“My mother was of Japanese ancestry, but was an American citizen, born in Hawaii. She was sent by the government to Okinawa to serve as an interpreter. My father was a corpsman in the Navy and they were working in the same hospital and got married.”2

Fenwick’s time at the top level was brief: just 59 at-bats in 41 games during 1972 and 1973. He got just 10 base hits and the unflattering nickname “Bloop.” At his best, though, he hit line drives – to the tune of .332 in 1971 at Triple-A Phoenix. His manager there, Jim Davenport, said, “Fenwick can be a pesky man at the plate.”3

Robert Richard Fenwick was born on December 10, 1946, in Naha, which is Okinawa’s main city. In fact, his mother, Miyoko “Mabel” Miyasoto, came from an Okinawan family. Within Japan, Okinawans are viewed – and view themselves – as a separate people and culture. The same held true in Hawaii, where 25,000 Okinawans emigrated between 1900 and 1924. Most of them labored on sugar and pineapple plantations.4 Wally Yonamine, who became a Japanese Hall of Fame outfielder, is a classic uchinanchu success story.

Bob’s father, James Fenwick, was from Minnesota. After the Navy discharged James, he returned home with Mabel (for whom Minnesota winters must have been a shock) and little Bob, who was about a year old. The Fenwicks had two other children, a son named John and a daughter named Elizabeth.

In 1958, after attending seminary school, James was ordained as an Episcopalian minister.5 He was assigned to a church in Duluth; living there was a formative experience for young Bob. He talked about its impact in April 2010, during an interview with WTIP Radio of Grand Marais, Minnesota. Fenwick credited a man named Don Derbyshire, who sponsored a local organization called the Good Fellowship Club, for first getting him into baseball and learning the fundamentals. He also said, “Minnesota has a tremendous local baseball tradition.” In addition, the Rev. Fenwick always encouraged Bob in his pursuit of a career in the game.

From 1960 to 1970, James Fenwick was pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church in Anoka, a town about half an hour north of Minneapolis. Bob starred at Anoka High School, where he also played football and basketball, even though he stood just 5’9” and weighed 165 pounds when fully grown. After hitting .409 as a senior, he won a scholarship to the University of Minnesota in 1964. The baseball coach at Minnesota then was Dick Siebert, whose major-league career spanned 1932 to 1945. “Siebert helped me a lot, especially on fundamentals,” Bob recalled in 1973. 6 Fenwick emphasized Siebert’s excellence even more strongly in the WTIP interview. “Even without outside practice, when we would go south to play Texas and schools down there, what I recall is that if we played 14 games, we would be 13-1. We were better equipped to know how to play the game than kids from California.”

Fenwick said in 1973, “I hit .360-plus, good for No. 2 in the Big Ten, in my first year at Minnesota. But they [scouts] brought up that ‘too small’ matter.” 7 The Chicago White Sox selected him in the 27th round of the June 1966 amateur draft, but he did not sign. As a result, he was eligible for the secondary phase of subsequent drafts. He hit .407 in his junior year, and the San Francisco Giants took him in the first round (16th pick) of the June 1967 secondary draft. “Unlike other coaches, [Siebert] encouraged me when I decided to leave school (after three years) and go into pro ball after I got a good enough offer (from the Giants).”8

Although Fenwick played shortstop in college, his preferred pro position was second base. In the WTIP chat, he called his first pro season in the Midwest League with Decatur, Illinois as “a step down from the University of Minnesota – the most miserable summer I have ever spent.” It provided him with motivation – he was named the second baseman on the National Association Class A-East all-star team. Fenwick followed up his .279 hitting performance with a .271 average for Fresno in the high A California League. His 31 stolen bases ranked second in the league.

Fenwick skipped Double A and went to Phoenix for 1969. During his first two years at Triple A, he played on a big-league contract. Something else stood out in spring training, as he recalled in the WTIP interview. That was the imposing size of Cincinnati pitcher Wayne Simpson, who threw very hard before hurting his arm. “It looked like he was handing me the ball,” Fenwick said.

At Phoenix, Fenwick split time with César Gutiérrez at second and short; Tito Fuentes was also in the mix for part of the year. Fenwick’s batting cooled to .258 in 1969, but he lifted it to .311 in 1970 and .332 the following year. The most home runs he ever hit in a season was five, though. He said with a self-deprecating chuckle on the WTIP show, “I am a testament that strength makes a difference!”

The Giants had qualified backup middle infielders such as Bob Heise and Frank Duffy in those years, yet Fenwick never even got a September call-up. In 1972, he speculated that he fell out of favor in the organization because he had his worst game as a pro in a winter rookie league in front of the San Francisco brass. Charlie Fox, the manager of that squad, was embarrassed because he had given Fenwick his endorsement. As luck would have it, Fox became skipper of the big club in 1970.9

Fenwick was available in the Rule V draft in November 1971, and the Houston Astros – who had good scouting reports on Bob – picked him up. The Astros had traded Marty Martinez, needed a utility infielder, and viewed Fenwick’s skills and attitude as a good fit.10 In March 1972, Baseball Digest described Fenwick as a “dandy glove man anywhere in infield; almost sure to stick as utility man with Astros.”11 Indeed, the 25-year-old rookie spent the whole 1972 season on the big club’s roster. However, playing time behind Tommy Helms at second and Roger Metzger at short was very scanty. He started just 10 games, appeared in 36 overall, and came to the plate just 53 times. Fenwick said on the WTIP show that the biggest difference between Triple A and the majors was the depth of top-quality pitching. He added that the defense was also superior – balls in the hole at short that might have been infield hits became outs instead.

In November 1972, the Astros traded Fenwick with Ray Busse to the St. Louis Cardinals for Skip Jutze and Milt Ramirez. He welcomed the trade because he liked Busch Stadium and the city of St. Louis, and because “I won’t have to worry about facing Bob Gibson any more.”12 When talking to WTIP, though, he cited Steve Carlton as the toughest pitcher he ever faced in terms of sheer stuff.

That winter, Fenwick worked for a relative’s business, hauling fuel oil to homes and schools in Anoka. He also worked out with another pro from Anoka, catcher Greg Dehn. Fenwick made the Cardinals roster during spring training 1973. He said, “I feel that if I play enough, I should hit around .270 or so and get on base a lot. Tell Ted Sizemore not to get fat or slow down, or else…”13

Fenwick appeared in only five games, however, before the Cards sent him down to Triple-A Tulsa in May. That June 12, the St. Louis organization released him – but he returned to the Astros chain as a free agent. After he spent a little less than a month at Triple-A Denver, the Astros in turn cut Fenwick loose. Again he hooked on with an NL team’s top farm club; this time it was with Wichita in the Chicago Cubs system.

After the 1973 season, the Cubs sent Glenn Beckert and Fenwick to the San Diego Padres for Jerry Morales. Fenwick was assigned to the Hawaii Islanders, then San Diego’s Triple-A club. Previously he had noted, “I was big in Hawaii when I played there in the Coast League. Every time I did something, I’d get big headlines about ‘Okinawan did this or that.’”14

Fenwick retired after playing just 52 games in Hawaii behind Dave Hilton at second and Héctor Torres at short. He then returned to Minnesota; as of 1973, he and his first wife, Linda, had three sons named Todd, Scott, and Chris.15 Since at least 2000, Fenwick has been living in Grand Marais, a village on the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota’s far northeastern region, the beautiful Boundary Waters wilderness area. He and his second wife, Jennifer Anderson, had two sons named Jeff and Lucas; he also had a stepson, Jeremiah.

Fenwick served for several years as a Cook County commissioner, and as of 2007 was also President of the Association of Minnesota Counties. In August 2010, however, he lost his seat as commissioner in a primary election. He remained manager of a local forest products company, Sawtooth Lumber. In April 2011, however, he became general manager of the Superior National Golf Course in Tofte, about 20 miles down the shore of Lake Superior from Grand Marais. He remains a member of the Cook County Community Center Steering Committee.

Fenwick kept involved with baseball to a degree, largely as a local umpire, though he told WTIP that the sport’s grip on him loosened over a period of several years because it was not part of his day-to-day working life. As of 2010, he didn’t watch the game as much as he used to, but he still watched the playoffs intently and enjoyed guessing along with the managers.

In his mid-sixties, Bob Fenwick retained many pleasant memories of the majors. They started with seeing Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal in the locker room at his first big-league spring training. Having the locker in between Joe Torre and Tim McCarver in St. Louis was another highlight. He also distinctly recalled how his career was on the cusp of change – for example, he voted against the strike of 1972 and admitted to mixed emotions about the impact of money on the game. Overall, though, he said without hesitation, “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. My dream was to be a Luis Aparicio, and I was lucky enough to achieve at least a part of that.”

Last revised: January 18, 2017

Sources

Bob Fenwick’s personal blog: http://bfenwickhistory.weebly.com/index.html

Bob Fenwick interview with WTIP Radio in Grand Marais, April 25, 2010:

http://www.wtip.org/drupal/content/former-mlb-player-bob-fenwick-talks-baseball

Wilson, John. “Astros See Useful Man in Fenwick.” The Sporting News, March 18, 1972: 46.

Russo, Neal. “Cards’ Fenwick Swings Strong Bat.” The Sporting News, January 6, 1973: 38.

James Fenwick obituary, www.abcnewspapers.com, January 9, 2009.

Topps 1973 baseball card, #567

Tadahito Iguchi’s favorite motto is the Japanese proverb “The boughs that bear most hang lowest.” The literal translation describes how rice stalks, as they ripen and bear more grain, bow down due to the weight. This metaphor for human behavior suggests that the more you achieve in life, the more modest you become as a person.1

Grounded by this principle, Iguchi enjoyed a 26-year career (1997-2022) in both Nippon Professional Baseball and the US major leagues, becoming one of the most accomplished and respected figures in the game. His trophy case includes an Olympic Silver Medal (1996 Team Japan), three Japan Series rings (1999, 2003 Daiei Hawks, 2010 Chiba Lotte Marines), and two World Series rings (2005 Chicago White Sox, 2008 Philadelphia Phillies).2 Iguchi holds the distinction of being the first Japanese player with US major-league experience to compete in and win the World Series. He’s the first Japanese player to manage in Nippon Professional Baseball and aspires to become the first Japanese national to manage an MLB team.3

Iguchi was born on December 4, 1974, in the Tanashi municipality of Tokyo. His love for the game was nurtured by his parents.4 His father Mitsuo coached his Little League teams and his mother Shoko accompanied him to all training sessions.5 He played catcher early on and switched to shortstop in high school, inspired by Cal Ripken Jr., whom he watched play during the 1986 Japan-US All-Star Series. “I was so impressed by his defensive quickness,” said Iguchi.6

He attended Kokugakuin Kugayama High School in Tokyo, leading his team to the Koshien Tournament in 1991, where they were eliminated on the second day in a heartbreaking 5-4 extra-innings loss.7 Despite the defeat, Iguchi gained valuable perspective, particularly from watching Seiryo High School star Hideki Matsui. “The power of his swing, the sound of the bat cutting through the air – everything was extraordinary,” Iguchi remarked. The “shock of Matsui” convinced him he should play in college, where he could develop in both size and skill level, rather than turn pro immediately.8

After graduating in 1992, Iguchi enrolled at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, helping the varsity baseball team win the All-Japan University Baseball Championship in 1993 and 1996. Inspired by teammate Hiroki Kokubo, Iguchi became serious about weight training.9 His hard work paid off and in 1994 he became the first Triple Crown winner in the Tohto University Baseball League.10

Iguchi earned a spot on the Japanese Collegiate All-Star squad that traveled to the United States in 1995, competing against a Team USA roster that included future major leaguers like R.A. Dickey and Troy Glaus.11 Team Japan won the first game, 5-3, in Millington, Tennessee, thanks in part to Iguchi’s two-run home run. It was the first homer allowed by Team USA pitching in its first five games (152 at-bats).12 The series moved on to San Antonio, where Team USA went on to win the five-game series over Team Japan, three games to two.13

Iguchi’s bat stayed hot through his senior year at Aoyama Gakuin University, where he finished his college career with 103 hits, 24 home runs, and a .281 batting average in 101 games.14

In 1996 Iguchi played for Team Japan in the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where they finished with a 4-3 record in the preliminary round. His bat contributed to Japan’s 11-2 upset win over Team USA in the semifinals, but they ultimately lost to Cuba in the Gold Medal game. The Olympic experience was transformative for Iguchi. “What made the biggest impression on me was the play of the Cuban national team. Their power and speed were completely different, they were like major leaguers, and I was blown away,” he said.15

After the Olympics, Iguchi was selected by the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks as the top pick in the 1996 NPB draft. He was excited to join the team under legendary player and now manager Sadaharu Oh. He also made his personal goals public: “I want to aim at batting .300, hitting 30 homers and stealing 30 bases.”16 He called this his “Triple Three” and made it his goal for every season.17

The Japanese term kōjō means continuous improvement and progress, and best describes both the Hawks’ and Iguchi’s development between 1997 and 2003.18 His rookie season in 1997 started strong, with a grand slam in his debut game. However, he struggled with a .203 batting average and 67 strikeouts, underscoring the need for more plate discipline. That offseason, Iguchi joined Hawks teammate Nobuhiko Matsunaka on the West Oahu CaneFires in the Hawaii Winter Baseball League, where he hit 8 home runs, showcasing his potential.19

In 1998 Iguchi improved to 21 home runs but still struggled with a low .221 batting average. The Hawks’ breakthrough came in 1999, winning the Japan Series with a 78-54 record. His performance improved – 14 home runs and 47 RBIs – and the team celebrated manager Oh’s first championship.

Iguchi’s hard work culminated in a stellar 2001 season. He batted .261 with 30 home runs, 97 RBIs, 104 runs scored, and 44 stolen bases. The Hawks finished second, narrowly missing the Japan Series. He maintained his form in 2002, hitting .259 with 18 home runs. Inspired by the success of Ichiro and other Japanese players in the United States, he announced he was ready to make the jump to the US major leagues.20

All eyes were on Iguchi in 2003, and he rose to the occasion with his best season yet in NPB. In 135 games, he achieved a career-high .340 batting average, 27 home runs, and 109 RBIs. His .438 on-base percentage and .573 slugging percentage resulted in an impressive 1.011 OPS. Iguchi’s 112 runs scored and 42 stolen bases highlighted his all-around excellence, establishing him as one of the premier players in NPB. Behind his all-star play, the Hawks soared to first place in 2003 with an 82-55 record, advancing to the Japan Series to take on the Hanshin Tigers.

Iguchi faced adversity in the 2003 postseason. After the Hawks secured the Pacific League pennant, he twisted his right ankle but was later cleared to play. He went hitless in a 6-5 loss in Game One against the Tigers, and then responded in Game Two with two hits, including a home run, in a 5-2 victory. In Game Six he hit another two-run homer, giving the Hawks a 5-1 victory and forcing a Game Seven.21

Iguchi connected off Game Seven Hanshin starter Trey Moore with a blast into the right-field stands in the third inning, giving the Hawks a commanding 4-0 lead. “I’m starting to see the ball well, and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” he said.22

The booming bats of the Hawks were too much for the Tigers. Iguchi hit yet another two-run homer and Kenji Johjima added a pair of solo shots as the Hawks defeated the Tigers 6-2 in Game Seven.23 Daiei pitcher Toshiya Sugiuchi, who won Games Two and Six, was named Series MVP.24

“We came from behind to win at home despite dropping three on the road. There are no words to express how wonderful I feel now,” said manager Oh. “It was a great Series, one that will pop up in my head as the best Series for years to come.”25

After the Series, Iguchi was named to the Pacific League Best 9 at second base, and more reports of his desire to go to America surfaced in the press. “Even before (joining Daiei), I’ve always wanted to give the majors a shot, and I feel that this is the best chance for me,” he told reporters.26

Team owner Tadashi Nakauchi was reluctant to lose Iguchi, saying, “I want him to stay. He batted in (more than) 100 runs this season and has played a pivotal role in helping Daiei win the championship. I want him to continue playing a leading role for the team.”27

In early November the New York Mets expressed an interest in Iguchi, but instead opted to sign Seibu Lions all-star second baseman Kazuo Matsui.28 Weeks later, Iguchi announced that he was putting his US dreams on pause, at least temporarily. The Japan Times reported, “Iguchi is set to accept a request from Daiei to stay in Fukuoka but has not given up his hopes of a move to the United States in the future.”29

He was compensated well for his loyalty. Hawks management tripled Iguchi’s salary for the 2004 season, increasing it to 240 million yen (roughly $2.4 million).30 He continued his high level of play that season and was voted in as a starter in the NPB All-Star Game.

Iguchi finished the 2004 season batting .333 with 24 home runs, 18 stolen bases, and 89 RBIs in 124 games. The Hawks finished first with a 77-52 record, earning a spot in the postseason Pacific League playoffs against the Seibu Lions. Despite Iguchi’s homers in Games One, Three, and Five, the Lions won the series.

The day after the loss, Iguchi told reporters he was ready for a challenge in the United States. “I don’t know if I can move to the majors, but I said talks should be held as quickly as possible,” he said, noting that he told Hawks general manager Kenji Sato of his wish to start negotiations.31

On November 4, 2004, Iguchi received his unconditional release from Fukuoka. After talks failed through the posting system, he opted for the release to increase his possible choices of selecting an American team.32 The strategic move paid off and Iguchi’s stock began to rise.

The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees expressed interest, but the Chicago White Sox looked the most promising. “I hear there have been several offers. The owner of the White Sox said he wants to meet with me,” Iguchi told reporters.33 General manager Ken Williams had never seen Iguchi play in person, but based on the recommendation of international scout Ray Poitevint, the Japanese star made his short list.34 After watching hours of tape and analyzing the skills and intangibles of Iguchi from afar, Williams was convinced he had found the White Sox’ next second baseman.35

Chicago offered a two-year, $4 million deal (about 420 million yen, 210 million yen per season). Iguchi’s side hoped to at least match his Japanese salary of 240 million yen. Thanks to Poitevint, who helped navigate the international and cultural nuances during negotiations, a compromise was reached.36 The White Sox offered Iguchi $2.3 million (237 million yen) a year plus incentives in a two-year contract.37 “Playing in the big leagues has been a longtime dream of mine, and I’m really happy,” Iguchi said. “I’m going to give my best and show them everything I’ve learned in Japan.”38

On January 27, 2005, Iguchi arrived at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago for a press conference. Williams, the White Sox general manager, emphasized, “We’re not looking for another superstar to come in here. This is about a fit, a piece. I told him earlier today, ‘I don’t care at the end of the year what your numbers are, just go out and play the game the way you’ve always played it, and things will take care of themselves.’” Iguchi responded through an interpreter, “I’ve been doing this style for eight years. There is really no intention to change that.”39

In early February, Iguchi joined the team for spring training in Arizona. He recorded a hit in his first preseason game, against the Diamondbacks.40 Throughout the spring he proved to himself and others that he belonged. He finished with a 3-for-4 performance against the Oakland Athletics, improving his Cactus League average to .327.41

Iguchi made his regular-season debut on April 4 against Cleveland. He went hitless but contributed to the 1-0 win with his defense. He recorded his first US major-league hit the next day, a double against Kevin Millwood, in a 4-3 victory for Chicago. In the third game of the series, Iguchi recorded his first multihit performance, going 3-for-4 and finishing the series with a .364 batting average.

On May 3 Iguchi had the best game of his early US career. He went 4-for-4 with his first major-league home run (off Brian Anderson) in a 5-4 win over Kansas City. “Of course it will be a memorable day … but at the same time, I’m glad we got the win.” he said.42

Iguchi carried a .302 average into June. In the second game of a two-game series against New York, he hit a solo home run to beat the Yankees 2-1. This performance marked the beginning of Iguchi’s unique place in history as the hitter with the best career batting average (50 or more at-bats) against the Yankees (.409, 27-for-66).43

On September 24 Iguchi recorded his second 4-for-4 game with a double and an RBI in an 8-1 win over Minnesota. Five days later, the White Sox clinched the American League Central Division crown with a 4-2 victory over Detroit.44 In the next to last game of the regular season, Iguchi hit his 15th home run, a three-run bomb at Jacobs Field that gave the White Sox a 4-3 victory and crushed Cleveland’s postseason hopes.

Manager Ozzie Guillén credited his new second baseman as an important ingredient to their winning formula. “One of the biggest reasons we are here is because of Iguchi,” said Guillén. “He moves the guy over, he runs for me, he makes the plays, he hits home runs, he runs the bases right. This kid does everything for the team, and that’s why I keep on saying he’s my MVP.”45

Iguchi finished the regular season batting .278 with 142 hits in 135 games, with 15 home runs and 15 stolen bases. Of his 71 RBIs, nine were generated through sacrifice bunts (three) and flies (six).

Iguchi’s postseason performance in 2005 was instrumental in the White Sox’ World Series victory. In the ALDS against Boston, he had a notable Game Two, hitting a crucial home run and driving in three runs. Despite a mixed showing in the ALCS against the Angels, his contributions helped the team advance by winning four games to one.

In the World Series against the Astros, Iguchi’s bat cooled. Still, he had key hits, including a two-hit performance in Game Three, and contributed to the team’s four-game sweep of Houston. The victory in 2005 ended an 88-year championship drought for the White Sox and brought the third World Series crown to the South Side of Chicago.46

The victory also marked an international baseball milestone. Eighty-eight years earlier it was three infielders – Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance – who led the Cubs to World Series victory by “turning their opponents’ sure hits into double plays.” Playing the roles of Tinker, Evers, and Chance in 2005 for the White Sox were Juan Uribe of the Dominican Republic, Iguchi of Japan, and Paul Konerko from the United States. The double-play trio signified that “baseball was transformed and enriched in the last century by globalization and diversity.”47

While the White Sox were welcomed by President George W. Bush at the White House, Iguchi was celebrated back home in Japan.48 There he was feted at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s official residence, where the star infielder presented gifts of a White Sox uniform and cap and taught Koizumi proper bunting techniques.49

Shortly after the World Series, all eyes shifted attention to the inaugural World Baseball Classic, scheduled for March 2006. “If I have a chance, I want to take part in the tournament, because Mr. (Sadaharu) Oh will coach the national team,” said Iguchi.50

In December Oh announced his WBC roster for Team Japan, which included several major leaguers: Akinori Otsuka (Padres), Ichiro Suzuki (Mariners), Iguchi (White Sox), and an undecided Hideki Matsui (Yankees).51

Shortly after Matsui declined to join the team, Iguchi announced that he too had changed his mind. “Unfortunately, I’ve decided to withdraw from the squad. I informed manager Sadaharu Oh of my decision,” Iguchi told reporters from his training facility in Okinawa Prefecture.52 “This is the second year of my two-year contract with the White Sox. The team expects more from me than in the first year, so I would have to be in spring training,” he explained.53

Iguchi reported a day early to spring training, emphasizing his commitment to the White Sox. “As far as being asked to play in the WBC, I am incredibly happy and incredibly honored,” he said. “It just didn’t work out this year.”54 Team Japan manager Oh invited Yakult Swallows infielder Shinya Miyamoto to fill the void left by Iguchi.55

In his second year with the White Sox, expectations were high for the 31-year-old, who finished fourth in the voting for AL Rookie of the Year honors. Manager Guillén praised his potential, saying, “What I see from (Iguchi) is a great RBI man. I want to get him more home runs.”56 Reflecting on his rookie US season, Iguchi expressed his goals: “I definitely want to build my batting average. I also think I can start running more this year.”57

Iguchi improved in 2006 with a .281 average, a .352 OBP, 156 hits, 18 home runs, 97 runs, and 234 total bases. Despite these improvements, the White Sox finished third in the AL Central Division behind the Minnesota Twins, led by Justin Morneau and Johan Santana, and the Detroit Tigers, led by rookie Justin Verlander.

The first of several notable highlights from the 2006 season occurred on April 13 when the White Sox faced Verlander at Detroit’s Comerica Park. Hitting in the number-two spot, Iguchi drove an 0-and-2 pitch to left-center field. The home-run blast set the stage for Verlander’s removal in the third inning and his first loss of the new season. Iguchi ended the day with a 3-for-6 performance and a 13-9 White Sox victory.

On May 20, 2006, at U.S. Cellular Field, Iguchi delivered a standout performance against the Chicago Cubs. Batting third, he went 3-for-3 with 2 runs scored and 6 RBIs. He hit two home runs – a grand slam off Rich Hill in the second inning and a two-run shot in the fifth inning. His contributions were key in the White Sox’ 7-0 victory over their crosstown rivals.

On September 30, the next to last game of the season, Iguchi had another notable performance in a 6-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins. He went 3-for-5 with a crucial home run in the seventh inning off Matt Guerrier, finishing the day with 3 RBIs and a stolen base.

In October the major leagues announced the roster of 27 big-league players selected to join manager Bruce Bochy in Japan for a five-game series against the top NPB players. Bochy selected Iguchi and Johjima (with the Mariners), making them the fifth and sixth Japanese players in the past 11 years to return home representing US major leaguers. Hideo Nomo was the first in 1996, followed by Kazuhiro Sasaki in 2000, Ichiro in 2002, and Kazuhisa Ishii in 2004.58

“Johjima and I played on the same team in Japan, so it’s very exciting to be going back to Japan together,” Iguchi said after a workout in Tempe, Arizona. “I don’t feel as much pressure as enjoyment. I’m very proud to be selected. These are great players.”59

Joining Iguchi and Johjima was an all-star lineup including MVP candidates Joe Mauer and Ryan Howard, Atlanta Braves outfielder Andruw Jones, and standout closers Brian Fuentes and Joe Nathan. The infield featured Howard and Lyle Overbay at first base, Iguchi and Chase Utley at second, Rafael Furcal and Jose Reyes at shortstop, and David Wright and Chone Figgins at third.60

Bochy, who led the major leaguers to a 5-3 series win in 2004, said he planned to rotate his infielders, giving each a start and then a day off unless needed for pinch-hitting. “There’s a lot of pride involved,” Bochy said. “We don’t want to lose on our watch. … We’ll be going all out.”61

Bochy’s team dominated the series, winning five games and tying one. The last time major leaguers went undefeated during a tour of Japan was in 1934 with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the rest of the All-Americans going 17-0. “Japan plays with a lot of heart,” Bochy said. “But we came over with a real good team and the fans got to see some of the best players in the world during this series.”62

The games were held in various ballparks, including the Tokyo Dome, Osaka Dome, and Fukuoka Dome. Ryan Howard of the Phillies was named the series MVP. In the second game, Howard and Iguchi led the offensive attack, with Howard hitting a pair of homers and Iguchi driving in two runs with a clutch double, leading the US team to an 8-6 victory.63

For Iguchi, the series was his first chance to play in Tokyo since he left for the United States in 2005. Several notable NPB players from this series later joined the US major leagues, including Yu Darvish, Kei Igawa, and Nori Aoki. The 2006 series turned out to be the 10th and final tour of MLB All-Stars in Japan.64

In the spring of 2007, Iguchi rejoined the White Sox for spring training. Upon his return to Arizona, he faced questions about his place in the future batting order. “It does not matter where I hit,” he said. “I just want to produce in the lineup. … I am just here to play.”65 With a potential lucrative free-agent contract weighing heavily on his mind, Iguchi had a rough start to the season, hitting just .221 in April and May. He improved in June, but on July 27, the White Sox traded him to the Phillies for Single-A pitcher Michael Dubee. Philadelphia was seeking a solid replacement at second base for the injured Chase Utley.66 Iguchi fit the bill and already had good chemistry with the Phillies all-stars who toured Japan in the offseason.

Iguchi posted a slash line of .304/.361/.442 with Philadelphia, helping them finish first in the NL East. The club wanted to keep him but asked him to make a permanent move to third base. Iguchi respectfully declined, and the Phillies released him in November 2007.67

On December 18, 2007, Iguchi signed a one-year deal with the San Diego Padres to continue playing second base. In March 2008, he traveled with the Padres to China, where they played a two-game exhibition series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wukesong Baseball Stadium.68 He hit his first home run as a Padre on April 26, a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 13th inning against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Petco Park.

Iguchi separated his right shoulder on June 5 against the Mets.69 After eight weeks of rehab, he returned to the Padres on August 2 but struggled, with his .259 batting average dropping to .231. He was released on September 1, 2008. Four days later, he re-signed with the first-place Phillies, who were gearing up for the postseason.70

Iguchi’s performance with the Phillies in the last month of the season was limited. In his final game, on September 28 against the Washington Nationals, he went 2-for-5 with a double, raising his season average to .232 and contributing to the Phillies’ 8-3 victory. Because he was a late-season signing, he was ineligible for postseason play.71

The Phillies finished the season with a 92-70 record, first in the NL East. They excelled in the postseason, winning the NLDS 3-1 against the Milwaukee Brewers, the NLCS 4-1 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and capturing the World Series title by defeating the Tampa Bay Rays in five games. This marked their first World Series championship since 1980. For his contributions to the team during the 2007 and 2008 seasons, the Phillies voted unanimously to award Iguchi a World Series ring.72

On November 13, 2008, Iguchi became a free agent again. In early 2009 he signed a three-year contract with the Chiba Lotte Marines worth 540 million yen (roughly $5.14 million), with an additional 20-million-yen bonus. “At the time, I had received an offer to play third base in the majors. But I was really keen to play second base, so I decided to join Lotte, where the conditions suited me,” he said.73

In his first season with the Marines, Iguchi played 123 games, posting a .281 average with a .391 on-base percentage and a .475 slugging percentage, resulting in an OPS of .866. He hit 19 home runs, drove in 65 runs, and scored 71 runs. His 68 walks contributed to his high OBP, marking a successful return to NPB.

Iguchi’s standout season came in 2010 when he played a key role in leading the Chiba Lotte Marines to a Japan Series victory. He appeared in 143 games, achieving a career-high .412 on-base percentage, hitting .294 with 17 home runs and setting a career high with 44 doubles and 103 RBIs. His OPS was .889, making 2010 one of his best seasons.

Iguchi’s performance declined in later years, but he remained a consistent presence for the Marines. In 2013, at age 38, he had a strong season, hitting .297 with 23 home runs and 83 RBIs, and reaching 2,000 career hits in NPB and MLB combined. This marked the peak of his later career as he transitioned to first base and DH due to age.74 His production dropped in 2014, and by 2015 and 2016, his role was reduced, though he still contributed as a veteran presence. In his final season, 2017, Iguchi hit his 250th career home run before announcing his retirement.

On September 24, in his retirement game against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, Iguchi had a two-hit performance, including a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning, closing out his career in style just like Red Sox great Ted Williams, who homered in the final at-bat of his career.75 The Marines won the game with Suzuki Daichi’s walk-off hit in the 12th inning.76

At 42 years old, his professional baseball career, which spanned 21 years and 2,408 games, had come to an end. During this time, he accumulated 2,254 hits and 295 home runs across both NPB and the US major leagues. By achieving this 2,000/200 milestone, he joined an elite group of eight players who accomplished the same feat.

Table 1. Players with 2,000+ Hits & 200+ HRs in Combined MLB & NPB Careers, by HRs (High to Low)77

Upon his retirement, Iguchi agreed to become the manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines. On October 14, 2017, he signed a three-year contract, becoming the first former Japanese player with US experience to manage in NPB.78

Iguchi had a respectable stint as manager of the Marines. Over five seasons (2018 to 2022), he managed 692 games, securing 324 wins against 338 losses (.489). His most successful season came in 2021, when the team achieved a .540 win percentage (67-57).

In 2022 Iguchi faced controversy when managing young pitching sensation Roki Sasaki. On April 10 Sasaki threw a perfect game, becoming only the 16th player in NPB to achieve this feat. A week later, Sasaki seemed on the verge of a second consecutive perfect game, but Iguchi, prioritizing the pitcher’s long-term health, decided to pull him after the eighth inning despite the ongoing perfect game. This decision was based on communication between Sasaki and the coaching staff, acknowledging the young pitcher’s growing fatigue and the potential risk to his arm. While some fans were disappointed, Iguchi and the team felt it was the best course of action for Sasaki’s future.79

Iguchi’s tenure as manager of the Marines ended after the 2022 season. Despite progress in building a competitive ballclub, the team finished with 69 wins and ended the season in fifth place, missing the playoffs for the first time in three years. On the morning of the final game, Chiba Lotte leadership informed Iguchi they planned to revise the assistant coaching staff for 2023. Feeling responsible for the team’s performance and loyal to his staff, Iguchi decided to resign. His decision was sudden, catching many by surprise. Although Iguchi planned to lead the team until 2025, he left believing he had laid the groundwork for future success, which was later realized when Lotte finished second in the league under new manager Masato Yoshii in 2023.80

After stepping away from the game, Iguchi joined NHK Japan as a studio analyst. His role with NHK had him traveling between the two countries he loves. In the spring of 2024, he returned to the Cactus League in Arizona to visit his former White Sox as they battled the Dodgers and new Japanese stars Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani.81

In August 2024, Iguchi participated in the Suntory Dream Match (an NPB old-timer’s game) at the Tokyo Dome attended by 33,079 fans. He helped the Premium Malts defeat the Dream Heroes, 4-3, and was named MVP for his outstanding performance, contributing two hits, two runs, and strong defense.82

In early 2024 Iguchi published his autobiography, Iguchi Vision: The Life Philosophy of Tadahito Iguchi. In the memoir, he revealed his desire to try coaching and eventually managing in the US major leagues.83

He also wants to help Japan become a leader in spreading baseball across Asia. Iguchi believes Japan, having achieved success in the WBC and the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, is now positioned to promote and develop baseball across Asia. He aims to share Japan’s baseball knowledge with emerging baseball nations like China, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, fostering a broader love for baseball and contributing to its global popularity.84

In his 2024 autobiography, Iguchi offered this advice for aspiring players: “[C]hallenge the dreams and goals you have set for yourself. You only have one life, and it belongs to you and no one else. … [M]ake choices that you will not regret. However, this is not a world you can take lightly. Don’t forget to be prepared to accept the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, as all valuable experiences. You cannot grow as a baseball player, or even as a person, if you are afraid of failure.”85

Last revised: March 1, 2025

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 “Yuyu Interview: Tadahito Iguchi,” San Diego Yuyu, June 16, 2008. https://sandiegoyuyu.com/index.php/features-2/interviews-en/1801-yuyu-interviewtadahito-iguchi.

2 Iguchi joined the Philadelphia Phillies in 2007 as a replacement for the injured second baseman Chase Utley. After a short stint in San Diego, he returned to Philadelphia in late 2008 but was ineligible for the postseason roster because he was signed in September. The Phillies organization still awarded Iguchi a World Series ring after their 2008 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, as a gesture of gratitude for his contributions to the club during the 2007 and 2008 regular seasons.

3 Pitcher Hideki Irabu received World Series rings as a member of the 1998 and 1999 New York Yankees but did not appear in a game during either Series.

4 In 2001, Tanishi merged with the neighboring Hoya municipality and is known today as Nishi-Tōkyō.

5 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: Weight Training Brings Out His Striking Ability,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 9, 2024. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024040900006-spnavi. The names of Iguchi’s parents were shared via email correspondence with his agent, Toru Suzuki, courtesy of Dennis Gilbert, October 30, 2024.

6 “Yuyu Interview: Tadahito Iguchi.”

7 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: The impact of Hideki Matsui at Koshien,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 16, 2024: 1. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024040900005-spnavi?p=1.

8 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: The impact of Hideki Matsui at Koshien.”

9 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: Kokubo’s Presence Embodied the Image of a Professional,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan. April 17, 2024 https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024040900006-spnavi.

10 The Tohto University Baseball League is the intercollegiate baseball league featuring roughly 20 prominent universities in Tokyo.

11 Tony Cooke, “Japan Stymies Team USA,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 23, 1995: 29. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal-team-japan-defeats/150627906/.

12 Tony Cooke, “Japan Stymies Team USA,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 23, 1995: 29, 33.

13 “Team USA Baseball Tour,” Reno Gazette-Journal, June 30, 1995: 51.

14 “Tadahito Iguchi,” namuwiki, https://bit.ly/namuwiki-iguchi.

15 “Tenma Project: A Challenge to the Future | Pegasus in the Sky,” Challenge Plus, November 2017. https://www.challenge-plus.jp/tenma/201711/.

16 “Hawks Take Iguchi First Overall in Draft,” Japan Times, November 22, 1996: 23.

17 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: A Consistent ‘Attitude of Fighting for the Team,’” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 22, 2024: 2. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041000002-spnavi?p=2.

18 Kōjō Life, “Kōjō: 向上 Life: A Unique Method for Building Successful Habits and Achieving Your Goals,” Medium, April 29, 2023. https://medium.com/@kojolife/k%C5%8Dj%C5%8D-%E5%90%91%E4%B8%8A-life-a-unique-method-for-building-successful-habits-and-achieving-your-goals-3056597d482c.

19 Al Chase, “Hawaii Winter Baseball Had Record-Setting Season,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, December 25, 1997: 26. https://www.newspapers.com/article/honolulu-star-bulletin-west-oahu-canefir/150636092/.

20 Adam Rubin, “Iguchi Fits Mets’ 2nd Options,” New York Daily News, October 31, 2003: 91.

21 “Hawks Send Series into Game 7,” Japan Times, October 27, 2003: 20.

22 “Hawks Blast Tigers, Wrap Up Japan Series,” Japan Times, October 28, 2003: 22.

23 “Hawks Blast Tigers, Wrap Up Japan Series.”

24 “Hawks Blast Tigers, Wrap Up Japan Series.”

25 “Hawks Blast Tigers, Wrap Up Japan Series.”

26 “Iguchi Eyes Majors,” Japan Times, October 31, 2003: 22.

27 “Second Thoughts,” Japan Times, November 1, 2003: 18.

28 “Giants Interested in Acquiring Tuffy,” Japan Times, November 02, 2003: 18.

29 “Lions’ Matsui Ready to Jump to Big Leagues,” Japan Times, November 18, 2003: 20.

30 “Jojima Gets Huge Raise from Hawks,” Japan Times, December 28, 2003: 20.

31 “Hawks Second Baseman Iguchi Says He’s Ready to Fly the Coop,” Japan Times, October 14, 2004: 21.

32 “Iguchi Released,” Japan Times, November 4, 2004: 18.

33 “White Sox Keen on Iguchi,” Japan Times, December 28, 2004: 17.

34 According to White Sox special assistant Dennis Gilbert, international scout Ray Poitevint was friendly with Iguchi’s family in Japan and was instrumental in the White Sox signing the Japanese star second baseman. Phone interview with Dennis Gilbert on September 5, 2024.

35 “Tadahito Iguchi,” Chicago Tribune, October 30, 2005: 17, 13.

36 Mark Gonzales, “Veteran Scout Retains Touch,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 2005: 4, 7.

37 “Batista Set for Hawks,” Japan Times, January 7, 2005: 23. Mark Gonzales, 7.

38 “Chicago-Bound,” Japan Times, January 27, 2005: 22.

39 “Iguchi Signs Two-Year Deal with White Sox,” Japan Times, January 29, 2005: 20.

40 Bob MacManaman, “Spring Training,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix), March 3, 2005: 59. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-arizona-republic-iguchis-first-cact/154378901/.

41 “Iguchi Has Three Hits in Win over Athletics,” Japan Times, March 30, 2005: 20.

42 “Iguchi Has Day to Remember; Goes 4-for-4 with Home Run,” Japan Times, May 5, 2005: 22.

43 “Highest Batting Average vs. the Yankees (All-Time, Minimum 50 At Bats),” StatMuse. https://www.statmuse.com/mlb/ask?q=highest+batting+average+vs+the+yankees+all-time+minimum+50+at+bats.

44 “Clinch Runners,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: 33, 13.

45 Rick Gano (Associated Press), “BoSox on Brink of Elimination,” Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff), October 6, 2005: 12.

46 Gary Washburn, “White Sox Triumph Gives Mayor a Reason to Cheer,” Chicago Tribune, October 30, 2005: 2, 2.

47 Newton M. Minow, “Big Year for Sox,” Chicago Tribune, January 1, 2006: 2, 8.

48 “Guillen’s Absence Disappoints Mayor,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 2006: 33, 26.

49 “Time Running Out for Matsui to Reach Deal with Yankees,” Japan Times, November 15, 2005: 22.

50 “Iguchi Released,” Japan Times, November 4, 2005: 11.

51 Stephen Ellsesser, “Matsui Still Missing,” Japan Times, December 10, 2005.

52 “Report: Iguchi, Buehrle to skip Baseball Classic,” ESPN.com, January 7, 2006. https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=2283668.

53 “Report Says White Sox Infielder Iguchi to Skip World Baseball Classic,” Charlottesville (Virginia) Daily Progress, January 8, 2006: 36.

54 “White Sox’s Iguchi Passes on World Baseball Classic to Concentrate on His Offense,” Chicago Tribune, January 1, 2006: 2, 8.

55 “Miyamoto Joins Squad,” Japan Times, January 13, 2006: 14.

56 “Iguchi Willing to Do What It Takes to Make Himself Better,” Northwest Herald (Woodstock, Illinois), February 22, 2006, 16. https://www.newspapers.com/article/northwest-herald-iguchi-i-want-to-get-h/159143046/

57 “White Sox’s Iguchi Passes on World Baseball Classic to Concentrate on His Offense.”

58 Joseph A. Reaves, “Pros Going to Japan.” Arizona Republic, October 30, 2006: 14.

59 Reaves.

60 Reaves.

61 Reaves.

62 “MLB All-Stars Perfect in Japan,” Kenosha (Wisconsin) News, November 9, 2006: 20.

63 “Howard, Iguchi Lead MLB Stars over Japan,” Passaic (New Jersey) Herald-News, November 5, 2006: D2.

64 “Howard, Iguchi Lead MLB stars over Japan.”

65 John Moredich, “Iguchi’s Spot in Batting Order Still Not Decided,” Tucson Citizen, February 23, 2007: 36.

66 Michael Radano, “Phils Acquire Iguchi from the White Sox,” Camden (New Jersey) Courier-Post, July 28, 2007: 47.

67 Todd Zolecki, “Phillies Eye Iguchi Despite Rule Problem,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 5, 2007: C09.

68 Dylan Hernandez, “After Hectic 72 Hours, Dodgers Return Home,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2008: D10.

69 “Padres’ 2B Iguchi Sidelined,” Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, June 7, 2008: 19.

70 Scott Lauber, “Iguchi Is Back,” Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, September 6, 2008: 23.

71 Lauber.

72 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: New Friends and Inspiration Gained Through Trading.” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 23, 2024: 2. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024040900008-spnavi?p=2.

73 “Tenma Project: A Challenge to the Future | Pegasus in the Sky,” Challenge Plus, November 2017. https://www.challenge-plus.jp/tenma/201711/.

74 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: A Consistent ‘Attitude of Fighting for the Team,’” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 22, 2024: 2. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041000002-spnavi?p=2.

75 Ted Williams hit his last home run on September 28, 1960, in his final major-league at-bat. The game was held at Fenway Park, where Williams was playing for the Boston Red Sox against the Baltimore Orioles. In the eighth inning, he hit a solo home run off Orioles pitcher Jack Fisher. This was Williams’ 521st career home run, and the iconic moment is celebrated as one of the most memorable in baseball history.

76 Kaz Nagatsuka, “Iguchi Hits Final Home Run to End Career in Style,” Japan Times, September 25, 2017. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2017/09/24/baseball/japanese-baseball/iguchi-hits-final-home-run-end-career-style/.

77 As of the end of the 2024 season, Shohei Ohtani is not a member of the 2,000/200 club. He has 273 career home runs (48 NPB + 225 MLB), but with 1,174 career hits (296 NPB + 878 MLB), he’s 826 hits short of the 2,000-career-hit milestone. Based on current trends (150 hits per season), he’s estimated reach the 2,000-career-hit mark in the 2029 or 2030 season.

78 Jim Allen, “Baseball: Iguchi Looking to Lay Solid Foundation in Chiba.” Kyodo News, March 3, 2019. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2019/03/b82e5488d55d-baseball-iguchi-looking-to-lay-solid-foundation-in-chiba.html.

79 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: Roki Sasaki’s Legendary Two Consecutive Perfect Games,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 28, 2024. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041000009-spnavi.

80 “Iguchi Vision: Roki Sasaki’s legendary two consecutive perfect games.”

81 Scott Merkin, “Brebbia Ditches Walking Boot Ahead of Side Session: Right-Hander Has Been Sidelined by Calf Strain; Iguchi in White Sox Camp to See Yamamoto,” MLB.com, March 6, 2024. https://www.mlb.com/news/john-brebbia-to-throw-a-side-session-for-white-sox.

82 “Tadahito Iguchi Named MVP as Premium Malts Win 10th Consecutive Championship,” Sports Hochi, August 6, 2024. https://hochi.news/articles/20240806-OHT1T51010.html?page=1.

83 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: I Want to Train as a Coach in America,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 11, 2024: 2. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041100003-spnavi?p=2.

84 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: The Role That Japan, Now the World Champion, Should Play in Asia,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 11, 2024: 2. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041100002-spnavi?p=2.

85 Tadahito Iguchi, “Iguchi Vision: Advice for Juniors Aiming for the Majors,” SportsNavi / Yahoo Sports Japan, April 11, 2024: 1. https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2024041100002-spnavi?p=1.

Mikami was born on November 6, 1889 in Kofu, capital of the Yamanashi Prefecture in the Chubu region of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Around the turn of the last century Japanese middle schools started forming baseball teams. Mikami started playing the game about age 13. In high school he played catcher for two seasons and was the team’s main pitcher during his senior year.

In 1908 Mikami enrolled at Waseda University in Tokyo to study business. In the meantime he played left field his first two years before moving to center field. By that time, Waseda had established a strong baseball rivalry with nearby Keio University. The two schools initiated an annual series in 1903 called the Sokeisen; it became the nation’s most popular college rivalry. In 1905, before Mikami arrived, Waseda had become the first group of Japanese ballplayers to barnstorm through the United States. Four years later, the University of Wisconsin nine traveled to Japan to play a series of games. Waseda played Wisconsin on that tour, though it’s unclear if Mikami was a part of the baseball team during his freshman year.

The University of Chicago accepted a similar invitation from Waseda for the fall of 1910. Both universities prepared heavily for the matches. The Chicago ballplayers, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, took college classes all summer, as they would be out of the country in the fall, and also practiced baseball daily. Stagg did not travel with his club to Japan as he was also Chicago’s football coach, and the gridiron schedule kept him occupied.

In the meantime, the Waseda players took off for Honolulu at the beginning of July to practice for two months and play tune up games with an Oahu club. Former University of Chicago players Albert W. “Stuffy” Place, the Maroons top hitter for much of the 1890s until 1902, and Fred Merrifield, team captain in 1899, met Waseda in Hawaii to instruct the players. Both Place and Merrifield had coached the Waseda club in Japan prior to their first barnstorming tour of the U.S, and had first traveled to Japan in 1904 as recruiters for the Baptists Missionaries and the YMCA. They also taught classes at Waseda. Ultimately, Merrifield spent years in Japan training ballplayers during the first decades of the twentieth century, establishing himself as one of the game’s founders in that country. In 1921 he was named baseball coach at the University of Chicago.

Chicago, led (in Stagg’s absence) by player-coach Harlan Orville “Pat” Page, also a future head coach for the school, arrived in Japan at the end of September 1910, and returned home two months later having also visited China and the Philippines. The only loss Chicago suffered during the trip was to the Marine Club in the Philippines. They swept a seven game series against Waseda and also took three games from Keio. Each of their games attracted huge crowds. The New York Times commented that the Japanese clubs showed “great technical skill both with the bat and on the diamond generally.” The Times did note that the Japanese ballplayers couldn’t compete physically because of their “short legs” and general lack of stature. The Japanese players were all between 5’2″ and 5’8″. At the end of the tour the Chicago club invited Waseda to visit the United States in 1911, and Waseda accepted.

Accordingly, on March 28, 1911 sixteen Waseda players, including 21-year-old centerfielder Mikami, left Yokohama. The group was managed by English professor Takizo Takasugi, who had attended Northwestern College and taught at DePauw University. The captain of the club was 24-year-old star pitcher and leading hitter Sutekichi Matsuda. Their ship arrived in San Francisco on April 13 and was met by Chicago’s Pat Page, who would escort the Waseda club on their tour.

Waseda’s first game took place April 17 in San Francisco, when they took on a group of Waseda alumni who had relocated to California. At the time about 72,000 Japanese nationals lived in the U.S., 75% of whom resided in California. Newspaper accounts remarked that the entire contest was played without either team uttering a word. All communication was done via an elaborate signal system. Waseda played mostly college clubs on their way to Chicago, winning at least one game in California: a 4-1 victory over the University of California at Berkeley on April 22. The Waseda team arrived in Chicago on May 5 and played their host the following day, losing 6-4. The Mansfield News noted later in the month that Mikami, a right-hander, had supported his pitcher against Chicago with “heavy fielding.” On May 8 the entire Waseda team attended a Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals game.

Waseda played several college, semi-pro and amateur squads in the midwest, including their old rivals at the University of Wisconsin, before departing for the east coast at the end of June. They almost pulled off a victory over Chicago in their final faceoff on June 17, scoring five runs in the bottom of the ninth but falling short 12-11. Though game accounts are incomplete, Waseda won at least one contest in the Midwest, splitting a doubleheader with Ames College on May 20.

In New York City on July 1 Waseda won a game over a mixture of college students from Manhattan College and local semi-pro players at the Lenox Oval by a score of 10-4 in ten innings. Waseda scored seven times in the tenth. The game account includes a full box score, a rarity for the Japanese contests. Matsuda, pitching, induced thirteen hits back to the mound, throwing out twelve. Mikami batted second and played center field, going 2 for 4, including a hit down the right field line, a sacrifice in the tenth, and a steal. He was also tagged out at the plate trying to score on a short passed ball. The game was umpired by former major leaguer Jack Doyle.

Unlike the New York Times‘ accounts from the previous year, this time newspapers noted that the Waseda club and the Keio club, who also toured the U.S. in 1911, were extremely fast and agile athletes. The Times account had noted the less exalted state of the Japanese baseball player within the culture, suggesting that the finest Japanese athletes preferred participating in martial arts or sword fighting. A year later, the newspapers were seeing their finest players, and thought it would only be a matter of time before the Japanese squads started holding their own against their American counterparts. With the tour over Waseda departed from Seattle headed for home on August 1.

His tour completed, Mikami returned home and graduated with a B.C.S. in business from Waseda in 1912. He returned to the United States on September 1913 to study business at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, 200 miles outside Chicago. He had a terrific year with the baseball squad in 1914, playing shortstop and starring for the club. The Chicago Tribune called him “one of the fastest infielders in the middle west.” Mikami, called Mike by his fellow students, was unanimously elected captain of the 1915 team and was said to be one of the most popular men on campus. That year, he again manned the shortstop position and at times pitched a few innings.

After two years at Knox, Mikami transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He graduated there with an A.M. (Master’s degree) in economics in 1917. During the summers, he played for a traveling professional club called the All-Nations of New York in 1915 and 1916. (It should be noted that this was not the squad of the same named owned by John Wilkinson that became the Kansas City Monarchs.) As such, Mikami is the first known Japanese national to play professional baseball in the United States.

The All-Nations were a barnstorming outfit which marketed its club as an international squad. The men were purported to be Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, American Indian, Spanish-speaking, or from other exotic locales. Some of them actually were from these places, others merely played the part. There were also African-Americans on the team. With the All-Nations Mikami was billed as Jap Mikado. The nicknames Jap and Mikado were typical terms used during the era to refer to Japanese. An existing box score of a game versus the Bacharach Giants on August 2, 1916 in Atlantic City shows “Mikado” batting leadoff and playing second base. The other names on the roster included right fielder Red Cloud and pitcher Hong Long. Soon after the Bacharach game, Mikami was named player-manager of a Utah club known as the Salt Lake Nippons, an all-Japanese nine. Salt Lake City was one of the most popular strongholds for Nisei baseball, and for Japanese Americans, outside of California.

After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1917, Mikami joined the Mitsui Bussan, the international trading arm of the Mitsui Company, and in so doing he ended his active career in baseball. He took up residence in Paterson, New Jersey, and worked for the Mitsui Company on Front Street in New York City as an importer.

The Mitsui Company originated as a cloth-dealing and dry goods firm in the late seventeenth century in Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo). After Japanese ports were opened to foreign trade in 1858, Mitsui opened the Mitsui Bussan in 1876 in order to expand their commodity base. The company traded nearly any product that would provide a profit. Initially, the bulk of the foreign trade was confined to China. Soon though, Mitsui opened its first New York branch in 1879, then closed it briefly for lack of profitability. By 1900 the branch was reopened, sparked by Japan’s importing of American cotton and the exporting of Taiwanese oolong tea to the United States.

Mitsui Bussan performed extremely well during World War I, necessitating the hiring of Mikami and others for their New York branch. Mikami did a great deal of traveling in his position, often to the Caribbean. After a few years he returned to Japan permanently in the summer of 1920. During the 1920s, Mitsui became one of Japan’s largest business conglomerates.

In his later years Mikami enjoyed amateur baseball but apparently paid little attention to Nippon Professional Baseball. He died of a gastric perforation at age 68 in 1958.

Photo credit

Courtesy of Peter Gorton / The Donaldson Network.

Sources

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Ancestry.com

Boston Daily Globe

Chicago Defender

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Ji, Zhaojin. A History of Modern Shanghai Banking: The Rise and Decline of China’s Finance Capitalism. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc, 2003.

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The Semi-Centennial Alumni Record of University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), 1918

Washington Post

Murakami was a left-handed pitcher with a three-quarters delivery listed at six feet and 180 pounds. He was born on May 6, 1944, near the end of World War II, to father Kiyoshi and mother Tomiko. Mashi was the third child, after oldest sister Kyoko and middle sister Haruko.1 His father was gone, drafted into the army, captured in Manchuria, and a prisoner of war in a Siberian camp for three years post-war. Young Murakami was raised by his grandparents.2  

His father’s father was postmaster of Otsuki, an isolated town west of Tokyo which avoided the destruction of war. His mother’s parents descended from samurai and displayed ancient samurai weapons in their home as family heirlooms. Young Murakami was allowed to play with these.3

On his fifth birthday, Murakami first met his father, released from the POW camp. Murakami had no idea what his father looked like. Up to then, he had been raised by his grandparents and a bit “spoiled.” Young Murakami soon learned his father Kiyoshi was strict and violent. Murakami said his father was “a scary person” and “if I didn’t do what he told me, he would slap me mercilessly.”4

Robert Fitts, author of the definitive book-length biography, Mashi (2014), wrote, “Today, [his father] would probably be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.”5

In post-war Otsuki, things were scarce. He and his friends played marbles and with menko (trading cards).6 Baseball was a bit makeshift. Because baseball equipment was unavailable, they had to improvise gear. For example, in a 2022 interview with Michael Clair of MLB.com, Murakami remembered, “I would cut a bamboo stick and find a softball and try to play baseball.”7

His father did not want him to play. He wanted his son to be a doctor. Murakami thought it was because his father had been injured in battle and saw so many wounded. By fourth grade, father had relented and allowed him to play softball. Young Murakami played barehanded, afraid to ask for a baseball glove. One of his sisters suggested that he write a letter asking for one and put it by father’s bedside while he slept. Young Murakami wrote the note, left it by his sleeping father, and got his first glove.8  

In junior high school, his father, by then the Saruhashi postmaster, forbade him to play baseball.9 He wanted him in judo, so young Murakami tried. He didn’t like it and quit. The next year, against his father’s wishes, he secretly joined the baseball team at Saruhashi junior high. His mother found out but kept the secret.10

It wasn’t a secret long, for as postmaster, his father knew everyone. One practice, young Murakami saw his father across the field screaming at the manager, which left the young man shaken.11 His manager said, “I thought your father was going to punch me in the face.”12

Upon getting home, Mashi found his father sitting down between his two uncles. They told young Murakami to sit, and he did, afraid he was in trouble. Instead, his father told him the manager said that he was very talented at baseball.13 His father and the manager agreed: Murakami could play baseball if he studied and kept good grades.14

Later Murakami realized his grandfather intervened, convincing his father to let him play.15  

The standout lefthander drew the attention of manager Hitoshi Tamaru, who invited Murakami to enroll at Hosei Number Two High School, which had a prestigious baseball program.16 Tamaru offered a scholarship, so father agreed.17

His father added, “If you want to be a ballplayer, you will have to be the best in Japan.”18

In Murakami’s first year at the prestigious baseball high school, there were about 200 players, but the practices were devised to frighten off the least dedicated, where each practice ended with a full-speed sprint, 10 laps around the field, and maintenance work on the grounds. Murakami said, “Every day, the number of members decreased by 20 to 30 people, and those who were absent were immediately dropped.”19 By year three, there were about 30 players left.

Murakami and Fitts while doing a nine-city tour to support the book “Mashi” gave a talk together at SABR 45. At the talk, Fitts said, “As some of you know, in Japanese baseball the training is very infused with the martial arts. Sometimes to toughen up the players they were not allowed to drink water.”20

Murakami added, “We could not drink the water. But sometimes we would very quickly drink some water. You would go to pick up the ball and there would be the little bit of water with the baby moquitoes [sic] in it. [Puddles.] Sometimes you would put a towel in that water and (*slurp*) [sic].”21

In high school Murakami loved watching the American TV western Rawhide.22 Through this and other U.S. shows, he found America fascinating.

His first chance to take part in Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball tournament was in 1960. That time, however, he cheered from the stands, seated behind ace pitcher and future Yomiuri Giants outfielder, Isao Shibata. In 1961, he sometimes relieved, and Shibata played outfield. In 1962, he missed Koshien with a broken arm. Murakami said, “After the opening ceremony of the Kanagawa tournament, I went back to school and was pitching … when a ball hit my left wrist.… I tried to pick up the ball … and throw it. I couldn’t move my left arm…. I went to the hospital.… It was cracked.”23 He was unlucky in 1963, too. He got food poisoning during the qualifying Kanagawa tournament in Koshien and lost his stamina.

After the 1963 Koshien, Murakami was scouted by the Nankai Hawks of Japan Pacific League (JPPL). Hawks manager Kazuto Tsuruoka visited the Murakami family home. Tsuruoka’s son, Yashushi, raved about the young prospect. At first, though, Murakami refused to sign. He recalled, “my parents worked at a … post [office], so I thought I could take over after graduating from university.” 24

Tsuruoka said, “’If you join Nankai, I’ll send you to America to study baseball.”25

Murakami said, “I changed my mind. I had seen Rawhide, Hollywood movies with John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, and I wanted to come [to America].”26 He signed.27

Japanese player contracts were translated from a copy of the standard Uniform Players Contract (UPC), including Section 10A, known as “the reserve clause”. Robert Whiting, author of several books on Japanese culture and baseball, wrote, “The Uniform Players Contract long used in the NPB was a descendent of a 1930s U.S. minor league contract. It had the same annoying reserve clause in it and it denied the right of collective bargaining.”28

During the Hawks’ camp, Tsuruoka took Murakami in with his family.29 They treated the 19-year-old as a son.30 Murakami felt deep loyalty to Tsuruoka.

With the Hawks’ “ni gun” or “second team”, the equivalent of the minor leagues, team in 1963, a coach told Murakami to throw overhand, and he did, injuring his elbow.31 Given several weeks to heal, Murakami returned and pitched through pain, losing effectiveness. Tsuruoka started to doubt that the lefty was major-league caliber.32 Murakami appeared in three games for the “ichi gun” or “first team”, the equivalent of the major leagues, but with a 4.50 ERA was no longer considered a prospect. 33

On February 20, 1964, Murakami was called to the manager’s office. Tsuoroka said, “You are going to the United States.”34 Catcher Hiroshi Takahashi and infielder Tatsuhiko Tanaka were going, too.35 General manager Makoto Tachibana thought none were major-league caliber.36

The Hawks sent Murakami to their representative, Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, who also worked for the San Francisco Giants. In retrospect, the Hawks saw that since Harada worked for the Giants prior to working for Nankai, he might have a greater loyalty to the Giants and chose San Francisco’s best interest over Nankai’s, and they accused him of a “conflict of interest”37 Harada was close with Tsuruoka, whom Murakami trusted.38 Harada brought the contract to Murakami.

Fitts said, “The agreement [was] entirely in English and the Hawks didn’t notice the clause that says for $10,000 the Giants can just buy their contracts if the Giants wanted them.”39 Though he couldn’t read the contract, Murakami signed. There were not yet formal agreements between NPB and Major League Baseball.40

On March 10 he and the others flew to San Francisco.41 Murakami recalled, “Looking down on the ground from the sky over San Francisco, I felt like I was in a beautiful fairy tale land.”42

After landing he went to Candlestick Park to meet team officials. Still wearing his necktie, he stood on the mound.43 He thought, “I would be happy if I could pitch in a place like this.”44

Minor-league camp was in the Arizona desert, with mountains in the distance, reminding Murakami of cowboy movies.45 He recalled, “When we moved to … Phoenix, Arizona, we bought things like cowboy hats as souvenirs.”46

Their interpreter left after a week. Murakami was nervous. With the interpreter gone, Murakami and the other two Hawks spoke only Japanese, and had no one to translate to English for them to communicate with the team, but they carried Japanese-to-English pocket dictionaries. For many people they encountered in the U.S., it was the first-time meeting someone Japanese. They would approach and talk in English or Spanish. With a common language in baseball, they became friends. 47

Compared to NPB, U.S. baseball training was easy–out-of-shape players were slowly working themselves into playing shape and took care not to overdo it.48 Murakami said, “I [was] a little bored.”49

After practice, they would hitchhike to town to shop. He stopped after a while, as the money he had brought from Japan started running low and the team had not paid him.50 Murakami recalled, “In Japan, I got my salary every month from January, but in America, I didn’t get my salary until the season started.”51

Once camp was over, Murakami and the others were assigned to the Class A Fresno Giants. They arrived at the hotel expecting a Japanese American guardian, but the guardian never came.52 Murakami recalls, “When we moved to Fresno, California in mid-April, our sponsor took a long time to arrive, and we also had to pay for hotels. The 400 dollars I had brought in cash (about 144,000 yen at the exchange rate at the time) was quickly disappearing. I had to find a place to live on my own….”53

They tried getting a loan at the Tokyo Bank in town and had a lucky break, running into a second-generation Japanese American, Mr. Saeki, who spoke Japanese. He boarded them and drove them to the ballpark.54  

During the first week of the season, Murakami finally got paid, a big relief. Two weeks later, he was alone. The other Hawks were sent to Rookie League. He was grateful to Mr. Saeki.55

At Fresno, manager Bill Werle converted Murakami into a reliever.56 In 49 games, the southpaw excelled, going 11-7 with a 1.78 ERA. He won California League Rookie of the Year.57 In late August the Fresno club was in a playoff race. Nonetheless, on August 29, Werle told his bullpen ace that he was going to the majors, and the next day he told Murakami what to do to report to the major leagues: “The minor league GM will bring you an air ticket and hotel address, so please follow his instructions.”58

Around then the Hawks sent a letter asking for Murakami to return to Japan, which didn’t arrive. Murakami was unaware of this when he was promoted to the majors.59

On August 31, he flew to New York. Nobody met him at the airport, so he took a bus alone to the hotel in Manhattan, only to find that he wasn’t registered. Murakami says, “I waited in the lobby for 20 minutes, and I felt depressed again.”60 He felt more alone than ever.

After two hours, a team representative arrived at last and got him a room. He went to the hotel restaurant to eat alone, but when Juan Marichal and José Pagán invited him to eat with them. He happily joined them. He could not read the menu, so he ordered what they did. He recalled, “I can’t help but have roast beef … since my salary is so low, I won’t be able to afford such a luxury [after this].” 61

On September 1, Murakami made his major-league debut in New York versus the Mets. Before the game, he visited the 1964 World’s Fair, and then went next door to Shea Stadium, which was still brand new. Murakami remembered, “It was more beautiful than the stadiums in Japan.”62

While he was warming up, an official from the Giants came up to him with a contract, which he refused to sign. At Fresno, others had warned him to beware of contracts – plus, he could not read English. Team officials found a fan who could translate to Japanese. Murakami signed it just 15 minutes before game time.63

That game turned out to be his big-league debut. The Mets were leading, 4-0, in the bottom of the eighth. The loudspeaker echoed across the field, “Now pitching! Number 10, Masanori Murakami.”64 He left the bullpen to take the mound before a crowd of nearly 40,000. Murakami described all four at-bats of his first major league appearance: “I threw a perfect strike on the outside, then [a strike]out, [a] hit, [a strike]out, and [a] groundout to short, and I was able to keep my debut score at zero.”65 The batters were, in order, Charley Smith, Chris Cannizzaro, Ed Kranepool, and Roy McMillan.

The next day, the newspaper headlines read, “First Japanese Major Leaguer.” Upon returning to San Francisco a week later after the road trip ended, he noted that “not only Americans but also people of Japanese descent had gathered at the airport to congratulate me.” He had become an international hero.66

Baseball historian John Thorn said, “Until he appeared at the major league level, the general supposition among fans and baseball professionals was that the Japanese professional league was the equivalent of Double-A at best. After Murakami, that was impossible.”67

Each performance broke down walls. Decades later in Time magazine, Dante Ciampaglia wrote, “[Murakami] pitched out of the bullpen eight more times in 1964…. With each throw, Mashi further legitimized Japanese baseball in the eyes of Americans.”68 Over the 1964 season, Murakami pitched in nine games, with a 1.80 ERA, and recorded his first career win on September 29 against the Houston Colt .45s, where he induced a popout from Joe Morgan.

After the season, he stayed in the U.S. to play in the Arizona Instructional League where a second-generation Japanese American fan loaned him a TV. Murakami watched Rawhide and The Bob Hope Show, remembering when he and other Giants were on the latter show.69 The TV and movies were his only news. He didn’t know what was happening in Japan.

He had not heard from the Hawks. Finally, he called his father, who perhaps didn’t understand the legal details but knew something was wrong, said, “Your position is strange,” and he eventually got in touch with the team, who said, “Just come back.”70 However, Murakami wanted to play for the Giants, so he signed a deal for 1965. Fitts said, “the Giants got him to sign a contract for 1965 because they knew they could get him for $10,000. But instead of mailing a check and the contract they handed it to a scout from the Hawks …the scout thought that the $10,000 was a bonus for him.”71

The Giants owned Murakami’s rights, through the U.S. reserve clause. On December 17, he returned to Japan.72 Back in his home country, he discovered the nation’s press saw his Giants’ contract as traitorous.73

The Hawks paid Murakami a $30,000 signing bonus. They couldn’t afford to lose both money and player, arguing that the $10,000 payment from the Giants was for making the majors.74 They tried getting out of the situation by having him write a letter to the Giants saying that he was homesick. They argued that under Japanese law he was still a minor and thus his signature on the Giants’ contract was invalid.75 Pressured, he signed a new contract with the Hawks.

The Hawks claimed his rights through the Japanese reserve clause, which conflicted with the U.S. reserve clause. Murakami was caught in the middle, torn between his loyalty to Tsuruoka and his dream of returning to the Giants.

U.S. Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick thought the new Japanese contract crossed a line, responding, “If in the face of documentary evidence there still is insistence on the part of the Hawks baseball team in going through with this new arrangement and the breaching of the original contract, then as Commissioner of Baseball I can only hold that all agreements, all understandings and all dealings and negotiations between Japanese and American baseball are canceled.”76

In February, Murakami went to the Hawks’ camp in Hiroshima. He couldn’t play official games because of the legal limbo, so he pitched batting practice. When the season started, he still could not pitch official games.

For a month, his baseball career was in doubt. Representatives from NPB and Major League Baseball argued. Murakami remembered telling Tsuruoka that “was planning to quit baseball” out of frustration.77

NPB Commissioner Yushi Uchimura read the original contract, which the Hawks signed with the Giants allowing Murakami and the others to study baseball in America; finding it difficult to understand. He concluded that the Hawks didn’t understand it either.78 Uchimura offered a compromise. Murakami could fulfill the Giants contract, then return to Japan to honor the Hawks’ contract.79 In May, NPB and Major League Baseball reached agreement, and Murakami returned to the Giants.80

As a direct result of this incident Major League Baseball and NPB commissioners signed the “United States-Japanese [sic] Player Contract Agreement” (“Working Agreement”), where both leagues agreed to respect the other’s reserve clause.81 The “ring of fire” was now official. As Ciampaglia wrote, “The door Mashi so improbably opened slammed shut for other Japanese players—and it stayed sealed for 30 years.”82

Thorn added, “I think the Japanese professional baseball leagues did not want to become just a source of raw materials. They protected their best players with much more vigor afterwards.”83

Murakami returned to San Francisco on May 5 and celebrated his shared birthday with Willie Mays on May 6. He proceeded to have a good season, going 4-1 with a 3.75 ERA and eight saves in 45 games. Among them, Murakami closed the game in which Marichal attacked John Roseboro. From another game against the Cincinnati Reds, Murakami remembered Pete Rose flexing his biceps, bragging you had to be strong in Major League Baseball.   

Another memorable meeting was with Roberto Clemente, who asked Murakami who was better, Clemente or Mays. Murakami said, “Mays.” Clemente asked, “Why?”84 Murakami was a fan of Clemente and asked for an autograph. Clemente obliged. Murakami said, “As [Clemente] was signing … he was telling me about … giving back to the community. That … stuck with me for a long time.”85

Murakami dealt with racism in the United States. Players would taunt him with slurs and pick fights. For a time, he pitched so well against the Dodgers that threats on his life had him under FBI protection.86 Despite that pressure, he did well.

At the 1965 season’s end, he returned to Japan to fulfill his commitment to Tsuruoka.87 He struggled during his first two seasons back with the Hawks. Murakami said, “I made two big mistakes: I put on too much muscle and I messed up my form.”88

After Rose’s bicep-flexing, Murakami thought, “Major-leaguers have amazing muscles.”89 Echoing the Babe Ruth woodchopping story, Murakami says, “I had a blacksmith make a masakari [battle axe] twice as big as the one at my parents’ house … I [split] the firewood … one year’s worth of wood in one month.”90

Also, in response to a newspaper story claiming that left-handed pitchers could only win pitching over the top, he switched his delivery to that style from three-quarters. This strained his arm, pained his shoulder, and hurt his performance. After a couple of failed starts, Murakami was moved to relief – a demotion, in NPB terms. In 1966, he went 6-4, although he posted a respectable 3.08 ERA in 96 1/3 innings). In 1967, he went 3-1 (4.03 ERA).91

In 1967 Murakami married Yoshiko Hoshino. They had two children: a daughter named Maho and a son named Naotsugu.92

By 1968 Murakami was demoted to the second team, where catcher Sumio Watarai advised him to stop throwing overhand and return to three-quarters. His form returned and he became a first-team starter. In his first start, on June 29 against the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes, he had a complete-game win. That was his best season, with a career high 18 wins against just four losses, for a league-leading winning percentage of .818.93 His ERA was a tidy 2.38.

From 1969 to 1972 Murakami averaged 22 starts per season, with a 43-44 record. In 1973, he pitched primarily in relief, with eight starts and 15 relief appearances. In 1974, he returned to relief full time, with a 1-2 record and a 1.82 ERA in just 10 appearances.

Traded to the Hanshin Tigers in 1975, he struggled with a 5.12 ERA. After just one season, he was dealt to the Nippon Ham Fighters, for whom he pitched in relief for seven more years. The Fighters won the Japan Pacific League (JPPL) pennant in 1981, with Murakami contributing a 3.72 ERA, but lost to the Yomiuri Giants in the Nippon Series.

He retired from playing in 1982 at age 38 after making just two appearances for the Fighters.94

In 1983, Murakami attempted a comeback with the Giants to fulfill his dream of playing with them again. They didn’t sign him, but he stayed on as a batting-practice pitcher.95

He returned to Japan as a sports commentator from 1984-1986. He was pitching coach for Nippon Ham’s minor-league team from 1987-1988, and later was pitching coach for the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks and Seibu Lions.

In 1995, Hideo Nomo joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. Murakami said, “I was very happy to see another Japanese player finally make it to the major leagues after all of these years.”96

That year the Giants honored him with a pregame ceremony, led by manager Dusty Baker, and August 5 was declared “Masanori Murakami Day” by the city of San Francisco.97

For a time, he worked as a Giants scout.98

Also, in 1995, Murakami remembered Clemente talking about charitable work, and he decided to engage in it too, donating to “the Special Olympics and to U.N.-related charities.”99

In 1999, 2000, and 2001 he was manager/general manager of Team Energen, the first all-Japan, women’s amateur baseball team.100 In 2004 he founded a new women’s team, Amino.101

In 2004, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan awarded Murakami the Foreign Minister’s Certificate of Commendation, commemorating the 150-year anniversary of Japan-U.S. relations. Murakami was director of the Imagine One World Kimono Project and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

He currently works as Major League Baseball commentator for Japan’s public broadcaster, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), and as a writer for the Japanese newspaper, Daily Sports.102

Murakami has returned to the U.S. on occasion. Notably, he joined the book tour for Mashi. Most recently, on May 17, 2024, he returned to San Francisco to throw out the first pitch at the Giants’ invitation. The occasion was Japanese Heritage night at Oracle Park. The 80-year-old lefty, with his usual easygoing smile, threw a strike from in front of the mound.

Looking back two years previously, Murakami offered Michael Clair his view on the two key themes of his baseball journey:

• Loyalty: “Mr. Tsuruoka was the one who promised me a ticket to the United States when I first joined the team, and he kept his word there … I do have pride that I kept my promise [to manager Tsuruoka.”103
• Dreams: “How I look at it now is that you only live once. Players that want to go from Japan and challenge themselves at the highest level should be going.… It’s your life.”104

Last revised: September 9, 2024

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello, Robert Fitts, and Howard Rosenberg, and fact-checked by Mark Sternman and Alan Cohen. Thanks to Rob Fitts for agreeing to let this version of Murakami-san’s life story proceed and for providing his input.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, www.baseball-almanac.com, and MLB.com.

Articles in Japanese were translated with Google Translate. Where possible, quotes from English articles were preferred, because in at least some of those cases, it is clear human translators were involved.

Translations of the Japanese text referenced in the endnotes are available from the author.

Notes

1 Robert K. Fitts, Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 1, Figure 1.

2 Masanori Murakami, “40 years ago, there was a Japanese major leaguer,” Accumu.jp. Accessed August 4, 2024, Para. 2 and 3.

3 Fitts, 2-3.

4 Murakami, Para. 4

5 Fitts, 2.

6 Murakami, Para. 4.

7 Michael Clair, “Masanori Murakami, the Overlooked Trailblazer,” mlb.com, January 30, 2022. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www.mlb.com/giants/news/featured/masanori-murakami-first-japanese-player-in-mlb. 

8 Murakami, Para. 4.

9 “My Failure 1: Masanori Murakami had a ‘broken bone’ in his second year of high school and ‘food poisoning’ in his third year,” Sanspo, August 18, 2015. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www-sanspo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sanspo.com/article/20150818-5MXFPEC3OZISZO7ZPCHWB7IOMA/?outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D, Para. 3.

10 Fitts, 5.

11 Murakami, Para. 5.

12 Clair.

13 Fitts, 5.

14 Murakami, Para. 5.

15 Fitts, 5-6.

16 “My Failure 1,” Para. 3.

17 Fitts, 6.

18 Clair. 

19 Murakami, Para. 7.

20 Cecilia Tan, “Masanori Murakami speaks at #SABR45,” whyilikebaseball.com, June 27, 2015. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www.whyilikebaseball.com/?p=973.

21 Tan.

22 “My Failure 3: Masanori Murakami is treated as a bad guy for remaining in the US,” Sanspo, August 20, 2015. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www-sanspo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sanspo.com/article/20150820-DPRMWG6KNVJDLHRNU7SBU4DZ3I/?outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D, Para. 3.

23 “My Failure 1,” Para. 4.

24 “My Failure 2: Masanori Murakami is almost penniless in the United States,” Sanspo, August 19, 2015. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www-sanspo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sanspo.com/article/20150819-OB4HULKKENMH7F4YMUZFE5TJXA/?outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D, Para. 7.

25 “My Failure 2,” Para. 9.

26 Tan.

27 Murakami, Para. 9.

28 Robert Whiting, The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of our National Pastime (New York: Warner Books, 2004), 85-87

29 Tan.

30 Fitts, 2-3.

31 “Masanori Murakami,” Baseball Reference. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Masanori_Murakami.

32 Fitts, 27-30.

33 “Masanori Murakami,” Baseball Reference.

34 Fitts, 34.

35 “My Failure 2,” Para. 2.

36 “Masanori Murakami,” Baseball Reference.

37 “My Failure 3,” Para. 1 and 2.

38 “My Failure 3,” Para. 2.

39 Tan.

40 “My Failure 3.”

41 “My Failure 2,” Para. 3.

42 Murakami, Para. 10.

43 “My Failure 2,” Para. 3.

44 Murakami, Para. 10.

45 Murakami, Para. 11.

46 “My Failure 2,” Para. 5.

47 Murakami, Para. 12.

48 Clair.

49 Clair.

50 Murakami, Para. 13.

51 “My Failure 2,” Para. 1.

52 Murakami, Para. 14.

53 “My Failure 2,” Para. 5.

54 Murakami, Para. 14.

55 Murakami, Para. 14.

56 Tan.

57 “My Failure 2,” Para. 6.

58 Murakami, Para. 15.

59 “My Failure 3.”

60 Murakami, Para. 16.

61 Murakami, Para. 16.

62 Murakami, Para. 17.

63 Murakami, Para. 17.

64 Murakami, Para. 18.

65 Murakami, Para. 19.

66 Murakami, Para. 19.

67 Dante A. Ciampaglia, “Masanori Murakami: Baseball’s Forgotten Pioneer,” Time, July 14, 2015. Accessed May 27, 2024: https://time.com/3955421/masanori-murakami/.

68 Ciampaglia.

69 “My Failure 3,” Para. 69.

70 “My Failure 3,” Para. 5.

71 Tan.

72 “My Failure 3,” Para. 6.

73 Murakami, Para. 20.

74 Clair. 

75 Clair.

76 Clair.

77 Murakami, Para. 20.

78 “Masanori Murakami,” Baseball Reference. 

79 “My Failure 3,” Para. 6.

80 Murakami, Para. 20.

81 Whiting, 84-85.

82 Ciampaglia.

83 Ciampaglia.

84 Murakami, Para. 23.

85 Clair.

86 Murakami, Para 23.

87 Murakami, Para. 26.

88 “My Failure 5: Masanori Murakami lost his body shape after gaining muscle,” Sanspo, August 22, 2015. Accessed May 26, 2024: https://www-sanspo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sanspo.com/article/20150822-DEWSVYR5UNN6DB4OBAXJGZMMNY/?outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D, Para. 1.

89 “My Failure 5,” Para. 3.

90 “My Failure 5,” Para. 3.

91 “My Failure 5,” Para. 8.

92 Fitts, 182-183, 186.

93 “My Failure 5,” Para. 4.

94 “My Failure 5,” Para. 4.

95 Michael Clair (in part), “Masanori ‘Mashi’ Murakami,” Japan American Society of Houston. Accessed May 27, 2024: https://www.jas-hou.org/masanori-murakami-bio.

96 Ciampaglia

97 Clair (in part).

98 Tan.

99 Clair. 

100 “1st Season Team Energen Records,” girls-bb.com. Accessed May 26, 2024; “2nd Season Team Energen Records,” girls-bb.com. Accessed May 26, 2024; “3rd Season Team Energen Records,” girls-bb.com. Accessed May 26, 2024.

101 “6th Season Team Animo Records,” girls-bb.com. Accessed May 26, 2024.

102 Clair (in part).

103 Clair.

104 Clair.

Nomo was born on August 31, 1968, into a working-class family in the industrial section of Osaka, Japan. His father, Shizuo, and mother, Kayoko, had great hopes for their son, naming him Hideo (pronounced He-day-oh), which translates literally to “excelling man,” but is commonly understood to mean “superman” or “hero” in Japanese.1

He started playing baseball with his father at age 5 and by the time he was 12 his dream was to become a professional ballplayer. In the fifth grade he invented his corkscrew “tornado” windup to impress his father, and to fool batters. “By twisting my body and by using this force, I was able to throw harder. And at the same time, with that motion, it would be difficult for batters to pick up the ball,” he explained.2

When Hideo reached middle-school ball he dominated batters with his speed, and frightened them with his lack of control. At times he would walk the bases loaded only to strike out the side. The head coach of Kindai High School, the top school-baseball program in Osaka, told Nomo, “Young man, with that tornado windup, you’ll never make it.”3 Nomo used the criticism as inspiration when he enrolled in the lesser-known Seiyo Industrial High School. There he dominated the local competition, and even pitched a perfect game.

Despite his 6-foot-2, 200-pound frame, when he graduated from high school in 1987 Nomo failed to catch the attention of college and pro scouts. Instead, he joined the Shin-Nitestsu Sakai, a company-sponsored club in the semipro industrial leagues, where he perfected both his corkscrew motion and his forkball. He was so dedicated to mastering the forkball grip that at night before going to sleep he taped a tennis ball between his index and middle fingers.4

Nomo earned a spot on Team Japan, which won a silver medal in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. The next year he received offers from a record eight teams in the 1989 Nippon Professional Baseball draft. Nomo signed with the Osaka-based Kintetsu Buffaloes and received a bonus of 100 million yen (roughly $1 million US) and a guarantee that the team would not try to change his pitching form.5

Buffaloes manger Akira Ogi was an easygoing character who endeared himself to Nomo. As a result, Nomo gave Ogi-san everything he had on the mound. Armed with a blazing fastball and a wicked forkball, Nomo tied for the league lead in wins (18-8) and led with a 2.91 ERA and 287 strikeouts in 235 innings. He won the Rookie of the Year award, the Most Valuable Player award, and the Sawamura Award, given to the best pitcher in NPB. For the next three seasons he led the Pacific League in wins and strikeouts. And because of his unorthodox windup, he also earned the nickname “Tatsu-maki” – Japanese for “The Tornado.”6

The young Nomo also bonded with teammate Masato Yoshii, a veteran pitcher three years his senior. Masato took Hideo under his wing when he first turned pro, and in addition to teaching Nomo the ins and outs of professional baseball, he also shared with him his dream of one day playing in the US major leagues. “Masato was a diehard major-league baseball fan for a long time,” said translator Kota Ishijima, who worked with both Nomo and Yoshii with the Mets. “Their relationship was quite strong. With regard to Hideo’s interest in playing in the major leagues, Yoshii strongly influenced him.”7

After the 1990 season, the Japanese all-stars battled the visiting major-league all-stars, winning four games in the best-of-seven series. Nomo’s performance caught the eye of several Americans, including Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson. The Big Unit approached Nomo at a private dinner in Japan and told him, “You belong in MLB.”8 With Johnson’s praise, and the strong influence of Kintetsu teammate Masato Yoshii, Nomo could not shake the thought of going to America to compete in the majors.

In 1994 manager Ogi was replaced by Keishi Suzuki, a Japanese Hall of Fame pitcher with an impressive résumé: 317-238 record, fourth all-time in wins; 3,061 strikeouts, and 340 games pitched without a walk, an NPB record. Suzuki followed a militaristic training regimen and believed that the remedy for a sore arm was to throw more. “Throw until you die,” he said.9 By the time Nomo left the NPB, he had thrown more than 140 pitches in a single game 61 times. The excessive pitch counts took their toll on the righty. He was injured most of the 1994 season and finished with an 8-7 record, appearing in only 114 innings, down 53 percent from 243 1/3 the previous season.10

After the 1994 season Nomo met baseball agent Don Nomura, who had translated the Japanese Uniform Players Contract searching for loopholes to recruit players to the United States. With the help of California-based agent Arn Tellem, they found one – the voluntary-retirement clause. It stated that if a player retired and returned to NPB, he was bound to his former team. However, there was no provision for players who retired and went to another country to play. This was Nomo’s out. After the ’94 season, he declared his retirement from NPB at age 26.

After interviewing with several major-league teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, and Seattle Mariners, Nomo found a personal connection with Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley and signed with the team in February 1995.

That spring the relationship between the major leagues and its fans was at an all-time low. The previous season was killed by the players strike, a conflict that many perceived as an unrelatable argument over money between billionaires (the owners) and millionaires (the players). The 1994 World Series was canceled. Fans were disgusted and some vowed never to step foot in a major-league ballpark again. Many fans had a change of heart after Nomo arrived in America.

Nomo signed a minor-league contract with the Dodgers’ Double-A team, the San Antonio Missions, who had just hired new pitching coach Luis Tiant, a fellow tornado-style pitcher. Nomo reported to spring camp in Vero Beach, Florida at the end of February and immediately impressed Tiant. “He’s a smart pitcher. … (If) you’re good, you’re good, no matter where you pitch,” Tiant said in his endearing Cuban accent.11

By the end of April the Dodgers were convinced Nomo was ready for the big leagues, but wanted the rookie to get a tune-up start with one of their minor-league clubs.12 In his American professional baseball debut, Nomo pitched 5 1/3 innings for the Bakersfield Blaze of the California League against the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. With little run support, the Blaze lost 2-1, but the Dodgers were pleased with Nomo’s performance and called him up. They announced that he would make his first start on May 2 against the San Francisco Giants in Candlestick Park.13

With his start against the Giants, Nomo became the first Japanese-born player to join a major-league team after officially retiring from the NPB. When he joined the Dodgers, only one other Japanese native, Masanori Murakami, had played in the major leagues. Murakami returned to Japan after playing with the Giants in 1964-65.14

His predecessor offered Nomo a congratulatory message in the press: “I wish him all the best and hope he has great success as a Japanese major-leaguer. I would like to see him do well against everybody – except for the San Francisco Giants.”15

Murakami’s jest helped fuel Nomo when he pitched against San Francisco. By the end of his career, he had compiled a 13-7 record against the Giants, 4-5 when pitching in Los Angeles and 9-2 in San Francisco, an .818 winning percentage in the Bay City. Throughout his career Nomo was “a Giant killer” in their own ballparks, Candlestick/3Com Park and PacBell/AT&T Park. (Nomo’s personal best in any opposing city was .833 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.)

In his major-league debut, Nomo pitched five scoreless innings, allowing one hit. He left the 0-0 game after the fifth inning and did not get a decision. (The Dodgers lost to the Giants 4-3 in 15 innings.) Among the 200 members of the media present, most were from Japan. Only 16,099 fans paid to see the game at Candlestick Park (just 28 percent of the 58,000 capacity). However, millions in Japan watched the game live on television, where the first pitch was thrown at 5:33 A.M.

After six starts, Nomo ended May with five no-decisions and one loss. June would be a different story. He recorded his first major-league win against the New York Mets on June 2, a 2-1 victory. In eight innings he allowed just two hits, a home run and single, both to Bobby Bonilla. Nomo went undefeated for the entire month of June, going into the midseason break with a 6-1 record, a 1.99 ERA, and 119 strikeouts in 90 1/3 innings pitched.

Nomo had one of the greatest Junes in Dodgers history. In each of his six starts, he pitched at least eight innings. He gave up just five earned runs in 50 1/3 innings, allowing 25 hits and 16 walks while striking out 60. In winning six straight games, he capped the month with back-to-back complete-game, 13-strikeout shutouts. No other Dodgers pitcher had ever thrown back-to-back shutouts with 13 or more strikeouts.16

Shortly before the 1995 All-Star Game, Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux suffered a groin injury running to first base.17 Maddux’s injury made Nomo the potential starter for the National League. The Braves ace said, “I think more people want to watch him pitch than me, to be honest.” Nomo got the official nod to start from NL manager Felipe Alou.

The game was played on July 11 in Texas at The Ballpark in Arlington in front of 50,920 fans. Fittingly, Nomo’s boyhood idol, Nolan Ryan, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Nomo pitched two innings and faced six batters. He struck out three (Kenny Lofton, Edgar Martinez, and Albert Belle), allowed one hit (a single by Carlos Baerga, who was caught stealing) and no walks. The NL won the game, 3-2, on a home run by Jeff Conine in the eighth.18 Nomo had a great outing, but would never pitch in another All-Star Game.

Nomo’s spotlight in the All-Star Game also helped heal a nation and improve relations between the United States and Japan. His brilliance in the 1995 season was a source of great pride and a much-needed morale boost for the Japanese.19 The country had recently experienced acts of terrorism, a massive earthquake, economic recession, and rising unemployment. Nomo’s performance was welcome relief for his country.20

In the late 1980s to early 1990s US-Japan relations were poor due to American perceptions of unfair trade practices in Japan. Some American politicians engaged in “Japan bashing” through policy and public-relations stunts like destroying Japanese-made products with sledgehammers on the evening news.21 Critics observed that there was a lot of “unwarranted, irrational, racially tinged hostility toward the Japanese.”22 Attitudes in the United States toward Japan started to change when Nomo arrived.

“Nomo’s impact will be so great as to recast the image of the Japanese people in the American imagination,” wrote the Mainichi News.23 Historians compared Nomo to Babe Ruth, who visited Japan in 1934. The US ambassador said then that Ruth was so popular in Japan that “one Babe is better than a hundred ambassadors.” For the same reason, one Japanese scholar observed, in 1995, “Nomo is better than 100 Japanese ambassadors to Washington.”24

At the end of the season Nomo was named NL Rookie of Year after notching a 13-6 record and a 2.54 ERA, and leading the league with 236 strikeouts in 191 1/3 innings. “I think I had a great year with the Dodgers, and I’m satisfied,” he said.25 “My next goal is to pitch for the Dodgers in the World Series.”26

Nomo’s Rookie of the Year Award was a disappointment for Braves rookie Chipper Jones, who had his sights set on winning the award when he was drafted years earlier. A key contributor to the Braves’ 1995 postseason success, Jones said, “He’s got something I don’t have, but I’ve got something he doesn’t have – a World Series ring.”27

In 1996 Nomo went 16-11, pitched his major-league career high of 228 1/3 innings, and reduced his walks to a career-low 3.4 per nine innings pitched. His performance helped the Dodgers finish with a 90-72 record, one game behind the Western Division-leading San Diego Padres. Los Angeles secured the wild-card spot in the postseason, but was swept by the Braves in the Division Series. (Nomo started the third and final game of the series and gave up five runs in 3 2/3 innings.)

While a World Series championship eluded Nomo in 1996, the Japanese righty found himself once again making history on the mound. On April 13 he struck out a career-high 17 batters in a 3-1 victory over the Florida Marlins.28 On September 17 he pitched a no-hitter against the Colorado Rockies at hitter-friendly Coors Field.

Nomo was 3-0 against Colorado in his career, but the mile-high altitude had never been kind to him. He had never won a game in the Rockies’ home ballpark.29 Furthermore, Colorado was an offensive powerhouse in 1996. By the end of the season the Rockies led the NL in home runs (221) and stolen bases (201). Their lineup included three 40-home-run hitters, Andrés Galarraga (47), Ellis Burks (40), and Vinny Castilla (40). Dante Bichette and Eric Young were also among the top offensive performers in the National League.

Nomo dominated the Rockies hitters in the game and won 9-0. In the improbable no-hitter, he struck out eight and walked four. Dodgers manager Bill Russell was stunned by Nomo’s achievement. He said, “That was huge, especially to do it in Colorado. With the hitters they have over there and for Nomo to throw a no-hitter … is a tremendous effort.” 30

“(Nomo) probably doesn’t realize how unbelievable that accomplishment is,” said teammate Eric Karros. “People in Japan probably don’t know Coors Field, but I’m betting it won’t be done again.”31

Karros was correct in his prediction. As of the 2016 season, no other pitcher had thrown a no-hitter in Coors Field. More than 20 years later, some argue that Nomo’s feat, particularly against one of the best-hitting teams of all time – was “the greatest regular-season pitching performance in baseball history.”32

In 1997 Nomo set a major-league record for starting pitchers by reaching 500 strikeouts in 444 2/3 innings. That was one-third of an inning less than Dwight Gooden‘s record of 445 innings set in 1985.33 Nomo’s record was later broken by Kerry Wood (404 2/3), Yu Darvish (401 2/3), and the late Jose Fernandez of the Marlins, who surpassed them all in 2016 by reaching the milestone in 400 innings.34

On paper Nomo’s 1997 season looked somewhat average, and even uneventful. Unbeknownst to him and those around him though, his career began its downward spiral that season. The critical moment occurred on July 26 when the Phillies’ Scott Rolen knocked Nomo out of a game with a line drive off his pitching arm. Rolen’s shot was the only hit Nomo allowed in 3 2/3 innings. The Dodgers won the game, 4-1, but the smash changed everything for Nomo.

He quickly returned to pitching, but by the end of the season his elbow required surgery to remove bone chips and calcium deposits. In hindsight, the career-altering impact of Rolen’s line drive off Nomo suggests parallels to the beanball that leveled Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro in 1967. Both athletes eventually returned to the field and displayed flashes of their former brilliance, but neither was ever truly the same player again. 

Rolen was the batter Nomo hit most often during his career. Nomo hit the Phillies shortstop three times, all after the line-drive incident. According to Nomo each hit-by-pitch was an honest mistake. “Absolutely not intentional,” he declared. “He’s a great hitter. I was just trying to jam him inside. I will not give him any more sweet pitches.”35

The 1998 season marked the beginning of the end of “Nomomania” in Los Angeles. With a 2-7 record and 5.05 ERA, the 29-year-old right-hander was removed from the Dodgers’ 40-man roster after complaining when he learned that his name had been included in trade talks with Seattle for Randy Johnson.36 Both the Yankees and Mets expressed an interest in Nomo, but the Mets appealed to him most because of familiar faces in the clubhouse. Among them were rookie pitcher Masato Yoshii, one of Nomo’s best friends from Japan; his former Dodgers catcher, Mike Piazza; and Dave Wallace, his former Dodgers pitching coach, now a senior adviser for New York.37 On June 4 the Dodgers traded Nomo with Brad Clontz to the Mets for Greg McMichael and Dave Mlicki.

Getting Nomo’s career back on track was the Mets’ top priority. Even his new teammates tried to help. Mets outfielder Butch Huskey thought he had the solution. He said the right-hander was tipping his pitches. “You could figure out what pitch he was throwing,” Huskey said: When Nomo was throwing a fastball, his left pinkie was visible at the height of his windup. When he threw a splitter, his pinkie was in his glove. Huskey said that ex-Mets Tim Bogar and Bill Spiers discovered the flaw during Nomo’s rookie season. Mets pitching coach Bob Apodaca alerted Nomo. “He’s a professional. I don’t want him to be overly concerned,” Apodaca said. “It might just be a matter of putting his hand up higher in his glove. Or getting a bigger glove.”38

The change of scenery or glove size didn’t help Nomo in New York. He pitched only slightly better for the Mets the second half of 1998. After spring training in 1999, the Mets released him, choosing to give the aging Orel Hershiser a try instead.39

Nomo signed a minor-league contract with the Chicago Cubs, who gave him an extended spring training and required him to start three games with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. After assessing his performance, the Cubs would either put him on the major-league roster or release him. Rick Kranitz, the Cubs’ roving pitching instructor, declared, “I don’t see why he can’t pitch in the big leagues. The ball’s jumping out of his hand.”40 But Nomo was released after his final start.

Nomo next signed with the Milwaukee Brewers. He pitched one solid outing for the Double-A Huntsville Stars and the Brewers brought him up. In Milwaukee, Nomo returned to his lucky jersey number 11 that he once wore with the Kintetsu Buffaloes in Japan. Nomo had a good season, going 12-8. Nomo got his groove back, thanks in part to a close relationship with manager Phil Garner.41 “He seems to do well for people he likes,” Garner observed.42

On September 8, 1999, Nomo became the third-fastest starting pitcher to reach 1,000 strikeouts, trailing only Roger Clemens and Dwight Gooden.

Unable to come to an agreement on a long-term contract with Milwaukee, Nomo entered the 2000 season as a free agent. He signed a one-year contract with the Detroit Tigers for $1.25 million and the chance to earn an addition $3.25 million in performance bonuses. In Detroit he reunited with Phil Garner, now the Tigers manager.

With the Tigers Nomo had to abandon his lucky jersey number 11, which had been worn by former manager Sparky Anderson and would be retired when Anderson was elected to the Hall of Fame. So Nomo settled for 23, previously worn by Kirk Gibson. When asked what he knew of Gibson, Nomo said, “He played well for the Dodgers and the Tigers.” Nomo hoped to do the same.

In the season opener in Oakland, Nomo pitched a three-hitter and struck out eight in seven innings. The Tigers won, 7-4, and the season started on a promising note for Nomo and his new team. By the end of the season Nomo led the Tigers pitching staff with 181 strikeouts in 190 innings pitched, but also held the dubious distinction of leading the team in home runs allowed. He gave up a career-high 31 homers, six of them to the Boston Red Sox. His season was also marred by nagging injuries. In August he experienced discomfort in his throwing hand, radiating pain that originated in the first knuckle of his middle finger and shot down both sides of the finger. The Tigers training staff suspected that the injury was the result of Nomo’s spreading his fingers to throw his forkball.

Despite the injuries, home runs allowed, and losses (he was 8-12), Nomo enjoyed his time as a Tiger. One night in Milwaukee after pitching six innings, he wore an eight-foot-tall costume of an Italian sausage and secretly participated in – and won – County Stadium‘s nightly Sausage Race.43

Nomo’s enjoyable season came to a sour end when the Tigers released him. The Red Sox came calling and signed him to a one-year, $3.25 million contract with a signing bonus of $1.25 million.44 Unlike the Tigers, the Red Sox were impressed that Nomo was sixth among AL starters with 181 strikeouts and third in strikeouts per nine innings (8.57). Nomo also had 17 quality starts (six innings or more and three earned runs or less allowed). They believed there was still some gas in Nomo’s tank and that his arm could help the team. “I’m happy to be part of the Red Sox team,” Nomo said. “I’m going with the Red Sox because they have a strong chance to go to the World Series.” As he did in Milwaukee, Nomo donned his lucky jersey number 11 in Boston.

In his first start with the Red Sox, on April 4, 2001, Nomo pitched the second no-hitter of his career, defeating the Baltimore Orioles, 3-0, in Camden Yards. He joined Cy Young, Jim Bunning, and Nolan Ryan as the only major-league pitchers to throw a no-hitter in both the American and National Leagues. (Randy Johnson joined the group with his perfect game in 2004.)

Nomo struck out 11 and walked three. The no-hitter was the first thrown at Camden Yards. It also was the first of four no-hitters caught by Boston’s Jason Varitek in his career. And it was the earliest calendar date on which a no-hitter had been pitched. (Bob Feller threw a no-hitter on Opening Day in 1940, but that occurred on April 16.)45 The old Nomo was back, and it wasn’t just for one game. He went on to finish the 2001 season with a 13-10 record and lead the American League in strikeouts with 220.

The major-league game with the largest viewing audience in Japan had been Nomo’s debut game. On May 2 Nomo pitched in the game with the second largest audience. The Red Sox played the Seattle Mariners in Seattle and Ichiro Suzuki was in his first season with the Mariners.46 The game started at noon in Japan and was an instant classic.47 The Mariners won, 5-1. Nomo held Suzuki hitless but drilled him in the middle of the back with a fastball. The blow left the Mariners’ leadoff hitter gasping for breath. “It was a fastball that I wanted to throw inside,” Nomo said. “The cutter stuck on my fingers longer than I wanted, so the ball was more inside than I wanted.” Ichiro joked about the incident later, saying, “I never imagined that my first hit-by-pitch would be done by a Japanese pitcher in Major League Baseball.” 48

After rejuvenating his career in Boston, Nomo turned down the Red Sox’s offer of $19 million for three years and re-signed with the Dodgers. He earned close to $22 million over the next three seasons in Los Angeles. But by turning down the Red Sox offer he missed an opportunity to achieve the one goal that eluded him during his major-league career. Had he stayed in Boston, he might have been a member of the historic 2004 Red Sox team that “Reversed the Curse” and won the organization’s first World Series in 86 years.49

When Nomo returned to Los Angeles in 2002 he quickly learned that this was not the same Dodgers organization he once knew. The O’Malley family had sold the team to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corporation, the giant media conglomerate.

In Nomo’s first season back, the Dodgers finished 92-70. They held first place for 30 games throughout the season, but finished in third place in a strong NL West behind the wild-card San Francisco Giants, who advanced to the World Series against the Anaheim Angels. Nomo finished the season with 193 strikeouts in 220 1/3 innings and a 16-6 record, the best winning percentage (.727) of his major-league career. He was 9-5 at the All-Star break and got on a hot streak, winning 11 of 12 games in the second half.

In 2003 the Dodgers improved to second place despite a worse record (85-77) than the season before. Nomo started a team-high 33 games and compiled a 16-13 record with 177 strikeouts in 218 1/3 innings. He pitched two shutouts and two two-hitters. His 3.09 ERA was the sixth best in the NL and the second best of his career. The Dodgers pitching staff had three players from Japan: Nomo, Masao Kida, and Kaz Ishii.

Nomo missed two weeks in September with shoulder inflammation and had surgery in the offseason to “clean up” the rotator cuff. Afterward, the velocity on his fastball dropped dramatically, from the 90-mph range down to the low to mid-80s. “I can’t get strength behind my pitches,” Nomo complained. The Dodgers noticed the decline in velocity at the beginning of spring training but hoped he would come around.

Manager Jim Tracy proclaimed Nomo the staff ace after the departure of Kevin Brown.50 But the ace never appeared. In July the Dodgers placed Nomo on the 15-day disabled list with rotator-cuff inflammation.51

After achieving the best winning percentage of his career the previous season, Nomo struggled in 2004. He finished with a 4-11 record (a .267 winning percentage, a career low) and an 8.25 ERA, the highest ERA ever for a pitcher with at least 15 decisions. The Dodgers sent Nomo to Triple-A Las Vegas for a brief stint and eventually released him at the end of the season.

Nomo signed a minor-league contract with Tampa Bay for 2005. With the Devil Rays he returned to his lucky uniform number. One reporter commented that Nomo wore number 11 “any season when he feels he has something to prove.”52 At the start of the season, Nomo had 196 career wins between Japan and the major leagues, and desperately wanted win number 200. “In Japan, 200 wins is a big deal,” a Japanese sportswriter said. “It will ensure Nomo’s spot in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, if he hasn’t earned one already.”53

After the rotator-cuff injury and the attempt to repair it, Nomo was clearly no longer the pitcher he used to be. “It’s his guts, his competitiveness that makes him an effective pitcher,” said Tampa Bay general manager Chuck LaMar.54 On June 15 Nomo allowed two runs in seven innings as the Devil Rays defeated the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-3. It was career win 200, qualifying him for the Japanese Golden Players Club, known in Japan as the Meikyukai.55 Membership in the Meikyukai is automatic for position players with 2,000 hits and pitchers with 200 victories. Nomo’s win made him the 45th member of the Golden Players Club and the 16th pitcher.56

“He’s had a great career and this is a special win,” said Tampa Bay manager Lou Piniella. “We didn’t have champagne, but we had the beer, so he got doused with beer and everybody gave him a standing ovation, which was really respectful of a heck of a competitor and a great pitcher.”57 But by midseason Nomo was sitting on an unimpressive 5-8 record and a 7.24 ERA, and with a stockpile of young arms in the Tampa Bay farm system, the team released him.

The 36-year-old veteran was immediately picked up by the New York Yankees but pitched only at Triple-A Columbus. After the season his contract with the Yankees was not renewed.

In March 2006 Nomo signed with the Chicago White Sox, the defending World Series champions. He started one game for Triple-A Charlotte and afterward was put on the disabled list with a sore elbow. He was released in June. Nomo resurfaced 16 months later and about 20 pounds heavier, signing with the Leones del Caracas in the Venezuelan League. The 39-year-old pitcher arrived in Venezuela in October 2007 because of his friendship with Leones manager Carlos Hernández, Nomo’s batterymate during his first two seasons in the major leagues. When asked if this was a first step to returning to the majors, Nomo answered, “I’m taking things slow, this is a first step, if all goes well, I’ll think about looking for the opportunity to return.”

In January 2008 Nomo agreed to a minor-league contract with the Kansas City Royals. Despite his history of shoulder problems, the Royals were intrigued with Nomo as a middle reliever and as a mentor for rookie pitcher Yasuhiko Yabuta. “Hideo has a lot of experience and can help guide him along and serve as a role model,” said Royals GM Dayton Moore.

Nomo pitched three games in relief in April as a member of the Royals. Against the heart of the Yankees lineup, he surrendered home runs to Alex Rodríguez and Jorge Posada in the ninth inning. Undeterred, the veteran struck out fellow countryman Hideki Matsui to end the inning. Against the Mariners, Nomo faced Ichiro Suzuki, who struck out swinging on a 2-and-2 pitch.

In his third and final appearance for the Royals, on April 18, Nomo relieved Yabuta in the bottom of the eighth inning against Oakland. He faced four Oakland hitters and allowed a single, double, and a home run – a triple shy of the cycle, and a heartbreaker for anyone rooting for a Nomo career comeback. Travis Buck went down swinging to end the inning. It was the final strikeout of Nomo’s 12-year major-league career. The Royals released him a week later.

In July 2008 Nomo announced his retirement from professional baseball at age 39.58 Slugger Hideki Matsui said, “He was a pioneer for all of us. He helped all of us come to the major leagues. All of the players who have come from Japan owe him a debt of gratitude.”59

“Before Hideo came over here everyone had an image of major-league baseball and people looked at players over here as monsters because they were so big,” said Ichiro Suzuki. “We were able to watch more MLB games and were able to get an image of, ‘Maybe I can play in the big leagues.’”60

After retirement Nomo joined the Orix Buffaloes, the current incarnation of his former Japanese team. He traveled occasionally with the team during the 2009 season and worked with the pitchers.61 In 2010 he became a part-time adviser for the Hiroshima Carp, and also invested in a team in Japan’s Industrial League.62

Nomo had participated in instructional camps in the past, but in retirement he found a new passion in coaching and helping to develop young players. He founded the Nomo Project, an initiative designed to help introduce young Japanese players to the experience of playing baseball in America.63

In 2011 Nomo partnered with Shigetoshi Hasegawa to create the USA-Japan Youth Baseball Games, a tournament for players 15 and younger. Nomo’s Junior All-Japan team joined with Hasegawa’s Southern California-based ROX Baseball Club, the Japan-based International Baseball Exchange Committee team and the Urban Youth Academy team to make up the participants in the tournament. 64

In 2014, his first year of eligibility for election to the Hall of Fame, Nomo received only six votes (1.1 percent) and was thus removed from the Cooperstown ballot. The voting on the other side of the Pacific was a different story. For the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, he received 82.4 percent of the 324 votes, well above the 75 percent needed for induction.65

Nomo joined the elite group with Victor Starffin (1960) and Sadaharu Oh (1994) as the only people elected to Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. He also became the youngest person ever to be inducted, at the age of 45 years and 4 months. When Nomo learned that he had been elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, he was doing what he loved most: He was on the field helping to develop future All-Star players with his own boys baseball tournament.

Nomo’s son, Takahiro, joined the family business of baseball after graduating from Menlo College in California in 2015. He was named the team translator for the Nippon Ham Fighters, winners of the 2016 Japan Series (Japan’s equivalent of the World Series).66 In 2016 Nomo and former Dodgers executive Acey Kohrogi joined the San Diego Padres to help increase the team’s presence in the Pacific Rim.

In reflecting on Nomo’s legacy, Dave Wallace, former Dodgers pitching coach, said, “He was the first one. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain. He set the table for a lot of other guys, who are now reaping the benefits. Japanese players will always owe him for that.”67

Since Nomo’s arrival in 1995, a total of 58 other Japanese-born players have pursued their major-league dreams in America.

“For him to come over and leave a successful career behind in Japan the way he did … he had to have some guts to do that,” said former Dodgers teammate Eric Karros. “And then to succeed the way he did with the media watching him 24 hours a day? There may be better players from Japan who come to MLB, but Nomo will always be the man,” he said. “There’s Nomo up here, then there’s the rest.”68

Last revised: February 9, 2017

Photo credits

Hideo Nomo portrait: Courtesy of Jerry Coli / Dreamstime. 

Hideo Nomo baseball card: Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Jrank.org, “Net. Hideo Nomo – Super Tornado,” sports.jrank.org/pages/3447/Nomo-Hideo-Super-Tornado.html#ixzz4UAhMsTQV, accessed November 20, 2016.

2 Robert Whiting, The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 98.

3 Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 71.

4 Whiting, 99.

5 Whiting, 99.

6 Jrank.org, “Net. Hideo Nomo – Super Tornado.”

7 Kota Ishijima, Nomo’s former translator, email interview, January 13, 2017.

8 Whiting, 97.

9 Whiting, 101.

10 Ken Daley, “Dodgers Forgo MRI Exam for Pitcher Nomo,” Los Angeles Daily News, February 14, 1995.

11 Ken Daley, “Spark(y) Is Lacking in Game – Anderson, Lasorda Differ on Dispute,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 4, 1995.

12 Cindy Martinez Rhodes, “Spirit Not Snubbed by Nomo’s Start for Blaze,” Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise, April 26, 1995.

13 Eric Noland, “Dodgers Notes – Nomo Not Nervous About Making Debut at Candlestick,” Los Angeles Daily News, May 1, 1995.

14 Noland.

15 Ken Daley, “Japanese Import Delivers – Dodgers’ Nomo Fulfills Dream in Pitching Debut,” Los Angeles Daily News, May 3, 1995.

16 Craig Minami, “Dodger Rookie Hideo Nomo Starts 1995 All-Star Game,” True Blue LA, July 12, 2013.

17 “Injured Maddux Decides to Skip All-Star Appearance – Braves Ace Strained his Groin Thursday Night Against Dodgers,” Kansas City Star, July 8, 1995.

18 Craig Minami, “Dodger Rookie Hideo Nomo Starts 1995 All-Star Game.”

19 Cameron W. Barr, “A Welcome Ray of Sunlight for Gloomy Japan,” Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 1995.

20 Barr.

21 Martin Tolchin, “The Nation: Japan-Bashing, Becomes a Trade Bill Issue,” New York Times, February 28, 1988.

22 Tolchin.

23 Barr.

24 Barr.

25 Chuck Johnson, “Top Rookie Nomo ‘Really Appreciates’ New Teammates,” USA Today, November 10, 1995.

26 Dave Allen, “L.A.’s Nomo Is Rookie of the Year,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), November 10, 1995.

27 Johnson.

28 Gordon Edes, “Nomo Baffles Marlins, Strikes Out 17,” South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), April 14, 1996.

29 Video: MLB Classics, “9/17/96: Nomo’s No-No,” youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2_wo2l72A,, accessed November 27, 2016.

30 “Dodgers’ Nomo Pulled No-Hitter Right Out of Thin Air at Coors Field,” Spokesman.com, September 19, 1996. 

31 “Dodgers’ Nomo Pulled No-Hitter Right Out of Thin Air at Coors Field,” Spokesman.com, September 19, 1996.

32 “Dodgers’ Nomo Pulled No-Hitter Right Out of Thin Air at Coors Field,” Spokesman.com, September 19, 1996.

33 “Nomo Returns to the Dodgers,” Deseret News, (Salt Lake City), December 21, 2001.

34 Zachary D. Rymer, “Fastest Starter to 500, How Far Can Jose Fernandez Climb MLB’s All-Time K List?” Bleacher-Report.com, July 18, 2016.

35 Don Bostrom, “Swollen Elbow Causes Rolen to Miss First Game,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, August 26, 1997.

36 Jack Curry, “Nomo Released by Dodgers, May Land With Mets,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 2, 1998.

37 Curry.

38 Thomas Hill, “Mets Finger Pinkie as Nomo’s Weak Spot,” New York Daily News, June 8, 1998.

39 T.J. Quinn, “Official Sayonara for Nomo – Yoshii May Be History Soon,” The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey), March 27, 1999.

40 Dave Van Dycke, “Nomo Still Presenting A Puzzle – Theories Abound, But Cubs Taking A Look,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 18, 1999.

41 Tom Haudricourt, “They Go Hand in Glove – Nomo’s Comfort Zone With Garner Leads Him to Detroit,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 28, 2000.

42 Haudricourt.

43 “Names in the Game,” Associated Press Archive, July 9, 2000.

44 Sean McAdam, “Red Sox Acquire Hideo Nomo,” Providence Journal, December 15, 2000.

45 Murray Chass, “Baseball: Nomo Hurls a No-Hitter in His Red Sox Debut,” New York Times, April 5, 2001.

46 Jeff Horrigan, “Baseball – Sox Slip Up in Seattle – Ichiro, Mariners Sail to 5-1 Victory,” Boston Herald, May 3, 2001.

47 Horrigan.

48 Horrigan.

49 MLB.com, “Red Sox Break the Curse,” m.mlb.com/video/v19983103/ws2004-gm4-red-sox-complete-a-fourgame-series-sweep, accessed October 29, 2016.

50 Bill Plunkett, “Dodgers’ Winning Streak Ends at Six,” Orange County Register (Santa Ana, California), May 13, 2004.

51 Rich Hammond, “Dodgers Notebook: Injured or Not, Nomo on DL,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 2, 2004.

52 Roger Mooney, “Japan’s Wonder: Rays’ Nomo Left Everything to Play Ball in America,” Bradenton (Florida) Herald, April 15, 2005.

53 Mooney.

54 Mooney.

55 Carter Gaddis, “Rays’ Nomo Finally Nails Down Victory No. 200,” Tampa Tribune, June 16, 2005.

56 Gaddis.

57 Gaddis.

58 “Around the Bases,” Miami Herald, July 18, 2008.

59 Mooney.

60 Mooney.

61 NPBtracker.com, “Nomo Travels with Orix,” npbtracker.com/2009/04/nomo-travels-with-orix/, April 15, 2009.

62 Robert Whiting, “Nomo’s Legacy Should Land Him in Hall of Fame,” Japan Times, October 24, 2010.

63 Ben Platt, “Japanese Youth Get Taste of American Baseball,” MLB.com, August 24, 2011.

64 Platt.

65 Kaz Nagatsuka, “Nomo Inducted Into Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame,” Japan Times, January 17, 2014.

66 Kei Nakamura, “Sports Graphic Number Web (Japanese),” January 30, 2015, number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/822582, accessed December 30, 2016.

67 Robert Whiting, “Nomo’s Legacy Should Land Him in Hall of Fame.”

68 Robert Whiting, “Nomo’s Legacy Should Land Him in Hall of Fame.”

Easily the most lionized athlete in the history of Japan’s professional national pastime, Sadaharu Oh also owns a leading claim to the title of baseball’s greatest all-time home run slugger. Across a 22-season career with the Central League Yomiuri Giants – Japan’s most celebrated, popular and successful team – the left-handed hitting and throwing first baseman stroked a career total of 868 round-trippers, a number that outstrips those of major league baseball’s most potent long-ball sluggers Barry Bonds (762 in 22 seasons), Hank Aaron (755 in 23 seasons), and original “Sultan of Swat” George Herman “Babe” Ruth (714 in 22 seasons).1 But the claim is certainly not without its controversies and its reasonable challenges. Foremost is the issue of an adequate assessment of the nature and level of Japanese League play during the era of Oh’s productive career; critics point to the lesser quality of Japanese pitching, the size and layout of Japanese ballparks, and the issues surrounding the type of lightweight baseball employed in the Japanese game. But controversies aside, on the basis of raw numbers alone it is indisputable that the charismatic and workaholic Oh produced one of the most impressive career resumes found anywhere that professional baseball has been played at the highest levels.

The differences between Japanese and North American major league baseball left aside for the moment, Oh’s numbers stack up quite impressively against those of his three main rivals for the title of supreme slugger – Aaron, Bonds and Ruth. With 3,000-plus fewer at-bats than Aaron (his seasons were 14-32 games shorter) Oh still managed 100-plus more round-trippers; and with only 2,786 total career hits, nearly a third of his safeties actually left the ballpark. His AB/HR ratio is the best of the quartet (a homer every 10.7 official ABs, compared to 11.8 for Ruth, 12.9 for Bonds and 16.4 for Aaron). Oh also claims the best walks-to-strikeouts ratio (he walked 1071 more times than he struck out, slightly ahead of Bonds’ 1019 positive ledger in walks versus strikeouts). And his 13 consecutive home run crowns in the Central League (15 in total) have no parallel in the majors. Many would of course claim that Bonds should be dropped from the comparison altogether, given that the bulk of his long-ball numbers were achieved in a recent “Steroid Era” tainted by acknowledged reliance on performance-enhancing medications.

The remarkable story of Oh’s four-decade career (as both player and manager) is, however, a saga that stretches far beyond mere raw numbers and record-book batting feats. Comparisons with big leaguers or idle speculations over Cooperstown status miss out on the appreciation of unprecedented athletic accomplishments taken in their own context and thus only tend to reveal the frequent parochialism inherent in many North American discussions of the bat and ball sport. Sadaharu Oh’s arduous rise to prominence in the Japanese League and the unparalleled longevity of his topflight performances contain the saga of one of the most dedicated and tenaciously serious pro athletes the sport has ever produced; Oh’s physical dedication and tenacity stand far above the crowd even within a Japanese-style of baseball play famed for its slavish devotion to physical training and mental discipline. Nothing came especially easy for the self-made slugger – from the first physical and emotional setbacks of his earliest schoolboy career; to the difficult transitions, unfulfilled potential and accompanying frustrations of his first four professional seasons; to the late-career pursuits of distant landmarks owned by Ruth and Aaron – and thus the story of Oh’s career development is one of the most inspiring personal tales found anywhere in the world of sport.

Not to be entirely overlooked in any portrait or career summary of Japan’s greatest ballplayer is the rather substantial fact that Oh is also the co-author (with American journalist David Falkner) of one of the most remarkable ballplayer biographies ever published. In that volume Oh not only provides readers with one of the fullest understandings of the special nature of baseball in Japan; at the same time he also offers one of the most honest and revealing self-portraits ever penned by a former professional athlete. One recent online reviewer looking back on the volume published nearly 30 years ago (in 1984) adequately describes A Zen Way of Baseball as “not strictly an autobiography [but instead] more the story of an idea and a process.”2 Oh writes with great sensitivity about the triumphs and failures of his remarkable life, both on and off the baseball diamond. But most of the book’s ink is focused on his intimate relationship with hitting coach and personal spiritual guru Hiroshi Arakawa and their lengthy joint struggle to master an approach to hitting a baseball based on stoic mental discipline and grounded in the dedicated practice of rituals drawn from traditional Zen and Aikido philosophy. Oh lays out the personal failures and triumphs of his career in a most eloquent and humble manner, one entirely devoid of the self-aggrandizement found at the heart of most personal reminiscences penned by ex-athletes. The engaging self-portrait is thus both emotion-packed and gripping from start to finish.

A great irony surrounding Oh’s storied baseball tenure is the fact that while he would eventually become the most widely known and celebrated product in a baseball-crazy Asian nation – the only universally recognized Japanese ballplayer within the game’s epicenter in North America and the Caribbean – nonetheless he was for most of his career never the most popular player in his own homeland or even on his own celebrated Tokyo Giants team. That honor seemingly always fell to Yomiuri Giants teammate Shigeo Nagashima, a beloved third baseman whose own slugging feats stood only a shade behind Oh’s.3 Nagashima broke into the Central League one year ahead of Oh but retired a half-dozen seasons earlier, serving as Giants manager across Oh’s own final six campaigns. Together Oh and Nagashima were known far and wide in Japanese baseball lore of the 1960s and 1970s as the ON Hou (the Oh-Nagashima Cannon) and their presence in the same lineup made the Yomiuri ball club the most dominant in Japanese League history. But it was always Nagashima that seemingly attracted the highest devotion among Japanese fans (and a wide majority of Japanese fans were dedicated Yomiuri Giants rooters, whether they lived in the capital city of Tokyo or elsewhere in the Japanese islands). Writing during Nagashima’s Tokyo managerial tenure, renowned Japanese baseball commentator Robert Whiting (perhaps the English-language author most responsible for the popular notion of Oh’s second-tier status) went so far as to suggest that the star third baseman was “the best loved, most admired, and most talked about figure in the history of sport … the adulation accorded to Nagashima [even being] unequalled by Babe Ruth’s fans in his years with the Yankees.”4

The reason for differing hometown reactions to Nagashima and Oh – to whatever degree they actually existed – seemingly had at least something to do with the strong racial prejudice and jingoism which has long been a central feature of Japanese cultural and social life. Not to be pure-blooded Japanese carries a heavy social stigma in the island nation and Sadaharu Oh – like many other top Japanese League stars down through the years – was widely known to be of foreign ancestry. Fiercely proud of their native baseball traditions, Japanese fans and ballplayers alike often made life difficult for American imports (especially ex-big-leaguers) when they began to arrive on the scene in the 1950s and 1960s and the “Gaijin” phenomenon has long been one of the defining staples of professional baseball played Samurai style.5 And while the label of unwelcomed “Gaijin” (literally “foreigner”) stuck fast to virtually all American imports – both surly and uncooperative underperformers like Joe Pepitone and Don Newcombe, and also more quickly acculturated high-level performers like Daryl Spencer, George Altman and Clete Boyer – it also discolored the Nippon league careers of such Japanese-raised stars as Russian-born pitching nonpareil Victor Starffin and Hawaiian-born American Nisei Wally Yonamine. And many Japanese-born natives owning Korean or Taiwanese roots have been forced to hide (as much as possible) their non-Japanese ancestry in order to maintain respectable professional careers on Central League and Pacific League diamonds in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The future baseball star and national idol arrived in the most humble of circumstances, being born (with twin sister Hiroko) in the Sumida district of war-torn Tokyo during May of 1940, the second son of an immigrant Chinese father (Shifuku) and a native Japanese mother (Tomi).6 His birth date is today widely published as May 20, 1940, but the actual date (as reported by Oh himself in his celebrated autobiography) was in fact ten days earlier on May 10.7 Oh’s parents were working class shop keepers with little formal education and at the time of his birth they ran a small Chinese noodle restaurant in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood. Shifuku originally hailed from the Zhejiang Province of mainland China and carried a PRC (Communist China) passport throughout his own life span in his adopted homeland. But worried about the eventual fate of the two separate Chinas at the close of the Second World War, Shifuku eventually obtained ROC (Taiwanese) passports for each of his sons. While Sadaharu would grow up speaking only Japanese and also displaying thoroughly Japanese orientations in his cultural attitudes, he would maintain his ROC passport throughout his adult life as a sign of paternal respect as well as permanent tribute to his own ethnic heritage. It would nonetheless be a heritage that would have considerable negative impact on the future ballplayer’s widespread perception as a “foreigner” (or Gaijin) posing as one of Japan’s greatest popular culture heroes.

Oh’s original Chinese name of Wang Chenchih holds a somewhat ironic meaning once translated into its Japanese equivalent (meaning roughly “emperor” or “king”); the rather strange-sounding “Oh” was simply the Japanese pronunciation of the common Chinese surname Wang. Oh would later find much significance in the fact that he was actually born as a twin and that the sister with whom he shared his birth would die only fifteen months later. He would write in the opening pages of his autobiography about the strange sense he has always felt that he somehow carried two lives and two personalities within his single being and that his strengths (physical, mental and spiritual) in later life were thus not merely his own exclusive property. He would also in those same pages explain that although he was born left-handed (a later strength in his baseball career) he grew up as a young child believing he was right-handed, due to the popular practice at the time of suppressing left-handedness which was traditionally considered an evil omen and even a vile curse. Fortunately, although trained to write and use chopsticks with his right hand, an innate left-handedness could not be suppressed permanently on the athletic field.

The future ballplayer’s earliest years were filled with the considerable hardships suffered by all urban Tokyoites during and immediately after the horrific years of World War II. His father was arrested and imprisoned for several months, purportedly under suspicion of being a foreign spy, but more likely simply because he was Chinese and also because he aggravated local officials by keeping his noodle restaurant open beyond wartime curfew hours. Oh’s first childhood memories include being carried on his mother’s back as they fled their devastated neighborhood during the fire bombings that destroyed most of urban Tokyo.

It was older brother Tetsushiro (ten years the senior) who would play a major role in developing young Oh as a talented baseball player and also inspiring early-formed and deep-seated love for the popular Japanese national game. Tetsushiro was charged with babysitting his younger sibling while both parents daily manned the family business and thus would regularly drag him along to the local sandlot games in which Tetsushiro honed his own skills. Soon enough Sadaharu was also enthralled with playing the game, at first swinging from the right side of the plate like all the other boys since he assumed that was part of the fixed rules of the game. As with so many future professional ballplayers, however, young Oh had to overcome some deep-rooted objections of his immigrant father toward idle ball-playing; Shifuku envisioned his sons pursuing some more respectable occupation of the kind envisioned by any lower-class immigrant parent aspiring to middle-class financial success for his own offspring. His dream was that one son might become a medical doctor and the other an electrical engineer. Tetsushiro as eldest sibling would please his father greatly when he entered Keio University as a medical student when Sadaharu was still only in the fourth grade of primary school.

Tetsushiro’s abiding love for baseball would in the end, however, work to defeat a father’s more prosaic ambitions for the younger of the two offspring. He not only included his brother in local neighborhood ballgames (where Sadaharu displayed an early talent as a pitcher while still in elementary school) but also planned outings to Korakuen Stadium where Sadaharu would first thrill to the play of the popular Yomiuri Giants and watch the exploits of such early post-war era stars as 400-game-winner Masaichi Kaneda, Hanshin Tigers slugger Fumio Fujimura, and Giants’ hitting wizard Tetsuharu Kawakami. Tetsushiro’s own playing would be suddenly derailed by a career-ending injury when he broke an ankle in a neighborhood league game while still a medical student at Keio. But his role as inspiration for his more talented and fortune-blessed brother would indeed have an immense future impact on Japan’s national sport and consequently also on the nation’s soon thriving post-war popular culture.

Horrified that his elder son’s injury and resulting hospitalization came on the eve of the boy’s crucial university medical examinations, Shifuku forbade any further ball-playing by either of his offspring. As the dutiful and respectful elder son, Tetsushiro pledged to abandon the sport but Sadaharu (while quietly nodding his own agreement to his father’s demand) continued to indulge his baseball passion as much as possible out of the senior Oh’s sight. Since his popular junior high school baseball team boasted a long waiting list for enrollment of any new aspiring players, Sadaharu was forced to perform on a collection of local neighborhood sandlot clubs, including a squad of much older university medical students that had been organized by his brother. The first taste of true baseball success for Sadaharu would eventually come as a high school pitching star at one of Japan’s most celebrated secondary-school baseball factories. But even getting to attend the prestigious Waseda Commercial high school took some effort since it was accomplished only against the strong initial objections of Oh’s practical-thinking and stubborn father.

Resigned to follow his brother’s footsteps and honor a father’s long-standing wishes, the young Oh was prepared for dropping baseball as a career option and pursuing an engineering career. But fate intervened and charged his life’s course when he failed to score high enough on entrance examinations that would have admitted him to the Sumidagawa Public School for a pre-college course of studies. He had, however, been accepted to the Waseda Jitsugyo (Commercial) campus and a visit to the baseball facilities at Waseda arranged by a local sporting goods dealer quickly awoke renewed dreams of pursuing baseball as more than an idle hobby. Shifuku of course strongly objected to any such plan, but eventual gentle if forceful persuasion from Sadaharu’s brother and uncle turned the tide. Sadaharu reports in his autobiography that his fortunes took a fateful and perhaps destined turn when Shifuku Oh was finally convinced by Tetsushiro that perhaps it would be okay to “let there be one strange profession” in the Oh family.8

High school baseball in Japan – today as well as during the decade of Oh’s youth – is not at all similar to the North American high school sport. A far better comparison might be made with top-level college football or basketball, but even that does not quite do the Japanese version of the scholastic game full justice. An annual spring national high school championship tournament staged at Koshien Stadium in Osaka has for decades now been a centerpiece of Japan’s baseball fanaticism. Upwards of a half-million spectators pass through the turnstiles for the ten-day event and national television provides day-long coverage of the games. The fascination with schoolboy baseball spills over to the collegiate ranks as well and Tokyo’s Big Six University League draws nearly as much attention as the celebrated professional Yomiuri Giants. Robert Whiting reports in the late-1970s that Big Six games between traditional rivals Keio and Waseda universities would “for sheer spectacle [surpass] a Michigan-Ohio State football game.”9

Oh began his career as a celebrated schoolboy pitcher, although he also displayed early talent as a powerful batsman. By the time his freshman season commenced at Waseda he was already swinging from the left side of the plate, a practice he had taken up more than a year earlier when he was told by pro outfielder Hiroshi Arakawa that as a natural southpaw he was wasting his talent by swinging from the right side in imitation of his teammates. The fortuitous meeting with Arakawa (Oh’s future batting instructor and spiritual guru) took place in November 1954 when the big leaguer had by chance stopped to watch a sandlot practice game in which the 14-year-old was playing. But as a high school rookie several months later it was young Oh’s work on the mound that drew most public attention. As the Waseda squad’s number two pitcher he hurled a no-hit, no-run masterpiece in an early round of the national playoffs designed to determine qualifiers for the summer’s prestigious Koshien tournament. He also smashed a homer in the final game of that preliminary event which launched his squad into the Osaka-based Koshien championships.

While the first year of Oh’s high school career would experience a number of such celebrated moments of triumph it would also own its full share of painful episodes involving defeat and disappointment. The first such setback came in an early-season tournament match with an arch rival school which Waseda defeated 4-0 on the strength of a complete-game shutout tossed by Sadaharu (who was still a week short of his sixteenth birthday). But celebration was quickly transformed into sadness when Tetsushiro delivered a devastating post-game tongue lashing. The stinging post-game rebuke Oh received from his brother (for showing up his defeated opponents by tossing his glove in the air in unbridled celebration) made such a deep impression on the young athlete that it firmly fixed his resolve to forever hide his emotions on the field of play, a practice that would continue across the next quarter-century of his budding baseball career.

An even deeper disappointment came at season’s end when starter Sadaharu Oh completely lost control of his pitching mastery in the second contest of the Osaka Koshien tournament. Unable to locate the plate Oh was quickly removed from the game and Waseda consequently received a severe drubbing that sent them heading home from Osaka after only two outings. This sudden attack of pitching wildness had also occurred several times earlier in the season and Oh’s coaches would quickly conclude that perhaps inadequate body balance and a faulty pitching rhythm were the true culprits. They also speculated that a solution might be found in developing a novel no-wind-up delivery. By the end of that 1956 fall high school season Oh had become the first pitcher in Japan to experiment with the then-novel no-wind-up pitching style. Ironically Oh adopted the unique pitching approach in precisely the same month that Don Larsen of the New York Yankees employed identical mechanics while pitching the first-ever no-hitter and perfect game in the history of the North American major league World Series.

At the outset of Oh’s sophomore high school season his Waseda club returned to Osaka for the spring version of the Koshien tournament. Unlike the summer Koshien event which required qualification, the spring version was an invitational affair involving only a couple dozen schools. 10

Despite brighter prospects for Waseda this time around, the second Koshien trip would again involve a tantalizing mixture of challenging pain and pride-filled triumph for the promising young pitcher. Oh had developed severe blisters on the fingers of his pitching hand during the intensive training sessions leading up to the tournament and although he successfully completed his first couple of starts (he was now on the mound for all his team’s tournament games) he also struggled against destracting pain in the damaged digits that made it most difficult for him to grip the baseball let alone heave it at top speed. Despite increasing pain, a bloody baseball, and the need to rub dirt into his torn fingertips after each pitch, Oh agonized most severely not over his physical discomfort but rather over the fear that he would have to reveal his hidden ailment to his teammates, or that he might be responsible for yet another team failure at Koshien. Watching the games on television back in Tokyo Shifuku miraculously somehow sensed his son’s problems and made a surprise 700-mile round trip to Osaka bringing a traditional Chinese folk ginseng-root remedy that quickly relieved Sadararu’s suffering. With his father’s unexpected but deeply appreciate aid Oh was ultimately able to struggle through the nine innings of the final game in which Waseda was this time crowned as Koshien champions.

Oh’s Waseda high school career would also involve one additional deeply painful personal defeat – one that underscored the exclusion and prejudice he would continually experience has a non-pure-blood Japanese resident of Chinese ancestry. On the heels of the victory in Koshien the Waseda club was selected for a second invitational tournament, this time the Kokutai or National Amateur Athletic Competition to be staged in Shizuoka Prefecture. But this national competition was specified as open to native Japanese athletes only and as a result the star Waseda pitcher was informed that he could not take part alongside his teammates. Deep disappointment was soothed only by the solidarity displayed by teammates and coaches who insisted that their banned star hurler don his uniform and travel with the team even though he could not take to the field to compete. It was this event that Oh would later remember as a cherished symbol of the deep-seated spirit and camaraderie inherent in Japanese high school baseball.11

Sadaharu’s high school club would not make it back to Koshien at the conclusion of his final season; they would instead suffer a year-end heartbreaking defeat against their top rivals from Meiji that ended their season (and Koshien qualification hopes) with what Oh remembered as his toughest defeat during a lifetime of playing baseball. Oh was on the mound to surrender the game-winning hit that capped a miraculous Meiji five-run rally in the bottom of the twelfth. But that final schoolboy defeat was quickly enough washed away when dreams of a future baseball career loomed on the horizon. Later that same winter the heavily recruited youngster rejected an opportunity to pursue college play at nearby Waseda University and then also turned down a contract offer to sign with the Central League Hanshin Tigers. He opted instead to ink a contract with the Yomiuri Giants, the beloved hometown team he had followed passionately throughout his childhood. The proffered first-year Giants contract specified a hefty rookie salary of 13 million yen (about $60,000 US).

Despite the optimisms surrounding such a hefty investment in an untried rookie, Sadaharu’s earliest seasons as a Yomiuri Giant were marked mostly by failure and frustration as he struggled to make the transition from amateur to professional-level competition. It was almost immediately determined that his future promise lay in his considerable promise as a strong batter and not as an undersized pitcher, and by the time spring training concluded before his 1959 rookie season he had settled into the starting lineup as a first base replacement for the legendary “God of Batting” Tetsuharu Kawakami, a longtime all-star who had recently retired to become the Giants hitting coach. But such early votes of confident from manager Shigeru Mizuhara (in his final Giants season) bore very little immediate reward.

Oh’s early seasons (especially a rookie campaign that produced a mere .161 batting average over 94 games) were marred by a technical weakness in the youngster’s approach to swinging a bat that had remained largely unnoticed during triumphs as a high school star but quickly became a fatal flaw for the struggling pro. Kawakami worked long and patient hours with his young disciple to correct improperly rigid leg and hip movements that were causing Oh to pull his head up and his eyes off the ball; the defect left him particularly vulnerable to breaking balls and any pitches tossed by left-handed hurlers. The St. Louis Cardinals had paid an late fall exhibition visit (October 24-November 15, 1958) to Japan and the following spring the struggling nineteen-year-old Giants rookie attempted briefly and quite unsuccessfully to experiment with Stan Musial’s renowned contorted batting posture. That failed adjustment was quickly dropped. In his debut Central League game Oh struck out twice and didn’t put a single ball in play; through his first 13 games and 26 at-bats he went hitless until the string was broken by his first big league hit (a “Chinese” homer that barely topped the fence and was hit off an old high school rival, Genichi Murata, who was now pitching for the Hanshin Tigers).12

As Oh’s struggles persisted and as strikeout totals continued to mount (he ended the season with 72 in but 193 ABs, more than one for every three official plate appearances) hometown fans began publicly mocking his Chinese name (literally translated as “King”); during each plate appearance in jam-packed Korakuen Stadium many in the throng would loudly chant “Oh! Oh! Sanshin Oh!” (“King! King! Strikeout King!”). And to make matters even worse, this was also a time when Oh was perhaps less than totally serious about his dedication to the game. He received further stinging criticism from coaches and the press alike for his newly developed habit of post-curfew partying, heavy after-hours drinking, and lavish spending in Tokyo’s Ginza bar district.

It was early in his career and in the midst of his struggles to find some degree of hitting success that Oh played a significant role in what is still celebrated a half-century later as the most famous game in Japanese professional baseball history. This was the now-legendary “Emperor’s Game” (June 25, 1959) that would write the name of Shigeo Nagashima indelibly in the island nation’s celebrated baseball lore. The Japanese Emperor (Hirohito) and Empress (Kojun) attended their first-ever baseball game that day at Korakuen Stadium to witness a match between the Giants and visiting Hanshin Tigers. Coming off his rookie-of-the-year 1958 debut season Nagashima was already an established Yomiuri star and didn’t disappoint on this most historic occasion; his fifth-inning homer gave the popular home team a brief lead. After the Tigers had again seized the advantage, promising rookie Oh belted a seventh-inning round-tripper of his own (one of only 7 he hit all season) to again equalize the affair. Scheduled to depart the stadium at 9:30 pm, the royal couple remained in their seats to watch one final at-bat by star slugger Nagashima in the home ninth. A storybook ending unfolded when Nagashima drove a pitch from ace hurler Minoru Murayama into the left-field seats for the most celebrated sayonara home run of Japanese league history. All remember that Nagashima stroked the most legendary round tripper in national lore on that memorable day; few recall that it was rookie Sadaharu Oh who had set the stage for Nagashima’s indelible heroics.

Perhaps the single element that best defines the career of Japan’s greatest slugger was his unique approach to batting and the unparalleled batting stance and swing that would become a calling card during the most productive middle and late years of his career. Of course there have been a fair share of big league batsmen also known for odd approaches to the art of batting a thrown ball and equally renowned for their strange yet effective stances at the plate. There was Ty Cobb with his famed split-hands grip designed to increase bat control in an age of “small-ball” slap hitting. There was Stan Musial and his corkscrew position in the batter’s box that was the closest parallel perhaps to the stance that later defined Oh. There was Gil McDougald with his oddly dropped bat (the top end of his war club nearly touching the dirt at the rear of the batter’s box) and also Mel Ott (another parallel for Oh) with his raised leg accompanying an unorthodox and seemingly off-balanced swing. There has never been only one approach to successfully stroking a spherical ball with a round stick of lumber.

But Oh’s approach was easily the most unusual of all and one that involved great physical discipline to fully master. The batting posture that came to define the unique hitting approach of the Giants’ top young prospect appeared in his fourth pro season and was the outgrowth of a lengthy struggle to overcome a failure in technique that had marred his three earliest campaigns. It was also the result of a long period of tutoring (approximately two years) under the wing of former Japanese big leaguer Hiroshi Arakawa. In his masterful autobiography (Chapters Six and Seven) Oh details at great lengths the origin and development of his hitting style, as well as the near-career-long relationship with his own personal batting guru.

Oh’s first fateful meeting with Arakawa had been that brief chance encounter at a local sandlot game which had prompted him to first adopt a better hitting strategy as a natural left-handed swinger. A still more fortuitous and career-changing reunion came at the outset of the 1962 season (Oh’s fourth with the Giants) when Kawakami succeeded Shigeru Mizuhara as manager and inked Arakawa as the club’s new hitting coach. Arakawa was a devoted student of Zen philosophies as well as a former outfielder with the Mainichi Orions (his best season was 1954 when he hit at a .270 clip) and had employed his Zen studies and practices to improve his own hitting techniques during a mildly successful nine-season Pacific League career. It was Arakawa-san who first concluded that Oh’s primary difficulty was not so much the earlier troubling tight hip problem but a severe “hitch” in his swing and that the solution to correct the flaw might well be Arakawa’s own favored approach based on “down swinging” and not “upper cutting” the pitched baseball. The pair began a lengthy teacher-disciple relationship that would last until Arakawa signed on in 1974 to manage the rival Central League Yakult Swallows.

The struggle to correct Oh’s early-career batting weaknesses became a lengthy and arduous one and that personal battle represented the most difficult sustained period of the slugger’s otherwise success-draped career. To combat the debilitating and ingrained “hitch” Oh (under Arakawa’s careful tutelage) developed a seemingly awkward approach at the plate that involved balancing himself on his left leg, with the right leg lifted off the ground and the tip of his bat tilted toward the pitcher to maintain the necessary perfect balance. It was an approach Oh would perfect not only through hours of “shadow swings” in front of a full-length mirror about also with the painstaking study of ancient Aikido philosophy (in the pursuit of perfecting his single-leg “balance”) as well as several years of disciplined exercises swinging a Samurai sword. The eventual remarkable success of his new “flamingo” stance (Oh’s own name for the approach) is today the stuff of Japanese baseball lore. And the connection with a Japanese tradition of Samurai warrior swordsmanship is a major part of the fairy tale-like story.13 The immediate results were two breakout seasons (1962 and 1963) that produced the first two of an unparalleled 13 consecutive home run titles. And several days after Oh smashed his first “flamingo” style home run in Korakuen Stadium (versus the Hanshin Tigers) Arakawa issued a surprising challenge to his rapidly improving pupil when he suggested that they now set their sights squarely on overhauling Babe Ruth’s long-established and iconoclastic big league home run record. It seems that Arakawa may not only have been a master teacher but also something of a miraculous Zen soothsayer.

The 1964 campaign marked Oh’s arrival as Japan’s greatest slugger. It was also the year that he would indisputably seize the reins from Nagashima as the Giants’ most potent offensive weapon. Benefitting from the use of handmade tamo-wood bats fashioned for him by a master craftsman named Jun Ishii, Oh went on a slugging rampage in 1964 that produced a still-record 55 homers and included an early May four-homer explosion against the Hanshin Tigers in Korakuen Stadium. Two days after that record one-day outburst a new wrinkle entered the unfolding Oh saga when the visiting Hiroshima Carp introduced a new defensive strategy that would become known as the “Oh Shift” and would replicate the defensive alignments first conceived in 1946 for use against Boston Red Sox slugger and dead-pull-hitter Ted Williams by Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau. The alignment employed by Hiroshima against Oh (the entire left side of the field left open with the third baseman standing behind second base) was slightly more extreme than the famed American League “Williams Shift” (which had the left fielder positioned about 30 feet beyond the infield in short left-center). But the object was the same and Oh’s reaction paralleled that of Williams. He refused to take easy base hits (and thus perhaps batting .400 or more) by slicing the ball toward the opposite field. The reason in this case was that to stop pulling the ball would have meant giving up on his new stance and hitting style – the very psychological effect that Hiroshima (and later other teams) most obviously had in mind.

Once Oh found his stride and his unorthodox stroke in his fourth pro season he never looked back. Few players (big leaguers, minor leaguers, or otherwise) have ever enjoyed so heady and long a run of unrivaled successes. His initial Central League home run title in 1962 (with 38, bettering by one the total of his first three campaigns combined) was the first of an unparalleled 13 straight and 15 in the following 16 years. He would pace the circuit in walks for 18 straight years (and in all but four of his total career seasons). He was a Central League batting champion five times (three consecutively during 1968-1970) and an RBI king on 13 different occasions, with strings of four straight seasons (1964-1967) and later eight straight (1971-1978). He paced the Central League in total base hits on only three occasions but in total runs scored on 15 (13 consecutively, 1962-1974). There were also a pair of Triple Crowns (1973, 1974) thrown into the mix. For two full decades Oh-san (Mr. Oh) literally owned the Japanese baseball record book when it came to all phases of successful and even masterful power hitting.

Late career years were surrounded by the ultimate pursuit of Babe Ruth’s once seemingly invincible career mark of 714 big league dingers. The challenge presented early on by Guru Hiroshi Arakawa was no longer an impossible dream by the time the 1976 season rolled around. Milestone home run 500 had come on June 6, 1972 in Hiroshima; number 600 (the first time a Japanese leaguer had reached that plateau) came in the midst of his second Triple Crown year (May 1974) and was struck against the Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium. Despite a 648-game playing streak coming to an end in 1975, Oh charged on and the magic number 700 was finally reached on July 23, 1976 in Kawasaki versus the Taiyo Whales (ironically in the same stadium where Oh had debuted his “flamingo” stance back in 1964). Ruth was finally overhauled on October 11 of that same season (only four games from the end of the campaign) and if there was any disappointment attached to the historic event it was only the fact that Hank Aaron had already crossed the big-league milestone in Atlanta two full seasons earlier (on April 8, 1974).

With Ruth in the rearview mirror, next came the struggle to surpass Hank Aaron who had also bypassed the Babe’s once-cherished record far ahead of his Japanese rival. Oh and new big league record holder Aaron would actually meet in Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium in November 1974 for a head-to-head slugging showdown celebrated all across Japan even if largely ignored by North American fans. With 50,000 fanatics in attendance for the event, the pair alternated five fair-ball swings each for four rounds and Aaron game out the winner with 10 successful long balls in his allotted 20 swings; Oh socked nine out of the park in fair territory. By the time Oh had reached and surpassed Ruth at the end of the 1976 campaign, Aaron was already announcing his own retirement after ringing up a final 755 career total. Oh would himself surpass that mark (off a delivery from Yakult Swallows hurler Yasujiro Suzuki) on September 3, 1977 before a wild overflow home crowd in Korakuen Stadium. With Aaron finally conquered, the quest continued and new goals were set, although Oh admits those later milestones never had quite the same allure. Home run number 800 was struck late in the 1978 season, but the final goal of 900 would never be reached before Oh finally retired at the conclusion of 22 campaigns in November 1980. Oh later wrote that he was saddened by Aaron’s earlier 1976 retirement and thus the end of their ongoing head-to-head long-distance competition.

Oh’s career in the end produced nine Central League MVP awards, four in the 1960s, five more in the 1970s and in the end also four more than his more fan-favored long-time teammate Shigeo Nagashima. But the many team successes earned by the O-N Cannon Giants (as the team was popularly known) were even more numerous and totaled 11 Japanese Series titles during Oh’s two-decade-plus career. In brief, he celebrated as a Japan Series winner (Japan’s World Series) in a full half of his league seasons as an active player. A comparable achievement would be Joe DiMaggio’s collection of nine World Series Titles in only 13 career seasons with the Yankees, although DiMaggio’s successes admittedly came over a much shorter career span. But by the second half of the seventies Oh found his slugging powers waning and perhaps an earlier retirement might have left his record of team championships looking far more like that enjoyed by DiMaggio and the Yankees. Oh’s last Japan Series victory came in 1973 (although his club did reach the final playoffs in both 1976 and 1977, only to lose on both occasions to the Hankyu Braves). But the personal drive for home run records would be sufficient to stretch Oh’s career several years beyond its prime. He still slugged 30 homers in his final season at age 40 but only managed to post an anemic batting average that dipped slightly below the .240 standard.

The loss of his headlining role as celebrated active player hardly meant the close of Oh’s five-decade career on the baseball diamond. He quickly threw himself into the next stage as a high-profile coach (assistant manager) with his beloved Giants; he also built a new home which fittingly contained an old-style training room with tatami mats just like the one in which he had trained under Atakawi. He would serve as the assistant skipper of his old club for three full seasons under new bench boss Motoshi Fujita (who had replaced Nagashima); in that span the club captured one Japan Series, won two Central League pennants, and limped home in second place on the third occasion.

In 1984 Oh moved into the top slot as Yomiuri Giants field manager, a position he would hold for a short span of only five moderately successful seasons. The skein would produce a single Central League championship banner in 1987 (but also a six-game loss in the Japan Series to the Seibu Lions). Oh’s tenure also featured an overall .568 winning percentage, two second-place finishes, and another pair of seasons in third slot. He would later manage the Fukuoka Daiei (later SoftBank) Hawks (beginning in 1995) where he enjoyed even greater pennant successes, achieving three Pacific League titles (1999, 2000 and 2003) and twice reigning as Japan Series champion. After his managerial career was briefly interrupted by the life-threatening 2006 bout with cancer, Oh reclaimed his spot on the Fukuoka bench for a single swansong 2008 Pacific League season, his final team finishing in the league cellar more than a dozen games off the pace. After retirement as an active field boss Oh would serve two additional seasons as the Hawks front office general manager. Over 19 campaigns as an active Japanese League manager the final ledger for the former home run king would read 2501 total games, 1345 wins, 1141 losses, and an impressive overall .541 winning percentage.

Sadaharu Oh’s most prestigious stint as a field manager was perhaps his most successful and easily his best known – at least to fans outside of Japan. Appointed skipper for the inaugural showcase MLB World Baseball Classic in March 2006, Oh led his nation’s team to a dramatic Gold Medal victory over the upstart Cubans (the only serious contender without any big league players on its roster). The Oh-led Nippon squad featured such current or future MLB notables as pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroki Kuroda and Akinori Otsuka, plus Seattle Mariners stalwart Ichiro Suzuki, yet the team nonetheless struggled early on, losing an opening-round match with rival Korea in the Tokyo Dome and only advancing to the San Diego finals on the strength of a single controversial round-two win over Team USA and a resulting complicated tie-breaker scenario. In the final wild shootout at PETCO Park, however, Oh’s forces up-ended the Koreans 6-0 in a rain-drenched semifinal and then outlasted Cuba 10-6 mainly on the strength of four-run outburst in both the first and ninth innings.

Oh’s managerial career would not be without its controversies, especially the three instances (one with the Giants and two during his tenure with the SoftBank Hawks) involving a trio of serious challenges to his single-season home run record launched by foreign-born “Gaijin” imports. The events were all-too reminiscent of earlier situations in which Japanese pitchers thwarted potential Gaijin home run or batting crowns by pitching around Americans Daryl Spencer (1965), Dave Roberts (1969) and George Altman (1971). The first incident involving Oh came in 1985 when American Randy Bass (Hanshin Tigers) entered the season’s final game versus Oh’s Giants only a single blast short of Oh’s cherished 1964 record; Bass received four straight walks on four wide pitches each. In 2001 Tuffy (Karl) Rhodes (Kintetsu Buffaloes) had already tied the long-standing mark with seven full games remaining on the schedule; but Rhodes received the same treatment and same assortment of unhittable wide tosses during a final weekend series with the Oh-managed Hawks. Finally, in 2002 Venezuelan Alex Cabrera had again equaled the standard with five games remaining; again he was walked repeatedly in the season-ending set of games versus Fukuoka. In each case Oh denied ordering his pitchers to conspire against the challengers, and there is even evidence that he actually ordered his staff to throw hittable strikes to Cabrera. Whatever Oh’s own direct involvement in the apparent conspiracies might have actually been can only now remain a matter of pure speculation.

Early in his budding professional baseball career Oh had married Kyoko Koyae to whom (along with mentor Arakawa) his impressive 1985 autobiography would later be dedicated. He had known Kyoko originally as a starry-eyed autograph seeker he had met during his rookie campaign with the Giants and he was immediate struck by her beauty as well as her practical intelligence; he was also impressed by the fact that she wrote him repeated insightful letters for several years even though she wasn’t even a true baseball fan. The long-term correspondence carried on for more than half a decade before the pair was finally officially married a full seven years later. The couple had three children, all daughters.14 Kyoto would die at age 57 (in December 2001) from stomach cancer, the same disease that would eventually slow but not fell Oh himself in mid-2006. Less than one year after her death Kyoko’s ashes were sadly and quite mysteriously stolen from the family grave site in Tokyo.

Sadaharu himself would later suffer from the same disease (he was diagnosed only a few months after Japan’s victory in the inaugural WBC) and, although he recovered fully, the brief bout with cancer did keep him from repeating his managerial role with Team Japan during the 2009 second edition of the World Baseball Classic.15 The Nippon squad under new skipper Tatsunori Hara (Yomiuri Giants manager) nonetheless claimed its second consecutive WBC championship, with Oh personally attending many of his former club’s 2009 WBC games during his lengthy ongoing post-surgery rehabilitation. He would also again be a notable presence at the third edition of the WBC in March 2013 when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch to open initial tournament round robin action in Fukuoka’s Yahoo Dome.

Post-career years also provided a number of non-baseball awards befitting a national hero. Oh was named an Ambassador-at-Large to the Republic of China in 2001 by Taiwanese president Chen Shui-ban, with an official charge of promoting sports exchanges between Japan and Taiwan. Eight years later (February 2009) he also received the prestigious Taiwanese Order of Brilliant Star from the then-president Ma Ying-jeou (a decoration he would subsequent refer to as “the greatest honor of my life”). The supreme lasting tribute to Oh, however, is the extensive Sadaharu Oh Museum today housed at the Yahoo Dome Stadium in his adopted home city of Fukuoka. This museum is easily the most extensive, most impressive and most complete shrine dedicated to a single ballplayer to be found in any of the major ball-playing nations. It may well also be the most elaborate museum structure dedicated exclusively to any single athlete in any major sport. More than twenty separate rooms and connecting hallways feature state-of-the-art interactive displays celebrating every important milestone of Oh’s career, from childhood days, through playing and managing careers, and on to the 2006 WBC championship triumphs. There are original balls and bats from every landmark home run and team championship, as well as family photos, personal scrapbooks, game-worn uniforms, and even a complete re-creation of the bedroom from his childhood home. The museum is in fact considerably larger and houses far more valuable memorabilia than even the central Japanese National Baseball Hall of Fame now housed in the country’s largest sports palace, the Tokyo Dome.

Oh’s home run records are today fodder for many heated debates among those wishing to make speculative comparisons with Bonds, Aaron or Ruth. The debates surrounding Oh’s actual achievements – especially as they might be speculatively compared with major league performance – also focus on the proposals voiced by many that Sadaharu Oh deserves enshrinement in the North American National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Jim Albright in a well-reasoned and thorough online treatment has perhaps best capsulized the arguments in favor of (and opposed to) Oh’s recognition has baseball’s true home run champion. Albright actually breaks his argument into two quite distinct areas of debate and treats these topics in separate detailed online articles. Part I of Albright’s work tackles the issue of Oh’s actual Japanese record (with detailed statistical review not only of performances in Central League games, Japanese All-Star Games, and the post-season Japan Series, but also in 110 specific exhibition contests played against touring big leaguers); Albright then also offers some subjective analysis of the overall Oh record (including quoted observations by big leaguers and others who saw him play first-hand). In Part II (a separate article) Albright expands on the “subjective” argument by introducing the issue of “hypothetical projections” from the statistical record – the type of argument often advanced by those arguing for equating top Negro league stars with big leaguers from a similar era.16

The related Cooperstown argument is more complicated, even if one is of the opinion that Oh’s slugging can indeed withstand legitimate comparison with similar records established in the big leagues. Many North American Blackball stars have now been enshrined over the years, and few of the arguments in their favor are based on any easily defensible or thoroughly documented evidence that the Negro leagues and big leagues were in any way equivalent in talent level. There have to be other standards beyond mere box score numbers if one wants to broach the subject of comparing ballplayers across eras or across leagues of different stature.

And all this begs a much larger question, the parochial assumption of so many North American fans and commentators that professional baseball is an exclusively North American institution and therefore that Cooperstown is the only legitimate Valhalla to house the sport’s immortals. There is little evidence that Cooperstown enshrinement would mean anything to Oh (he never speaks of it) or to any of his multitudes of Japanese fans, or that such an honor would in any way amplify his substantial legend in the sport’s century-plus annals. One might as well be asking here if Joe DiMaggio’s New York Yankees legacy is in any way diminished by that fact that Joltin’ Joe never found his way into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo (although his one-time San Francisco Seals mentor Lefty O’Doul actually did).17 Such idle speculations comparing ballplayers from different leagues, epochs or countries are perhaps delightful fodder for Hot-Stove discussions; in the end they offer little true insight into any athlete’s true achievements.

No matter where one stands on competing interpretations of Oh’s actual statistical achievements, or on his true stature in the Japanese record books and in Japanese baseball lore, there is no room for argument concerning the fact that his remarkable career was the true stuff of baseball legend. No player outside of Babe Ruth himself has to date ever dominated for quite so long one of the game’s top professional leagues. None ever brought to the game a more revolutionary or unique style of hitting a baseball. Few if any of the game’s greatest on-field stars can also boast a more successful and celebrated managerial career. And if the diamond sport is ultimately a game of numbers – as so many of its commentators contend – no single batter in any of the world’s top circuits has left behind a more impressive and enduring numerical and statistical legacy.

Last revised: April 1, 2014

Acknowledgements

This author wishes to thank Sadaharu Oh for several brief but informative personal conversations at Fukuoka’s Yahoo Dome Stadium during the first round of the 2013 World Baseball Classic. But even more importantly this biographical essay owes a deep debt of gratitude to leading Japanese baseball scholar Rob Fitts whose careful reading and editing contributed to the final improved version.

Sources

Albright, Jim. “Sadaharu Oh and Cooperstown, Part I” online article (posted in 2002) at: BaseballGuru.com (http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright12.html)

Albright, Jim. “Sadaharu Oh and Cooperstown, Part II” online article (posted in 2002) at: BaseballGuru.com (http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright13.html)

Albright, Jim. “All-Time Foreign Born Team” (from the “Japanese Insider”) online article at: BaseballGuru.com (http://baseballguru.com/jaqlbright/analysisjalbright05.html)

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. See Chapter 3: Japan, Besuboru Becomes Yakyu in the Land of Wa (121-157).

Deford, Frank. “Move Over for Oh-san,” in: Sports Illustrated, Volume 47:7 (August 15, 1977), 58-67.

Ivor-Campbell, Frederick. “Sadaharu Oh’s Place in Baseball’s Pantheon” in: The National Pastime 12 (1992). Cleveland, Ohio: Society for American Baseball Research, 35-36.

Lefton, Brad. “Sadaharu Oh Still Feels and Thinks the Game,” The New York Times (May 4, 2008). Online article (http://www.nttimes.com/2008/05/04/sports/baseball/04oh.html?_r=0)

Oh, Sadaharu with David Falkner. A Zen Way of Baseball. New York: Times Books, 1984.

Whiting, Robert. The Chrysanthemum and the Bat – Baseball Samurai Style. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1977.

Whiting, Robert. You Gotta Have Wa* – When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1989.

Wu, Debbie. “Baseball Great Has Roots in ROC,” The Taipei Times (November 16, 2003). Online article (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2003/11/16/2003076035)

Photo Credits

Author’s Collection (Japanese Hall of Fame plaque photo by Peter C. Bjarkman)

Notes

Tomo Ohka was one of three children born into “semi-poverty” to a single mother in Kyoto, Japan.1 Despite this tough beginning, by the time he was 18, the wiry Ohka (6-foot-1, 180 pounds) had attracted interest from professional scouts in Japan, and the Yokohama BayStars of the Japanese Central League ultimately drafted him. Once with the BayStars, Ohka had a hit-or-miss career. On one hand, he was stellar with the BayStars’ minor-league team, featuring an above average curveball and a fastball topping out at 92 mph. However, once Ohka began pitching for the BayStars major-league club, he struggled on and off the field.

On the field, “Ohka appeared in 34 games for the BayStars and was 1-2 with no saves and a 5.56 ERA in 57 1/3 innings” during the first part of his career.2 Moreover, during his stint with the BayStars from 1994-98, Ohka developed a reputation as an upstart who was unwilling to adhere to the strict hierarchal structure that permeated Japanese clubhouses. Though he only pitched two innings for Yokohama in 1998, the team won the Central League pennant. Ohka had dreamed of pitching in the American major leagues since he was in junior high, and he reportedly asked BayStars management to arrange a playing tryout with the Boston Red Sox Florida Instructional League team later in 1998. The Red Sox were impressed enough with his ability that they negotiated with the BayStars. This was the break Tomo Ohka was looking for. The Red Sox purchased his contract from Yokohama on November 20, 1998 for cash and a player to be named later.

The Sox signed him to a minor-league deal. Ohka was assigned to the Red Sox Double-A affiliate in Trenton where he went 8-0 before being promoted to Triple-A Pawtucket. There he posted a 7-0 record with a 1.58 ERA in 12 starts. Suffice it to say, this fast 15-0 start turned him from a project to a prospect and fast-tracked him to the majors during the 1999 season.

Once he got to Boston, Ohka made two starts and finished six others as the long man for the Red Sox. His major-league debut occurred on July 19, 1999 in Fenway Park against the Florida Marlins. That day, in front of 23,282, Tomo Ohka showed the Red Sox faithful that a chasm existed between Triple A and the big leagues and that Ohka still had a lot to learn to be an effective big-league pitcher. To lead off the game, Marlins second-baseman Luis Castillo reached on an error by shortstop Lou Merloni. Castillo then stole second and scored on a single by shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Gonzalez went to third on a single by the DH, Bruce Aven. At this point, Ohka recorded his first out when he gave up a sacrifice fly and an RBI to Kevin Millar. Mark Kotsay singled to move Aven to third base. Center-fielder Preston Wilson doubled, driving in Aven and moving Kotsay to third. On a comebacker to the mound, Ohka threw to first base for the second out while Kotsay scored to give the Marlins a 4-0 lead. Mike Lowell lined out to center for the inning’s final out. Ohka was charged with two earned runs.

The Red Sox were quickly dispatched, but things did not improve for Ohka in the second. Catcher Mike Redmond singled, and Ohka walked Castillo. At this point, Red Sox manager Jimy Williams lifted the rookie for reliever Pat Rapp. One of the inherited runners scored, after another Red Sox error. Ohka had faced 10 hitters and given up five hits and five runs (two earned) in his one-plus inning.

The Red Sox gave him a second start four days later, against the Detroit Tigers. This time he lasted 4 2/3 innings while giving up two home runs and seven runs (all earned). It was just over a month before he got more work; from August 24 to the end of the season, he made six more appearances, all out of the bullpen. He worked a total of 7 1/3 innings without an earned run, and gained his first big-league win during three innings against the Baltimore Orioles on October 10.

With this buoyant finish, and his 15-0 record in the minors, the Red Sox named Ohka their minor-league player of the year for 1999. Ohka was back in Pawtucket for the first four months of the 2000 season, compiling a 9-6 record, which included a perfect game against Charlotte on June 1.3 This performance, along with Ohka’s other work, earned him a call-up to Boston in July when Boston had a rash of pitching injuries in the starting rotation. Once he returned to the big leagues, Ohka made 12 starts and went 3-6 in two different stints as the Red Sox finished in second place (85-77) in the AL East. Ohka’s ERA for the season was a very good 3.12.

Once again, despite the mixed results between AAA and Boston, the Red Sox remained hopeful that Ohka would help stabilize a shaky pitching staff for the 2001 campaign. In fact, the national media was so sure that Ohka was going to help Boston in the coming year that Ken Rosenthal had him slated as the number four starter in the Sox rotation. Many teams coveted Ohka in offseason trade requests, but the Sox kept him on board. He pitched well during the Grapefruit League season and earned a spot on the Opening Day roster.

Ohka had a 2.67 ERA after six starts at the beginning of the season, but was hit hard in the May 10 game and was returned to Pawtucket, where he went 2-5 in eight starts. Returning to Boston in July, Ohka saw his ERA increase one appearance after another and he was up to 6.19 by the end of the month. The Red Sox were looking for a closer as they fought for an Eastern Division title, and dealt the once highly touted Ohka along with Rich Rundles in a two-for-one deal to the Montreal Expos for Ugueth Urbina.

For some pitchers, such a move ends up revitalizing a player. In Ohka’s case, the deal was the start of his time as a journeyman with a mix of results. In 2001, he finished 1-4 with the Expos with an ERA 4.77.

With a full season for the Expos in 2002, he compiled a winning record of 13-8 with a 3.18 ERA in 31 starts, leading his team in wins. But Ohka never quite fulfilled his promise. In 2003, he went 10-12 for Montreal and in 2004 he only made 15 starts due to injury. The franchise moved from Montreal to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. He was 4-3 in his first nine starts, with a 3.33 ERA. On June 10, he was dealt to Milwaukee for second-baseman Junior Spivey. Once in the Brew City, Ohka occasionally proved a bright spot for a perennially bad franchise. However, in the end, injuries plagued his time with the Brewers and Milwaukee released Ohka, making him a free agent at the end of the 2006 season.

In 2007, Ohka originally signed with the Toronto Blue Jays. However, his second stay in Canada was cut short after 10 starts when the Blue Jays released the ineffective (2-5, 5.29 ERA) hurler. Ohka played in both the St. Louis and then Seattle minor-league systems that year, before signing a minor-league deal with the Chicago White Sox in February 2008. He pitched in Charlotte and was 5-11 (4.18) in the Triple-A International League.

Ohka signed as a free agent for the 2009 Cleveland Indians. He made 18 appearances (six starts) and was a disappointing 1-5 (5.96 ERA) in what was his last big-league stint. He was not finished pitching, however.

In 2010, Ohka showed that you could go home again when he signed to pitch once again for the Yokohama BayStars. This time, Ohka went 7-9 (in 2010) and 0-6 (2011) during two seasons with the club that gave him his start. At that point, it looked like Ohka’s career, which had shown so much promise, was over. However, in 2013, Ohka signed a contract with the Japan based Toyama Thunderbirds of the semipro Baseball Challenge League. While there, he learned to throw a knuckleball and parlayed this new pitch to a minor-league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2013.4

Despite his newfound talent, Ohka’s time with the Jays was short-lived. He was one of the first players cut from the Blue Jays camp in the spring of 2014. Following his attempt to get back into Major League Baseball, Ohka completed the 2014 season as a “low 50s knuckleballer” with the Atlantic League (Independent) Bridgeport Blue Fish. During that stint, the 10-year big leaguer compiled a 6-11 record with a 5.37 ERA.5

Last revised: April 14, 2015

Sources

To write this biography, the author relied on statistical and game information from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org as well as the following written materials:

Clair, Michael. “The last chance circuit: 9 Major Leaguers you’d be surprised are playing in Independent Leagues.” (2014). http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2014/09/04/90409418/9-major-leaguers-surprised-playing-independent-leagues [accessed February 15, 2015].

Japan Times Staff. “Ohka Returns Home to BayStars,” Japan Times, April 8, 2010.

Associated Press. “Pawtucket’s Ohka pitches perfect game,” The Seattle Times, 2 June 2000.

Associated Press. “Blue Jays Sign Pitcher Tomo Ohka to Minor League Deal,” Toronto Star, December 12, 2013.

Whiting, Robert. The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of our National Pastime (New York: Warner Books, 2004).

Notes

Roberts was named NL Manager of the Year three months later, guided LA in 2017 to their first World Series since 1988, and won the 2020 World Series with them. Roberts apparently can be quite the spark, given that he is revered by Red Sox fans for a stolen base in 2004 that was crucial to the least likely postseason comeback ever. As an unusual indication of how memorable his stimulus for Boston was, more than a decade later general manager Daryl Morey of the NBA’s Houston Rockets posted a video of Roberts’ theft on social media as those basketballers also faced a deep playoff deficit.2

David Ray Roberts was born on May 31, 1972, in the city of Naha on the Japanese island of Okinawa to Eiko Ikehara and Waymon Dewitt Roberts. His mother was born in Japan on August 25, 1948, four days after his father was born in Liberty, Texas. Waymon Roberts was stationed at Okinawa during a long career in the United States Marines, during which he reached the rank of master gunnery sergeant.3

Dave’s sister, Melissa, was born in California in the summer of 1973.4 During their childhood the family moved from one military base to another a considerable distance away. The family’s first move was from Okinawa to California, and they had later stints in North Carolina and Hawaii before finally settling in the San Diego area in 1984.5

Dave Roberts received periodic attention on local sports pages while attending Washington Middle School in Vista,6 which is in San Diego County about 40 miles north of San Diego. His earliest mentions by sportswriters, as both Dave and David, might have been during the winter of 1984-1985 while playing in the Vista Parks & Recreation Junior Basketball Association with a team called the Traveling Panthers (or vice versa).7 Not much later, David Roberts of Washington Middle School won the 100-meter race among boys born in 1972 during the Vista City Track Meet held on April 13.8 Three more months later, Roberts was a member of the Vista Pony League “13-year-old All-Stars” as they won a district championship and competed in sectionals.9

On May 3, 1986, David Roberts again won a 100-meter dash among boys born in 1972, with a time of 12.06 seconds. This time the event was the San Diego County Track and Field Championships. Meanwhile, Melissa Roberts placed fourth among girls born in 1973.10 About four years later, she was on their high-school track team as a short sprinter.11

In June 1986 Dave Roberts was instrumental in his Sport About team’s Pony League championship finale, with a home run and a save in relief.12 That fall he was a freshman at Vista High School. In a lengthy 1989 interview for the San Diego Tribune, about midway through his senior year of high school, Roberts said he was promoted to Vista’s varsity football team as a freshman but couldn’t play because he was only 15 years old. “I told Coach [Dick] Haines it would be a good idea if I didn’t suit up,” Roberts recalled. “I didn’t want to just stand there and do nothing. So I sat up in the stands. I knew I had three more years.”13 In the spring of 1987 he played baseball for Vista High as a freshman, and was named the Most Valuable Player of the junior varsity team, which won 19 out of 22 games.14

For his sophomore year, Roberts switched to the brand-new Rancho Buena Vista High School. A Los Angeles Times sportswriter in an article on the difficulties of launching an athletic program at such a new institution, quoted the varsity football team’s sophomore quarterback. “It’s a challenge. We’re the underdogs. We want to take advantage of that,” Roberts said. “We want to be ourselves. We want to build our own tradition.”15 Soon enough, Roberts was doing his utmost to build those traditions as a basketball player16 and then as a baseball player as well. No RBV baseball player was named to the Avocado League’s First Team after the 1988 season and only one was named to the Second Team, but Roberts was one of two teammates to receive Honorable Mention.17

As the Longhorns prepared for the 1988 football season, Roberts suffered a knee injury in spring practice so serious that it was known well in advance of the regular season that he wouldn’t play at all. Coach Craig Bell described the uncommon characteristic he hoped for in a replacement for Roberts at that time. “A bomb could go off beside him and he’d just smile and go on,” said Bell. “That kind of leadership is invaluable on the field, especially from a quarterback.”18 That positive, unflappable attitude was likely important during Roberts’ very gradual recovery, because at some point he was told by at least one doctor that he’d never play any sports again.19

Roberts’ injury was to his right knee’s anterior cruciate ligament and required major reconstructive knee surgery. He stood with his teammates during games, wearing a cast that encased his leg from thigh to ankle. When Roberts returned to the team as a senior, Bell’s praise shifted from his quarterback’s poise as a sophomore to his intelligence. “He’s like having another coach on the field,” Bell said, which now seems like foreshadowing. “He makes life easy for me. If he were a coach, I’d probably be out of a job.”20

It was estimated that Roberts played most of the football season of his senior year at 85 percent of his capability, but the Longhorns won the California Interscholastic Federation Division I title, setting a record for total yards of offense in the process. “David was the single biggest reason we won the CIF title,” said Bell. “He wouldn’t allow the team to lose. He drove that team every hour, every minute, every day of the season.”21

Roberts lettered in football, basketball, and baseball at Rancho Buena Vista.22 His high-school baseball career ended on a personal high note in mid-1990 when he was the only RBV player named to the CIF All-Section team.23 Still, because his severe knee injury also caused him to miss his junior year of baseball, his chance to be recruited by colleges had been undercut considerably. As it was, his only offer for collegiate football came from the Air Force Academy. Though football was his first love, he reasoned that baseball was the more promising option after high school. He was a walk-on at UCLA and became a scholarship recipient his sophomore year there.24

Roberts was named to the All-Pac-10 Team in 1992 and 1994, and lettered each season from 1991 through 1994.25 By the time he graduated in 1995, he’d set a university record for most stolen bases. That resulted in large part from setting a record for stolen bases as a senior. When he left UCLA, he ranked second all-time in runs scored, third in triples, fifth in hits, and fifth in walks. He earned a degree in history; he also developed a shoulder so sore that it required surgery.26

Through mid-1994, Roberts considered his greatest thrill in baseball to have occurred in 1992, which was playing in an NCAA regional championship game in Starkville, Mississippi, on the cusp of the College World Series.27 The game was played on May 24, the same day UCLA eliminated Mississippi State. Though UCLA was shut out by Oklahoma, Roberts led off and had two hits in four at-bats.28

Roberts was selected in baseball’s June 1993 amateur draft by the Cleveland Indians, though not until the 47th round.29 His UCLA coach, Gary Adams, said Roberts seemed acutely aware that seven of his UCLA teammates who were also juniors were drafted much higher. “He came into my office after the draft was held feeling really down in the dumps,” Adams recalled. “I didn’t see him that way really often.” Roberts, who decided not to sign with Cleveland, quickly requested advice from Adams on how to get drafted higher the next year, and Adams theorized that scouts were looking for stronger throws from an outfielder. Adams and fellow coaches Don Tamburro and Vince Beringhele helped Roberts with that the following season, and Roberts led UCLA outfielders in assists.30 All that effort did come at a cost. “I wasn’t used to all that throwing,” Roberts said, because he’d mostly been a designated hitter during his first three seasons at UCLA. “So I hurt my shoulder, and it required surgery.”31

Nevertheless, the Detroit Tigers selected Roberts in the 28th round of the June 1994 draft, and he accepted a bonus of $1,000.32 He also secured a guarantee from Detroit that the club would help finance the remainder of his undergraduate education.33 Roberts signed his first pro contract on June 9, 1994. Dennis Lieberthal was the scout who arranged that.34

Roberts was assigned to the Jamestown Jammers of the Class-A New York-Penn League. The club began its season on June 16,35 but when Roberts signed, he informed the Tigers that he wouldn’t report to Jamestown until he was done at UCLA that semester, and thus his arrival was delayed about two weeks. It took another week for him to crack the starting lineup.36 His name didn’t appear in Jamestown stats printed by the Detroit Free Press on June 29, which covered their New York affiliate’s first 10 games.37

Roberts made his professional debut on June 28, 1994, in Jamestown. In hindsight decades later, it was fitting that he took part only as a pinch-runner. He didn’t steal a base off the Welland Pirates, but did score a run in what turned out to be a 17-inning marathon, won by Jamestown, 8-7.38 Jamestown’s scheduled game the next day was rained out, so his next chance to play was in a doubleheader on June 30.39 He led off the first game as the DH and went 0-for-4.40 After the team’s first 22 games, Roberts was just 6-for-34 (.176).41 He overcame this very slow start to hit .292 by the end of the short 1994 season.

For the remainder of the decade, Roberts advanced steadily toward the majors. After hitting .303 in 1995, he reached Double-A partway into 1996, the first of several seasons he split at two different levels. His combined total of stolen bases for 1996 was 65, which led minor leaguers at all levels.42

Roberts played a full season at Double A in 1997 and had a .296 batting average. On November 8 of that year, he married his high-school sweetheart, Tricia Schempp. Their relationship dated back to the spring of 1988, around the time he suffered the serious knee injury that cost him his junior season of football.43

On June 24, 1998, Roberts was involved in a trade for the first time, when Detroit packaged him and pitcher Tim Worrell to Cleveland in exchange for outfielder/DH Geronimo Berroa.44 He hit .326 at Double-A Jacksonville before the trade, and hit .361 for Double-A Akron afterward. He tied an Akron record with a 22-game hitting streak.45 He also played his first Triple-A ball in 1998, for Cleveland’s affiliate in Buffalo, though he played in just five games.

In mid-1999, Roberts had a big thrill when he was named to Team USA for that summer’s Pan Am Games.46 His manager at Buffalo, Jeff Datz, advised him that missing up to three weeks of high-level pro ball in favor of amateur competition might have a negative effect after his return, but Roberts was eager to take that risk. “I figured you have a limited chance to play for your country so you might as well take it,” he said. His father’s time in the Marine Corps was also a motivation. “He represented this country for three decades; the least I could do was two weeks.”47 Roberts helped Team USA earn a spot in the 2000 Olympics by hitting .308 in the leadoff spot and swiping four bases. “It was incredible – the best experience of my life,” Roberts declared. He then returned to Buffalo for just two games before even more exciting news: Cleveland had called him up to the majors to sub for injured superstar Kenny Lofton.48

Roberts made his major-league debut with the Indians on August 7, 1999, in Tampa Bay. He was put atop Cleveland’s batting order and assigned to patrol center field. More than 38,000 fans watched him thrive beginning in the second inning. To begin the game, he grounded out to pitcher Bobby Witt after a first-pitch strike, but in the next inning he worked the count to 3-and-1. He then lined a two-out double toward the left power alley for his first hit in the majors, though the following batter’s out left him there. All told, Roberts went 3-for-5 with a walk, a stolen base, and three runs scored as his team won a 15-10 slugfest. Regardless, the game was of considerable historical significance because Wade Boggs homered with his hometown team for the 3,000th hit of his Hall of Fame career.49

Roberts hit his first home run in the majors at home on August 30, against Anaheim. He was in the leadoff spot and went 3-for-4 with four runs scored. The homer was off Ramon Ortiz in the second inning, with two outs and two men on base.

He stayed with Cleveland for the remainder of the regular season, and in 41 games had a .238 batting average. He capped his rookie season by appearing in two American League Divisional Series games against the Red Sox; he was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. Roberts also spent some time the next two seasons with Cleveland, but the 41 games he played for them in 1999 were his maximum.

Dave and Tricia’s life together took a new turn shortly after the 2000 season, when their first child was born on October 9, son Cole. He ultimately graduated from Santa Fe Christian School in Solana Beach, California. In June of 2019, Cole was chosen by the San Diego Padres in the 38th round of the amateur draft and as of the summer of 2023 was still listed on the roster of LA’s Loyola Marymount University.50

On December 22, 2001, Cleveland traded Roberts to the Dodgers for minor-league pitchers Christian Bridenbaugh and Nial Hughes. Roberts had expected Cleveland to offload him that offseason. “I didn’t know where I might end up, but it couldn’t have worked out any better than it did,” he said. “Cleveland is a great organization, but the opportunities there were hard to come by.”51

Roberts’ optimism was rewarded. He became a regular as he was turning 30, and continued as a starter the following five seasons, playing a minimum of 107 games in each from 2002 through 2007. Over those six years his 226 stolen bases ranked fourth among all major leaguers.52

In 2002 Roberts played in 127 games for the Dodgers, almost exclusively in center field, and had a solid .277 batting average. He reached base by hit or walk in 80 percent of his games. Some statistician took the time to determine that Roberts, Vladimir Guerrero, and Luis Castillo were the only three major leaguers that season to pair at least 40 walks with 40 or more stolen bases.53

Roberts’ 2003 season represented a step backward, with a .250 batting average in 20 fewer games, but the hamstring soreness that contributed to that didn’t prevent him from stealing 40 bases again. Only two other National League players stole that many.54 It was business as usual for him with the Dodgers into the 2004 season, though better in at least one way: Through July, he’d swiped 33 bases and was caught stealing only once.

On July 31 the Dodgers traded Roberts to the Red Sox for fellow outfielder Henri Stanley (whose pro career peaked at Triple A). Not surprisingly, it was reported that Boston wanted to obtain Roberts to improve their fielding and add speed. Though Roberts had missed three weeks on May after pulling a hamstring, he was expected to allow for some healing of starting center fielder Johnny Damon’s nagging injuries. “It’s great to have Dave around so this old, broken-down body can get a day off every now and then,” Damon said, adding that they’d played together “on Team Florida years ago. He’s a good player with speed who makes things happen on the basepaths.”55

Before 2005’s regular season began, Roberts revealed how he and Tricia reacted upon learning by phone that he had been traded by the Dodgers. “It was a bad day,” she said. “At the time we thought it was the worst thing that could have happened.” Complicating matters was the fact that Tricia was in the final weeks of pregnancy with their second child.56 Emmerson Roberts, who often goes by Emme for short, was born at a Boston hospital on September 19. Her father skipped that afternoon’s game in New York and was in time to witness the birth.57

Roberts played his first game for Boston on August 3, and over the next two months got into 45 games. His batting average was little better than in 2003, though his slugging percentage of .442 over those two months was his highest in the majors. He was on Boston’s roster for the ALDS against the Anaheim Angels, but only entered the second of those three games, solely as a pinch-runner, and was forced out at second base on a grounder to short by Damon.

That set the scene for the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. On October 17, 2004, the Red Sox began play trailing three games to none, and entering the bottom of the ninth inning the score was Yankees 4, Red Sox 3. Future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera was on the pitcher’s mound, charged with preserving that lead. The first Boston batter he faced was Kevin Millar. Red Sox manager Terry Francona maintains that moments earlier he went down in the tunnel to tell Roberts that “Millar is going to get on and you’re going to steal.”58 After Millar drew a walk, he immediately headed to the dugout and exchanged a quick gesture while passing Roberts. “No words were necessary,” Millar said. “It’s not like I was about to give him baserunning advice.”59

Even a decade later, for the book Don’t Let Us Win Tonight: An Oral History of the 2004 Boston Red Sox’s Impossible Playoff Run (from which Francona’s and Millar’s quotes above are excerpted), Roberts found it difficult to describe how he felt in that moment. “I can’t tell you how many emotions went through me,” he said. “To be honest, the fear of being the goat definitely went through my mind because I hadn’t played in 10 days and didn’t feel fresh.”60 One specific thought was a conversation on a Florida field in 2002. “Maury Wills told me that at some point in my career there will be an opportunity for me to steal a base, a big base, and everyone in the ballpark knows I’m going to steal, and I can’t be afraid to steal that base,” Roberts added.61

Roberts recalled feeling “really calmed” after Rivera’s second pickoff attempt, and was glad Rivera hadn’t begun with a quick-pitch to batter Bill Mueller. First-base coach Lynn Jones and Roberts seemed of like mind. “There was no doubt the pickoff throws heightened his senses,” said Jones, who added, “They helped take those jitters away. He kept moving out there a little bit further, and we’re talking about inches, but when you’re out there that far, holy smokes. He’s way out there.”62

After Rivera’s third consecutive throw over to first, Roberts decided to go at the next sign of any meaningful movement by the pitcher. Roberts said the chest-high, outside pitch to Mueller wasn’t a pitchout but functioned as one for catcher Jorge Posada.63 One sportswriter succinctly summarized what happened next that night and in the days afterward:

Mueller would single up the middle past a sprawling Rivera to score Roberts and tie the game. [David] Ortiz would hit a game-winning home run in the 12th inning. Less than 24 hours later, Millar again would walk and Roberts again would pinch run, this time participating in a less-remembered hit-and-run to reach third base and eventually score a Game 5-tying run on Jason] Varitek’s sacrifice fly off Rivera. And Ortiz would hit a game-winning single in the 14th inning.

The Red Sox inconceivably would become the first team to climb out of an 0-3 playoff-series hole, would end the franchise’s 86-year championship drought, would become an exemplary sum of unconquerable parts large and small.64

Roberts didn’t get to play in the 2004 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, but that apparently made no difference to the legend he’d become. “For his singular contribution, Dave Roberts has been practically canonized in this town,” Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe wrote seven years later. “No comparable Boston sports hero stakes his claim to eternal fan gratitude on the basis of one act that compassed about four seconds, give or take.”65

On December 20, 2004, Roberts was sent to the team that played where he grew up. The Red Sox dealt him to the San Diego Padres for fellow major leaguers Jay Payton and Ramón Vázquez, future major leaguer David Pauley, and cash. Roberts responded by having his best two-year stint in the majors in 2005 and 2006. He hit .275 in 2005 and then followed that up by batting .293, easily his highest mark during any of his full seasons in the majors. In 2006 he tied Tony Gwynn for most triples in a season by a Padre, with 13.66

After both of those regular seasons Roberts experienced a National League Division Series against the Cardinals. He played in all three of the 2005 games and all four of the 2006 games. Though he hit only .222 in the Padres’ 2005 NLDS, he did swat a homer at home, in the seventh inning of the final game. In the Padres’ 2006 NLDS, he went 7-for-16 for an impressive .438 batting average. That concluded his postseason experience as a player.

On December 2, 2006, Roberts took advantage of free agency by signing a three-year, $18 million contract with the San Francisco Giants.67 He batted .260 in 114 games for the Giants in 2007 but plunged to .224 in just 52 games the next season. Barely a week into April, he went on the disabled list, and didn’t play for the Giants again until July 23, because he ultimately needed knee surgery, this time on his left knee.68 The final game of his career as a player was on September 28, 2008, which was the season finale for the Giants, hosting the Dodgers. He singled as a pinch-hitter, and soon scored what turned out to be the winning run. On March 5, 2009, Roberts was released by the Giants.69

Within two months, Roberts was hired by the New England Sports Network as an in-studio analyst for Red Sox broadcasts.70 Late that same year, one Boston Globe sportswriter summed up Roberts’ performance across the season. “Roberts was almost too friendly, to the point where he was either reluctant to or incapable of criticizing players who had recently been his peers,” Chad Finn wrote. “And he maintained many of the same verbal tics at the end that he had at the beginning, such as the habit of saying ‘right there’ or ‘great’ when analyzing a replay. In the end, he proved how difficult the transition to television really is.”71

On December 7, 2009, Roberts was hired by the Padres as a special assistant for baseball operations.72 One of his assignments during the subsequent spring training was to advise players how to read pitchers and get better jumps on stolen-base attempts.73 About a week into May the Padres were leading the National League in steals, with a success rate above 80 percent, and Roberts received some of the credit.74

In May of 2010, Roberts announced that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a kind of cancer. By the time he went public, he’d already had two rounds of chemotherapy.75 In September he was found to be cancer-free, and on June 20, 2011, that was confirmed by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He happened to be in town with the visiting Padres, for whom he’d switched to first-base coach shortly after the 2010 season. Fans at Fenway Park gave him a rousing ovation.76

After three seasons as first-base coach, on November 18, 2013, Roberts was promoted to bench coach for Padres manager Bud Black. He served in that secondary role for the 2014 and 2015 seasons, and even managed the Padres one game, on June 15, 2015, after Black left that role.77 The Padres lost at home to Oakland, 9-1.

Around Halloween of 2015, Roberts was interviewed by the Dodgers to fill their managerial vacancy, and he “aced” it, according to Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke, who added that Roberts had apparently become the front-runner for the position. Plaschke endorsed that course of action fervently.78 David Ray Roberts was announced as the Dodgers’ new manager on November 23, 2015,79 and he still held that job through 2023.

It wouldn’t be difficult to double the length of this biography by cataloging the many insightful comments Roberts has offered in that high-profile role and by describing the countless ways he made and makes a difference as Dodgers manager, game to game, month to month, and season to season. Much more challenging is paring down a list of his highlights as a manager, but that’s one of the assets of franchise media guides.

Roberts became the 32nd manager in the history of the franchise and just the 10th since the move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for the 1958 season. He also became the Dodgers’ first minority manager and the fourth to have both played for and later managed Los Angeles. His first Opening Day as manager was against the Padres on April 4, 2016, and the Dodgers’ 15-0 cakewalk was the largest margin of victory in any Opening Day shutout in major-league history. After winning the NL’s West Division in 2016, he was named NL Manager of the Year. The award, which was initiated in 1983, had gone to a first-year manager only five times before Roberts. During his second season, the Dodgers had a stretch where they won a staggering 43 of 50 games, which hadn’t happened since the 1912 New York Giants. His 195 wins across the 2016 and 2017 regular seasons are the fifth most by any manager in his first two years.80

When the Dodgers qualified for the playoffs in 2021, Roberts became the first major-league manager to lead his team to the postseason in his first six full seasons with that franchise. He extended that record in 2022 when the Dodgers won 111 games, a franchise record, In establishing that, he exceeded his own record of 106 wins, which he set in 2019 and tied in 2021. The Dodgers have captured three NL pennants under Roberts and won the 2020 World Series. Despite the Dodgers’ frequent successes in recent decades, it can be easy for even the oldest fans to forget that Roberts became only the third manager in franchise history to achieve that ultimate championship.81

Roberts’ father only lived long enough to experience his son’s 2016 successes. Waymon Roberts died shortly before Opening Day 2017, on March 17, at the age of 68.82 He is buried at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California. His gravestone notes that he received the Good Conduct Medal during his time in the Marine Corps.83

About half a year later, Dave Roberts admitted that his father talked him out of quitting baseball after the 1995 season, his second in the minor leagues. Though he had made the Florida State League all-star team, for 1996 the Tigers sent him to yet another Class-A team, the Visalia Oaks, which was considered a destination for marginal prospects. It helped that Waymon was less than six hours away by car.84 Fans of the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers, among innumerable other baseball enthusiasts, certainly remain very glad Dave Roberts didn’t choose a different career before the turn of the century.

Last revised: April 26, 2024

Sources

Except where otherwise noted, information about Roberts’ personal life and managerial accomplishments is from the 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers Media Guide (see Note 78). The primary source for his statistics and individual game information as a player, including during postseasons, is baseball-reference.com.

Notes

1 Bruce Jenkins, “Bochy’s Crew Has the Edge over L.A.,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2016: B1, B3.

2 Diamond Leung, “Warriors One Win away from NBA Finals,” Sacramento Bee, May 25, 2015: B6, B10.

3 Dave Roberts’ completed Howe Sportsdata International questionnaire dated September 1, 1994 (accessible via ancestry.com). See also Eiko Roberts’ 1991 naturalization paperwork and the Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997, accessible via genealogical websites, plus Waymon’s findagrave.com entry, especially the gravestone photograph.

4 California Birth Index, 1905-1995, accessible via genealogical websites. A distinguishing detail in this index is the mother’s maiden name.

5 Billy Witz, “Dodgers’ New Manager Reflects on Team’s Ties to Breaking Barriers,” New York Times, December 2, 2015: B13. Andy McCullough, “Unifying Dodgers Is His Purpose,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2016: A1, A16, A17.

6 Bill and Jean Rath, “Sports Letters,” North County Times (Oceanside, California), April 9, 2003: C-4.

7 For example, see “Youth Basketball,” Escondido (California) Times-Advocate, January 24: 1985: C6. One of Roberts’ teammates was Junior Moi, with whom he would later play Pony League baseball and high-school sports.

8 “Youth Track and Field,” Escondido Times-Advocate, April 14, 1985: D4.

9 “Vista Stars Stopped in Ramona,” Escondido Times-Advocate, July 25, 1985: D4. Junior Moi was also on this team, which adds credence to the presumption that it was the same David Roberts on those teams.

10 “Track and Field,” Escondido Times-Advocate, May 15, 1986: D4.

11 John Schlegel, “Rivalry to Replace Jorgensen Will Have to Wait,” Solana Beach (California) Blade-Citizen, March 15, 1990: C-4.

12 “Sport About Wins Vista Pony,” Escondido Times-Advocate, June 26, 1986: D4.

13 Jeff Savage, “The Long Wait Is Almost Over for Quarterback of Longhorns,” San Diego Tribune, December 7, 1989: D-6.

14 J.P. Hoornstra, “How New Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts Emerged as a Leader at Every Stop,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 25, 2015, accessible at https://www.dailynews.com/2015/11/25/how-new-dodgers-manager-dave-roberts-emerged-as-a-leader-at-every-stop/.

15 Steve Beatty, “Home on the Ranch,” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1987: Part III, 11, 13.

16 For example, see “Pollard Leads Torrey Pines to Rout,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1987: III, 12.

17 “1988 Spring All-League Selections,” Escondido Times-Advocate, June 5, 1988: D2.

18 Terry Monahan, “Longhorns Seek Winning Tradition,” Escondido Times-Advocate, September 3, 1988: Football 1988 section, 8, 14.

19 John Maffei, “Racing Through Adversity,” North County Times (Escondido, California), May 13, 1996: C-1. Andy McCullough, “Unifying Dodgers Is His Purpose,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2016: A1, A16, A17.

20 Hoornstra.

21 Maffei, C-1.

22 Dave Roberts’ completed Howe Sportsdata International questionnaire dated September 1, 1994 (accessible via ancestry.com).

23 “San Diego Day in Sports,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1990: C13A.

24 Andy McCullough,” Unifying Dodgers Is His Purpose.”

25 Mike Leary, UCLA Baseball 2014 Media Guide: 99, accessible at https://ucla_ftp.sidearmsports.com/pdf/2014BaseballFullGuide.pdf. See page 73 for Roberts’ seasonal stats with UCLA. His UCLA stolen-base records hadn’t been eclipsed through at least 2013, as indicated on page 104.

26 Maffei, C-6. On this page, UCLA coach Gary Adams said Roberts wasn’t drafted in 1993, at the end of his third year, but Adams apparently meant that Roberts didn’t sign then. See other text herein quoting Adams about the June 1993 amateur draft.

27 Dave Roberts’ Howe Sportsdata International questionnaire.

28 “NCAA Tournament,” Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion-Ledger, May 25, 1992: 2C.

29 Chris Assenheimer, “Managers Reminisce about Their Playing Time in Cleveland,” Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, July 10, 2019: B4.

30 Hoornstra. Though this article provided several insightful quotations, it incorrectly added that Roberts was drafted by Cleveland in the 28th round of the 1994 draft, but that second time he was drafted by Detroit.

31 Maffei, C-6.

32 McCullough, A17.

33 Steve Scholfield, “David Roberts Has His Priorities Straight,” Solana Beach Blade-Citizen, September 9, 1994: C-1, C-2. In contrast to many other sources, Scholfield reported Roberts’ bonus as $1,500 rather than $1,000.

34 Dave Roberts’ Howe Sportsdata International questionnaire.

35 “Minor Leagues,” Philadelphia Daily News, June 17, 1994: 134.

36 Scholfield, C-2.

37 “Tigers’ Affiliates,” Detroit Free Press, June 29, 1994: 9C.

38 Jim Riggs, “’After Midnight’ Was Theme of Jammers’ 17-Inning Win,” Jamestown (New York) Post Journal, June 29, 1994: 21. It wasn’t clear from the box score when Roberts might’ve entered the game, but Riggs did allude to a pinch-runner helping to propel a crucial four-run rally in the eighth inning.

39 “Pittsfield Mets Rained Out, Will Play 2 Games Tonight,” Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), June 30, 1994: C1.

40 “Mets, 6-1,” Berkshire Eagle, July 1, 1994: C2.

41 “Tigers’ Minor League Affiliates,” Detroit Free Press, July 13, 1994: 7C.

42 See the back of Roberts’ 1999 Bowman baseball card, number 392.

43 Scholfield, C-2. This article provided her surname, and in it Roberts indicated how long they’d been in a relationship. Their wedding date was specified by the same sportswriter late that decade. See Steve Scholfield, “Roberts to Make His Point,” North County Times, November 7, 1999: C-1.

44 Gene Guidi, “Worrell for Berroa; Anderson Coming,” Detroit Free Press, June 25, 1988: 7C.

45 Scholfield, “Roberts to Make His Point.”

46 “Aeros Notes,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, July 5, 1999: C6.

47 Steve Scholfield, “Roberts’ Great Year Continues,” North County Times, August 10,1999: C-1, C-5.

48 “Roberts’ Great Year Continues.” Roberts was not on the Team USA roster in the 2000 Olympics – see https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/2000_Olympics_(Rosters)#United_States.

49 Bill Chastain, “Worth the Wade,” Tampa Tribune, August 8, 1999: sports, 1, 14. This article incorrectly stated that Roberts’ first hit in the majors was in the fourth inning; that was when he logged his second hit of the game. For detailed stats about this game, see https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TBA/TBA199908070.shtml.

50 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=robert001col and https://lmulions.com/sports/baseball/roster/cole-roberts/12072.

51 “RBV Grad Roberts Traded to Dodgers,” North County Times, December 22, 2001: C-5.

52 San Diego Padres Communications Department, 2011 San Diego Padres Media Guide, 35.

53 See the back of Roberts’ 2003 Topps baseball card, number 544.

54 See the back of Roberts’ 2004 Topps Heritage baseball card, number 368.

55 Nick Cafardo, “Glove at First Sight: Newcomers Can Field,” Boston Globe, August 1, 2004: C7. For information about Stanley’s minor-league career, see https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=stanle001hen.

56 Chuck Culpepper, “Stolen Moment,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), March 6, 2005: B8.

57 Peter May, “Wife’s Surgery Sends Cabrera on Home Run,” Boston Globe, September 21, 2004: F5.

58 Four Days in October (ESPN Films 30 for 30), Major League Baseball Productions, 2010.

59 Allan Wood and Bill Nowlin, Don’t Let Us Win Tonight: An Oral History of the 2004 Boston Red Sox’s Impossible Playoff Run (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2014), 126.

60 Wood and Nowlin, 127.

61 Wood and Nowlin, 127.

62 Wood and Nowlin, 128.

63 Wood and Nowlin, 129.

64 Culpepper, B13.

65 Bob Ryan, “Stolen Glory in ’04,” Boston Globe, October 14, 2011: C1.

66 San Diego Padres Communications Department, 2011 San Diego Padres Media Guide, 35.

67 Andrew Baggarly, “Giants Fill a Need for Speed, Adding Roberts,” Oakland Tribune, December 2, 2006: Sports, 8.

68 “Giants Place Roberts on DL,” San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 2008: A24. Janie McCauley, “Giants Still Alive in NL West,” San Francisco Examiner, July 17, 2008: A39.

69 Andrew Baggarly, “Giants Swallow Pride, Roberts’ $6.5M Contract,” Oakland Tribune, March 5, 2009: Sports, 1-2.

70 Chad Finn, “NESN’s Edwards Man of His Words,” Boston Globe, May 1, 2009: C9.

71 Chad Finn, “Hitting the Ground Running,” Boston Globe, December 11, 2009: C3.

72 Peter Abraham, “Relationship No Longer Dicey,” Boston Globe, December 8, 2009: C6.

73 Manny Navarro, “Question of the Week,” Miami Herald, April 25, 2010: 6D.

74 John Shea, “Padres Finally a Fit for Petco,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 2010: B6.

75 Nick Cafardo, “Roberts Won’t Run from This,” Boston Globe, May 4, 2010: C2.

76 Michael Vega, “Rizzo Finally Makes His Debut at Fenway,” Boston Globe, June 21, 2011: C2. See also San Diego Padres Communications Department, 2011 San Diego Padres Media Guide, 35.

77 San Diego Padres Communications Department, 2011 San Diego Padres Media Guide, 35. 2018 Los Angeles Dodgers Guide, 16.

78 Bill Plaschke, “Authority Figures,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2015: D1, D7.

79 Dylan Hernandez, “Roberts’ Story Is Human Interest,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 2015: D1, D7.

80 2018 Los Angeles Dodgers Guide, 16.

81 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers Media Guide, 24.

82 Andy McCullough, “Kershaw Takes Long View after Three-Homer Outing,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2017: D10.

83 See https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/182341718/waymon-dewitt-roberts.

84 Steve Wulf, “Roberts’ return to L.A. ‘was meant to be,’” ESPN.com, October 9, 2017, accessible at https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20914762/los-angeles-dodgers-manager-dave-roberts-took-long-road-back-home-la. This article offered several familial anecdotes.

After a nine-year career in Japan, where he won an unprecedented seven consecutive batting titles, seven consecutive Gold Glove awards, and three consecutive MVP awards, Ichiro Suzuki became the first position player from Nippon Professional Baseball in the major leagues in 2001. Proving many doubters wrong, his stellar hitting continued in the U.S. against major-league pitching, as he began his big-league career with an unprecedented 10 straight 200-hit seasons, including a record-setting 262 hits in 2004.

Ichiro’s style was reminiscent of an earlier era. Although he could hit for power, Suzuki usually used his tremendous bat control to spray the ball around the field. Appearing almost to run before his bat struck the ball, he sped down the line from the left-hand batter’s box and beat out many infield choppers and bunts. His pre-pitch ritual was inimitable and distinctive. Swinging the bat in a long arc, he pointed it at the pitcher, and then tugged on his right sleeve. Only then was he ready to hit. Baseball columnist Thomas Boswell opined, “To see Ichiro hit is to be taken back almost a century to the hit ’em where they ain’t technique.”1

His outstanding offensive abilities were complemented by great defense. Playing primarily in right field, as well as some time in center, he also won 10 consecutive Gold Glove awards. One highlight reel of his defensive gems contains 10 minutes of diving catches, stolen home runs, and frozen-rope throws.2 After one strong throw from right field to third base, Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus, making one of his most famous calls, exclaimed, “I’m here to tell you that Ichiro threw something out of Star Wars down there at third base!”

In addition, he enjoyed All-Star appearances each year during his first decade in the majors. His outstanding play in two countries made him an international celebrity, known by one word alone like soccer hero Pelé. Ichiro’s success in the U.S. changed the perception that major-league teams had of Japanese baseball players. He paved the way for future stars such as 2009 World Series MVP Hideki Matsui and 2021 AL MVP Shohei Ohtani.

Suzuki played major-league baseball for 19 years. He had a 28-year professional career in Japan and the U.S. combined. His longevity exceeds that of major-league leaders Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson, who each played for 27 seasons. Suzuki finished with 3,089 big-league hits, which puts him 24th on the all-time career hit list (as of 2022). Adding his 1,278 hits while playing in Japan’s Pacific League gives him a total of 4,367 hits at the top level in each nation. That total exceeds the record 4,256 hits that Pete Rose amassed during his big-league career.

Suzuki also excelled on the basepaths. He is one of only seven major-leaguers to have 3,000 hits and 500 stolen bases.3 Ichiro and Lou Gehrig are the only players in the modern era to have eight seasons with 200 hits and 100 runs scored. His stellar offense, superb defense, and success running the bases meant that Ichiro Suzuki was the first Japanese player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 2025.

Ichiro (the name means brightest, most cheerful) Suzuki was born on October 22, 1973, in Nichi Kasugai-gun (a suburb of Nagoya), Japan.4 His parents are Nobuyuki and Yoshie Suzuki, and his only sibling is his older brother, Kazuyasu.5 Ichiro’s love of the game, and famous work ethic, were instilled in him by his father. Nobuyuki was a former high school pitcher who bought Ichiro his first glove, and played catch with him, when Ichiro was just 3 years old. Although Suzuki was naturally right-handed, Nobuyuki taught Ichiro to bat left-handed because lefties get to first base faster. When Ichiro was 7, the two established a daily afternoon routine – summer and winter, regardless of the weather. The boy would throw 50 pitches, hit 200 tosses from his father, and do 50 infield and 50 outfield fielding plays. After dinner every day, the two would go to the local batting cage, where Ichiro would take 250 to 300 swings.

By the time Ichiro was 12, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. In a sixth-grade essay he wrote, “My dream when I grow up is to be a first-class professional baseball player…. I have the confidence to do the necessary practice to reach that goal…. I only had five or six hours (per year) to play with my friends. That’s how much I practiced. So I think I can become a pro.” Reflecting on this period, Nobuyuki said, “Baseball was fun for both of us.” Ichiro replied, “It might have been fun for him, but for me … it bordered on hazing and I suffered a lot. But I also couldn’t say no to him. He was doing his utmost to help me.”6

High school baseball in Japan is taken with the same seriousness that Texans take high school football. For promising Japanese baseball players, the choice of where to go to high school is given the same consideration as where to go to college is given in the U.S. The high school that Ichiro attended, Aikodai Meiden Kokko, in Nagoya, is one of the top baseball schools in Japan and is well known for sending its best athletes to the professional ranks. Ichiro’s time there was difficult. As a freshman he had to scrub the dormitory floors and got up at 3 A.M. to do laundry for the upperclassmen. After he became a starter in his junior year, the chores were replaced with running, and drills such as throwing car tires, and hitting Wiffle balls with a shovel. Ichiro called his time at Meiden “the hardest thing I have ever experienced.”7

But the hard work paid off – Ichiro batted .502 during his high school career. He never struck out swinging in over 500 high-school at-bats and was called out on strikes just 10 times. He twice led Meiden to the most prestigious high school baseball tournament in Japan. However, in spite of these stellar numbers, he was not chosen until the fourth and final round (36th overall) of Japan’s 1991 draft, by the Orix Blue Wave. Scouts for most teams did not think he could compete because of his small stature (he was then 5-feet-9 and just 120 pounds).8

Ichiro made his Nippon Professional Baseball debut with the Blue Wave at age 18 in 1992. But the manager of the team had doubts about his future in baseball because of his small size and unorthodox hitting technique, so he spent most of his first two seasons in the minor leagues. As part of his development, Orix sent Suzuki to play in the Hawaii Winter Baseball League after the 1993 Japanese season. Playing for the Hilo Stars of the four-city circuit, Ichiro led the team to a 28-20 record and a first-place finish. League owner Duane Kurisu said Suzuki’s play stood out even then. He exclaimed, “Ichiro, man. His name would keep popping up throughout. It was from Day 1. One day I was with some farm directors, they said you gotta look at this kid. Here was this small guy hitting bombs. This was the first inkling of who Ichiro was. I saw it in BP. He was hitting things beyond these warehouses that were over 450 feet away.”9

When Orix changed managers in 1994, Ichiro was allowed to play every day. Leading off for the Blue Wave for most of the season, his 210 hits marked the first time anyone exceeded 200 hits in the circuit’s 130-game season. He batted .385 and scored 111 runs. His reward for this stellar offense was the Most Valuable Player award in the Pacific League.10 In addition, he won the first of seven consecutive Gold Gloves (in Japan) for his defensive prowess.

It was also in 1994 that he became known as Ichiro. Suzuki is a common surname in Japan, so in order to draw attention to their budding star, the Blue Wave decided to put Ichiro on his jersey rather than Suzuki. The team also announced his at-bats by Ichiro. Suzuki did not like the idea at first. “I’ve got to admit, though, that it embarrassed me when the public address announcers announced the starting lineup with me as ‘Ichiro,’ not as ‘Suzuki’ and there was a great stir among the crowd.”11 But over the course of the season, as he became famous nationwide and endorsement offers came rolling in, it was the only name by which he wanted to be known.12 How famous was Ichiro in Japan? He said that letters with the address, Ichiro, Japan, would reach him as long as the address was written in katakana (Japanese phonetics).13

The Orix club is based in Kobe, Japan. Suzuki was there when the Kobe earthquake struck in January 1995. Of the experience he said, “I really felt like I might be killed. I can’t put into words how frightening it was.”14 Yet the baseball season went on as planned, in spite of extensive loss of life and damage to the city, and Ichiro continued his offensive onslaught in 1995. He led the Pacific League in hits (179), RBIs (80), stolen bases (49), and batting average (.342), and won his second consecutive MVP award. The Blue Wave won the Pacific League by 12 games, then played in the Japan Series against the Central League champion, the Yakult Swallows. Although Orix lost the series in five games, the season set the stage for 1996. Paced by Ichiro’s 193 hits and .356 batting average, the Blue Wave won their second consecutive Pacific League title. Facing the famed Tokyo Yomiuri Giants in the Japan Series, Orix prevailed in five games, and Suzuki won his third consecutive MVP award.

Although the Blue Wave never won another league title while Ichiro was there, his offensive heroics continued over the next four years. With batting averages of .345, .358, .343, and .387, he earned an unprecedented seven consecutive batting titles. The press started referring to him as the “Human Batting Machine” and later simply as kaibutsu. This is high praise in Japan: kaibutsu means monster. Ichiro thought he could be the first Japanese player to bat .400 for a season.15

It was during this period that Ichiro married Yumiko Fukushima, an announcer at a major Tokyo television station who spoke fluent English. The wedding took place on December 3, 1999, at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. The small, private ceremony was held outside of Japan in order to avoid the media crush that certainly would have accompanied an in-country wedding. Recalling the experience, Ichiro mused, “After it was all over, I thought to myself what a wonderful thing a wedding is.”16

Ichiro had played against American stars in postseason exhibition games and became interested in playing in the U.S. During one exhibition series, Barry Bonds is reported to have said, “That little s–t can really hit the ball.”17 But getting to play in the U.S. was a complicated proposition. Japanese players couldn’t become free agents for nine years, and Ichiro’s sense of duty to Orix precluded him from using the “voluntarily retired” loophole that Hideo Nomo had used to come to the U.S. in 1995.18 However, the financially strapped Orix club, aware that Ichiro would become a free agent soon, and knowing they could get a big payment from an American team, agreed to “post” him. This meant that U.S. teams could bid on his services.19

How did the small-market Seattle Mariners get Ichiro instead of one of the big-market teams? Jim Colborn, the Pacific Rim scouting coordinator for the Mariners, had been the pitching coach for Orix in the early 1990s. When Ichiro was shooting Nissan commercials during the winter, he stayed at Colborn’s house in California. Colborn had also given him jerseys from Ken Griffey Jr. (Suzuki’s favorite player). In addition, Orix and the Mariners had an agreement to share marketing ideas in exchange for information about Japanese players.

When Orix posted Ichiro, Colborn convinced the Mariners’ general manager, Pat Gillick, that the team should vigorously pursue him. Gillick then sold the Mariners’ principal owner, Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, on the idea. Yamauchi wanted Ichiro badly enough to add a few million of his own money to the Mariners bid.20 Seattle’s $13 million offer earned the club the right to negotiate with Ichiro, and Suzuki soon signed a three-year, $14 million contract with the Mariners. The ploy worked in part because most big-league teams believed Ichiro was too small to be successful in the U.S.

Ichiro was the Mariners’ starting right fielder on opening day, 2001. It didn’t take him long to prove he could play in the U.S. In Seattle’s eighth game of the season, at Oakland, Ichiro’s leadoff single in the top of the eighth inning sparked a three-run rally to break a scoreless tie. In the bottom of that inning, he made a defensive effort that is now simply referred to as “The Throw.” Playing right field, he threw Terrence Long out at third base with a perfect throw. Rick Rizzs, the Mariners radio announcer, called it a “laser beam strike,” and said it was one of the greatest throws he had ever seen.21

Yet despite this start to the season, there were still doubts, even among his teammates, that he could play in the major leagues. In an interview Ichiro stated, “If I said there wasn’t concern among the team, I wouldn’t be telling the truth. There were all sorts of views about my performance among the Mariners players then, not just positive opinions. It took longer than the month of April to gain their trust.”22

But his stellar play continued. By the All-Star break, he led the majors with 133 hits. Ichiro started the All-Star Game in center field for the American League and beat out an infield single against 6-foot-10 southpaw Randy Johnson. His success against Johnson was not unusual. Unlike many left-handed hitters who struggle against lefty pitchers, Ichiro batted .329 versus southpaws compared to .304 against righties during his major-league career. Suzuki felt honored to be among the All-Stars. Asked about his All-Star experience, he gushed, “I loved playing in that game. Every time I looked around during the game, I got the feeling of Wow! These are the All-Stars.”23

In addition to putting up tremendous individual numbers, Ichiro sparked the entire team to play great baseball. The Mariners had a 63-24 (.724!) record at the All-Star break and led the American League West by 19 games. Seattle wound up winning 116 games – tying the 1906 Cubs’ all-time win record and surpassing the 1998 Yankees’ AL mark of 114. The Mariners beat Cleveland in the ALDS before losing in five games to the three-time defending champion Yankees in the ALCS. Asked about that opponent, Ichiro said, “There’s a sense of awe that’s always there with the Yankees. The atmosphere’s different. The Yankees had gone to the World Series four years in a row, and I think they’re amazing.”24

The numbers that Ichiro put up in 2001 were pretty amazing too. Although his lengthy Japanese career meant that the 27-year-old Suzuki was far from a typical rookie, he won the American League Rookie of the Month awards for April, May, August, and September. In 157 games, he led the league in batting average (.350) and ranked second with his career-high 127 runs scored. He led the major leagues in plate appearances (738), at bats (692), hits (242), and stolen bases (56). His 242 hits were the highest total since Bill Terry’s 254 in 1930. Ichiro was the first player to lead a league in batting average and stolen bases since Jackie Robinson in 1949. His efforts were rewarded with a Silver Slugger award, a Gold Glove, and Rookie of the Year honors. In a close vote, he edged the Oakland Athletics’ Jason Giambi for Most Valuable Player honors, 289 points to 281. Seattle’s Bret Boone also received seven first-place votes. Suzuki was surprised that he won, saying, “I really hadn’t been thinking about the MVP at all. I was sure all the time that my teammate, Bret Boone, would win it. I figured Boone was the best man for the MVP.”25

In both the 2002 and 2003 seasons, Suzuki recorded at least 200 hits, scored 111 runs, won a Gold Glove, and started the All-Star Game. The Mariners won 93 games each season but failed to make the playoffs. The stage was set for one of the greatest hitting seasons in baseball history.

At the end of April 2004, Suzuki was batting just .255, and the Mariners’ record was 8-15. While Seattle struggled all season, finishing 63-98, Ichiro was hitting .315 by the end of June. In July, however, he collected 51 hits and batted .432. In August, he added 56 more hits with a .456 average. In the 60 games between July 1 and September 6, he hit safely a record 121 times, and batted .458. Only Rogers Hornsby (.486 in 1924) produced a higher average over the same number of contests.26

Through September 6, Ichiro had 226 hits, with 25 games remaining to chase George Sisler’s record of 257 in 1920. He managed just 10 hits over the next 12 games but added 13 hits in the following four contests to put the mark within reach. On October 1, in front of a sellout crowd at Safeco Field that included Sisler’s daughter, Ichiro broke the record with a three-hit performance in Seattle’s 160th game. When he hit safely in his final at-bat of the season two days later, the new record was 262.

Ichiro was glad that the pressure of the chase was over. He said, “It was a big relief. I felt like something got off my shoulders. To see the fans and to see my teammates, it was just a very exciting time for me. It was a very special moment, definitely the highlight of my career.” His father, Nobuyuki, watching in Japan, added, “You can tell how happy and proud I am just by looking at me. The tears just won’t stop flowing.”27

It was truly a season for the ages. In addition to setting the hits record, Ichiro became the first player to get 200 hits in his first four years in the major leagues. His 924 hits in those four years are the major-league mark for most hits in any four-year span. His 225 singles are the major-league record, and his 80 multi-hit games set the club record. He had 50 hits in a month three times (50 in May, 51 in July, 56 in August) and was the first player since Pete Rose to have four 50-hit months (Suzuki also had 51 hits in August 2001). He had five hits four times and led the majors with 57 infield hits. He set career highs in batting average (.372, which also led the majors), OBP (.414), and OPS (.869). He stole 36 bases and had a career-high four steals against Boston on July 20.28 He also earned his fourth straight All-Star appearance and fourth straight Gold Glove award. Ichiro had proved his doubters wrong, and showed that Japanese position players could compete in the U.S.

The Mariners never made it back to the playoffs after 2001 while Ichiro was on the team. Seattle was in first place in August of 2002 and 2003 but faded down the stretch both years. In 2007 the team got within a game of first place in August, but soon fell off the pace. However, Suzuki was a model of consistency. By the end of the 2010 season, he had produced at least 200 hits in 10 straight campaigns – no other player has ever done that – while being selected to the All-Star Game and winning a Gold Glove in each campaign.

Noteworthy events during this period include career highs in home runs (15) and triples (12) in 2005. He set the American League record with 45 straight successful steals from April 19, 2006 to May 17, 2007. In 2009, he had a career high 27-game hitting streak from May 6 to June 3, and he victimized Mariano Rivera with his first career walk-off home run on September 18.

One of Ichiro’s All-Star Game highlights came in 2007. He came to bat in the fifth inning with the AL trailing, 1-0. Suzuki crushed a pitch from Chris Young to the right field wall at AT&T Park in San Francisco. The ball took an unexpected carom off the wall, and Griffey could not track the ball down soon enough to prevent Ichiro from scampering for an inside-the-park home run – the only such homer in All-Star Game history. Ichiro went 3-for-3 in the game and was voted MVP in the American League’s 5-4 victory. Surprisingly, he never hit an inside-the-park home run during the regular season.

During this portion of his career Ichiro also played for Japan in the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic and the second edition in 2009. In 2006, Japan played Cuba in the final game of the tournament. Ichiro’s two hits and three runs in the final game contributed to Japan’s 10-6 victory to win the tournament. Defending their title in 2009, Japan played the U.S. in one of the semifinal games. Facing three-time All-Star Roy Oswalt, Japan scored five runs in the fourth inning to break open a close game, earning a berth in the final against South Korea. As the home team, South Korea got a run in the bottom of the ninth inning to send the final game into extra innings. In the top of the 10th, Ichiro came to bat with two outs and two men on. His single scored the two runs that proved to be the margin of victory, as Japan won the World Baseball Classic for the second consecutive time.29

Ichiro was reserved when talking to the media, always speaking through a translator so he would not be misunderstood, even though he could speak English well. Even so, teammates said that he was exuberant and very funny in private. Mariner teammate Aaron Sele opined, “I don’t think people realize how funny he was.” Mike Sweeney was part of the All-Star team that visited Japan to play exhibition games after the 2000 season. When an American got a hit, the public address announcer would say, “Nice batting.” Sweeney thought he would return the favor when Ichiro got a hit the following season, saying “Ichiro, nice batting.” Ichiro replied, “Mike Sweeney, nice ass.”

When Ichiro spoke English, he used the F-word liberally. Mariners trainer Rick Griffin said, “He dropped many, many F-bombs in many different varieties and different forms. Just screaming and yelling and hopping up and down — and then he walked away and sat down like nothing happened.” A story from the 2002 All-Star Game is a good example. Before the game, Joe Torre (the manager for the AL team) made a calm, professional speech to the players. Torre then pointed to Ichiro and asked him if he had anything to add. After a brief pause, Ichiro shouted out, “Let’s kick their f—ing fat asses.” The other players cheered, “Yeeeaaahhhhh!” So, Ichiro got the last pregame word at every All-Star game he played in, and he always finished with similar remarks.30

But even Ichiro’s talent and hard work could only fend off Father Time for so long. In 2011, at age 37, he batted .272 – his first sub-.300 average as a professional, and his first season with fewer than 200 hits (184) since coming to the majors. He was batting just .261 at the 2012 All-Star break when the Mariners – who hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2001 – decided to trade their beloved star rather than give him a lucrative contract for the following year.31 The Yankees, believing Ichiro could regain his form in a new setting, traded relievers D.J. Mitchell and Danny Farquhar to acquire him.

From September 1 through the end of the 2012 season, Ichiro batted .362 with 38 hits in 31 games as the Yankees went 20-11 to win the AL East by two games. New York faced Baltimore in the AL division series. Although Ichiro batted only .217 for the series in his second taste of postseason action, he drove in a crucial run in the sixth inning of the decisive Game Five victory. Subsequently, Suzuki’s .353 batting average in the ALCS was the team’s best, but the Yankees were swept by the Tigers. This was Ichiro’s last postseason appearance, and he never played in a World Series.

Ichiro was unable to continue his late 2012 season form into 2013, as he batted .262 with 136 hits. After he followed that up with a .284, 102-hit showing in 2014, the Yankees allowed him to become a free agent. He was signed by the Miami Marlins as the team’s fourth outfielder for 2015. He played more than expected because of an injury to Giancarlo Stanton, appearing in 153 games, but batted just .229 with 91 hits. (He also made his only big-league appearance on the mound that year.) Nonetheless, that was enough, combined with his still formidable defense, to entice the Marlins to re-sign him for 2016.

That set the stage for another career highlight. Ichiro was just 65 hits shy of 3,000 for his major-league career on Opening Day. The total increased slowly through the year because he was used mostly as a late-inning defensive replacement. But on August 7, at Coors Field, the 42-year-old Suzuki ripped a stand-up triple off the right-field wall to become the 30th player with 3,000 hits (Paul Molitor was the other player to achieve the milestone with a triple).

Good defense, and Suzuki’s .291 batting average, caused the Marlins to re-sign him for another year. But even though he said he wanted to play until he was 50, the Marlins didn’t offer him a contract after he batted .255 with 50 hits in 2017.32 That season, he had 27 pinch-hits (in 100 at-bats), falling just one short of John Vander Wal’s single-season mark.

Ichiro wanted to play in 2018, but even though his agent had contacted every major-league team, he still didn’t have a contract in early February of that year. Wright Thompson of ESPN the Magazine spent five days with Suzuki in February and wrote a widely read feature article about him. Thompson portrayed Ichiro as a compulsive baseball savant, but also as someone having difficulty envisioning a life beyond baseball. Former Marlins teammate Dee Gordon said, only half-jokingly, “I really just hope he keeps playing, because I don’t want him to die. I believe he might die if he doesn’t keep playing. What is Ichiro gonna do if he doesn’t play baseball?” Suzuki echoed the sentiment. When asked by a Miami journalist what he will do after baseball, Ichiro replied, “I think I’ll just die.”33

Fate then intervened to bring a storybook ending to Ichiro’s stellar career. During spring training in 2018, three Mariners outfielders were injured, and Seattle was unable to find any suitable short-term replacements. They turned to Ichiro. Despite not arriving at spring training until March 8, Suzuki was in the starting lineup for the Mariners’ opener on March 29. At 44 years, five months, and seven days, he was the fifth-oldest player to make an Opening Day start in the major leagues. The largest regular-season crowd in Safeco history, 47,149 fans, gave Suzuki a thunderous ovation when his name was announced, and chants of “I-chi-ro!” filled the stadium when he came to bat. When asked about getting to play for the Mariners again, he replied, “The dreams that I have, one of them came true.”34

Ichiro started 10 of the first 15 games for the Mariners in 2018, and played in 15 games total, batting just .205, before his last appearance on May 2. The Mariners used Suzuki as a mentor, front-office advisor, and a batting, base running, and outfield defense instructor for the rest of the year, with the intention of keeping him in the organization for the long term.35

The fates were not through with Ichiro just yet. The fairy tale ending continued in 2019, as MLB scheduled the Mariners to play in the Japan Opening Series at the Tokyo Dome. After starting both games for the Mariners, in the eighth inning of the second game his teammates left the field; Ichiro, tipping his hat, exited to a standing ovation from the adoring Japanese crowd. He announced his retirement at a press conference immediately following the game. After answering questions for 30 minutes, Griffey told Suzuki that the fans were still waiting for him to make a curtain call. In a manner similar to Cal Ripken after he broke the consecutive games played record, Ichiro walked slowly around the perimeter of the field, surrounded by photographers, saluting the crowd. Ichiro was overcome with emotion. He said, “I’m very thankful to the fans, to the Mariners and all the people that work for the Mariners…it doesn’t get better than tonight. Nothing can top what happened tonight for me.” It was a fitting ending to his unparalleled career.36

At his retirement press conference Suzuki exclaimed, “I have achieved so many of my dreams in baseball, both in my career in Japan and, since 2001, in Major League Baseball. I am honored to end my big-league career where it started, with Seattle, and think it is fitting that my last games as a professional were played in my home country of Japan.” He added, “I want to thank not only the Mariners, but the Yankees and Marlins, for the opportunity to play in MLB, and I want to thank the fans in both the U.S. and Japan for all the support they have always given me.”37

Since his retirement Ichiro has served as special assistant to the chairman in the Mariners organization. His role in that capacity has been as a uniformed instructor during spring training for the team.38 He lives in Seattle with his wife and their dog, Ikkyu.

He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote in 2025.

Last revised: January 21, 2025

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to SABR members Malcolm Allen and Rory Costello. Their careful review of this biography, and the numerous additions they suggested, significantly improved the final product.

This biography was also reviewed by Norman Macht and fact-checked by David Kritzler.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-reference.com.

Notes

1 Robert Whiting, The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime (New York, New York: Warner Books, 2004), 33.

2 Made the Cut, “Ichiro Suzuki Defensive Highlights,” March 21, 2020, You Tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnzgoNELh3w, (last accessed February 4, 2022).

3 The other six are Lou Brock, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor, and Honus Wagner.

4 Ichiro’s name is often incorrectly translated as “first boy.” Reddit, “Baseball,” https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/dah7c/the_japanese_name_ichiro_is_often_written_郎, (last accessed January 6, 2022).

5 Dennis Normile, “Museum Showcases Ichiro’s Baseball Career,” New York Times, August 27, 2012.

6 Whiting, 5-6.

7 Whiting, 10.

8 All of the information about Ichiro’s childhood and high school career came from the book, Whiting, The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime, 1-12.

9 Matt Monagan, “Baseball in Hawaii, As Cool as it Sounds,” MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/news/hawaiian-winter-league-look-back, (last accessed February 5, 2022).

10 Sports Team History, “The Career of Ichiro Suzuki,” https://sportsteamhistory.com/the-career-of-ichiro-suzuki-yesteryears-player, (last accessed January 5, 2022).

11 Narumi Komatsu (translated by Peter Gabriel), Ichiro on Ichiro (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2004), 167.

12 Whiting, 16.

13 Michael Knisley, “Baseball,” The Sporting News, March 19, 2001: 13.

14 Komatsu, 169.

15 Whiting, 18.

16 Komatsu, 182-185.

17 Whiting, 20.

18 Whiting, 96-106.

19 Tyler Conway, “MLB-NPB Japan Posting System: Explaining Rules, Format, and Bid Process,” BleacherReport, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1831683-mlb-npb-japan-posting-system-explaining-rules-format-and-bid-process, (last accessed January 10, 2022).

20 Jake Kring-Schreifels, “The Colossal Legacy of Ichiro’s Rookie Season, 20 Years Later,” The Ringer, https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/9/14/22664414/ichiro-suzuki-seattle-mariners-2001-rookie-season-legacy, (last accessed January 10, 2022).

21 Kring-Schreifels.

22 Komatsu, 21.

23 Komatsu, 30-31.

24 Komatsu, 43-44.

25 Komatsu, 5.

26 Matt Kelly, “The Best 60-Game Stretches in MLB History”, MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/news/best-60-game-performances-in-mlb-history, (last accessed January 14, 2022). Kelly’s article says Hornsby batted .466 between June 21, and August 29, 1924. But Hornsby played in 71 games during that time period, not 60. From July 1 to August 29, 1924, Hornsby played in 60 games, and went 106 for 218, batting .486 over that period.

27 Tim Korte, “The Record Falls: Ichiro Breaks Sisler’s 84-year-old Mark for Hits,” Indiana Gazette, October 2, 2004.

28 Misc. Baseball, “Some Trivia About Ichiro’s 262 Hit Season in 2004,” https://miscbaseball.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/some-trivia-about-ichiros-262-hit-season-in-2004/ (last accessed January 15, 2022).

29 Jack Curry, “Ichiro Suzuki Delivers Memorable End to World Baseball Classic,” New York Times, March 24, 2009.

30 Corey Brock, Rustin Dodd, Jayson Jenks, “Untold Stories of Ichiro: Wrestling With Griffey, All-Star Speeches, and Ichi-Wings,” The Athletic, https://theathletic.com/2678297/2021/07/06/untold-stories-of-ichiro-wrestling-with-griffey-all-star-speeches-and-ichi-wings/, (last accessed January 18, 2022).

31 Luis Torres, “Trade Retrospective: Mariners Trade Ichiro Suzuki to the Yankees,” Beyond the Box Score, https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2018/1/31/16927274/ichiro-suzuki-mariners-yankees-trade-retrospective, (last accessed January 18, 2022).

32 ESPN.com News Services, “Ichiro Suzuki Wants to Return to Marlins, Play Until at Least 50,” https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20868828/ichiro-suzuki-wants-return-miami-marlins-play-least-50, (last accessed January 19, 2022).

33 Wright Thompson, “When Winter Never Ends,” ESPN the Magazine, http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22624561/ichiro-suzuki-return-seattle-mariners-resolve-internal-battle, (last accessed February 5, 2022).

34 Steve Freidman, “March 29, 2018: Ichiro Returns to the Seattle Mariners,” First Games Back Project, SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/march-29-2018-ichiro-returns-to-the-seattle-mariners/#_ednref11, (last accessed January 20, 2022).

35 Bill Shaikin, “Ichiro Suzuki Retires — for This Year, at Least,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2018.

36 Mariners Blog, From the Corner of Edgar and Dave, “Ichiro’s Historic Career Wraps up at the Tokyo Dome,” https://marinersblog.mlblogs.com/ichiros-historic-career-wraps-at-the-tokyo-dome-56ae3b5839d4, (last accessed January 21, 2022).

37 Mariners Blog, From the Corner of Edgar and Dave, “Ichiro’s Historic Career Wraps up at the Tokyo Dome.”

38 Larry Stone, “Ichiro Makes Seamless Transition From Star Player to Seattle Mariners Coach,” The Spokesman Review, https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/feb/29/larry-stone-ichiro-makes-seamless-transition-from-/, (last accessed January 25, 2022).

When Takatsu entered the game, a gong rang out through the ballpark, thrilling the fans. Takatsu was a right-handed side-arm pitcher listed at 6 feet tall and 180 pounds, who was beloved by White Sox fans during his brilliant but brief time on the White Sox. As of 2023, he is the first and only pitcher to record saves in all four top-level leagues in four countries – Japan, the US major leagues, Korea Professional Baseball, and the Chinese Professional Baseball League (Taiwan).2 He is like a gunslinger with the card: “Have gun, will travel.” There is so much more to his Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame career.

He was born on November 25, 1968, in Hiroshima, Japan. His father, Toshiaki Takatsu,3 was a self-employed plasterer and business owner, with a hired crew to help him lay tiles, bricks, and paint, while his mother, Mitsue Takatsu,4 cared for the household.5 From birth to elementary school, his family lived in a one-story house in Danbara-cho, Hiroshima City. Takatsu remembered, “It was an old wooden house with impressive glass doors … at the foot of a mountain [Hijiyama], right behind where the atomic bomb was dropped. There must have been some damage, but thanks to the mountains, this area survived without burning.”6

They later moved into a four-bedroom high-rise apartment in front of Mount Hijiyama. From his bedroom, Takatsu had an excellent view of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, the home ballpark of the local team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.7

“Of course, I was a huge Carp fan,” said Takatsu. “For a year, I went to [Hiroshima] Municipal Stadium, with my dad and [riding bicycles] with my friends. Back then, fans would rush down to the field after the game. … As [kids], we would always race to see who could get over the fence and reach second base first. … When I returned, I was unable to climb the fence. … I had to have the security guard push [me] up.”8

The Takatsu family would go to a fugu restaurant owned by his aunt, where young Takatsu once saw one of his Carp heroes, closer Yutaka Enatsu. Takatsu thought, “Enatsu is cool” when he watched him pitch – he always liked the closer.9

He was too shy to approach the player, but his aunt said to Enatsu, “My nephew plays baseball and is a big Carp fan. Would you like to [meet him]?”10

When Enatsu agreed, young Takatsu said to his hero, “I play baseball, too.”11 Takatsu had started playing baseball with the local team, the Danbara Red Eagles, at age 9.

Enatsu replied, “Do your best.”12

Relating the story 30 years after, Takatsu said, “I didn’t [ask] anything. else … I was so nervous … [the] intimidating feeling … aura … and power remain clear after many years. It’s burned into my memory.”13

Takatsu went to Hiroshima City Danbara Junior High School, then transferred to Hiroshima Technical High School. There, he went to the Japanese national high-school tournament: the “Koshien.”14 But his dream was to play in a Carp uniform. Takatsu said, “My dream stadium is Hiroshima Municipal Stadium. If I was offered a match at either Koshien or Municipal Stadium, I would choose Municipal Stadium without hesitation.”15

Takatsu wasn’t a star in high school. “There were other super aces and I couldn’t compete with the same pitching style,” he said.16 One was his childhood friend Shunji Ueda. “I wondered how I, who was mediocre in everything, could become an asset to the team.”17 He wasn’t as strong as Ueda, but he searched and found his own way – pitching underhand.18

In his first two years of high school, Takatsu did not make the first team. But his manager, Narumi Ogawa, believed in him, saying “[You] are a late bloomer. … Someday, [you] will become something” – words that Takatsu later remembered as “a precious treasure.”19 Working on his underhand delivery, he became the second starter in his third season, 1986. “Ueda was the absolute ace … and I was a distant second,” he acknowledged.20

In the semifinals of the Hiroshima prefectural tournament, Ueda was out with appendicitis,21 and Takatsu started in four games, threw two shutouts, and pitched a complete-game victory over Onomichi Higashi High School to help his team advance to Koshien.22

But at the Koshien, Ueda returned, and Takatsu struggled – instead of pitching, he played infield, with no hits in seven at-bats. Takatsu felt a little overshadowed by Ueda, saying, “Ace Ueda was said to be the number-one pitcher in the tournament at Koshien … and I didn’t get any attention. … It’s all Ueda, Ueda, Ueda. Ueda’s presence was too big.”23 Even with his struggles, the upbeat Takatsu said, “I was very happy to be able to play in … Koshien.”24

This drove him to improve in college at Asia University. Takatsu compared the dormitory to a “prison sentence” – a former hospital where, he said, “[The] construction was questionable … [and] the dining room was a former operating room.”25 Rooms were cramped, practices grueling, and some players ran away.

At Asia University, Takatsu again found himself in the role of second starter behind southpaw Hideki Koike, soon to be drafted by eight NPB teams. As Takatsu put it, “Seriously, there’s a monster pitcher everywhere I go.”26

To adjust, Takatsu said, “I look at [the] Ace … and figure out what I’m lacking.”27 So he lifted his delivery to side-arm and learned the slider, which would become his superpower. He explained: “When I entered college, I couldn’t throw the speed or breaking ball to match that level, so I changed myself to survive … raising [my] arm a little to increase the speed of the ball.”28 Through four years of college, Takatsu pitched in 40 games and had 11 wins and 15 losses.29

With his side-arm delivery, Takatsu was drafted by the Yakult Swallows in the third round of the Japanese 1991 draft. For his first couple of seasons in the NPB, Takatsu bounced between starter and reliever. In his first season, 1991, he started two of 13 appearances with a 1-2 record and a 4.23 ERA.

During 1992 fall training, manager Katsuya Nomura told Takatsu to focus on the sinker.30 At that time, the velocity of his sinker was about 74 mph31 and they wanted to slow it down.32

Takatsu experimented with the sinker that season. “I thought of various ways to avoid speeding up by waving my arms. The way you grip, the way you use your arms, the way you pull your elbows out … then I created my own original grips and ways to use them that suited me.”33

Takatsu described his sinker: “Hook the outside of your middle finger into the seam and pull it out between your middle and ring fingers … gripping deeply and applying spin … with my sinker, it spins and drops … more … a changeup than a fork.”34 Echoes of Boyer’s Bugs Bunny joke: “The timing goes awry when it suddenly rises … you … think a slow ball was coming and go to swing, only to find out it was even slower.”35 With this new grip, Takatsu would shine.

In 1992, he appeared in 23 games, started in 11, went 5-3 with a 4.68 ERA, and helped the Swallows win the NPB Central League pennant, the second in franchise history. The Swallows lost to the Seibu Lions of the Pacific League in the Nippon Series.

On May 2, 1992, Takatsu earned his first save, against the Yomiuri Giants, and became a closer.36 In his third season, 1993, he started only one game and pitched in a career high 56 games. He ended the season with a record of 6-4, 20 saves, 72 strikeouts, and a 2.30 ERA. That postseason, the Swallows again faced the Lions in the Nippon Series, and this time they won, beating the Lions four games to three, with Takatsu notching three saves in the series and closing game seven to clinch the championship. Summarizing his first three seasons, Takatsu said, “The first year or two was tough … in my third year, I became a closer, and I felt the thrills and excitement. … Once I learned how to hold back batters, I started to really enjoy baseball.”37

In 1994 Takatsu continued this success, with eight wins, four losses, 19 saves, a 2.30 ERA, and his first NPB All-Star Game.

In 1995 Takatsu again helped his team win the Central League pennant with 28 saves. The Swallows went on to win their third Nippon Series championship, 4-1 over the Orix Blue Wave, featuring Ichiro Suzuki. Takatsu was the winning pitcher in Game Three and saved Games One and Five – again on the mound to clinch the championship.

He had 21 saves in 1996, finishing 36 of his 39 games, and made his second NPB All-Star Game.

The Swallows won the 1997 Nippon Series championship over the Lions – a rematch of 1993, featuring shortstop Kazuo Matsui. The Swallows beat the Lions 4-1, with Takatsu winning Game Three and earning a save in Game Five. He struggled as a closer that season and bounced between middle relief and spot starter, recording seven wins and four losses, with a 2.04 ERA.

In 1997, Takatsu married his wife, Maki. Next year, she was pregnant38 with their first of two sons, Daishi and Shota.39 His struggles continued in 1998, with only three saves and a 5.56 ERA. But he became an elite closer the next two seasons. That year, Takatsu made a brief appearance in the first scene of Hideo Nakata’s horror movie Ringu, via actual game footage on the spooky TV. Ringu was later remade in the U.S. as The Ring (2002).

In 1999 he had 30 saves with a 2.18 ERA. and in 2000, 29 saves with a 2.08 ERA. He made the All-Star Game both years.

In 2001 the Yakult Swallows won their fourth Nippon Series championship with Takatsu as closer, 4-1 over the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes, who featured US import Tuffy Rhodes. Again, Takatsu clinched the winning game. That season, he had 37 saves and a 2.61 ERA.

In 2002 Takatsu continued his dominance as a closer, with 32 saves in 44 games. That year Takatsu’s teammate for four championships, pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a free agent.40 Takatsu thought of joining Ishii in moving to US baseball, but he was so close to the NPB all-time saves record that friend advised, “Why don’t you break the Japanese record and then think again?”41 He stayed another season.

In 2003 Takatsu continued dominating, with 34 saves, and made his fifth NPB All-Star Game. After setting a new NPB all-time saves record with 260, Takatsu declared his free agency. He held an open workout in Los Angeles, and the White Sox signed him for the 2004 season. He was the first Asian player signed by the team. He was 34 years old.

Baseball America listed Takatsu as the number-eight prospect in the White Sox organization that preseason.42 During spring training the White Sox kept Takatsu’s secret weapon, the sinker, under wraps. According to manager Ozzie Guillen: “He kept shaking off. … He wanted to throw it. We explained to him why we didn’t want [him] to throw it: We didn’t want anybody to see it.”43

Takatsu began the season as a set-up man. He made his first US major league appearance on April 9, 2004, at Yankee Stadium, where he first introduced his secret weapon, the sinker known as “The Frisbee,” to MLB hitters. The first batter he faced was Hideki Matsui, who having hit his first NPB home run off Takatsu back in Japan, already knew the pitch. Matsui doubled. But Derek Derek Jeter had never seen it before, and became Takatsu’s first US strikeout victim.44 Takatsu soon hit his stride, compiling 26 2/3 scoreless innings pitched, from April 23 to June 30. He moved into the closer role during that streak and earned his first save against Atlanta on June 12.

The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Takatsu has become something of a phenomenon at U.S. Cellular Field. … When he enters the game, the crowd gives him a standing ovation and a gong sound is played over the loudspeaker.”45

Takatsu’s entrances into a home game were announced with the ring of a Japanese gong through the ballpark loudspeaker and a video montage on the Jumbotron, like a Shogun warrior, and the fans would stand and cheer. Takatsu said through translator Hiroshi Abei, “The fans give [me] the energy to pitch good.”46 “When my name was called and the bell rang, it felt like the whole stand came forward at that moment … a feeling I had never experienced before in Japan.”47 Out of respect for Takatsu’s heritage, Boyer, the marketing executive, did his research, asking Takatsu for his approval.48

It was a wonderful time for Takatsu and Chicago. He said: “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting all that. I didn’t know how successful I would be coming over to the major leagues in my first year. The team just went out of their way, and you know they created all of that kind of … the gong and the video. The fans, I wasn’t expecting the fans to have that reaction. It did catch me by surprise, but I loved every moment of it.”49

In 2004 Takatsu had 19 saves and a 2.31 ERA, and finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, behind shortstop Bobby Crosby of the Oakland A’s. White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper said, “I’d hate to think where we’d be without him. He’s jumped over all the hurdles. Now we can see what made him a good closer in Japan. He’s calm, but he’s got a fire and enthusiasm.”50

By 2005, the American League had figured out The Frisbee. He saved the season opener for Mark Buehrle, a 1-0 win over Cleveland. But on April 7 with the Sox up over the Indians 5-2, Takatsu came out in the top of the ninth to close. Instead, he gave up home runs to Casey Blake, Coco Crisp, and Ronnie Belliard to tie the game in what turned into an 11-5 loss. From around April 10 to May 10 the team went to closer-by-committee and Takatsu recorded another six saves and two losses in that month. Some solid performances by Dustin Hermanson, with five saves for the Sox over that stretch, plus 17 saves for the San Francisco Giants in 2004, earned him the closer role, and Takatsu became expendable. Takatsu was released on August 1.

Despite his struggles, Takatsu contributed eight saves to the White Sox’ 2005 championship season, earning a ring for his fifth championship between the United States and Japan.

He signed with the New York Mets, pitching well briefly for the minor-league Norfolk Tides, and was called up for his National League debut on September 3, pitching 1⅓ innings of scoreless relief against the Florida Marlins. With the Mets, he was reunited with his Swallows teammate Kazuhisa Ishii and Lions rival Kazuo Matsui. He pitched well the rest of the season, with a 1-0 record, a 2.35 ERA. The Mets did not re-sign him for 2006.

Takatsu returned to the Swallows for a couple more seasons. He pitched well in 2006, with a 2.74 ERA. But 2007 was rough, ending with a 6.17 ERA, but making his sixth NPB All-Star Game. It was his final season in NPB. He compiled 286 saves, since surpassed by Hitoki Iwase.51

Takatsu signed a minor-league deal with the Chicago Cubs in 2008 but was let go.

Then he signed with the Woori Heroes of the KBO League in South Korea.52 He made his debut on June 24 vs. the Doosan Bears. His first KBO save came on June 29, against the LG Twins. He pitched brilliantly the rest of the season, with a 0.86 ERA and eight saves. In Korea, Takatsu said, “I realized the joy I feel when I win is the same no matter where I am.”53

About the level of play in Korea, Takatsu said, “I think top-class players can do reasonably well in the first team in Japan. …”54 Comparing its batters to the United States and Japan, he said, “Korean batters didn’t make too many tricks. Like in America, everyone from number one to number nine seemed to take big swings.”55

Takatsu signed a minor-league contract with the San Francisco Giants in 2009.56 Showing his determination to compete, he said, “I’m prepared for it to be difficult, but I don’t want to give up easily.”57 He pitched for Triple-A Fresno but struggled. He never returned to the US major leagues.

In 2010 Takatsu received an offer to play for the Sinon Bulls of the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan. He said, “I really didn’t know anything about Taiwanese baseball. I knew there was a professional baseball game, but I had no knowledge of the level of baseball or the players.”58 But he was happy for the offer and signed. His final season as a player was good: 26 saves and a 1.88 ERA.

On March 31, 2010, Takatsu saved his first game for the Bulls, becoming the first player to get a save in the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.59 He has 347 total saves between all four leagues.

About the Chinese league, Takatsu recalled his little league days. “There’s no dugout, no lockers. A tree. I changed my clothes in the shade of a tree, [like when I] started playing baseball … so I didn’t mind.”60 He relished the chance, saying, “I’ll be able to experience this again this year … happiness … I love closing out matches … I can’t believe I’m playing baseball again!”61

Comparing baseball from all four countries, Takatsu said, “Japan is without a doubt the biggest disadvantage for pitchers. The strike zone is narrow, the ball flies, and the stadiums are small. When it comes to strike zones, America, South Korea, Taiwan, all of them are wide.”62 And on travel between the leagues, “All travel in Korea and Taiwan was by bus. … It used to take many hours to travel from Seoul to Busan in South Korea or from Taipei to Kaohsiung in Taiwan. … In America, traveling on the team’s chartered plane seemed like a dream.”63

In 2014 Takatsu rejoined the Tokyo Yakult Swallows as a coach, and in 2015 helped them to win another pennant, the seventh in franchise history, and his sixth with the team. He coached there until 2019, when he left to manage their Eastern League farm team.64

The Swallows tapped Takatsu as manager for 2020. They finished last for the second year in a row, maybe in part because, according to the Kyodo News, they lost home field advantage “having to play home games away from Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium, which was closed for much of the summer due to its proximity to the National Stadium, the centerpiece of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.”65

Finishing last in 2019 and 2020, the Swallows were the “perennial underdogs fac[ing] the prospect of another long season at or near the bottom.”66 Later in 2020, Takatsu ran into his former manager Nomura. Just a couple weeks after their last meeting, Takatsu would recall his mentor’s sage advice that day, in a eulogy for Nomura’s passing: “Use your head. If you use your head, you can win.”67

With this advice, two Gold Medal Olympians in sluggers Tetsuto Yamada and Munetaka Murakami, and a return to their home ballpark, Takatsu led the Swallows to the Central League pennant in 2021 and they won the Japan championship, for their sixth overall Japan Series win, and the fifth with Takatsu on the team.

It was a high point for the team. Takatsu said: “It was really a hard season, coming off back-to-back last-place finishes, so the joy right now is off the charts. We wanted to represent the Central League with pride, but the Buffaloes were extremely difficult opponents, so this was no easy task.”68 The Swallows led the Central League again in 2022, the ninth league championship in franchise history.69 They lost the Japan Series that year.

In 2021 Takatsu was awarded the Matsutaro Shoriki Award, an honor reserved for those who have made great contributions to professional baseball. In 2022 he was elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, listed on 311 ballots, well over the 271 (75 percent) needed for election.70 With managerial success, he has authored several books about managing.71

Despite Takatsu’s seriousness on the field, he has a great sense of humor. To help keep the team loose at spring training, he would don a wig and do a funny impersonation of Monsieur Yoshizaki, the lead singer of the Japanese rock band Crystal King, singing their hit, “Daitokai (Big City),”72 once performing the act on TV.73

Of his time with the White Sox, Takatsu said, “After all was said and done, I really, really enjoyed my time with the White Sox, and I really love the city of Chicago and their fans.”74

Last revised: March 1, 2025

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Yuichi Ando, Heather Kerrigan, Dr. Taku Hayashi, and Kanya Honoki for research assistance.

Articles in Japanese were translated with Google Translate. Where possible, quotes from English articles were preferred, as in at least some of those cases, it is clear both Takatsu and a translator were present at that time, and the translation therefore closer to the direct source.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, www.baseball-almanac.com, and MLB.com.

Notes

1 Scott Merkin, “The Gong Tolls Reminder of Takatsu’s Reign,” MLB.com, December 24, 2019, https://www.mlb.com/news/shingo-takatsu-white-sox-cult-hero.

2 As of 2023, 23 players have played in all four leagues: MLB, NPB, KBO, and CPBL. Nineteen of them are pitchers. Three have recorded saves in three leagues (Mike Johnson, José Núñez, and Ben Rivera). Three have recorded saves in two leagues (Alfredo Figaro, Radhames Liz, and José Parra). Three have recorded saves in one league (Ariel Miranda, Ken Ray, and Bryan Corey).

3 “Former Professional Baseball Pitcher Shingo Takatsu’s Father Passes Away,” Sponichi, August 6, 2013, https://www.sponichi.co.jp/baseball/news/2013/08/06/kiji/K20130806006367260.html.

4 “All-Star team Yakult Coach Takatsu Takes Charge in His Hometown,” Sanspo, July 20, 2023, https://www.sanspo.com/article/20230720-5PXI5RXWNVIEBDQXQBFKTVHCFY/?outputType=theme_swallows.

5 “Shin Ie no Rirekisho. Takatsu Shingo,” [New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu”], Shükanbunshun [Weekly Bunshun], March 3, 2011: 96.

6 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 96.

7 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 96.

8 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 96.

9 “Takatsu Shingo chõrongu intabyu” [Shingo Takatsu Long Interview], Yakyü Kozõ [Baseball Boy], February 2011: 19.

10 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 19.

11 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 18-19.

12 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 19.

13 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 19.

14 Chicago White Sox 2004 Media Guide, 122-123.

15 Yasutaka Nakamizo, “The Origins of the Greatest Closers of All Time: The Unknown Era of Kazuhiro Sasaki and Shingo Takatsu,’” Sports Graphic Number Web, June 27, 2017, https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/828338?page=1.

16 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball That Nomu-San Devised After Being Told to Do,” Shizuoka, July 2, 2023, https://www.at-s.com/sp/news/article/national/1269827.html.

17 Nakamizo.

18 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball That Nomu-San Devised After Being Told to Do.”

19 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 20.

20 Nakamizo.

21 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 97.

22 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview,” 20.

23 Namakizo.

24 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 97.

25 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 97-98.

26 Namakizo.

27 Namakizo.

28 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball.”

29 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 96.

30 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball.”

31 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 22.

32 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 98.

33 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball.”

34 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball.”

35 “Mr. Shingo Takatsu, the Original Magic Ball.”

36 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 20.

37 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 23.

38 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 99.

39 Chris Kuc, “What Baseball Fathers Know: Advice from Cubs and White Sox Dads,” Hartford Courant, June 19, 2016, https://www.courant.com/2016/06/19/what-baseball-fathers-know-advice-from-cubs-and-white-sox-dads/.

40 Associated Press, “Dodgers, Ishii Beat Deadline with $12.3M Deal,” ESPN.com, February 8, 2002, http://www.espn.com/mlb/news/2002/0207/1324786.html.

41 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 23.

42 Baseball America, https://www.baseballamerica.com/rankings/2004-top-100-prospects/.

43 Kyodo, “Masahiro Yamamoto and Shingo Takatsu Elected to Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame,” Japan Times, January 14, 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2022/01/14/baseball/japanese-baseball/yamamoto-takatsu-hall/.

44 Merkin.

45 Chris Chamska, “Remember That Guy: White Sox Reliever Shingo Takatsu,” NBC Sports Chicago, March 25, 2020, https://www.nbcsportschicago.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/remember-that-guy-white-sox-reliever-shingo-takatsu/320081/.

46 Dave Van Dyck, “Bang That Gong: Cell Fans Fire Up Takatsu,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 2004, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-07-12-0407120100-story.html.

47 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 26.

48 Merkin.

49 Merkin.

50 Van Dyck.

51 Kyodo, “Iwase Records 287th Save to Surpass Takatsu,” Japan Times, June 17, 2011, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2011/06/17/baseball/japanese-baseball/iwase-records-287th-save-to-surpass-takatsu/.

52 Patrick, “Shingo Takatsu on His Way to Korea,” NPB Tracker, June 15, 2008, http://www.npbtracker.com/2008/06/shingo-takatsu-on-his-way-to-korea/#content.

53 “New Resume of Family: Shingo Takatsu,” 99.

54 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 30.

55 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 29.

56 “40-Year-Old Takatsu Tries Again as Giants Minor Player,” Nikkan Sports, June 16, 2009, https://www.nikkansports.com/baseball/mlb/news/p-bb-tp2-20090616-506979.html.

57 “40-Year-Old Takatsu Tries Again as Giants Minor Player.”

58 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 31-32.

59 “Shingo Takatsu: From BR Bullpen,” Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Shingo_Takatsu.

60 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 32.

61 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 32.

62 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview ”: 34.

63 “Shingo Takatsu Long Interview”: 34.

64 Kyodo, “Former Star Closer Shingo Takatsu to Manage Swallows, Source Says,” Japan Times, September 27, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2019/09/27/baseball/japanese-baseball/former-star-closer-shingo-takatsu-manage-swallows-source-says/.

65 Kyodo, “Baseball: Swallows Capture 8th Central League Pennant,” Kyodo News, October 26, 2021. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/10/19a5ef30d93b-baseball-swallows-capture-8th-central-league-pennant.html.

66 Jim Armstrong, “Birds of Prey: Unsung Swallows Upstage Giants, Tigers in Central League,” Japan Forward, October 2, 2021, https://japan-forward.com/baseball-birds-of-prey-unsung-swallows-upstage-giants-tigers-in-central-league/.

67 Tamura, Ayumi, “Katsuya Nomura’s ‘Another Testament’ and One Suggestion That He Wants to Convey to Shingo Takatsu, Who Is Getting Thinner,” note.com, July 2, 2023, https://note.com/avocado5037/n/ne038005b5cf8.

68 Kyodo, “Baseball: Shingo Kawabata Pinch-Hit Drives Swallows to Japan Series Title,” Kyodo News, November 27, 2021, https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/11/ae31be57e4c3-baseball-kawabata-pinch-hit-drives-swallows-to-japan-series-title.html.

69 Kyodo, “Baseball: Yakult Wins 2nd Straight Central League Pennant in Walk-Off,” Kyodo News, September 25, 2022, https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/09/1a12347287f7-urgent-baseball-yakult-swallows-win-central-league-title.html.

70 Kyodo, “Masahiro Yamamoto and Shingo Takatsu Elected to Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame,” Japan Times, January 14, 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2022/01/14/baseball/japanese-baseball/yamamoto-takatsu-hall/.

71 Shingo Takatsu, Ideal Workplace Management – The Work of a First Team Manager (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 2023).

72 “A Fan for 32 years. Editor Yohei Kumagai Talks About the Appeal of the Strong and Weak Swallows,” Niew Media, September 25, 2023, https://niewmedia.com/en/specials/022071/.

73 “Shingo Takatsu’s Big City,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70CFCXOK_fA.

74 Merkin.