka, the son of a landscape gardener who had dreamed of his own baseball career and poured that dream into his son with an intensity that bordered on terrifying. By the time young Tsuyoshi was six years old, his father had already established that the boy could throw a stone farther than any adult in the neighborhood. Their daily training ritual involved Shinjo standing at the top of a hill while his father threw the ball up from the bottom, hard as he could and if the boy let it roll back down, he was ordered to chase it before it stopped. He chased it, crying, every time. But he never quit.

    The competitive fury expressed itself early. In a town softball tournament at the age of eleven, Shinjo was so incensed by what he believed was a bad call that he argued with the umpire alone, weeping, long after his coaches had tried to pull him away. The coach was so struck by the sight that he made Shinjo an offer: if you feel that strongly, I’ll become your manager. Let’s start a baseball team and turn that frustration into something. Shinjo assembled enough players within two days, took charge of designing the uniforms, and within six weeks they had finished third in the Fukuoka prefectural tournament out of 64 teams. He was captain, ace pitcher, and cleanup hitter. He was eleven years old. He was already producing and directing his own story.

    The team, by the way, was called the Nagaoka Fighters which, if you believe in that sort of thing, is either a coincidence or something else.

    There is a moment from September 16, 1992, at Koshien Stadium, that the Hanshin faithful still remember.

    The Tigers, coming off two last place finishes in a row, are improbably in the pennant race. The game against Hiroshima is scoreless going into the eighth inning. With two out and the bases loaded, Hiroshima’s Ryuzo Yamasaki hits a liner to right-center, a ball that looks like it is going to possibly end the season. No longer a shortstop, Shinjo, who has been a regular for less than three months, is already running. He runs a long way. He dives. He catches it.

    Then, in the bottom of the ninth, with the score still 0-0, Shinjo steps in against future Hall of Famer Yutaka Ohno, and hits a walk-off home run.

    In the hero’s interview afterward, Shinjo grabbed the microphone and announced: “We’re going to win the pennant!”

    They did not win the pennant. They finished second, one game out, in what became another in a long list of heartbreaking near-misses in franchise history. But for one evening, standing in the lights at Koshien, Tsuyoshi Shinjo made everyone believe it was possible.

    That year’s Tigers resurgence had two faces: center fielder Shinjo and left fielder Tsutomu Kameyama, whose names combined to give the phenomenon its name, Kame-Shin Fever. The city of Osaka lost its mind. Fan letters for Shinjo arrived at the team dormitory at the rate of one cardboard box per day. Young women, dubbed Shinjo Girlsby the press, gathered in such numbers outside the dormitory gates that getting home from the stadium became impossible, and the dormitory manager eventually put Shinjo in a hotel to relieve the congestion. His salary that offseason rose 323 percent, the largest single-season raise in Tigers history at the time.

    He was twenty years old. He was driving a Lamborghini and receiving a cardboard box of love letters every day and playing center field for the most passionate fan base in Japanese baseball. The reasonable response to this situation would have been to become completely insufferable. Instead, Shinjo seems to have concluded that all of it—the letters, the fans, the noise, the love—was not something that was for keeps, but something he owed back. The fans gave him their passion. He would spend the rest of his career figuring out how to return it.

    He dyed his hair. He began wearing the bright red wristbands that would become synonymous with his name. He developed his signature habit of adding a small hop to routine fly ball catches, a theatrical touch he had developed in high school by training himself to catch eggs dropped from the second floor without breaking them. The hop, it turned out, had genuine logic behind it, stilling his eye line at the moment of catch, absorbing the ball’s momentum, and loading him instantly for the throw. He explained all of this with complete seriousness when asked. No one ever quite knew what to do with the fact that his most flamboyant habit was also one of his most technically sophisticated.

    He drove a Lamborghini Countach to contract negotiations in 1993. A Porsche in 1994. A Lamborghini Cheetah in 1995. Car reporters began staking out the parking lot of the Tigers front office because Shinjo’s arrival was better automotive content than anything else they were covering. He wore Versace. He sprayed perfume on his wristbands and towels because he couldn’t tolerate the smell of the dugout. He recorded a love song in 1994 that sold 8,000 copies. He married one of Japan’s top models. He was Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and he wanted everyone in the stadium to know it.

    On June 12, 1999, in the twelfth inning of a tie game against Yomiuri at Koshien, the Giants decided to intentionally walk Shinjo to set up the force play.

    Three days earlier, against the same Giants, Shinjo had been walked intentionally and let it go. But he had spent that time in the batting cage with his hitting coach, practicing swings at pitches thrown well outside the strike zone. He had arranged a signal with Nomura so that in the right situation, he would receive permission to swing. When the signal came, he repositioned himself to the far edge of the batter’s box, noted that the shortstop was shading toward second base, leaving a gap on the left side of the infield, and waited.

    The second pitch was perhaps slightly less outside than the first. Shinjo swung and drove a single through the gap and sending home the winning run. The Giants protested that his foot had left the batter’s box. The home plate umpire ruled that his heel had remained on the chalk line. Shinjo walked off the hero of the game. He had pre-planned and pre-practiced a play that no rational person would have attempted, gotten managerial approval in advance, studied the defensive alignment, found the gap, and executed. A spaceman, Nomura had called him. It turned out that being a spaceman was occasionally a tactical advantage

    He then announced, with a grin, that he would never do it again. The following day, before the same opponents, he took more batting practice on outside pitches, just in case.

    In the winter of 2000, Shinjo made the most Shinjo decision of his career.

    He had just completed his best NPB season: .278 average, 28 home runs, 85 RBIs, a team-best in virtually every offensive category, a Best Nine selection, a Golden Glove. The Tigers offered him a five-year contract extension worth approximately 1.2 billion yen. This was an extraordinary sum, security for life, in the city where he had become a star.

    Shinjo turned it down to sign with the New York Mets for the major league minimum. At the press conference announcing the deal, he stepped to the microphone with the calm of a man who had been rehearsing this moment for years: “I’ve finally found a place where I can play the kind of baseball I envision. That team is the New York Mets.”

    The reaction in Japan was divided along a single line. That same offseason, Ichiro Suzuki had finalized his move to the Seattle Mariners through the posting system. Ichiro’s move made sense. Shinjo’s move prompted something closer to seriously? He was not Ichiro. He had one excellent season and eight largely difficult ones. He was a defensive specialist with intermittent power and a .254 career average. The Mets’ offer was less than what Hanshin, Yokohama, and Yakult were each prepared to pay him, making the gamble look even stranger from the outside.

    He only played in the majors for three seasons, with the Mets, San Francisco Giants, and then back with the Mets. But he did become the first Japanese player to appear in the World Series. The bat he used to record the first hit by a Japanese player in World Series history, a first-inning single off Jarrod Washburn in Game 1, sits in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It is engraved TSU No. 5, in Shinjo’s own handwriting.

    When Shinjo returned to Japan to play for the Nippon-Ham Fighters, the performances grew more elaborate.. In the first inning of the 2004 All-Star Game, Shinjo stepped to the plate, pointed dramatically toward left-center field—a called shot, straight out of Babe Ruth—and then dropped a surprise bunt on the first pitch. It failed. He returned to the dugout having accomplished nothing except making everyone in the stands laugh.

    In the third inning, he doubled to left-center off the same pitcher, moved to third on a ground ball, and then, with the the catcher returning the ball to the pitcher, Shinjo broke from third base. He slid headfirst into home plate and was called safe on the closest of plays. He pounded the ground with both hands and feet, a grown man overcome with pure joy.

    It was the first solo steal of home in All-Star Game history. The only one ever, to this day.

    After collecting the MVP award, Shinjo was asked about the play. His answer was precise and, once you understood who he was, completely unsurprising: “If I weren’t in the Pacific League I wouldn’t have done it. I want to brighten things up. If players like this appear and get media coverage, fans will want to come to the ballpark.”

    On Opening Day 2006, rather than jogging to his position in center field like a normal human being, Shinjo drove a Harley-Davidson trike across the playing surface of Sapporo Dome, circled the warning track, and parked at his position, while his fellow starters rode in the sidecars. The stadium held 43,000 people. It was sold out. He had promised it would be when he signed.

    That same season, he appeared at a game wearing, under his Fighters uniform, his old Hanshin Tigers jersey. He had worn it to honor his former team during an interleague matchup. The Pacific League umpires ruled it a violation. He was warned. He removed the jersey. He did not particularly seem to regret it.

    In April, after hitting a home run against Orix, he named the blast by announcing it had been hit with a special technique: “I enjoyed baseball fully for 28 years. This year I’ll take off my uniform” home run technique. He was announcing his retirement, mid-game, in a home run naming ceremony, while still playing the game. The press called it the Shinjo Theater. It was.

    In June, before a game against the Tigers at the Sapporo Dome, he descended from the ceiling in a small gondola with a disco ball attached to it. In the All-Star game that year, he used a rainbow bat and wore an LED belt with the message “Never mind whatever I do, fan is my treasure.”

    He wore a collared undershirt beneath his uniform in a game against the SoftBank Hawks. SoftBank’s manager Sadaharu Oh complained. The league ruled against it. The debate occupied sports media for days. Shinjo said he had thought the look was nice.

    He declined to steal bases because, he said, he had no interest in it and because, more specifically, he didn’t want his legs to become too muscular, because muscular legs did not look attractive in jeans.

    On September 27, 2006, in the final regular season game at the Sapporo Dome, Shinjo played in the number he had worn as an eighteen-year-old rookie: 63, the first number the Tigers had given him, the number stitched in black thread into the thumb of the glove he had used his entire career, the glove he had bought with his first paycheck, repaired four times, and refused to let anyone else touch. Before the retirement ceremony, the stadium went dark. A video of his baseball life played on the scoreboard. He watched it from center field, standing in his customary posture, his glove resting on top of his cap.

    Then he removed his uniform and placed it on the ground, along with the glove and the wristbands. His undershirt had a message printed across the back: “Today, this day, this moment, I’m going to engrave it in the album of my heart, and from here on, I’ll keep doing things my way!”

    He walked off the field without speaking. The scoreboard displayed a handwritten message he had prepared in advance: “With what little baseball life I have left, I promise everyone today that I’ll keep chasing the white ball with brightness and joy.”

    Six weeks later, after the Fighters had won the Japan Series (the first championship for the franchise in 44 years) and after Shinjo had gone six for seventeen in the Series itself, his teammates did not toss manager Trey Hillman into the air first. They tossed Shinjo. He wept so completely that he could barely walk.

    He had told them when he arrived in Hokkaido that he would fill the stadium and win the championship. He had done both.

    In 2022, the Fighters hired Shinjo as their manager. He asked to be called Big Boss. He arrived at his first home game in a manner resembling professional wrestling. He designed alternate uniforms in black, red, and gold, with a V on the chest, labeled “New Age Games produced by SHINJO”. He banned the sacrifice bunt, in a league that treats the sacrifice bunt as something close to sacred. His first season the Fighters finished last. He gave 23 different hitters regular playing time. He developed young pitching. He built from nothing.

    By his third year the Fighters were back in contention, and by his fourth they were among the Pacific League’s genuine powers. The critics who had spent thirty years saying Shinjo was all show and no substance looked at what he had built and found they had run out of things to say. He had always been serious. He had always been paying attention. He had just declined, then and now, to perform seriousness in the way that made other people comfortable.

    There is a woman, a devoted Tigers fan, as so many people in Osaka were and are, who in 1992 listened to every Tigers game on the radio with her sister, because in those days almost nothing except Giants games made it to television. For two sisters who had grown up through the Tigers’ long dark years, Shinjo was one of the dazzling stars they had finally found. One evening, Shinjo was called to the hero’s interview platform. The sisters turned up the volume and leaned close. There was a pause. Then his voice:

    “I smashed that white ball!”

    The two sisters burst into applause, there in their living room, clapping for a radio.

    The image they held in their minds was Shinjo’s smile, white teeth flashing.

    He never met those two women. He never knew they existed. But he had spent his entire career performing for them and for every person in every living room who couldn’t make it to Koshien, who pressed their ear to a speaker and listened for something worth believing in. The disco ball and the wristbands and the LED belt buckle were the version of that smile scaled up for stadiums. The principle was always the same.

    “Fan is my treasure.” He meant it.

  • Meet Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes on May 7 at 830 pm EST

    Meet Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes on May 7 at 830 pm EST

    SABR’s Asian Baseball Committee is thrilled to host former NPB star Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes for a zoom discussion on May 7 at 8:30 pm EST. Mr. Rhodes will talk about his experiences in NPB and then answer your questions.

    Sign Up for this free event below– Open to non-SABR members, All are welcome

    Asian Baseball Committee meeting

    When: May 7, 2026 08:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

    Register in advance for this meeting:
    https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rBkEkX2eRgCNcfDJEFtb8w

    After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

    Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes had a six-year Major League career before signing with the Kintetsu Buffaloes of NPB before the 1996 season. He played 13 seasons in Japan for the Buffaloes and Yomiuri Giants. A ten-time NPB All-Star and seven-time Best Nine Award winner, Rhodes also led his league in RBI three times, and home runs four times. His 55 home runs in 2001 tied Sadaharu Oh’s single-season HR record and earned him the Pacific League MVP. He retired with 1792 NPB hits and 464 NPB home runs.

  • A Brief History of the Asia Series

    A Brief History of the Asia Series

    by Tim Sokol

    In many sports, the journey doesn’t end when you win your national championship. Continental, or sometimes even intercontinental glory beckons for the strongest and most ambitious teams. Look at the success of the UEFA Champions League, the Copa Libertadores, and the other continental trophies in club football. Look at EuroLeague basketball, which is far more prestigious than any domestic league in Europe. The idea of competing against teams from outside your own league is an appealing one. There is both excitement in reaching an even higher level of competition and also a novelty in playing new opponents. High level baseball leagues have largely never embraced this idea, with the most notable exception being the Caribbean Series for top winter league teams, but even that is somewhat of an all-star series when you dig into the roster rules and circumstances surrounding winter league ball. The Caribbean Series is awesome, but I don’t think it is quite the same thing as a “Champions League” type tournament between full-length season national champions. The WBSC has recently organized an Americas Champions League and found minimal success so far. There has basically been one honest effort at a “Champions League” style tournament as we generally understand the idea, and so I would like to look back at the now-defunct Asia Series.

    The first Asia Series was in 2005, but the lineage can actually be traced back a decade earlier, to a 1995 tournament sometimes known in English as the “Asia Pacific Super Baseball Championship” or the Asian Pacific Cup. This was a tournament hosted by the Daiei Hawks, who came in 5th place in the Pacific League that year. They invited teams from Taiwan, Korea, and Australia to participate in a two-day single elimination tournament. The Hawks were upset in the first round by the Uni-President Lions (CPBL) and wound up in 3rd place. The Hanwha Eagles (KBO) defeated the Australian League All-Stars in the other first round game. The Lions would go on to win the title, though only a few Lions fans seem to remember or care these days. This tournament received limited media coverage at the time and is largely forgotten today, but it is worth mentioning as an early foray into continental competition. 

    A decade later, baseball executives decided to try the idea again in a more official capacity. The Asia Series was created for the 2005 season with Konami announced as the title sponsor, making the official name of the competition the Konami Cup Asia Series. The Chiba Lotte Marines, the tournament favorites, won all of their games without too much difficulty and capped it off with a 5-3 victory over the Samsung Lions in the final. The event, hosted at the Tokyo Dome, produced mixed crowds. When the Marines were playing, fans showed up, including over 37,000 people at the final. When the other teams were playing, attendance was paltry. Only 6,340 were on hand for the decisive group game between the Sinon Bulls and Samsung Lions that would determine who advanced to the championship. 

    In 2006, with the tournament once again at the Tokyo Dome, attendance dropped sharply as NPB was represented by Hokkaido rather than the more locally based Chiba. This edition saw the favorites threatened for the first time, with Taiwan’s La New Bears losing to Hokkaido by just one run in both the group stage and in the final. And in 2007, the breakthrough was finally made when the KBO’s SK Wyverns beat the Chunichi Dragons in the group stage, handing NPB its first loss in the Asia Series. Chunichi would go on to get revenge over the Wyverns in the final, 6-5. Attendance remained closer to 2006 levels rather than the heights of 2005.

    While these tournaments produced some good games, there was also an inherent problem with this format. Though there was a vast gulf in talent between the three premier Asian leagues, they were still all stocked with professional players and the weaker teams were still capable of competing with the stronger ones over a short tournament like this. The same cannot be said for the China Stars, who were a representative all-star team from the Chinese Baseball League. The CBL was not a professional league and was of such inferior quality to the other three leagues that even an all-star team proved completely uncompetitive; the China Stars played nine games in these three years and lost all nine, mostly by very large margins. In 2008 the CBL sent the champion Tianjin Lions rather than an all-star team, and the Lions also went 0-3.

    2008 marked a big turning point for the competition. Evidently unhappy with how things were going, title sponsor Konami ended their partnership with the tournament, leaving the name as just the Asia Series. Other sponsors followed suit. And perhaps most importantly, in Japan the tournament was moved off of terrestrial television to satellite channels with a much smaller reach. The competition had never been on the firmest financial ground, but now it found itself in an untenable situation. Amidst further declining attendance despite the presence of the Saitama Seibu Lions, the tournament produced some gripping baseball including a nailbiter final in which Seibu walked off the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions in the 9th for a 1-0 victory. And so despite the 2008 edition ending on a high note, the tournament’s future looked bleak.

    In 2009, due to lack of funding and willing sponsors, the Asia Series was cancelled. The general understanding around the industry seems to have been that this was a temporary cancellation rather than a permanent one, and there was clearly still some appetite for the idea. That year administrators organized the NPB-KBO Club Championship, a single game winner-take-all replacement for the Asia Series to be held in Nagasaki. A half-filled stadium watched the Yomiuri Giants beat the Kia Tigers 9-4. 

    In 2010, though there were originally plans to revive the Asia Series in Taiwan, this idea was shelved due to a conflict with the 2010 Asian Games. But the interleague clashes continued. This time the KBO Champion SK Wyverns tied a two-game series 1-1 with the CPBL’s Brother Elephants. No game three was scheduled. Then the Wyverns headed to the Tokyo Dome for another NPB-KBO Championship where they were blanked by the Marines. These games were once again moderately but not overwhelmingly successful, and as shown by the scheduling of a two game series, were thought of closer to exhibitions than to any serious continental competition. 

    In 2011, the Asia Series made its formal return, back to the original format with four teams. Gone was the Chinese League, having been replaced by the previous champion of the Australian League. The tournament was hosted in Taichung and Taoyuan and once again saw limited attendance outside of when the home team played. Just 4,000 people showed up to watch the Samsung Lions defeat the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks to become the first non-Japanese team to win the competition. The theory that Taiwanese fans would come out in big numbers to watch NPB teams seemed to have been proven wrong. But still, the tournament trudged on, expanding to six teams in 2012.

    That expansion led to a new format with two groups of three. Participating teams were the champions from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia, as well as an extra team from Korea (the Lotte Giants, who qualified as hosts) and the return of the China Stars. The Lamigo Monkeys and Yomiuri Giants topped the groups, with the Giants winning 6-3 in the final. 

    The 2013 Asia Series would be the last, and kept the six team format, though the China Stars were replaced by an Italian club, Fortitudo Bologna, who were the reigning winners of the European Cup. This time Taiwan hosted and thus received two bids rather than one. The Italians performed as expected, but the shock came when neither Japan nor Korea were represented in the final. Instead, it was the Canberra Cavalry who claimed the first trophy for Australia, defeating the Uni-Lions in Taichung. 

    The tournament ended on a strange note, with Canberra player Matt Blazynski claiming that he had been offered money to throw the semifinal match against Samsung. The CPBL and Taiwanese police investigated the claim and determined that Blazynski’s story was full of inconsistencies, and the CPBL released a statement calling it “a fabricated lie.” Without really having any details we can only speculate, but the CPBL does have a long history of match-fixing scandals, and it seems like an unusual story for a player to lie about. On the other hand, athletes do tell strange lies sometimes. Ryan Lochte comes to mind. In any case, Blazynski didn’t even play in the tournament and obviously Canberra, the eventual champions, did not throw any games. We didn’t know it at the time, but this saga was basically the end of the Asia Series. The tournament did not return in 2014, and has not been played again since.   

    So where does that leave us? Undoubtedly the idea of the Asia Series sounds neat in theory, so why didn’t it work? I think there are quite a few reasons we can point to. The fourth league (after NPB/KBO/CPBL) was never a perfect fit. China (and Italy) simply didn’t have the quality to be competitive, and Australia has the problem of being a winter league and thus the tournament takes place at a strange time for them. A European invite does not move the needle, though there were rumors of eventually inviting teams from stronger leagues such as Mexico. The calendar also became too crowded with other events. We saw one tournament cancelled to make room for the Asian Games, and NPB at this time was still playing their exhibition series against MLB All-Stars in some years. Nowadays we have the Premier12 in this window sometimes. All of those events are higher profile and much more lucrative than the Asia Series. 

    All that said, obviously if viewership was booming the powers that be would have found a way to make it work. The number one reason that the Asia Series is not around today is that not enough people watched, not enough people cared, and not enough money was made. Fans I heard from all gave me a variation of the same answer: The tournament was a cool idea, but we (the fans) only *kind-of* cared and the teams and players only *kind-of* took it seriously. Undoubtedly, there were great moments. Look at the scenes of Chiba clinching the 2005 title and it is obvious that the result mattered to people. But despite the highs, the tournament was never truly elevated to the place of being a serious trophy on par with winning your domestic league. Major media outlets didn’t give it much credence. Attendance was not great. Some players and managers gave good PR answers when asked about the competition, while others were open about the fact that they weren’t interested. 

    And so the natural follow up question: Could this type of tournament work in the future? Never say never, but for now a return seems unlikely. National team baseball is a much more financially sound usage of that calendar space and there isn’t really a lot of clamor for another Asia Series outside of the hardcore baseball nerd demographic. I would love to see it but it’s really hard to pull off as you need full buy-in from players (especially pitchers) and organizations and fans. If everyone involved doesn’t treat it as a serious continental championship, then it becomes nothing more than a glorified exhibition. So you’d probably need a lot of prize money and a lot of prestige associated with the tournament to get everyone to care. Maybe that prestige comes over time as you host the series and it gets slightly more and more important with each passing year, but you need to be able to survive that build-up period without folding. And as we saw with the Asia Series’ original run(s), that is the tricky part.

  • The First Japanese Professional Game, An Update

    The First Japanese Professional Game, An Update

    by Robert Fitts

    April 15, 2026, marks the 120th anniversary of the first professional game in Japanese baseball history. Thirty years before the formation of a professional league in Japan, Guy W. Green, the owner of the Nebraska Indians Baseball Team, gathered a dozen immigrants from Japan to form an all-Japanese baseball squad to barnstorm across the Midwest of the United States. Like Green’s Nebraska Indians players, the Japanese players signed contracts and were paid to play, making them the first known professional Japanese team on either side of the Pacific. Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team played their first game on April 15, 1906, in Frankfort, a small town in Northeastern Kansas. In 2020, I published an article on this game, but after five years of further research it is time to update the story. The following article is the first in a series focusing on these Issei baseball pioneers. It includes sections from my previous article with updates and changes when necessary.

     

     

     

     

     

    The early twentieth century was the heyday of barnstorming baseball. Independent teams crisscrossed the country playing in one-horse towns and large cities. There were all female teams, squads of only fat men, clubs of men sporting beards, and teams consisting of “exotic” ethnicities. These independent squads were often called “semi-professional” to differentiate them from teams in Organized Baseball (clubs formally associated with Major League Baseball), but they were professional enterprises. The teams signed players to contracts, paid salaries during the season, provided transportation and housing on the road, charged admission to games, and were intent on turning a profit.

     

    In 1906 much of United States was enthralled by Japan and all things Japanese. Japan had just emerged as the improbable victor in the Russo-Japanese War and the year before the Waseda University baseball club had toured the West Coast. Guy W. Green decided to capitalize on the fad by creating an all-Japanese baseball team to barnstorm across the Midwest.

     

    Although Green would claim that he had “scour[ed] the [Japanese] empire for the best players obtainable,” he did nothing of the sort. In early 1906 Green instructed Dan Tobey, captain of the Nebraska Indians, to form a team from Japanese immigrants living in California. Players congregated on March 15 in Havelock, Nebraska to practice.

     

    1906 Advertising Card, Ken Kitsuse Collection, National Baseball Hall of Fame

    The team contained some extraordinary men.  At first base was Ichiro Fujisaku, who played under the name Toyo Fujita. Fujisaku would become a movie star, appearing in about a dozen Hollywood and Japanese films. Playing second base was Tetsusuburo Uyeda, the third son of a Japan Diet member. During World War II, Uyeda would be jailed as a spy but afterwards his daughter would marry an heir to the Anheisier-Busch fortune. The shortstop was Ken Kitsuse, considered to be the best Issei player of the time. His father was also a member of the Japan Diet. The outfield consisted of Junjiro Uyeda, Tetsusuburo’s brother; Umekichi “Kitty” Kawashima; and Koji Naito, a graduate of Keio University. Acting as an umpire when needed was Tozan Masko, who would become a journalist, sports promoter, and eventually a swindler.

     

    As some of the Issei players lacked the skills to play on a professional independent squad, Green and Tobey decided to bolster his roster with Native Americans —hoping that most spectators would not be able to tell the difference. Manager Dan Tobey, who would eventually be inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame as an announcer, and Nebraska Indian veteran Sandy Kissell shared the pitching duties and played outfield on their off days. Seguin, another member of the Nebraska Indians, was the catcher, while Roy Dean Whitcomb, an 18-year-old Caucasian from Lincoln, usually played third base under the name Noisy. A man known only as Doctor filled in as necessary.

     

     

     

    Manger and pitcher Dan Tobey

     

     

    During the lunch break on the second or third day of practice, Tobey handed out the club rules.  With Masuko interpreting, he laid out the fines for undesirable behavior:  $2 for being late for a game; $2 for lazy playing; $3 for refusing to follow the manager’s orders; $3 for refusing to travel to the ballpark with the team; $3 for gambling; and $5 for drinking alcohol.  He then produced a stack of contracts for the players to sign.  “Of course, we happily signed immediately,” one player remembered.  “We had been worried that Mr. Green might not be satisfied with our techniques and would send us home, so we were so happy to be offered contracts that we didn’t even think about reading it.”

     

    After practicing for about a month in Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 13 Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team headed south to begin a twenty-five-week tour that would cover over twenty-five hundred miles through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. Their first stop was Frankfort, a small town of about 1,400 people in northeastern Kansas, where they would play the town’s high school squad.

     

    Prior to the game, Guy Green sent out promotional material and flooded local newspapers with advertising and press releases. At the time, there were so few Japanese living in the Midwest that many rural farmers had never seen a Japanese person. So, Green’s advertisements emphasized the players’ foreignness and the uniqueness of the team. A typical announcement read, “Green’s [team] are the most novel baseball organization the world has ever known. Every player is a genuine Japanese. Not one of them can speak a word of English. They do all their coaching in Japanese and is certainly the most Japanesy Japanese you have ever listened to.”

     

     

    An advertising poster for Guy Green’s Japanese Team

     

     

    Playing on the public’s fascination with the Russo-Japanese War, Green also concocted fictional backgrounds for his players. An April 13, 1906, article in the Frankfort Review noted, “One of the most interesting members of Green’s Japanese baseball team is Kitsuse, who left school in Japan to serve during the last great war with Japan. He was wounded in the left leg at Mukden so severely that he was compelled to go home and even yet he limps slightly. He is one of the best me on the team, however, and always a great favorite with the crowds.” Kitsuse, however, immigrated to California on June 8, 1903, almost two years before the 1905 Battle of Mukden.

     

    Shortstop Ken Kitsuse

     

    On Sunday, April 15, Frankfort welcomed the visiting team in style with a parade to Sportsman’s Park led by a thirty-piece cornet band. According to the Nebraska State Journal, “both teams, together with city officials, were in the procession.” The exact location of the ballpark is currently unknown, but evidence suggests that it was on the western edge of town.

     

    The high schoolers took the field in brand-new grey uniforms which just arrived a couple of days before. They had F.H.S. stitched across their jerseys in red and wore red caps and stockings. The Marshall County Indexnoted that “the boys look very striking in their new toggery.” The Japanese squad wore white pants reaching just below the knees, wide leather belts, maroon stockings, maroon undershirts, and a winged-collared maroon jersey with “Greens Japs” stitched in white block letters across the chest. The caps were white with maroon bills.

     

    A parade in Frankfort, Kansas circa 1906

     

     

    As the high school contained just 41 students, the match should have been an easy victory for Green’s professional team, so Tobey started a mostly Japanese lineup. But Tobey had underestimated the skinny, 15-year-old redhead on the mound. The teenage ace, Fairfield “Jack” Walker would go on to pitch for the University of Kansas in 1911-12 and professionally in the Class D Nebraska State League and the Eastern Kansas League. Although a quiet kid, the Horton Headlight noted “when playing Walker wears a perpetual grin that makes a lot of batters mad because they think he is laughing at them.”

     

    No box score for the game survives, just a notation of the pitchers and catchers, but based on the lineups used by the high school just two days earlier and in the following weeks, we can infer that pitcher Fairfield Walker was backed up by George Moss behind the plate; a boy identified only as Russell at first; Harold Haskins at second; Willis Cook at third; Leo Holthoefer at short; and Robert Barrett, John McNamara and Walker (unknown first name but perhaps Isaac B.) in the outfield.

     

    The schoolboys jumped out to an early 4-1 lead after three innings, forcing Tobey to bring in what the Marshall County Index called “five professional American players.” The visitors battled back, scoring in every inning after the second, to eventually win 11-8. The Frankfort Review reported, “A large number of people witnessed the game, and they pronounced it one of the best games ever played here.”

     

    Nonetheless, the game irked some local residents. Later that week, the Frankfort Review reported, “The protest against the Sunday ball playing, made by the ministers of this city last Saturday, met with approval of nearly everybody. There is no denying the fact that Sunday ball playing in a town the size of Frankfort is not good for the morals of the town. In a large city ball playing is alright, in fact beneficial for it amuses a class of people who would probably spend their time at worse places, and the noise does not disturb anyone. The usual small town game is annoying to many people. However, last Sunday’s game at Sportsman’s Park was not noisy. Our people are interested in baseball, and always patronized the games well but we know they would prefer to have the games played on other than Sundays.”

     

    After the Sunday game, the next day Green’s team traveled 14 miles to the west to play the Blue Rapids town team at Riverside Park, which still exists. The report on the 7-6 Japanese victory in the Blue Rapid Times provides insights on the barnstorming team’s economics. “The business houses pretty generally closed up or dismissed their clerks and there was a fine turnout. There were 356 paid admissions and the school children who were admitted free swelled the attendance to close to 500. The receipts were $85.30, of which the home team got one-fourth.”

     

    Green’s Japanese squad would stay on the road until October 10, playing about 170 games against small town teams and a few semi-pro squads throughout the Midwest. They won 122 of the 142 games for which results are known.

     

    Despite the lengthy tour and the uniqueness of the club, The Sporting News, as well as big market newspapers in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, did not cover or even mention Green’s Japanese team. As a result, the first professional Japanese players had little impact on the national or international baseball scene and were soon forgotten. But the tour marked the true beginnings of Japanese American baseball. After the season, the players headed back to the West Coast to form amateur Japanese ball clubs. These teams’ success helped spawn numerous Nikkei clubs as baseball became an integral part of the Japanese American community and culture.

     

    You can read more about the Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team and the early pioneers of Japanese American baseball in my book Issei baseball: The First Japanese American Ballplayers (University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

  • The 1974 New York Mets Goodwill Tour of Japan

    The 1974 New York Mets Goodwill Tour of Japan

    by Henry Tran

    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 HENRY TRAN focus on the Mets 1974 trip to Japan.

    For certain kids growing up in Tokyo in the 1970s, three of the most popular sports to watch on television were baseball, pro wrestling, and roller derby. For Hanshin fans, there was not much to cheer during the 1974 season, except for Koichi Tabuchi, the best offensive catcher in the league at that time, the Japanese equivalent of Johnny Bench. Some of the favorite wrestling moments were seeing Tiger Jeet Singh and Antonio Inoki going at each other or the Destroyer teaming with Giant Baba to face off against Fritz von Erich or Abdullah the Butcher. Then there was the Thursday night Roller Derby of the Tokyo Bombers against the New York Bombers or the LA T-Birds. Baseball, however, always took priority over the others. The one annoying thing was that the baseball TV broadcasts began at from 7 P.M., and at 9 P.M., whether the game was in the middle of excitement or a blowout, suddenly a woman’s voice offered this message: “Kono ban gumi wa goran no su pon sa no tei kyo de okuri shimasu” (“This program is brought to you by the following sponsors”) and the broadcast was over. That was when anyone wanting to know how the game ended had to listen to it on the radio.

    The summer of 1974 had a treat for baseball fans: a US collegiate team visiting Japan for a series. Managed by the legendary Rod Dedeaux, the team was loaded with hitters. One of the highlights of the series was the game played at Meiji Jingu Stadium when pitcher Takashi Yamaguchi from Kansai University struck out 13 American batters in a 6-3 victory for Japan. Then an exciting Central League race between the Yomiuri Giants and the Chunichi Dragons made it a busy baseball summer. And Japanese fans were buzzing all summer long in anticipation of a visit by the New York Mets in November.

    Hank Aaron ended the 1973 season with 713 career home runs, and second-year skipper Yogi Berra engineered the New York Mets to the NL pennant. Across the Pacific Ocean, Japan’s most popular team, the Giants, captured their 15th Japan Series, winning in five games over the Nankai Hawks. The baseball landscape in 1974 was heading into an exciting era. The Mets were invited to Japan for a goodwill tour at the conclusion of the season. With Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home-run record on April 8, 1974, Japan invited him over for a home-run contest with Sadaharu Oh. November could not come soon enough for Japanese fans. Despite the Mets’ disappointing season in 1974, which ended with a 71-91 record and a fifth-place finish in the National League East Division, Japanese fans were eager to see Berra, the Yankees’ former star catcher, and his All-Star pitcher, Tom Seaver.

    On October 24 the Mets delegation arrived at Haneda International Airport in a chartered DC-8. As expected, the delegation was welcomed by hundreds of media members and fans. A lot of the fans remembered that Berra had come to Japan almost two decades earlier, in 1955, as a member of the Yankees. They were looking forward to seeing the Mets play 18 games in 12 cities. For different reasons, nine Mets players decided not to make the trip including Jerry Grote, Cleon Jones, George Stone, and Tug McGraw. Berra brought up Roy Staiger and Ike Hampton from Triple-A Tidewater. (Hampton later played a season for the Kintetsu Buffaloes.) The Mets also included on their roster Joe Torre, whom they had just acquired from St. Louis in exchange for Ray Sadecki and Tom Moore.

    During the tour the Mets faced the Yomiuri Giants 10 times; the other eight games were split between an All-Japan team and squads of the Giants and another Nippon Professional Baseball Organization team.

    Game 1: Mets vs. Giants

    Korakuen Stadium, home of the Yomiuri Giants for almost 30 years, was located next to Korakuen Amusement Park. With a capacity of 50,000, it was the second largest ballpark in the JPL behind Koshien, home of the rival Hanshin Tigers, which could hold 60,0000. In a race decided by percentage points a few weeks before, the Giants lost the Central League pennant to the Dragons by a record of 71-50-9 (.5867) to 70-49-11 (.5882) – the closest winning margin ever. The postseason was an emotional time for Yomiuri, because the country’s favorite player, Shigeo “Mr. Giant” Nagashima, retired.

    On October 26, a capacity crowd filled the stadium to see the 1973 Cy Young Award winner, Tom Seaver, on the mound. Seaver pitched three innings, giving up three runs. The Mets jumped to a quick 3-0 lead off starter Mitsuhiro Sekimoto (10-5, 2.28 ERA during the season). With New York leading, 7-6, going into the bottom of the eighth inning, Oh parked a grand slam off reliever Jerry Cram and the Giants won, 10-7. John Milner, Wayne Garrett, and Dave Schneck all hit homers for the Mets. The Giants’ offense was impressive, recording 16 hits.

    Game 2: Mets vs. Giants

    A crowd of 40,000 showed up for a Monday afternoon game at Korakuen. Jon Matlack was on the hill against Kazumi Takahashi. Matlack pitched four solid innings and the Mets led 4-2 on Don Hahn’s home run in the top of the fifth. However, as in Game 1, the Mets were not able to hang on to a lead, when reliever Jack Aker walked six runners to allow the Giants to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth. Shigeru Kobayashi and Osamu Shimano kept the Mets scoreless in the last five innings. Neither team scored in the 10th and the game was called a 4-4-tie. This was done mainly so the teams could catch a flight to Sapporo for Game 3 the next day. Mets manager Berra noticed that the Japanese style of play was more aggressive since his first visit in the 1950s. “They’ve improved a lot, they’re more aggressive now, they go for the hit-and-run play, and they bunt more,” he commented.

    Game 3: Mets vs. Giants

    After an opening loss and a tie, the Mets were looking for a win in Sapporo. The teams arrived at Maruyama Stadium on October 29, a ballpark built in 1934 that seated 25,000. Occasionally the Giants and other teams played regular-season games at Maruyama. Jerry Koosman got the start. Before the game, Tom Seaver gathered seven Yomiuri pitchers in center field and gave advice about his four pitches and mechanics. New York Times writer Joseph Durso wrote: “They stood in a quiet semicircle on the center field grass in Maruyama Stadium beneath majestic mountains colored in the yellow and red of autumn. Expensive chalet homes snuggled into the slopes leading to the ski jump built for the 1972 Winter Olympics. In parkas and coats, the early arrivals began to crowd the gentle hill beyond the outfield fence at the foot of the mountain, spreading blankets on the cold ground to watch for the next four hours while the Giants and New York Mets brought their traveling goodwill tour north. Wood-burning heaters warmed the players in the dugouts and Sapporo beer warmed the customers who had paid $10 for box seats.”

    The Giants got to Koosman early, scoring two runs in the bottom of the second inning, but the Mets responded with two in the top of the third off starter Mitsuhiro Sekimoto. The Mets took the lead, 4-2, on a two-run single by Felix Millan in the fourth before Yomiuri recaptured the lead with three in the bottom of the fifth. The Mets got a run off reliever Takaaki Taniyama to tie the game at 5-5 in the sixth, but in the bottom of that inning, the Giants went ahead on a home run by Kazumasa Kono off reliever Bob Miller to win the game, 6-5. For the third straight game, the Mets did not hold on to their lead.

    Game 4: Mets vs. Giants

    After the game the teams flew to Sendai, the capital city of Miyagi prefecture. As in Sapporo, there were no professional baseball teams in Sendai. The multipurpose Miyagi Athletic Stadium opened in 1952 with a capacity of 30,000: a mere 7,000 seats but standing room for 23,000. Tom Seaver faced off against Nobuhiro Tamai, pitched six innings and drove in a run in the top of the fifth. Ed Kranepool homered off Shigeru Kobayashi to tie the game at 2-2 in the top of the seventh, but reliever Hank Webb gave up the winning run in the bottom of the inning, making the final score 3-2. Yoshimasa Takahashi came in to save the game for the Giants in the top of the ninth. The Mets were winless in four tries.

    Game 5: Mets vs. Giants

    The Mets arrived in Fukushima prefecture after a 90-minute ride on a bullet train. Kaiseizan Stadium had just opened in 1974 and was owned by Koriyama City. On this October 31 afternoon, with the temperature in the 40s, 18,000 fans flooded into the park to see Bob Apodaca start against Tadao Yokoyama. After seven innings, the Mets had a familiar 2-0 lead, with runs in the second inning on a fielder’s choice and an unearned run in the sixth. Once again the Mets were not able to hold on to their lead, as the Giants scored three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, two of them on a double by Toshimitsu Suetsugu to put them in the lead, 3-2. The Mets came back in the top of the ninth with a solo home run by John Milner, his second in the series, and the two teams settled for another 3-3 tie. After five games against the Giants, the Mets were still winless.

    Game 6: Mets vs. All-Japan

    The Mets were back to the familiar territory of Tokyo and Korakuen. A two-game series with the All-Stars was set for the weekend, in conjunction with Culture Day and the home-run contest between Hammerin’ Hank and Oh.

    Aaron arrived at Haneda Airport on November 1 after a 17-hour flight from Atlanta and was thrust into a press conference at the Hotel Okura in Minato-ku with his rival, Japanese home-run king Oh. Aaron had completed the 1974 season with 733 home runs and Oh had 634. The two home-run heavyweights would take several rounds of swings to see who would wear the crown. Aaron had not swung at a ball since Atlanta’s last game of the season, against Cincinnati on October 2. In that game, he parked a homer off the Reds’ reliever Rawly Eastwick in the seventh inning, his 20th of the season.

    Aaron and Oh were at the park taking batting practice at 10:30 A.M. The Mets and the All-Japan team were also there to prepare for their game after the home-run contest. Joe Pignatano, a coach for the Mets and a former catcher for the Dodgers, pitched to Aaron while batting practice pitcher Kuniyasu Mine threw to Oh. The 40-year-old Aaron was supposedly the underdog to the 34-year-old Oh, who had the home crowd of 50,000 behind him and was hitting against his familiar batting-practice pitcher.

    Aaron suggested the rules for the contest: Each batter would swing at 20 balls and whoever put the most into the stands would win. Aaron was being paid $50,000 and Oh $20,000. Oh won the coin toss and elected to go first. There were four rounds of five pitches in each. In the first round, Oh put three balls (measuring 330 feet, 396 feet, and 412 feet) into the right-field stands. Aaron followed with 396-foot and 380-foot homers. After one round, Oh led 3-2. In the second round, Oh put three more into the stands, one of them almost 400 feet. Aaron put four over the wall to tie the score at 6-6 after two rounds. In the third round Oh managed only one rocket, and Aaron hit three to take the lead, 9-7. In the final round, Oh put two over, including a 400-footer, to tie it at 9-9. Aaron parked a 429-foot blast with his third swing to win the contest, 10 homers to 9.

    After the two kings met in person, Aaron expressed his humble feeling about the contest: “Oh is only 34, he has a chance to hit over 800. Winning today’s contest proves nothing. If there is any meaning, it is that we made the fans happy.” The fans were happy indeed: they were treated to a one-time event.

    The game followed the contest and the Mets were still looking for their first win. Southpaw Jon Matlack was assigned to go against the best hitters of NPB. Yakult Swallows’ ace pitcher Hiromu Matsuoka, who was 17-15 with a 2.80 ERA during the season, started for the All-Japan team. Matlack pitched beautifully, giving up just two hits in eight innings, while Matsuoka struggled with the Mets hitters, surrendering six runs in 2⅔ innings. The Mets’ Joe Torre, Ron Hodges, and Ted Martinez homered in an 8-0 victory over the All-Stars. The All-Stars included future Hall of Famers Isao Harimoto, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Yutaka Fukumoto, Koichi Tabuchi, Oh, and Nagashima, but the Japanese media speculated that the All-Stars were not as good as the Giants, who had won their ninth straight championship in 1973.

    Game 7: Mets vs. All-Japan

    The next day, November 3, the Mets and the All-Stars squared off again with Jerry Koosman on the mound against Keishi Asano, who went 12-15 with a 2.49 ERA during the season with the Yakult Swallows. The Mets trailed 2-1 going into the top of the ninth, but Felix Millan and Ed Kranepool homered to put New York ahead 4-2 (the eventual the final score) and give Harry Parker the win. The Mets’ pitching had held the best of NPB to two runs in 18 innings. Berra summarized in his own way: “It took us a week to catch up – the pitchers, at least. Hitters can usually hit – Aaron showed that Saturday in his home‐run contest against Oh. But pitchers can go stale, the way ours did.”

    Game 8: Mets vs. Giants

    The Mets were playing their fourth straight game at Korakuen with another sellout crowd of 50,000 and looked for their first win against the Giants behind Tom Seaver. Yomiuri, wanting to continue its unbeaten streak, put Tsuneo Horiuchi on the mound. Seaver doubled in two runs to put the Mets up 3-1 in the top of the second but in the bottom of the inning, Shigeru Takada hit a three-run homer to put the Giants back on top, 4-3. John Milner hit a tying home run in the third; it would be the Mets’ last run of the game. Kazumasa Kono hit a solo homer in the bottom of the third to regain the lead and Oh added a solo homer in the sixth to make it a 6-4 game. Yomiuri then scored three runs on five hits, a walk, and two errors in the seventh and another in the eighth to win 10-4. In all, the Giants pounded out 17 hits, including three home runs.

    That evening, the Mets and Giants attended a reception at the US Embassy. Hank Aaron was also in attendance and the players from both teams exchanged game feedback as Shigeo Nagashima’s wife, Akiko, translated. Akiko had gone to Kokomo High School in Indiana and the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota.

    Read the rest of the article on SABR.org

    The 1974 New York Mets Goodwill Tour of Japan
  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 8, Daisuke Matsuzaka

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 8, Daisuke Matsuzaka

    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 pitcher who turned Koshien into theater and emerged as the Monster of the Heisei Era

    Every baseball country has its sacred ground.

    In America, it might be Yankee Stadium. Or the old one, at least. In the Dominican Republic, it might be Estadio Quisqueya. In Japan it is a ballpark called Koshien.

    Generations of high school players have stood on that field dreaming of becoming legends. Most leave in tears, collecting a small bag of dirt from the infield as a souvenir.

    On August 19, 1998, a seventeen-year-old pitcher threw 250 pitches at Koshien Stadium.

    The game lasted seventeen innings. It started in the morning and stretched into lunchtime. By the end of it the pitcher could barely lift his arm.

    The next day he came back and helped his team win one of the most famous comeback games in the history of Japanese high school baseball.

    The day after that, he threw a no-hitter in the championship game.

    That pitcher was Daisuke Matsuzaka. He became known as Heisei no Kaibutsu—the Monster of the Heisei Era.

    Matsuzaka was born in Aomori Prefecture in 1980 but grew up in Tokyo’s Koto ward. His parents named him after another famous pitcher, Daisuke Araki, who had been a star at Waseda Jitsugyo High School.

    Before baseball, Matsuzaka trained in kendo, starting at age five. The training was harsh. His instructor was known for pushing young students relentlessly, but it built strength in his back and wrists. Years later, when a child asked him how to throw faster, Matsuzaka answered simply: try kendo.

    But at first, Matsuzaka was not quite the legend people remember. At Yokohama High he was known as “Sabori no Matsu,” roughly “Matsu the Slacker,” because he did not like to practice. Then, during a 1997 regional tournament, he lost a game on a wild pitch.

    The loss changed him. He began training obsessively.

    By his third year, he could throw over 150 kilometers per hour (93 mph), a rare velocity for a high school pitcher at the time. His slider was devastating. His stamina seemed limitless.

    In 1998, he helped lead his team to the spring championship. But it was during the summer tournament that he became something larger than life.

    Koshien is not simply a stadium. For Japanese high school baseball, it is something closer to a shrine. The tournament fills the stands every summer and attracts enormous television audiences. Families sometimes move so their sons can attend schools strong enough to reach it. High school kids become household names overnight.

    Even before the tournament began, opposing coaches knew what they were facing. Shiro Mabuchi of Meitoku Gijuku watched him pitch earlier that year and shook his head.

    “That kid,” he said, “is a monster.”

    Matsuzaka laughed when people repeated the nickname.

    “Monster? I don’t really look like one.”

    He didn’t. He looked like a skinny teenager with the face of an angel but the arm of a devil. And once he stepped onto the mound, his expression changed. The fastball exploded from his hand. The slider seemed to snap downward at the last instant.

    Yokohama’s path to the championship unfolded like a drama that kept growing more intense. In the quarterfinals, Matsuzaka threw 250 pitches over 17 innings against PL Gakuen in one of the longest games in tournament history.

    It began earlier than he liked. The first pitch came at 8:30 in the morning. For Matsuzaka, that meant waking around 4:30 a.m. after barely sleeping. Pitchers often struggle to sleep after throwing because their bodies remain wired with adrenaline, and that night he lay awake until nearly two in the morning.

    Later he joked that the biggest reason he struggled early in the game was simple.

    “It was too early.”

    Matsuzaka had another unusual pregame habit. On the bus to games he liked to eat potato chips and drink Coca-Cola. It was his way of relaxing before pitching.

    The game itself quickly turned into a test of endurance.

    PL Gakuen jumped ahead early, scoring three runs. For several innings Matsuzaka struggled to find his rhythm. Later he said that in those first innings he felt as if his body hadn’t quite woken up yet.

    Yokohama fought back. In the fourth inning, catcher and captain Yoshio Koyama hit a two-run home run. By the middle innings, the game had become a back-and-forth struggle.

    And gradually, Matsuzaka began to feel the change.

    By the late innings the ball started to come out of his hand with more life. The longer the game continued, the stronger he felt.

    Which was good because the game stretched into extra innings.

    At one point, Yokohama took a one-run lead in the eleventh inning. Matsuzaka himself reached base with a hard ground ball and eventually scored the go-ahead run.

    Yet even then he didn’t believe the game was over.

    Later he said that the strangest feeling during that game was the sense that it would never end. Even when Yokohama moved ahead, he somehow felt that the game would continue.

    Perhaps part of him didn’t want it to end. 

    There was also a moment of frustration. In the eleventh inning, Matsuzaka allowed a game-tying hit to Hiroaki Onishi on a curveball he had not wanted to throw. Catcher Koyama had called for it, and Matsuzaka followed the sign.

    Afterward he told him quietly, “We shouldn’t throw a curve to Onishi.”

    Koyama’s answer was simple.

    “Then shake me off.”

    But Matsuzaka rarely shook off his catcher. He preferred to trust the call and find a way to execute it.

    The game kept going. After sixteen innings of play, the game was tied at 7 apiece.

    At some point, teammate Ryota Tokiwa walked over and tapped Matsuzaka on the shoulder.

    “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll hit one.”

    In the seventeenth inning, Tokiwa did exactly that. Yokohama won 9-7.

    The next day brought an even stranger scene.

    After throwing 250 pitches against PL Gakuen, Matsuzaka did not start the semifinal against Meitoku Gijuku. Instead he appeared in the lineup as the cleanup hitter and left fielder, his pitching arm wrapped in tape.

    Meitoku dominated early. By the middle of the eighth inning, Yokohama trailed 6-0 and the game seemed finished. But Yokohama scored four runs in the bottom half to close the gap.

    Then Matsuzaka began throwing in the bullpen.

    Years later he admitted that no coach had told him to warm up. He had gone there on his own, hoping the staff would see him and realize he was ready to pitch.

    Even from the stands the change in atmosphere was obvious.

    When he tore the tape from his arm and walked to the mound in the ninth inning, the noise swelled into something closer to a roar. Matsuzaka later admitted he had noticed the television camera beside him before ripping off the tape. Even at seventeen, he understood the theater of the moment.

    Matsuzaka retired the side. In the bottom of the inning, Yokohama scored three runs and completed one of the most improbable come-from-behind victories in the history of the tournament.

    People often say that monsters live at Koshien. The phrase refers to the strange magic of the tournament—the sudden comebacks, the impossible reversals, the games that twist in ways nobody expects.

    But in the summer of 1998 it felt as if Yokohama had somehow learned how to tame those monsters.

    The team itself was unusually unified. Players such as Takeshi Goto and Masaaki Koike later said the atmosphere inside the team mattered as much as Matsuzaka’s pitching.

    During the tournament Goto struggled badly at the plate. One night he returned to the hotel discouraged. The phone rang. It was Matsuzaka calling from the next room.

    “Don’t worry about today,” he told him. “We’re counting on you tomorrow.”

    The next day Goto delivered key hits in Yokohama’s comeback victory.

    And then came the championship game against Kyoto Seisho. The final pitch of the tournament was a sweeping slider. Kyoto Seisho’s Yugo Tanaka swung through it.

    Matsuzaka turned toward the scoreboard and raised both arms into the air.

    Later he admitted he had partly turned for the cameras. This was his final stage, after all.

    The scoreboard still showed zeros in the column for hits.

    It was the first no-hitter in a championship game in nearly sixty years. Yokohama completed a season that included four national titles—Meiji Jingu, the spring and summer Koshien tournaments, and the National Sports Festival—and finished 44-0 in official games.

    Watching the tournament unfold, Kyoto Seisho’s manager later said simply:

    “It was Matsuzaka’s tournament.”

    The Monster of the Heisei Era had arrived.

    Yet Matsuzaka’s story was not only about domination. When he was in junior high school, his father’s company went bankrupt. The family sold their car so they could afford tuition at Yokohama High School. His mother worked part-time to support the household. His younger brother eventually attended a public school rather than a private one to reduce expenses.

    For Matsuzaka, success in baseball meant more than fame. He said openly that he wanted to turn professional and earn money.

    The 1998 draft quickly became the Daisuke Matsuzaka draft. Three teams selected him in the first round: the Saitama Seibu Lions, the Yokohama BayStars, and the Nippon-Ham Fighters.

    Matsuzaka himself hoped to join Yokohama and even suggested he might play corporate baseball if another team drafted him.

    Instead, Seibu manager Osamu Higashio drew the winning lottery ticket.

    “It’s not that easy,” Matsuzaka said afterward. “Out of courtesy I’ll talk with them, but my feelings haven’t changed.”

    Eventually he agreed to sign after Higashio presented him with the game ball from his own 200th career win. He took the traditional ace number: 18.

    Almost immediately the country experienced what newspapers called “Daisuke Fever.”

    Restaurants created dishes named after him. Fans packed spring training. The crowds became so overwhelming that the team once dressed pitcher Shinji Taninaka in Matsuzaka’s number 18 uniform as a decoy.

    His first professional start came on April 7, 1999 against the Fighters.

    The first pitch of his career was a fastball. 149 kilometers per hour.

    Strike one.

    After that, he struck out veteran slugger Atsushi Kataoka with a 155 km/h fastball. At one point during the game, veteran pitcher Tetsuya Shiozaki told him he was throwing too hard to last nine innings.

    Matsuzaka answered calmly: he had only thrown one pitch at full effort.

    He won the game.

    From there, the season only grew more spectacular.

    He faced Ichiro Suzuki and struck him out three times. He dominated the All-Star Game with five strikeouts. He declared after one outing that his confidence had changed “from belief to certainty.”

    By the end of the year he had 16 wins, the league lead, and became Rookie of the Year.

    A high school pitcher had entered professional baseball and immediately become one of its best players.

    For several years he became the dominant pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball. Matsuzaka led the Pacific League in wins three straight years from 1999 through 2001. He piled up strikeouts and innings with astonishing durability, often pitching on short rest. He won the Sawamura Award in 2001*. He helped lead the Lions to a Japan Series victory in 2004.

    *He went 15-15 that year but led the league in games started, complete games, wins (and losses), innings pitched, and strikeouts.

    He threw from a three-quarter arm slot, pausing briefly in his windup before exploding toward the plate. His fastball averaged around 147 km/h and could climb into the mid-150s, paired with a devastating slider and a deep mix of secondary pitches. His quick delivery made it difficult for runners to steal.

    He loved pitching. He loved throwing deep into games. And sometimes he threw a lot: well over 150 pitches. He pitched 38 complete games across three seasons from 2004-2006.

    Command was not always perfect. Matsuzaka sometimes struggled with walks, partly because his release point could move and his lower body sometimes lost stability. But when his pitches were right, hitters described the ball as exploding.

    Some said his fastball moved like that of a left-handed pitcher.

    If Japan had a must-win game in those years, the ball usually went to Matsuzaka.

    At the 2000 Sydney Olympics. he pitched brilliantly despite Japan narrowly missing a medal. At the 2004 Athens Olympics. he helped secure bronze.

    Then came the World Baseball Classic.

    In 2006, Matsuzaka won all three of his starts—including the championship game against Cuba—and was named tournament MVP. When Japan repeated as champion in 2009, he won the award again.

    Across eight seasons with Seibu, he captured three Best Nine selections, seven Golden Gloves, four strikeout titles, and two ERA championships.

    After the 2006 season, the Boston Red Sox paid $51.1 million just for the right to negotiate with him.

    In Boston, he became known as Dice-K*.

    *My least favorite nickname of all time.

    In 2007, he struck out 201 batters and helped the Red Sox win the World Series. In Game 3, he became the first Japanese pitcher to start a World Series game and even drove in two runs with a hit. In 2008 he went 18-3, the most wins ever by a Japanese pitcher in a major-league season.

    Scouts marveled at the movement on his pitches, and for a time rumors circulated that he threw a mysterious gyroball. Matsuzaka himself seemed amused by the myth. He said he wasn’t sure what people meant by it.

    Injuries later reshaped his career. But he returned to Japan and even won Comeback Player of the Year for the Chunichi Dragons in 2018 before retiring in 2021.

    His final appearance came at Seibu’s home park. He faced one batter, Yokohama High alumnus Kensuke Kondoh, and threw five pitches. The fastest reached 118 kilometers per hour.

    Afterward, he walked slowly around the field while fans applauded.

    Then Ichiro Suzuki stepped onto the field and handed him flowers.

    Matsuzaka began to cry.

    He finished his career with 170 wins and more than two thousand strikeouts across Japan and Major League Baseball. He remains the only player to have won all four: the Summer Koshien, the Japan Series, the World Baseball Classic, and the World Series.

    But numbers alone do not explain why fans loved him.

    They loved him because he loved pitching and because he never seemed afraid of the moment. And because for a generation of fans, the story of modern Japanese baseball begins with one unforgettable image:

    A seventeen-year-old pitcher at Koshien, turning toward the scoreboard and raising his arms.

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

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

  • ‘We Are Trying to Close the Gap, but It Is Very Wide Yet’: The Baltimore Orioles’ 1971 Tour of Japan

    ‘We Are Trying to Close the Gap, but It Is Very Wide Yet’: The Baltimore Orioles’ 1971 Tour of Japan

    by Dennis Snelling

    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 DENNIS SNELLING tells us about what was supposed to be a true World Series: the 1971 Baltimore Orioles visit to Japan

    Matsutaro Shoriki spent four decades dreaming of an international World Series matching the champion team of American baseball and that of the Japanese. He created Japan’s greatest team, sponsored by his newspaper and known over the years as either the Tokyo or Yomiuri Giants, as a means to fulfilling that dream.

    Beginning in the 1950s, serious attempts were made to bring a World Series champion to Japan, but it never quite worked out. Because of the lead time necessary for planning such an event, guesses as to a potential World Series champion had to be made. These proved wrong every time, almost as if a curse. The New York Giants seemed a good possibility in 1953, but Brooklyn instead captured the National League pennant. Two years later, the New York Yankees – a sure bet during the 1950s – accepted an invitation. That turned out to be the year they finally lost to the Dodgers in the fall classic. So Brooklyn was chosen the next year and, of course, lost the 1956 World Series to the Yankees.

    The Los Angeles Dodgers, champions twice in three years, were invited after the 1966 season – and lost the World Series, once again dashing the hopes of those wanting to see two champions play in Japan. Two years later the St. Louis Cardinals, winners of the 1967 World Series, were invited to tour in October 1968, and they too lost the subsequent fall classic, to the Detroit Tigers.

    Shoriki died in October 1969, and his son took up the cause. Six months after Shoriki’s death, the San Francisco Giants visited Japan for spring training and lost six of nine games against Japanese competition. Despite not facing a World Series champion, the Japanese were gaining confidence that they measured up – 3½ years earlier they had won eight of 18 games against the Dodgers.

    The Yomiuri Giants were invited to Florida in the spring of 1971 to play six exhibition games against major-league competition. They were the best Japan had to offer – the 1970 season marked the sixth consecutive championship the Giants had captured, with three more still to come.

    The roster was impressive, featuring three of the biggest names in Japanese baseball. Foremost was Sadaharu Oh, the legendary left-handed slugger and by far the most famous Japanese player among American fans. He was widely known for his distinctive batting style, highlighted by balancing on his back leg while swinging, a style that drew comparisons to Mel Ott. It reminded others of a flamingo. Oh had hit 40 or more home runs eight straight years through 1970, including 55 in 1964, despite seasons 20 games shorter than in the United States. Through the 1971 season, the 31-year-old Oh had hit 486 career home runs and would play nine more years, ultimately slugging at least 30 home runs for an incredible 19 consecutive years, and 868 home runs for his career.

    The most famous and popular player among Japanese fans was charismatic 34-year-old third baseman Shigeo Nagashima. A hero thanks to his dramatic game-winning walk-off, or “Sayonara,” home run in the first game Emperor Hirohito ever attended, Nagashima was exceptional both at bat and in the field, hitting 444 career home runs with a .305 batting average.

    The manager of the Giants, Tetsuharu Kawakami, was known as the “God of Batting.” The winner of five batting titles and the first Japanese player to reach 2,000 hits, he took over as manager in 1961, three years after his retirement as a player, and never suffered a losing season at the helm. After winning pennants in 1961 and 1963 but losing the Japan Series both times, Kawakami had captured Japan Series wins in six straight seasons. It was time to measure Japanese baseball against the best – the mighty Baltimore Orioles, American League standard-bearers two years running and defending World Series champions. They were favorites to repeat in 1971 and finally bring the late Matsutaro Shoriki’s dream one step closer to reality.

    The Orioles, fresh off a fall classic victory over the Cincinnati Reds, accepted an invitation in January 1971 for a monthlong tour after the next World Series. The schedule included 18 games, 11 of them against the Yomiuri Giants.

    A couple of weeks after the invitation was accepted, the Japanese sports newspaper Hochi Shimbun commissioned a computer simulation of a theoretical seven-game series between the Orioles and the Giants. The computer results had the Orioles winning four of the seven games, with the Giants winning two and one game ending in a 12-inning tie.

    The Giants and Orioles previewed their postseason matchup during spring training in Miami on March 11, one of the half-dozen exhibition games Yomiuri played in Florida. Players mingled before the game, seven Giants surrounding Brooks Robinson behind the batting cage, including 5-foot-7, 140-pound pitcher Akira Tanaka, who could not resist measuring his hand against that of the Orioles third baseman in comparison.

    The Japanese were particularly impressed by the sight of 6-foot-4 Boog Powell, who was introduced to Sadaharu Oh. During their conversation, Powell leaned his massive frame against Oh and whispered, “Fella, you make more money than I do.” Oh replied, “47 home runs,” his total for the 1970 season.

    Brooks Robinson told reporters that Lee Walls, a former All-Star outfielder who played in Japan in 1965, thought Oh to be one of the five best hitters he had ever seen. Scout Gordon Windhorn, recently retired as a player after six seasons with the Hankyu Braves, recalled his advice to American pitchers facing Oh after they saw his stance and curious one-legged pause during his swing. “You think you can change speeds on him, but you can’t. He’ll just stand there and wait and keep that right leg balanced.”

    For his part, Oh said he enjoyed playing against Americans. “Friendships are very important to me,” he declared. “I also benefit from the spirit of the American players – the way they slide, the way they make double plays. The Japanese are much more conservative.”

    The game played that day was competitive. Both teams scored in the first inning, with the Orioles adding runs in the fourth and sixth to take a 3-1 lead. After some back-and-forth, Baltimore was ahead, 6-3, going into the last frame.

    Sadaharu Oh slapped a run-scoring single in the ninth, his second of the day. Then, with two out and one on, Shigeo Nagashima hit a long fly ball down the line that appeared to have tied the game. “I thought it was a home run,” said Nagashima “But the wind helped it go foul.” He was then retired and Baltimore won, 6-4.

    The Giants took heart that they had held their own, although several of Baltimore’s stars, including Frank and Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell, played only portions of the game. Tetsuharu Kawakami said of the Orioles, “Their physical superiority seemed indeed overwhelming before the game, but I found later they were not as powerful as I thought.” The Giants came away confident that they belonged on the same field, and looked forward to October.

    Relations between Japan and the United States grew tense in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Japan’s sensitivity always surfaced when the United States courted the attention of a rival. In July 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had completed a secret trip to the People’s Republic of China that resulted in Nixon being invited to meet with Mao Zedong. The invitation was accepted, with the meeting to take place within a year. This sent shock waves through Japan, which feared being abandoned by the United States. A month earlier, it was thought that all differences had been resolved through a negotiation aimed at returning Japanese territories seized during World War II, with Okinawa reverting to Japanese control in 1972.

    But the Japanese government was embarrassed by Nixon’s actions, the lack of forewarning about an earthshaking shift in American foreign policy considered a lack of respect, especially with Japan openly entrenched in a policy – thought to be shared by the United States – banning relations with China.

    Then, a month after announcing he was going to Beijing, Nixon announced a 10 percent import surcharge as part of an economic recovery package, further straining relations with Japan. Japanese students, unhappy with a continued military presence of the United States on Okinawa beyond 1972, began rallying against the US and the agreement, which delayed Japanese ratification of the deal until late November, after the Orioles had left the country.

    That fall, Emperor Hirohito, in his 45th year on the throne, became the first reigning emperor to travel abroad, returning from Europe a week prior to the arrival of the Orioles. He visited briefly with President Nixon during his first stop, in Anchorage, Alaska, as the Northern Lights danced overhead, punctuating Nixon’s attempt to mend fences.

    1971 Baltimore Orioles Goodwill Tour ticket (Robert Fitts Collection)

    While the 1966 Dodgers visited without Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Orioles brought everyone. Frank and Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell were the offensive stars and Baltimore boasted a pitching staff featuring 20-game winners Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson. Of course, the curse continued, with the Orioles dropping the 1971 World Series to Pittsburgh in seven games. So once again, the Japanese were frustrated in their attempt to stage an informal world championship series. The 72-person traveling party also included Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, American League President Joe Cronin, and umpire Jim Honochick. Pitching coach George Bamberger remained home, having suffered a recent heart attack.

    The Orioles arrived in Japan on October 21, greeted by several hundred fans and dozens of newspaper photographers. The next day they headed out to Korakuen Stadium for their first workout and were surprised by 5,000 rabid Japanese fans, digesting their every move. They seemed most in awe of the 260-pound Powell.

    Each Orioles player received $4,000 plus another $1,000 in spending money; meal tabs at the hotel were picked up by their Japanese hosts. Earl Weaver, legendary for his intensity, relaxed many of the rules for the trip. Players were allowed to grow mustaches, banned during the regular season, and to drink at the hotel bar, a domain traditionally restricted to the manager and coaching staff. Brooks Robinson grew a mustache. So did Mark Belanger, Mike Cuellar, Curt Motton, and Andy Etchebarren. By the end of the tour, reliever Eddie Watt sported a full beard. Frank Robinson opted for a Fu Manchu.

    Weaver also relaxed his strictly enforced dress code of coats and ties, and surprised many by drinking and playing cards with his men. “I told the players I would relax the rules … as long as they did not abuse the privileges. I also told them once we put the uniforms on, I expect the same performance and effort as in the regular season.”

    Two days after the team arrived in Japan, 15 of the Orioles wives held a shopping party where outfielder Curt Motton and his wife were staying, Room 1208 at the New Otani Hotel, which became an impromptu store thanks to George Speccks, who billed himself as George the Silk Man. He had been passing out his business card in the lobby, and Motton’s wife, Jackie, took him up on his offer, inviting the other wives to sift through a collection of silks, kimonos, watches, and cameras.

    “You can imagine the bedlam in my room with all these girls crowded in,” said Jackie Motton, shaking her head. “We went through thirty bottles of (Coca-Cola) and by the time it was over, I felt like I had thrown some kind of wild party.” She spent more than $250, buying 19 kimonos and happi coats. The nonstop hard-sell of George the Silk Man ultimately broke down just about everyone at some point during the tour. If you wanted it, George and his associates would sell it to you.

    Korakuen Stadium was the second largest in Japan and home of the Yomiuri Giants, who had played before more than 2.3 million paying customers in 1971, their ninth straight year topping two million, and more than twice the number drawn in Baltimore. The facility had its challenges. The outfield distances were short (295 feet down the lines, 380 to center) and the clubhouse was tiny, with no toilets or showers, so players dressed at the hotel. Catered meals were provided before games, served by tuxedo-clad waiters.

    Before the first game, Bowie Kuhn met with Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, while Earl Weaver told reporters he hoped to win six to seven of the 11 games against the Giants. Kuhn threw out the first ball and read a message from President Nixon, and the Orioles appeared wearing uniforms bearing their names in both English and Japanese.

    Baltimore easily won the first two games, knocking Japanese baseball experts back on their heels a bit. Jim Palmer won the opener, 8-4, despite allowing home runs to Yukinobu Kuroe and Koji Ano in the sixth inning. The Giants seemed shaky, committing five errors leading to four unearned runs. Brooks Robinson homered to spark a five-run second inning for Baltimore. Neither Oh nor Nagashima managed to get a hit, while Boog Powell slugged one over the fence for the Orioles.

    The second game matched Orioles veteran southpaw Mike Cuellar against Giants ace Tsuneo Horiuchi. Don Buford robbed Sadaharu Oh of a home run, keeping the Japanese star hitless in the first two contests. Frank Robinson, battling a strained Achilles tendon, homered on a Horiuchi changeup, one of three Baltimore round-trippers during an easy 8-2 win. Robinson praised the umpiring while noting that the strike zone was a bit high. He also suggested that Horiuchi, who allowed six runs in six innings, should rely more on his fastball.

    The Orioles were amused, but at the same time honored by the ceremonial atmosphere surrounding the contests. Before every game, a group of young women in kimonos presented Earl Weaver with a bouquet. During games, tuxedo-clad waiters served coffee and tea in the dugout. Even writers were treated well, provided with hot towels after the fourth inning.

    Read the rest of the article on SABR.org

    ‘We Are Trying to Close the Gap, but It Is Very Wide Yet’: The Baltimore Orioles’ 1971 Tour of Japan
  • Nippon Professional Baseball Teams: A Primer

    Nippon Professional Baseball Teams: A Primer

    T-Ray (Trevor Raichura) & Thomas Love Seagull talked on March 7 about all twelve NPB teams, their appeal and history, in this podcast.

    What makes these teams unique? Why should you want to cheer for them? If you’re new to NPB, this is the episode for you! If you already know the league, this is still a good primer to help you remember what got you here in the first place!

    Listen here:

    https://trevorraichura.substack.com/p/nippon-professional-baseball-teams?utm_source=podcastemail%2Csubstack&publication_id=2412463&post_id=191839981&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=play_card_play_button&r=3yqqjp&triedRedirect=true

  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 9, Randy Bass

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 9, Randy Bass

    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 quiet slugger from Oklahoma who became a Kansai folk hero

    For a time in Japan, Randy Bass was mentioned in the same breath as gods.

    It wasn’t a metaphor. It was a chant.

    Kamisama. Hotokesama. Baasu-sama.

    God. Buddha. Bass.

    It rose from the outfield stands at Koshien, carried by brass horns and plastic bats and voices from the Tigers’ faithful that had long ago decided that baseball was not a sport but a way of life. The chant sounded playful at first, the way Osaka humor often does: there is always a wink somewhere in Kansai. Because the single-character abbreviation for Hanshin can also be read as kami, meaning “god,” television captions and newspapers sometimes labeled him simply: Bass (God)*. But by the fall of 1985, when the Tigers were winning in a way they had not won in a generation, the wink was gone.

    *Hanshin is written as 阪神. The shorthand for it is 神.

    They meant it.

    The unmistakably American Randy Bass, blond, bearded, and broad-shouldered, had become something that rarely exists in Japanese baseball: a foreign player who did not feel foreign.

    And like many greats in baseball, he wasn’t supposed to be great.

    He had already been labeled in America. A hitter whose power sounded bigger than it actually was. A man once described as capable of hitting a ball from New York to Los Angeles, but whose real reputation settled into something less romantic: a warning-track hitter, vulnerable to fastballs, limited defensively, and slowed by a childhood leg injury that never fully healed. He moved from team to team in Major League Baseball—Minnesota, Kansas City, Montreal, San Diego, Texas—never quite settling in anywhere long enough to become a fixture. In 1981, at the age of 27, with the Padres, he hit .210/.293/.313 with 4 home runs in 69 games. That would be the longest look he would get at the big league level.

    In the minors, though, oh boy. After being drafted by the Twins out of high school, he led the Florida Coast League with 10 home runs in 1972. At 20, he hit 30 home runs for single-A Lynchburg. At 23, he slashed .321/.456/.560 with 25 home runs and 117 RBI for Tacoma in the Pacific Coast League. By the early 1980s, he was the sort of player baseball produces by the hundreds: talented enough to reach the majors, not quite good enough to stay.

    In the winter of 1982, several Japanese clubs considered signing Bass. Yakult nearly did, but they had too many first basemen already. Hankyu was close to making an effort, but decided on Boomer Wells instead. When the Hanshin Tigers went shopping that winter, they did not circle Randy Bass’s name. Manager Motoo Andoh flew to the United States in search of power, yes, but not specifically his power. Bass was the second signing. Steve Stroughter was their first target. Bass was insurance.

    After all, he had only hit nine home runs in the major leagues.

    Nine.

    He had spent winters working at a pipe company because minor league paychecks have a way of disappearing faster than you think they will. He had been, in the most neutral baseball sense, a professional hitter. The kind you can find every spring in Arizona and Florida. The kind who hopes the next swing might change everything. The kind who usually learns it won’t.

    When Hanshin offered him roughly double what he could expect in the United States, he did not speak of destiny or desire to experience a new culture. He spoke of practicality.

    “I was honest,” he would later say. “It was the money.”

    That statement is important because nothing about this story begins romantically. Even his name posed a problem.

    Technically, it should have been rendered in Japanese as “Basu” like “bus.” But Hanshin was a railway company. It also ran buses. And someone in the front office imagined the newspaper headlines if the American slugger struck out three times in a big game.

    “Hanshin Bus Stalls.”

    Or if he had a slump.

    “Hanshin Bus Breaks.”

    It was too easy.

    So they stretched the vowel. “Baasu.” It was long enough just to avoid unwanted wordplay.

    And then he started playing.

    He was hit by a pitch in an exhibition game and missed time. First base belonged to Taira Fujita, a legend, which meant Bass was shuffled into the outfield, which meant everyone in Japan could see that he was not an outfielder. He ran like a man who had once broken both feet as a child because he had. His first at-bat ended in a strikeout. He opened the season hitless in seventeen at-bats.

    Someone in the front office joked that if the original spelling of his name had remained, the newspaper headline would already have written itself: “Bus Stop.”

    The Tigers, constrained by the league’s limit on foreign players, soon had to make a decision. Keep Bass or keep Stroughter, whose production was nearly identical. The club valued his effort and attitude, but Bass survived largely because he was two years younger.

    Bass did something that many foreign players do not do. He paid attention. He watched teammates crowd around a small dormitory table late at night, tiles clicking and laughter bouncing off the walls. Mahjong. He asked to learn. Akinobu Okada, who would one day manage the Tigers to another championship decades later, shrugged and told him it wasn’t worth it because he wouldn’t be in Japan long enough.

    There is something beautifully human about that moment. Or maybe just blunt honesty. Okada assumed Bass was only passing through. It made sense: most foreigners only lasted a season or two. But Randy Bass was not like most foreigners.

    When his wife Linda struggled with homesickness, it was those same teammates who helped her adjust. When veteran Kozo Kawato introduced him to shogi, Bass did not treat it as a novelty. He studied it seriously. Kawato would later say what struck him most was not the power in Bass’s swing but the care in his questions. Where should I stand? Why do pitchers throw this way? How do fans think here?

    He learned to use chopsticks with ease. He embraced Japanese food, developing a love for Kobe beef and even the stadium udon at Koshien. There are foreign players who live in a country for years and never lean into it. Bass leaned into it.

    And then he leaned into the strike zone. Japanese pitchers did not challenge him the way American pitchers had. They worked the edges relentlessly. They lived outside. And umpires, for reasons cultural and practical, granted that outside pitch, especially against foreigners. Players called it the “gaijin strike.” Bass could have complained. Many did. Instead, he recalibrated.

    Under batting coach Teruo Namiki, he shortened his swing. He studied Japanese baseball deliberately. He learned about ballparks and winds from fellow foreigner Boomer Wells. Teammate Masayuki Kakefu showed him how to use the famous Koshien breeze, teaching him to guide pitches toward left field. Bass expanded his approach until even a controlled swing could carry into the stands.

    By late 1983, something changed. He hit in 25 consecutive games. He finished with 35 home runs. He was no longer the insurance option. He was an established star. But a star is not yet divine. Divinity came later.

    And it began, as so many good baseball stories do, with the Giants. You cannot understand the Randy Bass story without understanding the Yomiuri Giants.

    The Giants were not merely a rival. They were the sun while the rest of the teams were merely planets. They were Tokyo. They were money and history and television contracts and Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima and the assumption that, eventually, things would tilt in their favor. For decades, the Hanshin Tigers had been loud and loyal and theatrical but always second.

    Hanshin did not simply want to win. Hanshin wanted to beat Yomiuri.

    April 17, 1985, was only the fourth game of the season. That is important. This was not September. This was not a pennant race at its climax. The year before, the Tigers had finished in 4th place, behind the Giants, and twenty-three games behind the first-place Carp. But it was early enough that hope still existed and doubt had not yet hardened into place.

    Koshien was full, of course. It always was when the Giants came to town. Forty-five thousand voices, whistles bleating, yellow plastic bats clacking together, horns blaring in organized rhythm. The Tigers had lost two of their first three games. Bass was in a slump. Two hits in fifteen at-bats. Six strikeouts. No home runs.

    The Giants led 3-1 in the seventh inning. Warren Cromartie had hit a two-run home run in the first to give the Giants the lead.

    Hiromi Makihara, just 21 years old, stood on the mound. He would go on to have a long, distinguished career. That night he was young and confident and throwing well.

    Two outs. Runners on first and second.

    Bass walked to the plate. The number 44 stretched across his back.

    Makihara wanted a quick strike. The plan, as later told, was to induce contact. Perhaps a ground ball. Perhaps a fly ball that held up in the night air. But the pitch drifted too much toward the inside of the plate.

    He had been waiting for that pitch for two years.

    The ball left the bat with a sound that experienced hitters recognized instantly.

    It rose toward center field.

    Koshien’s batter’s eye loomed like a black rectangle against the night.

    The ball disappeared into it.

    The Tigers led 4-3. A come-from-behind three-run home run.

    Next, Masayuki Kakefu stepped in and hit one to almost the same place. He embraced Bass when he reached the dugout.

    Then Akinobu Okada did, too. He smiled as he rounded the bases.

    Three consecutive home runs to center field.

    The “Backscreen Three.” The phrase still lives on in Kansai.

    But players would later say something specific and revealing: it was Bass’s home run that mattered most. When he hit that ball, they believed. They won the game. And then they kept winning. What began as a comeback rally changed the course of the season.

    He hit third in a lineup that felt engineered for pressure. Akinobu Mayumi at the top, fast and dangerous. Bass was third, compact and merciless. Kakefu behind him, the long-time star of the franchise. Okada after that, the hometown pride. If you walked Bass, Kakefu punished you. If you pitched to him, he punished you.

    By the All-Star break, Bass had already hit 30 home runs and the Tigers stood in first place for the first time in years. “Tiger Fever” swept across the nation. In early August, he fouled a ball off his ankle and suffered a small fracture expected to sideline him for two weeks. Reporters immediately wondered how Hanshin could possibly survive without him.

    But only days later, when the Tigers arrived for a game in Tokyo, players were stunned to see Bass already sitting in the dugout, dressed in uniform despite the injury. Doctors had not cleared him to play, and the coaching staff suggested he limit himself to a pinch-hit appearance. Bass refused. With his ankle heavily taped and wearing modified shoes to dull the pain, he insisted on starting. That night he drove in a run with a line drive off the wall and slid hard into second base despite the injury.

    The Tigers won, and teammates later said the mere sight of Bass in the dugout had lifted the entire club. During the following days he continued hitting as if nothing had happened, and the momentum of the season never slowed. Hanshin hit 219 home runs that season, more than any other team. Four players topped thirty. The ball left Koshien in waves.

    But the real tension began when the number 55 entered the conversation. That was Sadaharu Oh’s record. Fifty-five home runs in 1964.

    In Japan, records are not just numbers. They are history. And they are protected.

    By late September, Bass had 54. Fifty-four with two games left. Both against the Giants. Managed by, of course, Sadaharu Oh. It could not have felt more scripted.

    Bass came to the plate nine times in those final two games. He drew six walks. The Giants pitched around him without apology. There was nothing subtle about it. Bass swung at balls he would not normally swing at. He chased. He reached. He tried to force the issue.

    He finished at 54.

    He understood something about baseball in Japan that took others longer to grasp: sacred numbers are not surrendered lightly. Oh denied ordering intentional walks. Bass later admitted disappointment but praised pitchers like Suguru Egawa who had faced him honestly.

    He had come within one swing of tying the most hallowed home-run record in Japanese history. He did not get that swing. But at the same time, something else was happening. He and Okada were racing for the batting title. With three games remaining, Okada briefly led.

    Imagine the tension in that clubhouse. Two teammates. Two friends. Both chasing something that would last forever. And then, almost ironically, it was the walks that helped Bass.

    While he was being pitched around in the home-run chase, his average did not drop. Okada pressed. He tried to do too much. When it was over, Bass had edged him by eight thousandths of a point.

    Triple Crown.

    .350 average. 54 home runs. 134 runs batted in.

    The Tigers clinched the pennant on October 16 at Jingu Stadium, their first one since 1964.

    Fans flooded the Dotonbori district in Osaka to celebrate. Supporters called out players’ names one by one, and for each name, a fan resembling that player leapt into the canal below.

    When it came time for Bass, there was a problem. There were no bearded American sluggers nearby. So they found the closest available substitute—a statue of Colonel Sanders from outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken—and threw it into the water instead.

    It sounds absurd. It was perfectly Kansai.

    They advanced to face the Seibu Lions in the Japan Series. Bass hit .368 in the Series with three home runs and 9 RBI to take home MVP. The Tigers captured their first championship of the two-league era that began in 1950.

    The Tigers would not win another title for decades. The statue would not be recovered until 2009. The “Curse of the Colonel” would become part of baseball folklore. But that night, there was no curse. For a fanbase that had waited generations, Bass was no longer just a foreign star. He was a god.

    Then came the next season. Because while maybe 1985 could be explained as magic, 1986 could not.

    There is something about the number .400 that makes reasonable people unreasonable. In American baseball, it is myth. Everybody knows Ted Williams was the last to do it in MLB. In Japanese baseball, it is impossibility. It had never been done.

    By the time the 1986 season began, Randy Bass was already something larger than a player. He had won a Triple Crown. He had helped deliver a championship that felt like civic duty. His beard was the most recognizable facial hair in Japan. Gillette had paid him an extraordinary sum to shave it for a television commercial. Candy bars bore his name. Children in Osaka wore fake blond beards to games.

    But in the beginning of the season, he looked ordinary. He arrived at spring camp heavier than ideal. He had trained lightly over the winter. There was a sense, perhaps subconscious, that he had climbed the mountain and could breathe a little. He dealt with back pain. Heel trouble. Blisters that split open on his hands. He struck out three times on Opening Day.

    Baseball specializes in humbling men who believe momentum carries over. Through April he lagged behind the leaders in all three Triple Crown categories. The Tigers stumbled out of the gate. Then, in late May, something aligned.

    It began quietly in a series against the Yokohama Taiyo Whales. Three games. Three home runs. Six hits. Eight runs batted in. The swing had been found again and by the end of May, his average had climbed past .340.

    In June, it exploded. He hit .473 for the month. Think about that number. Nearly half the time he walked to the plate, he walked back having reached base with a hit.

    On July 1, he was flirting with .390. On July 2, he crossed .400.

    Sports pages began printing his batting average daily in bold. Television commentators led broadcasts with updates. Opposing pitchers were asked before games how they planned to retire him. Retired pitcher Yutaka Enatsu, the man who struck out 401 while pitching for the Tigers in 1968, wrote a column that cut through the politeness: If Bass Hits .400, It Will Be the Shame of the Central League.

    Isao Harimoto’s .383 in 1970 stood as the modern standard*. To surpass it, to even approach it, felt like heresy.

    *Harimoto is ethnically Korean but born and raised in Japan. His Korean name is Jan Hun. He survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. He holds the NPB record for hits with 3,085 and is the only player in history to hit 500 home runs and steal 300 bases.

    He once said that if the Japanese Self-Defense Force worked as hard as the media had to find weaknesses in his swing, Japan would have the strongest military in the world.

    The joke landed because it carried the truth. There were magazine spreads analyzing his mechanics. Computer-generated charts mapping his contact zones. Articles detailing how to pitch him inside, how to change speeds, how to disrupt timing. It became a national project.

    Yet still, he hit.

    He tied Sadaharu Oh’s professional record with a home run in seven consecutive games, the seventh coming off Suguru Egawa. The poetry was impossible to ignore. Oh again, always Oh. Oh publicly complained that Bass was applying too much grip spray to his bat before stepping into the box.

    The umpires issued a warning. Bass shrugged then he hit another home run. He drove in runs in thirteen consecutive games, a Japanese record. Through his first sixty-nine games, he was hitting .399. The difference between .399 and .400 is microscopic. It is also infinite. When he went hitless in a game before the All-Star break and slipped to .399, it felt like a national event. When he collected three hits the next day and climbed again, the noise returned.

    Somewhere in the middle of that summer, Bass began thinking about something no one else knew. He worried that if his average fell below Harimoto’s .383, pitchers would simply stop challenging him altogether. They would walk him. They would pitch around him. They would protect the record through avoidance.

    He had seen it happen the previous year with 55. He quietly considered sitting out if necessary to preserve the average before it dipped below the record. But it never became necessary because he kept hitting.

    Multi-hit games appeared every few days. Hitless nights were rare and brief. In August, with its heat and humidity, he hovered around .390. In September he refused to collapse under the weight of attention.

    He finished the season at .389. 47 home runs. 109 RBI. Another Triple Crown. And the highest batting average in Japanese professional baseball history. A record that still stands.

    Even then, he sounded surprised.

    “I didn’t think I could hit this much,” he said later. “I was lucky.”

    There is something charming about that answer. Luck does not re-engineer a stance to conquer the outside strike. Luck does not survive two years of near dismissal. What Bass had done was not lucky. It was adaptive and patient. And it was a little unsettling.

    Because while he was climbing into the statistical stratosphere, the Tigers were descending. Hanshin finished third in 1986. A year after the parade, there was no parade. And in 1987, things worsened. The Tigers fell to last place. Bass still hit .320 with 37 home runs. But baseball has a way of reshaping narratives quickly. The man who had been called a god now felt mortal.

    And then, in 1988, the story stopped being about baseball at all.

    Early that season, Bass’s eight-year-old son, Zach, was diagnosed with a serious brain condition. Reports varied in translation—hydrocephalus, a tumor, complications requiring surgery—but the core was simple and devastating: his child needed treatment in the United States.

    Bass left Japan with the club’s permission. At first, the departure seemed straightforward. Family before baseball. That much everyone understood. But professional baseball, especially in 1980s Japan, did not operate only on sentiment. There were timelines. There were expectations, both spoken and unspoken.

    Hanshin manager Minoru Murayama, himself a Tigers legend, a man who won more than 200 games in his career, wanted his cleanup hitter back. Murayama was direct. “Bring him back,” he reportedly insisted. “As soon as possible.”

    Bass stayed in America with his son. Deadlines were discussed and formalized. Then they passed. So the Tigers announced his release. It was not a clean separation.

    Bass maintained that he had been granted permission to remain in the United States while his son underwent treatment. The club argued that uncertainty about his return left them little choice. There were disputes over medical expenses. There were disagreements over contractual interpretation.

    In Japan (especially at the time) loyalty to a company, to a team, to an institution carries enormous weight. Leaving midseason, even for family, complicated expectations. Would a Japanese star have left? Bass left the team to attend his father’s funeral in 1984 but Sadaharu Oh famously continued managing without missing an inning after his own father died the following year.

    At the same time, sympathy poured in from fans. Letters arrived by the thousands with origami cranes and messages of support. The man who had once been labeled selfish for returning home during his father’s illness was now seen through a different lens. Father first. Ballplayer second.

    The dispute with Hanshin grew public. Caught in the middle of it all was a man named Shingo Furuya.

    Furuya was a Hanshin executive. By all accounts, he was serious, diligent, and deeply conscientious. The Bass dispute was only one of several crises confronting the organization; there were also tensions involving Kakefu (who was injured and wanted to retire) and broader structural conflicts within the club. The pressure mounted.

    In July 1988, Furuya died by suicide, jumping from a hotel in Tokyo. He’d only been managing director of the club for six weeks.

    The news stunned the baseball world. For Bass, the tragedy added a layer of sorrow to an already fractured departure. Years later, he would say little publicly about that period. He spoke softly and described Furuya as a gentleman.

    He never returned to professional baseball. There was no farewell tour. No ceremonial goodbye. One day he was the centerpiece of the Tigers’ lineup. The next he was back in Oklahoma, tending to family and distance.

    In the years that followed, Hanshin entered what fans would call the “dark period.” The championships did not come. The Colonel Sanders statue lay in pieces at the bottom of the Dotonbori Canal. The chant quieted, but it never disappeared entirely. Bass was still a god in the hearts of the Hanshin faithful.

    Bass built a life in Oklahoma. He entered politics, serving in the state senate. He even worked as a scout for the Yomiuri Giants for a few years. The relationship with Hanshin was strained but slowly, it softened.

    He returned to Koshien, older, and the crowd, many of them older too, rose. Bass stood beside Kakefu and Okada again. They laughed. They remembered.

    In 2023, he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2025, he received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government for his contributions to Japanese society.

    Think about that arc.

    A man who arrived for money. A man who nearly lost his job because he was two years older than another player. A man who was once criticized for leaving to tend to family. Now formally honored by the nation he once entered as an outsider.

    For a brief, incandescent stretch in the mid-1980s, Randy Bass was more than a foreign slugger. Across six seasons in Japan, Bass hit .337/.418/.660 with 202 home runs. It remains one of the most dominant peaks any hitter has ever produced in Japanese baseball.

    He learned the strike zone. He learned the wind. He learned board games and how to eat without a fork. He learned how sacred numbers are guarded. He learned how loud Koshien could become when belief replaces doubt. To this day, many foreign sluggers arrive introduced as “the next Randy Bass.”

    He hit 54 home runs and was denied 55. He hit .389 and threatened .400. He stood at the center of a lineup that finally defeated the Giants not just once, but psychologically.

    He left abruptly. He returned gently.

    And through it all, the chant remained.

    Kamisama. Hotokesama. Baasu-sama.

    God.

    Buddha.

    Bass.

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

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com