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Tag: 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 Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list.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

  • ‘They Beat Us the Japanese Way’: The San Francisco Giants’ 1970 Spring Tour

    ‘They Beat Us the Japanese Way’: The San Francisco Giants’ 1970 Spring Tour

    by Steve Treder

    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 Steve Treder writes about the 1970 San Francisco Giant’s spring training visit to Japan.

    The San Francisco Giants – a party of more than 60, including players, management, and staff, plus embedded sportswriters – boarded their chartered Japan Airlines jet at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on the damp gray morning of Tuesday, March 31, 1970. Among the players, the prevailing mood was one of relief that their two-week ordeal in Japan was finally ending, spiked with a sense of annoyance at having to pull this damn slog in the first place. From their perspective, the tour – while offering bits of fun and adventure – had mostly been an exercise in discomfort, exhaustion, and competitive humiliation.

    Yet the club owner, 67-year-old Horace C. Stoneham, was settling into his first-class seat in a more ambivalent state of mind. To be sure, he was aware of the unhappiness among the players, and that pained him. Whatever else he was, Stoneham was an owner who cared deeply about his players – it would not be an exaggeration to say that he loved his ballplayers – and frustrating his boys, disappointing them in any way, was the last thing he ever intended to do. But as the operator of the business, he had broader concerns, and chief among them was the increasingly urgent need for cash revenue. The 1970 spring-training tour of Japan had netted the Giants a fat payday, something that was getting harder to find these days. This fact steeled Stoneham, reassuring him that, despite the trip’s problems, his decision to go was the right one. He’d done what he needed to do.

    Moreover, beyond the cold hard accounting, these two weeks of on-the-ground, in-the-flesh examination of the state of Japanese baseball had kindled in Horace Stoneham a familiar old sense of wonder and excitement, of boyish eagerness for the future. He hadn’t personally been over to Japan in 10 years (though he had engaged in long-distance baseball business with his Japanese friends and associates), and the progress and power now vividly demonstrated by Japanese baseball – not just as a modern business, but as a cultural spirit – delighted Stoneham. Even when things are at their toughest, he knew, when it all looks bleak, there’s always a fresh new way to go. The Giants owner knew this. His life’s work had demonstrated it to him, in so many ways. You just had to be looking for the new opportunities, and to make yourself ready for them. That was the thing. That was always the thing.

    Lefty’s Giants

    There was never any American major-league ballclub more indelibly connected to Japanese professional baseball than these Giants, whose full ownership Horace Stoneham had inherited from his father in 1936. Their first opponent on this tour’s schedule was none other than the perpetual powerhouse Yomiuri Giants – so christened in the spring of 1935 by their strategic adviser Lefty O’Doul. He named them in specific honor of the New York Giants, O’Doul’s final major-league team. The Yomiuri lads would forever be clad in Giants-style black-and-orange caps, uniforms, and regalia.

    When O’Doul was in New York with the Giants, he and Stoneham came to know each other well. When O’Doul’s career took him back to San Francisco, he and Stoneham sustained a good relationship. In 1945-46 their paths crossed again, when Stoneham’s Giants affiliated O’Doul’s Seals into their farm system, and in that period (as well as later), O’Doul was widely rumored as a candidate whenever Stoneham was thought to be pondering a managerial change.

    It was through the O’Doul connection that Stoneham’s Giants first toured Japan in the fall of 1953, and then again in 1960, at which point O’Doul was back on the (now San Francisco) Giants’ payroll as a hitting coach. In 1966, when O’Doul bought out his investment partners and became sole owner of the landmark San Francisco bar and restaurant bearing his name, the scuttlebutt was that he’d done it with the financial assistance of Stoneham. O’Doul would have been prominently engaged in the Giants’ 1970 Japan visit, too, but he’d so suddenly and sadly died in December of 1969. Among Lefty O’Doul’s vast legion of true friends distressed by his passing, not many had known him longer, or loved him more, than Horace Stoneham.

    Readily taking the torch from O’Doul, the key organizer of the 1970 tour was 48-year-old Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada. A native of Santa Maria, California, the son of Japanese immigrants, the bilingual Harada was spared internment during World War II, and instead was inducted into the US Army to serve as an intelligence officer. After the war he remained in Japan and soon became one of the key figures working with O’Doul to help heal the deeply wounded American-Japanese relationship with the tonic of baseball. When Stoneham’s Giants moved to San Francisco, they hired Harada, officially as a scout, specifically as their direct agent within the realm of Japanese baseball.

    Shared Goals

    The press accounts of the Giants’ 1970 tour reliably described it as a “goodwill” venture, dedicated to forging and expanding friendship between the two countries and their baseball communities. No doubt that much was true. But the tour wasn’t only that, or even mostly that. Fundamentally it was a business deal, designed and expected to deliver a profit to its sponsor, the Lotte Orions of the Japan Pacific League, as well as its invited guest star Giants.

    And for Stoneham’s Giants, generating some extra income wasn’t just a luxury. After enjoying consistently robust attendance in their first 10 years in San Francisco, the Giants saw ticket sales plummet with the arrival of the Athletics in Oakland in 1968. Stoneham needed this business. The deal he negotiated had favorable terms: The Orions would underwrite the Giants’ expenses, while guaranteeing Stoneham $150,000 from the proceeds.

    The Giants’ 1970 Japanese tour was a springtime visit, a first. All previous American excursions had taken place in the fall, at the conclusion of the US and Japanese seasons, and were thus understood to be “just fun” barnstorming exhibitions. Staging it in March instead made these games a part of the spring-training schedule for both the Giants and their opponents; while they were still exhibitions, these contests took on the purpose of training the participants for their coming regular seasons.

    For the Giants’ opponents, any disruption to their normal springtime routine was minimal: they were training in Japan anyway, and now they’d get to test themselves with some games against a formidable US major-league ballclub. As for the Giants themselves, Stoneham was no doubt considering this jaunt to be comparable to the springtime barnstorming schedules that were customary in earlier decades, as big-league teams played their way home after initial training at their “camp” somewhere in the South or Southwest.

    What Stoneham was perhaps not properly appreciating was that his 1970 ballplayers were too young to have experienced springtime barnstorming. These were creatures of the modern Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues, and they were accustomed to spring training (a) in balmy weather, (b) with minimal travel, and thus (c) allowing for extended daily and weekly routines of conditioning, practice, and in-game action – as well as American-style time off. To yank them away from Arizona in mid-March, put them on a marathon jet-lag-inducing flight to a faraway place notorious for cold and wet spring weather, and once there submit them to a wearying schedule that prohibited their usual daily routines, wasn’t the most player-friendly course of action.

    Nor were the games themselves anticipated to be cupcakes for San Francisco. In the assessment of Harada, “Our club is going over there next week expecting that it won’t have any easier time playing their clubs than it has been playing American teams in Arizona. The Japanese teams used to be comparable to our Class A minor leagues. But that was some time ago.”

    On March 15, a few days before the US team was scheduled to depart for Japan, the San Francisco Examiner reported:

    All of [the Giants players] are looking forward to the trip, but in varying degrees. Some fear the interruption of the normal spring training process could leave the Giants unprepared for the season opener at Candlestick. Others fear that cold weather in Japan could hamper them.

    The same article noted that Stoneham was doing his best to cheer them up: He was providing everyone with $500 spending cash, and players did look forward to shopping for pearls, cameras, and stereo equipment.

    Bumpy Ride

    The Giants’ flight from San Francisco, consuming nearly all of Wednesday, March 18, was an ominous start. Headwinds buffeted and slowed the plane, and the leg from Honolulu to Tokyo was itself a 10-hour barf-bag nightmare. When they finally landed in Japan, it was 45 degrees and windy.

    A welcoming party greeted them at the airport. Giants manager Clyde King, addressing the thronging press, vowed that his club was there on serious business, ready to play hard. Moreover, he noted that the team from Candlestick Park was “not afraid of cold weather.”

    The next morning the groggy Giants boarded a bus that inched through the city’s monumentally snarled traffic to Tokyo Stadium. There they worked out. The wind at the ballpark was described as “colder than Candlestick’s notorious breeze,” blowing straight in toward home plate with “a knife edge.” Hitters taking batting practice attempted to warm numb fingers over a smoldering bucket of charcoal. The infield grass was reported as “green but skimpy,” while the springtime outfield was “still brown from the cold wind.”

    The next day they played their first game, and lost to the Yomiuri Giants, 6-5, in 11 innings. Sadaharu Oh belted two home runs, including a walk-off game-winner, and Shigeo Nagashima homered as well. The day after that, also at Tokyo Stadium, in 39-degree overcast weather, the host Lotte Orions defeated their guests, 4-3, this time in 12 innings. Despite the gloom, a hardy band of San Francisco Giants Boosters some 100 strong, all the way from California – in loudly colorful attire, contrasting sharply with the drably clothed Japanese fans – lustily sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and traded cheers with the Lotte faithful.

    After the game the Giants embarked upon their first intra-Japan road trip. It didn’t go well. Having already checked out of their Tokyo hotel that morning, the players had to wait in a long queue to shower and change, because the ballpark clubhouse had only two showers, and the Americans weren’t keen on using the large communal soaking tub. Then, without time to eat, they were jammed onto a tourist-class flight to Fukuoka, over 600 miles distant, and from there, packed like sardines with all their gear into two small buses for a 2½-hour ride to their hotel. Neither conveyance was designed for 6-foot-tall passengers.

    When they finally arrived at nearly midnight, the players were loudly displeased. As one veteran put it, “This is like the low minors.” Their ire was directed at travel arranger Cappy Harada. “Where’s Cappy?” they asked. “Why isn’t he here?” Alas, Harada was not there, having instead flown ahead with Stoneham to Kyoto, first class, to woo potential broadcast sponsors.

    In Shimonoseki the Giants at last won a game, though not without rancor. Lotte Orions manager Wataru Nonin complained that San Francisco pitcher Gaylord Perry was throwing a spitball:

    Umpire Al Kuboyama warned Perry that if he continued to rub his fingers over the back of his head he would call those pitches balls. Perry pretended to not understand and imitated the umpire’s motion with his gloved hand. After Perry left the game he started to run in the outfield – a standard practice in spring training in the States – and umpire Kuboyama chased him off the field. King protested, but the Japanese were very serious about the whole thing.

    The Giants lost their next game, making it three out of four defeats to begin the trip. This was widely noticed, given that no previous big-league American barnstormer had encountered much competitive challenge in Japan. Willie Mays, reflecting on how different this was from his previous visit, in 1960, assessed that the Japanese “play much better today as a team. They make fewer false moves and fewer mistakes. They don’t make any bad throws and don’t throw to the wrong base. They run the bases better, hit behind the runner and sacrifice. They have been very well coached.”

    Sportswriter Jim McGee concurred, but believed that wasn’t the only thing making it hard for these Giants:

    The improvement in Japanese baseball explains only in part why the Giants have been able to win only one game in four so far. The Giants record here does not mean that the Japanese are surpassing the Americans in baseball. There are other factors.

    For one thing, the Japanese clubs are ahead of the Giants in conditioning. The Giants are far from ready to open the National League season. The playing conditions are primitive compared with American fields and clubhouses. The weather has been bitterly cold.

    Also, the Japanese teams have been playing strictly to win while the Giants have been following spring training procedures – giving less experienced players a chance in every game. The Japanese managers change pitchers according to the situation, while manager Clyde King is letting his hurlers go a certain number of innings no matter what is happening.

    The tour then took the Giants to Osaka, and the weather only got worse: On the morning of March 25, they were greeted with snowfall. Willie McCovey, no stranger to knee trouble, visibly limped into the breakfast room. “My knee always hurts when it’s going to rain,” he observed, “but it didn’t tell me it was going to snow.”

    The snow let up to allow that day’s baseball, albeit with the temperature at about 50 degrees and the wind icy cold. The Giants played a doubleheader, beating the Lotte Orions 2-0 and losing to the Nankai Hawks, 9-0, along the way being shut out in three innings of relief pitching by Masanori Murakami, the former Giant. (The previous week a rumor had circulated that Stoneham was engaged in negotiations with the Hawks to reacquire Murakami in a trade; however valid that notion was, nothing ever came of it.)

    Former big-league second baseman Don Blasingame, who was with the Giants in 1960-61, had played in Japan for three years and was now a coach for the Hawks. He acknowledged the problematic spring weather:

    “I told [current Giants’ second baseman] Ron Hunt in St. Louis last winter to wear his long underwear over here for the tour,” Blasingame said. “I’ve started spring training over here as early as January 27 and it does get cold. I don’t mind it though. I guess I’ve gotten used to it. It’s no colder than a night game at Candlestick Park. This year it is staying colder a little longer.”

    By this time, Stoneham’s wisdom at choosing to undertake the spring tour was being roundly questioned in the San Francisco press:

    The difficulty … seems to lie with owner Horace Stoneham’s decision to pack up in the middle of spring training, upsetting the annual rites and leaving the Arizona sunshine to barnstorm in Japan. It’s cold and snowy over there and the surroundings are totally unfamiliar, and, well, it just isn’t anything like how a major league baseball player gets ready for the major league season.

    “I don’t know what it is exactly,” Hal Lanier, the Giants’ veteran shortstop, was quoted the other day. “I mean, Japan is an interesting place and the people have been hospitable and all that. Most of the guys pretty much agree on the subject, all due respect to Mr. Stoneham’s decision to make the trip. It just isn’t the same, know what I mean? We’re supposed to be concentrating on getting ready for the season and trying to win a pennant. We hope this trip won’t hurt our chances.”

    The fed-up Giants players now did what they could to assert some control. The team voted to tell Harada and the tour management to change the schedule: Instead of staying in Nagoya on March 26 for a day off, they opted to return to Tokyo a day early and spend their precious leisure hours in the big city. Their frustrations were again articulated in the press: there was almost no opportunity for practice outside of the games, as even batting practice was limited to 15 minutes before each game; pitchers were unable to take their usual daily running in the outfield, because the ballparks were so small that they’d have to run in front of the outfielders instead of behind them; and moreover, Japanese fans were angered at the sight of pitchers running during a game, considering it an insult, a signal that the Giants weren’t taking the competition seriously.

    The Long-Term Perspective

    Horace Stoneham, perplexed though he was by his players’ sour experience, was nevertheless able to perceive sweetness in the tour. His interest wasn’t only in making immediate money off these engagements. He was also keenly focused (notwithstanding his mid-1960s misunderstandings in attempting to recruit Murakami) on the development of Japan as a source of player talent for the Giants. Stoneham’s organization had been second to none in opening up the Caribbean region to major-league talent-harvesting in the 1950s and 1960s, and he believed that by investing in relationships and forging trusting partnerships in Japan, he could gain another competitive advantage here.

    With that in mind, Stoneham was warmly encouraged by what he was seeing on this tour. Most obviously, the generation of young Japanese nourished from childhood by an ample postwar diet had simply grown taller and stronger than their elders. Stoneham assessed that the average height of the Giants’ opposing players in 1953 had been perhaps 5-feet-3, then jumped to about 5-feet-6 or 5-feet-7 in 1960, and was now getting closer to 6 feet. The drawback of Japanese players being too small was rapidly becoming outmoded.

    And not only were modern Japanese players ever more athletic, they were vividly, as Willie Mays had observed, “well coached.” They demonstrated baseball technique and skill better than ever before, and if the top-tier Japanese leagues altogether weren’t quite major-league quality, they were clearly gaining ground. Unquestionably there were now several, perhaps dozens, of Japanese players capable of at least making the majors, if not excelling there. “In five years, the Japanese will be a source of players for American baseball,” Stoneham predicted. “The Japanese player will be a common sight on American clubs.”

    While that assessment rested upon a sound reckoning of the baseball talent issue, the assumption Stoneham displayed in making it was telling: It was right and proper, indeed inevitable, that the American big leagues would recruit all the best young Japanese talent for themselves. The best interests of Japanese ballclubs, and Japanese fans, weren’t part of the equation. Stoneham was plainly not anticipating that the Japanese professional baseball business itself, vastly better organized and more unified than any counterpart in Latin America, could and would refuse to accommodate the Americans in positioning Japan as just another major-league feeder.

    Yet there was another potentiality beyond even that, and this was one in which the interests of US and Japanese baseball might fully align: a high-level partnership. Perhaps a truly international World Series could be staged, and/or perhaps Japanese franchises could be incorporated into major-league baseball. What was emerging in Japan wasn’t just a cadre of world-class players, but a broader world-class baseball culture, and a tremendous fan base: a world-class baseball market.

    It was this aspect of baseball in Japan that most captivated Stoneham. He was aware that the Japanese public consumed 13 daily sports newspapers, with most of the content for most of the year devoted to baseball. He noted that from his bullet-train window between Nagoya and Tokyo he’d seen countless kids engaging in baseball games all through the countryside. He was particularly struck by the image of one lone boy in a field, a husky teenager not attending to his farm chores, but instead swinging a bat, practicing his cut.

    “You have to be impressed when you see them using any vacant space to play, including cobblestone streets,” said Stoneham. “The other day, I saw a group of boys going along the street carrying fishing poles and nets. I asked Cappy where they could fish because I couldn’t see water anywhere. He told me they weren’t going fishing. As soon as they found an empty lot, they’d stick the poles in the ground, put the nets on top and use them for a backstop for the catcher. Most of them were wearing getas, the shoes with wooden clogs. You haven’t seen baseball until you’ve seen a kid in his getas, running down a fly ball on a cobblestone street.”

    End of the Bumpy Ride

    On Sunday, March 29, the Giants concluded their schedule with a 10-6 loss to the Orions at Tokyo Stadium. It was their least impressive performance yet: Gaylord Perry was riddled for seven runs in the first three innings, Ron Hunt crudely booted two grounders, and catcher Dick Dietz dropped a simple throw, botching a force out at the plate. The defeat finalized the team’s tour record at 3-6, by far the worst ever compiled by an American visitor to Japan.

    Manager Clyde King squarely faced reality:

    “The Japanese beat us completely. That was a fact. No alibis, no excuses. They beat us the Japanese way, with thorough preparation and planning. I knew they were laying for us and tried to get the club ready for what they had to face. We didn’t do the job, that was all there was to it.”

    The misadventure was hooted in the San Francisco press: Reporter Jim McGee, who traveled with the team, concluded that “the Giants lost face in Japan,” and commented, “[W]hat happened … was a blow to [the players’] professional pride. They are nettled that they were sent there virtually unprepared and are now being castigated for not playing better.” Columnist Prescott Sullivan put it bluntly: “The Giants made asses of themselves over there.”

    And to add illness to insult, ace pitcher Juan Marichal was one of several Giants players who came down with colds and flu on the tour – hardly surprising given the conditions. But Marichal’s bout was especially severe:

    “We went to Japan and the weather was so cold. It was about 27 degrees, it was so cold. And the stadium was concrete all over which made it colder. And they don’t have any heaters in there or nothing. The only thing they have is charcoal you would burn to warm up, and quite a few players got sick. I was one of the guys that got sick, I caught a real bad cold.”

    By the time he returned to the States, Marichal had developed a respiratory infection, and was running a high fever. He was given multiple shots of penicillin, and that provoked a serious allergic reaction. He became dangerously ill, and had to be hospitalized. Marichal missed several weeks of play, and then pushed himself back to the mound before he’d regained his strength. For the first time in his brilliant career he was miserably ineffective, until at last rounding into form over the second half of the season.

    Whether it was caused by their tumultuous spring training tour or not – Marichal’s struggles surely didn’t help – the Giants started the 1970 regular season poorly. In late May, with the perennially contending team mired in fourth place, 12 games behind, Stoneham fired Clyde King.

    The Lotte Orions in 1970 went on to enjoy a marvelous season, a pennant-winning 80-47 campaign. Spring training had presented no problems for them.

    As for Horace Stoneham, his dreams of finding a competitive and financial revival for his Giants amid the gathering abundance of Japanese baseball were to be unfulfilled. Within five years, facing bankruptcy, he would be forced to put his beloved Giants – his family legacy and his life’s work – up for sale, and retire to Arizona.

    Read the rest of the article on SABR.org

    ‘They Beat Us the Japanese Way’: The San Francisco Giants’ 1970 Spring Tour
  • Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 10, Atsuya Furuta

    Japan’s Favorite Players: No. 10, Atsuya Furuta

    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 four-eyed catcher who changed Japanese baseball

    For a long time in Japanese baseball, there was an unwritten rule about catchers. They were supposed to look a certain way: broad-shouldered, rugged, unmistakably athletic. The catcher was the field general, the toughest player on the diamond, the one who absorbed punishment without complaint. Above all, he was not supposed to wear glasses.

    Scouts repeated it often enough that it became a sort of conventional wisdom.

    Atsuya Furuta was a catcher. And he wore them anyway.

    Scouts worried openly about whether a four-eyed catcher could handle night games, whether his vision would hold under stadium lights, whether runners would exploit him.

    In fairness, he did not look like a future star. He did not come from a powerhouse program. He never played at Koshien. As a child in Hyogo Prefecture, he joined a local team and became a catcher largely because no one else wanted to and because, as he later joked, he was a little overweight*. Catching suited him immediately. It allowed him to think, to organize, and to control the flow of the game.

    *I also wore glasses as a child and was more than a little overweight. Maybe I should have been a catcher.

    He remained largely unknown through high school and chose a nearby public school rather than a prestigious baseball program. Only at Ritsumeikan University did his ability begin to emerge. He became a four-time Best Nine selection in the Kansai collegiate league, captained the team, and earned selection to Japan’s university national squad. By his senior year in 1987, teams were expected to draft him.

    Nippon-Ham promised to draft him out of university and then quietly passed, the explanation whispered afterward: a catcher with glasses could not succeed. Furuta sat through draft day surrounded by cameras and celebration prepared in advance, waiting for his name to be called. It never came. His teammate, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, remembered Furuta’s face as something he had never seen before. Not one of anger, not disbelief, just exhaustion.

    Instead of turning professional, he joined Toyota, working in the personnel department while playing industrial-league baseball. He handled employee disputes, organized company events, and lived the routine of an ordinary working adult. Later he would say those years gave him a normal sense of money and responsibility, something many professional athletes never experience.

    He understood that visibility was his only path back to professional baseball. The 1988 Seoul Olympics became his opportunity. Determined to make the national team, he researched the coaching staff and deliberately adjusted how he presented himself during tryouts, playing with visible energy and constant communication. He earned a roster spot and helped Japan win a silver medal, proving he belonged at the highest level.

    The Yakult Swallows selected him in the second round of the 1989 draft.

    He had finally made it.

    But acceptance was not immediate. Yakult’s new manager, Katsuya Nomura, the greatest catcher in Japanese baseball history, initially doubted the idea of drafting an industrial-league catcher with glasses. The team needed pitching, and Nomura believed amateur success rarely translated cleanly to professional baseball. Early evaluations were blunt: a first-rate arm, second-rate bat, third-rate game-calling.

    What changed everything was the moment pitchers began throwing to him.

    From the first spring training camp in Yuma, Arizona, teammates noticed something unusual. His throwing motion was impossibly quick. His catching was quiet and stable. His hips were extraordinarily flexible, allowing him to sink low without losing balance, presenting a steady target that calmed pitchers instinctively. Coaches timed his release to second base and watched him win throwing contests against veterans. Nomura, observing quietly, realized the fundamentals were already elite.

    “All he needs,” the manager later thought, “is to learn how to think.”

    Furuta learned quickly because thinking was already his instinct.

    He read constantly on road trips, unusual enough that Nomura once remarked he had rarely seen a player reading serious books instead of magazines. The praise embarrassed Furuta but also changed him; afterward, he joked, he felt unable to return to comics.

    As a 24-year-old in 1990, he earned the starting job quickly. A veteran pitcher told him bluntly that rookie catchers were not allowed to call games; Furuta’s job was to signal inside or outside and catch whatever came. It stung his pride, but he treated the moment as a puzzle rather than an insult. He talked constantly with the pitcher, asked questions, blocked everything in the dirt, and threw relentlessly behind runners. Around their fifth start together, the pitcher finally told him, “From today, I’ll leave it to you.”

    Trust, Furuta learned, was earned one pitch at a time.

    He would later explain that young catchers misunderstood the position. Strategy came later. What came first was proof that nothing would get past you, that runners would be controlled, that pitchers could throw without fear. Only when a pitcher felt reassured could he accept guidance. He encouraged pitchers to shake off signs, believing responsibility sharpened their execution. The exchange of signals, he said, was a conversation conducted with fingers rather than words. Catching, he believed, was less about toughness than about understanding people.

    To understand teammates better, he spent time with them away from the field. Sometimes they played video games. Often they played shogi, which he loved deeply enough to earn formal certificates from the Japan Shogi Association. Shogi revealed personality and how a person performed under pressure. Pitchers brought those same habits to the mound.

    Nomura berated him constantly, sometimes during games, demanding explanations for every pitch sequence. “The catcher decides whether a pitcher lives or dies,” he would shout. Furuta endured the criticism by moving closer on the bench rather than retreating. If knowledge was hidden in those lectures, he was going to find it.

    By his second season, his transformation stunned the league.

    In 1991 he hit .340 and won the Central League batting title. During the All-Star Game he threw out three runners attempting to steal and earned MVP honors. Catchers were not supposed to dominate offensively; Furuta ignored the rule. Over his career he would hit .300 eight times, the most by any catcher in Japanese professional baseball history.

    The following year he added power, hitting 30 home runs. In 1993 he led the league in hits and produced one of the most astonishing defensive seasons ever recorded: a .644 caught-stealing rate, still a Japanese professional baseball record. Runners stopped trying.

    His defensive brilliance was subtle. He framed pitches with his lower body rather than his hands, shifting his hips so borderline pitches appeared centered. He rejected traditional mechanics when experience suggested better solutions, even persuading Nomura to reconsider long-held catching techniques. Teammates later said defensive positioning across the entire field flowed from Furuta’s decisions behind the plate.

    Yakult transformed alongside him. Under Nomura’s data-driven “ID Baseball,” the Swallows rose from perennial underperformers to champions. Furuta became the center of it all, winning league MVP awards in 1993 and 1997 while guiding the team to multiple Japan Series titles. In 1997 he delivered the decisive home run of the Japan Series and became the first Central League catcher to win both regular-season MVP and Japan Series MVP. In 2001, returning from a serious knee injury, he batted .500 in the championship series while neutralizing the feared offense of the Kintetsu Buffaloes, led by Tuffy Rhodes and Norihiro Nakamura*.

    *The pair combined for 101 home runs that season.

    Through it all, he remained approachable, smiling behind familiar glasses that earned him the early nickname”“Nobita,” after the main character from Doraemon. Fans embraced the contrast: a cerebral catcher who looked more like a student than a warrior.

    And because Furuta was Furuta, even exhibitions became opportunities to make history.

    In the 1992 All-Star Game at Chiba Marine Stadium, managers searching for ways to energize the exhibition made an unexpected decision*: a catcher would bat leadoff. Furuta’s name appeared at the top of the Central League lineup, an almost absurd choice in a sport that traditionally hid catchers deep in the order.

    *Masumi Kuwata was on the mound for the Central League. Leading off for the Pacific League? None other than his former high school teammate and the other half of the KK Combo, Kazuhiro Kiyohara.

    He responded by turning the game into a personal highlight reel. In his first at-bat he drove a ball to center for a triple. Later came a single, then a home run to right field. By the middle innings he stood one hit away from something never before accomplished in an All-Star Game: the cycle.

    His final chance arrived in the ninth inning. Already behind in the count, he shortened his swing and focused on contact, sending a drive over the center fielder’s head for a double. The cycle was complete. Furuta later admitted he had been aware of the stakes, joking that another player, Yomiuri’s Kaoru Okazaki, was also close and that whoever finished first might win the MVP. When the ball skipped past the outfielder, he felt relief as much as triumph. Asked why he stopped at second instead of stretching for third, he laughed and said his legs had gotten tangled up beneath him.

    Another improbable moment came toward the end of his career. On June 28, 2003, against Hiroshima, aged 37, Furuta hit four consecutive home runs in a single game, tying one of the rarest records in professional baseball. Even as teammates urged him to chase history, he reportedly asked manager Tsutomu Wakamatsu with a laugh whether it was acceptable to match Sadaharu Oh. After the fourth homer, a young fan retrieved the ball and tried to return it; Furuta told the boy to keep it and posed for a photograph instead.

    By then, the idea that a catcher wearing glasses could not succeed had become laughable.

    He leaned into the identity instead. When laser eye surgery became popular years later, Furuta refused it. The glasses, he decided, were part of who he was. If anything, succeeding while wearing them made the accomplishment more meaningful. Young players with poor eyesight began telling him they continued playing because they had seen him play. That, he would later say, mattered more than any record.

    In 1998, Furuta became chairman of the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association. At the time, it did not seem like a role destined to define his legacy. That changed in 2004.

    When news broke that the Kintetsu Buffaloes and Orix BlueWave planned to merge, the announcement triggered fears that Japanese baseball would contract into a single league with fewer teams. Owners framed the decision as financial necessity. Players saw something else: disappearing jobs and shrinking opportunity.

    Furuta immediately demanded explanations from league officials. At first, the requests were ignored. Decisions, owners implied, belonged to management. Players were expected to accept them.

    He refused.

    The issue escalated quickly. Rumors spread of further mergers and a potential ten-team or even eight-team league. Furuta argued publicly that contraction would shrink the sport’s market rather than save it. Baseball, he said, needed expansion and innovation, not retreat.

    Negotiations dragged on through summer. Fans, initially confused, began paying attention, especially after prominent owner Tsuneo Watanabe of the Yomiuri Giants dismissed the dispute with the phrase “mere players.” Public sympathy shifted dramatically. Furuta appeared repeatedly on television explaining the stakes calmly and methodically, apologizing to fans even while defending the players’ position.

    In September 2004, for the first time in seventy years of Japanese professional baseball, players went on strike.

    Games stopped for two days.

    Players held autograph sessions to thank fans for their patience. Furuta appeared on television again, visibly emotional as he apologized while explaining why the decision had become unavoidable. The strike was not about salaries, he insisted, but about preserving the structure of the sport itself.

    Negotiations reopened. Owners softened their stance and the creation of the Rakuten Golden Eagles preserved the twelve-team, two-league system that continues today. One franchise still disappeared—the Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes merged to become the Orix Buffaloes—but the broader collapse many feared never came.

    For many fans, Furuta’s leadership during the crisis mattered as much as anything he accomplished between the foul lines. He had protected not just players but the continuity of Japanese professional baseball itself.

    In 2006, the Yakult Swallows named him player-manager, the first in Japanese baseball in nearly three decades since Nomura himself.

    Furuta accepted without hesitation. To him, the role resembled what many forty-year-old professionals already did: balancing individual performance with organizational responsibility. Still, the reality proved exhausting. Managing required long-term planning, media responsibility, and constant decision-making layered atop the physical demands of catching.

    True to his analytical instincts, he challenged tradition. Japanese baseball had long treated the sacrifice bunt as sacred, especially for the second hitter. Furuta disagreed. Outs, he believed, were too valuable to surrender easily. He preferred aggressive offense, prioritizing hits and baserunners over automatic strategy, a philosophy that sometimes puzzled reporters expecting conservative tactics. Critics described his baseball as overly bold, but Furuta insisted he was just adapting to the roster he had: when pitching depth was limited, winning required scoring runs.

    The experiment produced mixed results. Yakult finished respectably at first, but injuries and roster imbalance caught up with the team. By 2007, he knew the end had arrived.

    After the Swallows were eliminated from postseason contention, he announced through tears that he would retire as both player and manager.

    His final game at Meiji Jingu Stadium felt less like a goodbye than a celebration of an era. Tickets sold out immediately and more than 33,000 fans filled the ballpark, holding green placards bearing his number 27. In his final at-bat, he faced longtime rival Shinji Sasaoka, who had held his own retirement ceremony only a day earlier. As chants of “Fu-ru-ta!” echoed from both fan bases, the at-bat ended with a routine ground ball. He embraced teammate Shingo Takatsu on the mound. The farewell ceremony ended with simple words: “Thank you for eighteen years. Let’s meet again.”

    After retirement, Furuta did something that surprised even those who thought they understood him. Three days after cleaning out his locker, he flew alone to New York.

    There was no baseball reason. He simply wanted to go because he had never been and people told him he should. He ran laps through Central Park, read on benches, watched theater at night, and wandered the city trying to understand what people meant when they called it stimulating. After about ten days, satisfied that he had experienced it for himself, he went home.

    In 2015, he was elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame with overwhelming support.

    He finished with 2,097 hits, becoming only the second catcher in NPB history to reach 2,000. He won two Central League MVP awards, two Japan Series MVPs, nine Best Nine selections, and ten Gold Gloves. He appeared in seventeen All-Star Games. He slugged 217 home. His career batting average of .294 remains extraordinary for a catcher who carried such defensive responsibility. His career caught-stealing rate of .462 remains a Japanese record.

    Oh, and he also threw out Barry Bonds trying to steal second during the 2000 MLB Japan All-Star Series.

    When asked during the induction what record made him proudest, he talked about his glasses.

    Nomura’s influence never disappeared. Their relationship was not sentimental but demanding, forged through criticism and relentless expectation. Nomura pushed him harder than anyone else, often publicly, believing that elite players required pressure rather than praise. Furuta responded not with obedience but with thought, absorbing ideas while shaping them into something uniquely his own.

    Over time, he became what Nomura valued most: not a copy, but a successor capable of independent judgment.

    Late in Nomura’s life, the two appeared together again at Jingu Stadium during an old-timers’ game. The aging manager, unsteady on his feet, stepped into the batter’s box supported by former players. Furuta stood nearby, watching the man who had once scolded him endlessly now swing slowly at a ceremonial pitch. The crowd roared anyway.

    Nomura often said that leaving money behind made a man third-rate, leaving fame made him second-rate, but leaving people behind made him first-rate.

    If that is true, then Atsuya Furuta’s greatest achievement cannot be measured in hits or championships. It lives in the catchers who learned to think differently, the players who gained a stronger voice, and the fans who watched Japanese baseball survive a moment when it nearly changed forever.

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

    https://thomasloveseagull.substack.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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