How 50,000 fans ranked Japan’s most beloved retired stars
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 Yes, they could only vote for players who are no longer active, so you won’t see Shohei Ohtani or other current stars on this list.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. Takahashi 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).
No. 20: Alex Ramirez
The only foreign player to record 2,000 hits in NPB
Charlie Manuel used to tell him stories.
That’s how this whole thing begins—not with a contract or a scout or a dream, but with the manager of the Cleveland Indians, a man with a thick country accent and a Yakult Swallows heart, leaning against a batting cage and talking about Japan.
Manuel was one of the few Americans who had thrived in NPB. He won the Japan Series as a member of the Swallows in 1978. He signed with the Kintetsu Buffaloes and took home the Pacific League MVP in 1979. His nickname in Japan? The Red Demon. He knew the language of the league, the rhythm of its days, the fierce courtesy, the relentless work, the joy buried under the discipline.
Alex Ramirez listened because he respected Manuel.
But he did not yet understand him.
“Charlie told me baseball equals Japanese culture,” Ramirez recalled years later. “Back then, I didn’t understand how baseball and culture could be linked. Now I understand it completely.”
At the time, it had sounded like one of those mysterious lines you hear from someone wiser than you. It was meaningful, but maybe only in retrospect.
Besides, the other players Ramirez talked to painted very different pictures of Japan.
Most had struggled.
Most had returned home with bad stories and worse statistics.
Their message was: Good luck. You won’t last.
Manuel’s message was: If you open yourself to Japan, Japan will open itself to you.
And Ramirez, wonderfully and stubbornly, did not believe either one completely.
He prepared for his trip to Japan the way any sensible ballplayer would: he watched Mr. Baseball a dozen or so times.
In the movie, translators famously shrink long speeches into short summaries, sometimes to comedic effect. Ramirez took this as documentary realism.
“I thought the interpreters were going to lie to me,” he said. “Like in the movie, the player talks for a minute, and the translator says two words.”
So when he arrived in Tokyo in 2001, he was prepared for deception, confusion, and culture clash.
He was not prepared for loneliness.
“The players would talk to me,” he said, “but I couldn’t understand. And I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. It became pressure.”
The language barrier hit harder than the pitching. And the pitching, with its forkballs and cutters and relentless precision, hit pretty hard.
In the clubhouse, the food consisted of onigiri and ramen. He felt there was nothing to eat.
For a while, Japan felt like a puzzle whose pieces didn’t quite fit together.
But fortunately, there was Tsutomu Wakamatsu.
Wakamatsu, the Yakult manager, had a way of making the world slow down. He did not try to turn Ramirez into a Japanese hitter. He simply gave him space and structure and trust.
Wakamatsu, of course, is a Yakult legend. His nickname is Mr. Swallows and his uniform number, 1, is honored* by the team.
“If I hadn’t started with Wakamatsu,” Ramirez said, “I wouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame today.”
And slowly, day by day, Ramirez began to see what Manuel had meant.
The long practices were not punishment, they were pride.
The silence wasn’t coldness, it was concentration.
The discipline wasn’t rigidity, it was devotion.
Baseball wasn’t separate from life.
It was woven into the fabric of everything.
Once he understood that, he didn’t just adjust: he blossomed.
What happened next is one of the most beautiful second acts in baseball history.
Eight All-Star selections.
Four Best Nine awards.
Four RBI titles.
A batting title.
Two home-run crowns.
Two MVP awards.
Two Japan Series championships, with two different teams.
He hit .301 over thirteen seasons.
He averaged 29 homers a year.
He collected 2,000 hits, the first foreign player ever to do so.
And the fans called him “Rami-chan.”
The affectionate “chan,” the nickname given to children, pets, and beloved personalities.
He had come to Japan expecting to “teach the game.”
Japan had ended up teaching him something far larger, that baseball equals Japanese culture.
In 2019, Ramirez became a Japanese citizen. He had absorbed it, and became a part of it.
He was voted into the Japanese baseball Hall of Fame, along with Randy Bass, in 2023.
On induction day, he stepped to the microphone and did something that explained everything.
He thanked his interpreters and assistants.
He said their names. All of them.
He honored the people who had helped him find his way in Japan.
Charlie Manuel had been right: baseball and culture were inseparable.
Thomas Love Seagull’s work can be found on his Substack Baseball in Japan
SABR Asian Baseball Research Committee Blog 