1. Braves.
2. Whoever is playing the Nationals.
3. Any player I used to watch in the Japanese league, Nippon Professional Baseball, especially if they were a Yakult Swallow.

Like a helicopter mom with no day job, I try to watch these former NPB players whenever they come to the mound or the plate. My Google Calendar last year was just a list of projected Yu Darvish starts. Thankfully for me and whoever cashes the check for my MLB.TV subscription, there are even more Japanese players in America this season, and here’s what they’ll be up to in 2014.

The Big Names

Hiroki Kuroda – The “other” Japanese starting pitcher on the Yankees is now 39 years old and still doing this baseball stuff. Because he’s expected to mentor the new arrival Masahiro Tanaka in the ways of Major League Baseball, he’s been dubbed Kuroda-senpai by The New York Times. Next time I visit Yankee Stadium, I hope he notices me.

Masahiro Tanaka – The 175 million dollar man, and yet Yankees GM Brian Cashman says he’ll be the #3 starter this year. I wrote another big article about this fella, but there’s been an update since then! Tanaka said he’s “not necessarily a fan” of his wife Mai Satoda’s music! Be right back, I have to write a 2,000-word piece for the New York Post on how this factoid could affect his game.

Koji Uehara – With a World Series ring under his belt (that’s where rings go, right?), Koji is now the Red Sox’ starting closer. I wrote about him a while back, but now he’s trying to start throwing a Mariano Rivera-style cutter.

Junichi Tazawa – Tazawa has been completely overshadowed by Uehara in the Red Sox bullpen, but he’s still there and he’s still pretty good. Interesting note: Tazawa is only the third Japanese player ever to go straight to the MLB without spending time playing professional Japanese ball. He signed after impressing with the Nippon Oil company team.

Yu Darvish – Yu Darvish came 2nd in Cy Young voting last year, but now he’ll have to defend his title as best current Japanese player against Tanaka. If that doesn’t work out for him, he can, at least, still be the best half-Iranian player.

Hisashi Iwakuma – True to the city’s character, Seattle has the coolest, most underground, “you’ve probably never even heard of him” Japanese player. In-between rainstorms and bike trips to Ballard coffee shops, Mariners fans love to tell you that Iwakuma really deserved the Cy Young last year. Unfortunately for them, Iwakuma might miss the first week or two of the season because somehow he hurt his middle finger. What a hipster.

Norichika Aoki – In one of the offseason’s hardest-to-explain trades, the Brewers traded right fielder and former Yakult Swallow Norichika Aoki to the Royals in return for some guy named Will Smith. Will Smith is expected to join the Brewers bullpen, and Aoki will be starring in Men In Black 4 next summer.

The Old Guys

Ichiro Suzuki – The Yankees went a little crazy this offseason and got Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran, demoting future Hall of Famer Ichiro and sorta former Hiroshima Carp Alfonso Soriano (he only played nine games in Japan) to the bench. Rumors are starting to heat up that Ichiro may get traded to the Phillies. You’re too good for them, Ichi!

Tomokazu Ohka – Ohka has previously pitched for the Red Sox, Expos, Nationals, Brewers, Blue Jays, Indians, and the Yokohama BayStars, but he’s trying to make a comeback with the Blue Jays and a brand-new knuckeball. He’ll start the year in the minors. Years ago, Ohka was mentioned in The Simpsons, the joke being how obscure he was, so he has had that dubious pleasure.

Daisuke Matsuzaka – Dice-K was once a mega-famous import pitcher like Tanaka is today, but besides one great season, his career in the MLB never really satisfied expectations. He’s now aiming for a comeback with the New York Mets, and is considered a favorite to be their #5 starter when the season begins.

The Hopefuls

Munenori Kawasaki – Kawasaki, the man with the beautiful dance moves and the GIBBY award-winning “I am Japaneeeese” speech, is trying to play his way onto the Blue Jays roster. Unfortunately for him, he plays on the same team as Jose Reyes, so he’ll need some luck to get much playing time at shortstop.

Yoshinori Tateyama – A former high school teammate of Koji Uehara and NPB teammate of Yu Darvish, Tateyama is a sidearm pitcher trying to break his way into the Yankees bullpen.

Kensuke Tanaka – Kensuke Tanaka spent his whole career playing second base, so it was bittersweet when the San Francisco Giants gave him a one-day chance in the MLB last year… playing left field. He’s trying out with the Rangers this year, but looking likely to start the year in the minor leagues.

Kyuji Fujikawa – Kyuji will probably be in the Cubs bullpen this year, but he had Tommy John Surgery in May last year and won’t return until around June. Yes, his name really is 球児, meaning “ball child” or, to make it less weird-sounding, “baseball kid.” Kyuji’s father reportedly threw a no-hitter in an amateur game the day before his son was born, thus the name.

2014 Predictions

Now I don’t really have a clue how well these guys will play or what will happen this year, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because that’s how sportswriting works. Here are ten predictions for the season to come, sorted from most likely to least:

1. I will buy an Aoki Royals shirt and wear it in my Tofugu author profile picture, replacing my Aoki Brewers shirt.
2. Masahiro Tanaka will have the worst ERA among Yankees starters before the All-Star Break and the best ERA among Yankees starters after the All-Star Break.
3. Dice-K will have a bad year but still shutout the Braves twice just to annoy me.
4. The Yankees will inform Ichiro they have no more room for him on the roster, but offer him a position as batboy. He will proudly accept the role and become the greatest batboy of all time.
5. Hiroyasu Tanaka, Shuta Tanaka, and, uh, comedian Naoki Tanaka will all join the MLB, causing widespread confusion and chaos.
6. Yu Darvish will add a 15th pitch to his repertoire, a 75 MPH knuckleball.
7. Kawasaki will win another GIBBY award, this time for dancing.
8. Uehara and Tazawa will start a manzai comedy duo called Sokkusu, which American sportswriters will have to explain as being “sort of like Abbott and Costello.”
9. The Yankees will become unsatisfied with their current outfield of old guys who used to be amazing, so they’ll sign Sadaharu Oh.
10. I will conquer my nature and refrain from buying another $75 Japanese baseball video game.

“I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t watch on television or have videos or anything. I don’t watch soccer now and when I retire that won’t change. I don’t really understand why people are soccer fans. I don’t like to watch any sport so I don’t understand what makes people do that.”

Hidetoshi Nakata, the first Japanese soccer player to find success in the major European leagues, refuses to watch soccer and is not a soccer fan. So what made him decide to play in the first place? “Nakata [...] said that he read Tsubasa when he was young and that he had tried several of the skills featured in the manga, especially the overhead kick,” claimed Shisei Uchida from Weekly Shonen Jump, the longtime publisher of the world-famous soccer manga and anime Captain Tsubasa.

A Soccer Story in a Baseball Nation

In 1978, manga artist Yoichi Takahashi became a soccer fan. “In my third year of high school, I saw the FIFA World Cup in Argentina on television and discovered the excitement of the sport,” Takahashi said in an interview with Nippon.com. “At the time, soccer was semi-professional in Japan and the teams were really poor,” he commented. “I learned that in Europe, soccer was far more popular than baseball, and the number of soccer players was much greater.” As Takahashi’s interest in soccer grew, he discovered a whole culture surrounding the sport in not only Europe, but in his new favorite leagues in Brazil. Takahashi was one of the early converts in what would become (partially through his influence) a new soccer nation in Japan.

Baseball was the only nationally-popular team sport in Japan, and Takahashi’s favorite manga subject before his World Cup revelation. “During middle school I was into baseball manga, such as Dokaben and Captain, partly because I played baseball myself. Baseball was actually among the subjects I dealt with when I first started writing manga, but there were tons of baseball manga out there at the time. So I thought I might as well go with soccer, a mostly unexplored sport.” So in 1981, he created Captain Tsubasa, a story about an almost supernaturally talented young soccer player named Tsubasa Oozora who stars for his new high school, then the Brazilian leagues, then eventually for the world’s most famous soccer team, FC Barcelona. A Captain Tsubasa manga would run in the mega-popular Shonen Manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump from 1981 to 1988, 1994-97, 2001-04, and 2010-12.

Tsubasa was not the first soccer manga—The Red-Blooded Eleven and Shinji Mizushima’s Downtown Samurai took advantage of a brief blip of national interest in soccer after the Japanese national team won a bronze medal at the 1968 Olympics—but it was the first to achieve massive mainstream popularity and inspire future soccer superstars to take up the game.

The Tsubasa Generation

It’s difficult to overstate the reach and influence of Weekly Shonen Jump. Today, in America, the Sunday New York Times has a circulation of 2.3 million. The weekend Wall Street Journal reaches 2.4 million customers. The USA Today: 1.7 million. In 1982, when Tsubasa was in its early stages, Weekly Shonen Jump had a circulation of 2.55 million, toppling today’s American newspaper giants. At its peak in 1995, while running the Captain Tsubasa: World Youth manga (and little comic called Dragon Ball), Weekly Shonen Jump had a circulation of 6.53 million. Even now in 2013, with increased competition both within the magazine industry and from more and more video games and television, Weekly Shonen Jump has a circulation of 2.78 million.

And Captain Tsubasa was one of their landmark comics. Its success spawned imitators like Offside and Whistle! and many of Japan’s first soccer success stories credited Tsubasa with their taking up the sport. Hidetoshi Nakata, the one quoted above who “doesn’t like to watch any sport” and “tried several of the skills from the Tsubasa manga” was the first Japanese soccer player to have top-tier success abroad, including winning the Italian championship with A.S. Roma in 2001 and playing in the English Premier League and UEFA Cup with the Bolton Wanderers.

The outsized influence of Captain Tsubasa on Japanese soccer has had one major drawback: Tsubasa Oozora plays in a Maradona-inspired attacking midfield position, between the pure forwards/strikers and the defenders and defensive midfielders. Following his example, Japan has become a nation of midfielders, constantly struggling to find center-backs and strikers for both the J. League and the Japanese national team. Japan’s true superstars playing abroad—Keisuke Honda at CSKA Moscow (joining the even higher-profile AC Milan in January), Shinji Kagawa at Manchester United, Makoto Hasebe at FC Nurnberg—are all midfielders. Maya Yoshida is Japan’s most successful true defender ever, currently playing in the Premier League for Southampton, yet he too was a midfielder until J. League club Nagoya Grampus converted him to defender to fit him into their lineup. And none of the Japanese national team’s forwards actually play that position for their club: Hiroshi Kiyotake, Shinji Okazaki, Yoichiro Kakitani, and Takashi Inui all naturally play in a Tsubasa-style attacking midfield position. Directly or indirectly, Japan is now full of players who try to play the Tsubasa style, to the point that it makes it difficult to find other kinds of players.

A Cup Hosted, A Cup Won, and Tsubasa’s Homecoming

By 2002, when all the Tsubasa readers had grown up, Japan had a fully professional soccer league and had won a Korea/Japan joint bid to host a World Cup. Japan had never even qualified for a World Cup until 1998, but they defeated Russia and Tunisia before being eliminated by Turkey on home turf in Miyagi. The Japanese men’s national team had made extremely rapid progress from near non-existence to global contender status in only twenty years.

The Japanese women’s national team has seen even greater success. At the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany, Takahashi paid the team a visit before the Cup Final. Japan went on to beat the United States and claim their first World Cup trophy, led by Homare Sawa, yet another Tsubasa-style attacking midfielder wearing his number (10) and driving the offense with creative passes and long-distance shots.

Takahashi was even called upon to support Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, representing the country’s soccer legitimacy against Raul for Madrid and Pele for the eventually successful Rio de Janeiro bid. He drew Tsubasa and fellow main character Wakabayashi on the Tokyo 2016 flag flying in Copenhagen, where the host city was to be chosen.

A World of Tsubasa Fans

Tsubasa successfully interested a wave of Japanese children into soccer, so perhaps it was only natural that it would become even more popular in countries that were already sold on this whole “soccer” thing. The anime was translated and broadcast all over the world, in every language from Arabic to Tagalog. In the Middle East, viewers tuned in to Captain Majed. In South America, they watched Supercampeones. North American Tsubasa fans thought they were watching a show called Flash Kicker. And in Europe, Tsubasa was renamed Oliver and the goalkeeper Wakabayashi was renamed Benji, so many Spanish and Italian soccer players grew up obsessed with a cartoon they called “Oliver and Benji.” It was this version of the show in particular which inspired many current-day stars to take up the sport.

Fernando Torres, from the 2010 FIFA World Cup-winning Spanish national team, said “I remember when I was a kid, we couldn’t find the signal really well on TV, but everyone in school was talking about this cartoon about football, from Japan.[...] I started playing football because of this.” Alessandro Del Piero, a key player for Italy during their 2006 World Cup victory, also loved the cartoon as a child and treasures a signed drawing Yoichi Takahashi gave him in 2011. “When I saw Del Piero and [FC Barcelona defender] Francesco Cocco, they told me that they had read Holly e Benji [Captain Tsubasa’s Italian title] from an early age,” Takahashi told the Daily Times, who noted that he was “visibly pleased.”

Captain Tsubasa has had an enormous influence on soccer not just within Japan but all over the world. When Takahashi Yoichi sat down with Nippon.com, they said “Last year [2011] marked the thirtieth anniversary of Captain Tsubasa. Japanese soccer has made remarkable strides in that interval, and both soccer fans and those in soccer circles admit that this progress would not have been possible without the series. What is your take on this?” Takahashi replied “I think it isn’t so much the influence of Captain Tsubasa as it is the appeal of soccer itself that has led to the wide acceptance that the sport enjoys today. But I’m grateful that people say so, and it honestly pleases me to think that I may have been able to give a boost to Japanese soccer to some degree.”

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Bonus Wallpapers

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Sources:

• The Sunday Times – “I don’t understand why people are football fans. I don’t like to watch any kind of sport.” Bolton’s Japanese midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata
• TradingEconomics.com – Historical population of Japan
• Rakuten Plaza – Downtown Samurai scans
• Comipress – The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump
• Nippon.com – A Soccer Hero Adored Around the World
• Daily Times – Comic strip hero who inspired Nakata and Del Piero
• The Daily Mail – “Fernando Torres: I took up football because of Captain Tsubasa”
• FIFA Soccer 11 “We Are 11” – Episode 10, Captain Tsubasa
• Goal.com – “In the footsteps of Captain Tsubasa, Shinji Kagawa continues to inspire a nation”
• AlessandroDelPiero.com – “Capitan Tsubasa”
• AFP – Japanese comic superhero drawn to Tokyo Olympic bid

The most common recurring piece of advice I heard before leaving to study abroad in Japan was that I should make efforts to join a club, or a team, and become involved. The idea behind it was full cultural immersion: to take our Japanese outside the classroom and apply it to everyday life. I was welcomed into my host university’s track and field team, and in my experience, it was as much of a culture shock for me, as it was for them.

It was not an easy transition to position oneself inside a group of all Japanese, and my friends who also joined various teams and activities also shared similar experiences. By being a prospective addition to the team, and the “uchi to soto” (inside group vs outside group) concept that exists in Japan, I was already an outsider, and then even more so by being a gaikokujin.

Just because you look like them, it doesn’t necessarily make you one of them… I wouldn’t describe it as an unwelcoming atmosphere, but an awkward one. The first day I went to observe the track and field team, I was handed a uniform and tracksuit, and the second day was a race day. It was a qualification race for the Hakone Ekiden, one of the most prominent university relay marathon races in Japan. So, I dressed in my tracksuit, and went to the train station and ran into  four of my teammates on the platform. Their faces were new to me, just as mine was new to them, and even if they did see me the day before, this time they were curiously whispering when I was only five feet away. And we rode the train all the way to the meet like that: as two separate groups, not talking, despite wearing identical outfits.

Dressing like the Japanese, following the trends, and styling based on their fashion is not all it takes to be welcomed into a particular “in-crowd”. The foreigner wearing gothic Lolita clothing or mimicking popular hairstyles and make-up art will stand out and garner attention but at the expense of still being thought of as soto. It isn’t about whether or not it looks good or bad but rather just that it’s different. And with this cultural concept, being different is enough to distinguish “in” from “out”.

My impression of the Japanese is that they are introverted and shy, but curious… I’ve also learned that some of them have interesting impressions of foreigners, and in my case, specifically Americans. There exists the assumption that all Americans are outgoing and extroverted. For me, being the guest on the team, I expected that everybody else would approach me after I made my presence as a new runner. In my mind, I had played my part of the extrovert by seeking out the group and following through with my interest to join. I assumed that I would be met halfway in making new friends, but instead, I was kept waiting. And I was kept waiting for a while. There would be a few exchanges of words and greetings though nothing that led to a substantial conversation.

Over time, when they did start to open up and express their curiosity, I was overrun by various questions and comments. I was told statements such as “I’ve never seen a half [mixed] person before” and asked questions such as “do you own a gun?” The more they realized that simple conversations with the American didn’t have to be terrifying, the language barrier seemed to come down more quickly.

That being said, speaking the same language also doesn’t make us one of them. The language barrier is a big issue when it comes to interacting and communicating. In my experiences, the introversion did not just come from the shy Japanese personalities, but also the fear of striking up a conversation with a non-native because they won’t know what to do if it fails. The fear of not being able to understand the response, or the fear of not having the foreigner understand what they are trying to say is enough motivation to keep the “in-group” exclusive for a while. A dialogue may open for a couple of sentences only, because one or both parties believe that they have reached the limit of their foreign language abilities.

There were also those teammates who were studying English, or had lived in America before, or wanted to study abroad, who seemed to be driven by the prospect of one thing: eikaiwa (English conversation). Rather than becoming a fellow athlete or teammate, I had become the source of practicing English that they would not otherwise have access to. In theory, it was convenient for both parties involved, though ultimately, I was left to discover that I was merely the token English- speaking person in the group, who was befriended for the sole purpose of conversing in English. Every practice while jogging, I would act as an English conversation partner for one of my teammates. It ended up being great practice for them, and a good bridge to making real friends for me, but in the beginning that was not the way “in” and it wasn’t giving me any Japanese language practice, which was my motivation for joining in the beginning.

It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that to most Japanese, I did not look mixed or half-Asian, but fully Caucasian. They had no reason to assume that I had any level of Japanese language ability that included keeping up with nuances and humor. This made it easier for me, since it allowed me to surprise them consistently. Even with this “advantage”, when my teammates did realize that I could converse in Japanese, they were suddenly worried about how much I knew and would be overly cautious in considering how much I did or did not know. It seemed as they were entered into a new realm of stress regarding speaking with the foreigner. Considering the opposite of that, the expectation for people who look Japanese seems to be set much higher. In regard to those non-natives, it appeared to be assumed that they can speak Japanese, until it is discovered that they can’t. In both scenarios, it’s at these points that the aforementioned fears of being unable to communicate kick in, into a positive feedback loop.

Another difficulty of feeling fully accepted is the presence of the sometimes false, always presented, politeness known as tatemae. The difference between honne, one’s true feelings or desires, and tatemae, one’s public behavior, is hard to notice at face value. Similar to those times when store employees don’t get responses to customer service surveys, or when we get non-responses from friends who decided they wanted to cancel plans at the last minute, that was what is was like living in Japan for the first few months every time I met a new group of people. In fact, I would say it was safe to assume that without a situation that would require consistently seeing the new people I met, there was a high possibility that I would not see them again. They will be polite, probably exchange phone email addresses, and will say that they want to hang out again so an event should be planned, only to result in me never hearing from them again. It emphasizes that distinction between just experiencing a night out and making a close friend. I think that foreigners tend to expect the latter, which can be the source of frustration. But that is okay because despite all of that, if you give it time, the “uchi-soto” dynamic can shift.

It is possible for those shy exterior walls to come down… Though many foreigners and non-native Japanese feel as though they will never fit in, it is possible to go from being an outsider to part of the “in-group”. I joined the university track team during the off-season, but by the time track season started, it was no longer awkward to be wearing the same uniform going to track meets. When it ultimately got to that point, it made my time on the bukatsu (club) one of the best conquests of the intended cultural immersion. The collective cheering that is customary of Japanese sports fandom was unlike any form of cohesion I experienced as a track and field runner back home in California. I managed to make one or two close friends a couple of months in, and like a domino effect, the warmth from the rest of the team followed. It may take a shift in perspective on both our parts and some patience working through some cultural and language boundaries, but once “different” goes from being scary and unapproachable, to interesting and safe, it is my experience that the uchi to soto differences also seem to matter a little bit less.

And why are these foreign logographs being hoisted upon the American subconscious? Because Koji Uehara has become the latest household name among Japanese baseball players, winning the American League Championship Series MVP Award and closing out games for the Red Sox’ World Series title. At 38 (that’s about 70 in baseball years), Koji has a new-found celebrity status, earning his success with split-finger fastballs and a sense of humor that really translates.

An Unlikely Star

Uehara didn’t spring from the womb a baseball player like many of Japan’s greatest players. He never played in the mega-popular Koshien high school baseball tournament, and he initially failed his university entrance exams. After a year of studying and working as a security guard, Uehara finally entered the Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences, not exactly a baseball powerhouse. At this point, Uehara aspired to be a P.E. teacher, so he put on some bulk and joined the college baseball team, which was so casual that the manager told players to pick whichever position they liked best and stick to it. It was at that point that Uehara, previously an outfielder, decided to become a pitcher. Only a few years later, he would turn down a contract offer from the Anaheim Angels to join Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants, Japan’s marquis baseball team.

It’s not hard to see why a Major League team would look to sign Uehara. With the Yomiuri Giants, Koji won the Rookie of the Year and two Eiji Sawamura Awards (the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award, given to the best pitcher in his league each year). Uehara had tremendous success as a starting pitcher, but after an injury in 2006, he transitioned spectacularly to the closer role, finishing 2007 with a 1.74 ERA, 32 saves, and only 4 walks. Combining that with terrific play in the 2006 World Baseball Classic for Team Japan and one game in 2002 in which he struck out Barry Bonds three times, it’s no wonder why MLB teams were closely watching him.

But the Yomiuri Giants refused to sell Uehara via the “posting” system, in which Japanese players under contract are sold at blind auction to American Major League teams. While Daisuke Matsuzaka got to enjoy the American limelight, Uehara was stuck in Japan, waiting for his contract to run out. It finally would in 2008.

Major Leaguer

Uehara with the Orioles, perhaps one of the finest examples of an Asian with facial hair.

By the time he reached America, Uehara was already showing the signs of an aging baseball player. He was 34 years old and picked up injury after injury in his first year with the Baltimore Orioles. Initially, he had asked to be a starter, but after injuries sidelined him for much of 2009, he resigned himself to a bullpen position. He was still a great pitcher–striking out 11 per nine innings pitched in 2010–but aches and injuries plagued him, a common symptom of Japanese pitchers who throw many more innings than players in America, wearing out their arms.

In 2011, Koji was traded to the Texas Rangers for Tommy Hunter and the then-disappointing, now-spectacular slugger Chris Davis. There he was, incredibly, reunited with his high school teammate Yoshinori Tateyama, who had been the ace pitcher of their team while Koji was an outfielder. Uehara pitched well with the Rangers, but again only in limited work, pitching only 36 innings for the team in 2012.

In December of that year, Uehara signed with the Boston Red Sox, and he became their closer after two of his fellow relievers were injured and he was all that was left. Finally, Uehara was healthy for an entire year in the Major Leagues, and he shined, becoming one of the team’s greatest assets and suddenly a star.

Funnyman

Japanese players are typically quiet, reserved, and solitary when they come to the Major Leagues. This is partly due to Japan’s baseball culture of hard work and stern professionalism, but mostly Japanese players keep to themselves because it’s hard to make friends through a translator. Uehara speaks through a translator as well, but his Kansai sense of humor comes through nonetheless, and he has developed a reputation as “the life of the party.”

“He’s one of the coolest people I ever met,” Red Sox teammate Drake Britton said. Set-up man Craig Breslow agreed, saying “I don’t think guys think of him as someone who has come over from another continent. They think of him as one of the guys.” To get around his difficulty with the language, Uehara does exaggerated physical impressions of teammates and former teammates, such as an apparently popular one of Baltimore Orioles closer Jim Johnson. He has also developed a style of pithy humor that’s popular in the clubhouse. Breslow explains, saying “He doesn’t have the opportunity — because he doesn’t speak the language clear enough — to try to build up jokes. His one-liners are quite a bit more poignant because there’s not this setup and kind of ‘Let’s get to the punchline.’ Every time he opens his mouth, it’s a punchline. He’s got a great sense of humor.”

His humor isn’t reserved solely for the clubhouse, either. Uehara recently joked to the press about the mysticism they applied to Japanese former Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. Much of the initial excitement over Dice-K coming to America revolved around his mysterious new pitch, the “gyroball.” “I don’t think anybody believed that,” Uehara said, expressing disbelief over the American sports media’s gullibility. “The Japanese people are clever,” he said, laughing, “they never believed that.” After receiving his ALCS MVP award and being asked the standard empty question about how it felt pitching in such a big game, Uehara replied “I thought I was going to throw up.” Then there are, of course, his giant, comical over-the-shoulder bear hugs with David Ortiz after Red Sox wins, which always get played at the end of the highlight reel. On his blog, Uehara mused on these hugs, saying “Am I that light? Or maybe it’s that Papi is too strong. [A photo of the hug] was in US newspapers the day after the game. This made me really happy.’’

Postseason Superhero

Koji Uehara has had a very good career, from his two Sawamura awards to his 14/1 strikeout-to-walk ratio with Texas last year. But this year, and especially this postseason has been something different. Uehara had a 1.09 ERA in the regular season. He threw 74 innings, more than he ever had in America, at the age of 38, and only gave up 9 runs all year. Uehara also tied the record for saves in a single postseason with 7. Uehara is closing games out for the Red Sox as reliably as one could possibly hope. His sole mistake in the playoffs, a walkoff homer given up to Jose Lobaton of the Rays, seems like it happened years ago. His latest, most famous achievement came in Game 4, when Uehara picked off Kolten Wong to end the game, the first ever playoff game to end with a pick-off play. It is this dominance that has made Koji Uehara into an overnight sensation and has made the fans put his name on those sanshin signs at Fenway, as they flip from saying “strikeout” to telling us who threw it.

While Koji Uehara may be America’s current Japanese baseball hero, there are many more Japanese players who have etched themselves into MLB history. Of course you have Ichiro, Dice-K, Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui, Nomo, and plenty more. Who’s your favorite Japanese baseball player to come stateside (or who’s still in Japan). Surely the next big thing from the land of the rising sun is yet to come, don’t you think?

Header Image

Sources:

The New Yorker – Koji Uehara: The Boston Red Sox’s Brilliant Closer

Providence Journal – Uehara is Life of Sox Party

ESPNBoston.com – Koji Uehara’s Unusual Journey

Boston Globe – Translating Koji Uehara’s Blog

NESN.com – Koji Uehara Once Wanted to Be High School Phys. Ed. Teacher

MassLive.com – Boston Red Sox closer Koji Uehara on playoff pressure: “I thought I was going to throw up”

Baseball-Reference.com – Koji Uehara Statistics and History

As I jumped into my time travel device yesterday (or was it tomorrow, this time travel thing really muddles with your brain), I remember going through my list of potential jumps thinking that too many of them were in the past. All of them, actually. Battle of Sekigahara? Too many arrows. The arrival of Perry and his black ships? Check. Done. Badaboom. The Mongols being wiped out by the Kamikaze? A breeze. Stephen’s party? I had to pass on that one, too many things to do, and had nothing to do with Japan or the Japanese language.

I figured it was time to jump in my time machine and travel to the future instead. Sure, there are still opportunities to change said future and alter what it was I saw, but in general I don’t see a lot changing due to my actions. No, I wanted to continue the theme of Japanese baseball posts just for one more week. That’s why I decided to travel to the future to learn what happened to this great American Japanese pastime. I’d like to present to you the future of Japanese baseball, as it stands today, so long as none of you muck it up and cause our line to jump to another reality. Butterflies will just need to stop flapping their wings, please.

A Major Move To The MLB (2013-)

It’s 2013 (this year!). The big story is Yu Darvish, the Japanese pitcher from Japan who made his MLB debut in 2012. After a strong first season, it’s his second season that really wows the MLB. After going 21-4 for the Texas Rangers with 6 complete games, 204 strikeouts, and and one no-hitter, he wins the first of two career Cy Young Award just beating out Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez, who come in second and third respectively.

Our illustrator loves Yu

But this is just the start of things. I won’t tell you who wins the World Series (boy is it a good one!), though there is one Japanese player who does particularly well. It will help to open the MLB’s mind (if it wasn’t already open) to pulling more Japanese players over stateside at a much higher rate. In order to stay competitive, MLB teams would draft Japanese players out of high school and college, getting them before they have a chance to sign with a team in Japan, thus circumventing the posting system and getting young Japanese talent in the majors early on. The Oakland Athletics do particularly well at this, and by 2017 six of twenty-five members of the roster are from Japan, an MLB record at the time (it is broken three years later by the Baltimore Orioles, who have 8 Japanese players on their roster).

Superstars will begin to make their way to America as well. Shouhei Otani, illustrated above (by our illustrator Aya in present time, which I think is 2013), comes to America in 2015. Originally he planned to come to America straight out of highschool, but intense pressures on him by Japanese teams, coaches, and his parents cause him to being the first few years of baseball in Japan. He grows to regret this decision and comes stateside, debuting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the beginning of the 2015 season. The fireballer throws 100 mph and has a wicked splitter, going on to win the Rookie of the Year award as well as joining the limelight along with Darvish as well as Tomoyuki Sugano, who makes the jump to the majors a year later.

But this barely scratches the surface. More and more Japanese players move to America, and it happens earlier and earlier. As more Japanese baseball players get experience abroad they transmit the positive experiences to younger baseball stars in Japan. They become less reluctant to come to America, and soon a trickle turns into a landslide.

Sadaharu Oh No Someone Broke The Homerun Record (2019)

You may remember the past articles we wrote about Sadaharu Oh, and things haven’t changed much since then… well, except for how his home run record has been broken, with asterisks, however. In 1964 he banged out 55 home runs for the record. In 2017 a relatively unknown non-Japanese player would break the record with 59 home runs. In 2018 he would do it again, though an “accident” where he would fall down the stairs ended his promising (Japanese) career early. In 2019, a Japanese player would break the record much to the relief of many nationalist baseball fans.

Controversy would stir when the non-Japanese player that beat Sadaharu Oh’s record got an asterisk next to his name saying “non-Japanese player.” It angered both sides of the table. One side claimed it made Japanese baseball look weak. The other side just said it was racist and unnecessary. Either way, the Japanese seemed to work harder than ever before due to this which led to a Japanese player breaking the record with 60 home runs, hitting the last one on the last day of the season. To be fair, it was also in 2019 that they added five games to the season raising it from 144 games to 149 games.

The fact that a Japanese player could hit 60 home runs was no accident, though. Advances in training technology, diet, and baseball skill as a whole had increased rapidly during the last decade. Japanese baseball players were just becoming really good, on par with the rest of the baseball world (South America, Central America, and America-America).

Still, the MLB was the place to play baseball. All of this talent continued to move to Japan. Even the Japanese home run record holder came to the NY Yankees a year after knocking those 60 home runs. While he didn’t hit 60 home runs ever again in his career, he batted a career .279, averaged 30+ home runs a year, and made three All Star teams. He wouldn’t be the only one, either. The Japanese baseball league began to get worried about losing all their players, and rightly so.

A Closed Nippon Professional League (2020)

In 2020, the Nippon Professional League decides to close the doors to MLB teams trying to snipe their top talent. By this time, the NPL feels almost like another AAA league for the MLB. Japanese players train for a couple of years as “pro” players in the NPL or non-Japanese players come over to get some extra practice in before heading to the Bigs. The NPL is tired of this, and they implement the Foreign Transfer Act of 2020.

The Foreign Transfer Act states that “no player of Japanese descent will sign with a non-Japanese team for the first 10 years of his career.” While by law they could not technically keep any Japanese player from moving to the US to join an MLB team, there were steep penalties for those who did. Anyone who broke this rule would be banned, for life, from the NPL, and while this may not seem like a big deal if your goal is the Majors, it did put a lot of pressure on younger players. If they failed in the MLB, they had nowhere to go. Some players thought it better to join a Japanese team and have a safe job for those first ten years.

Japanese newspapers, who owned many of the Japanese teams at this time, highlighted the failed attempts at skipping the NPL to join the majors in their newspapers. Others would publish articles going over the negatives of baseball life in America. While the propaganda was strong, the Foreign Transfer Act of 2020 was abolished a year later in 2021 due to negative publicity as a whole.

It was clear that Japanese people wanted to see their Japanese players play in the MLB. TV ratings for the MLB in Japan continued to climb while the NPL games on TV declined.

Is That A Cyborg On First? (2036)

Fast forward 16 years later. The NPL is on a sharp decline with hardly the popularity it used to have. Many Japanese players go straight to the Majors (especially the good ones), and the NPL is diluted with mediocrity and MLB has-beens. As a baseball fan, this saddened me to see happen, but it’s all part of evolution. If you’re backed into a corner you have to make changes. Although it happened nearly by accident, the NPL discovered something that would change baseball around the world.

Keisuke Andoh, a first baseman for the Honda Hawks (Honda now owns the Hawks, thanks to the huge piles of money they got via forays in robot and cyborg technology), is the first baseball player to receive a cyborg implant. Partly because of the ownership, but mostly due to a career-ending crash at home plate in the previous season, Andoh and the team management bet on a new Honda technology to replace both of his knees with robotic implants. At the time, no rules were in place regarding machinery that would increase your speed or skill in baseball. By the time the NPL could come up with something Andoh was batting .455, got 193 stolen bases, and was an overnight Japanese star. Oh, and did I mention he was under contract with the Hawks for the next 10 years? Honda would milk this one out for as long as they could. Their new speedster wasn’t going anywhere.

Many other players were getting upset. Fans were getting upset too. But, as more people followed in Andoh’s footsteps, mostly with small improvements at first, popularity in Japanese baseball increased as well. Not only did it increase in Japan, but the rest of Asia and America as well. The NPL was on the up and up, and money came before purity, so the NPL let cyborgization continue.

The Cyborg Era (2037-2050)

There were some rules that had to come with cyborg enhancements, however. Otherwise things would be unfair.

• Arm-swing enhancements must remain under 100cc
• Running speeds must stay under 20mph (32kph)
• Jumping enhancements must not allow the player to jump more than 1 meter into the air.
• Throwing enhancements must remain under 200cc
• No more than one enhancement per player

Once the rules were in place, teams got to work. Being the leader in robotic technology, Honda had the distinct advantage, though the cyborg-augmentation draft, which allowed additional enhancements to the worst teams, helped even the playing field in 2042.

Popularity in Japanese baseball grew 10x in the same amount of years. America, which still believed in the purity of the sport, banned cyborgization altogether, no exceptions. This only fueled MLB players to come to Japan in greater numbers. Great players with season-ending injuries came to Japan. Young players came to Japan. Everyone wanted to play baseball in Japan. Things had evolved and gotten a lot more exciting. Some changes included:

• Much larger fields and ballparks (good for strength augmentations as well as fitting all the fans who wanted to watch the games now).
• 120 mph pitches.
• Players regularly hitting 40+ home runs (until pitching augmentations caught up to hitting ones).
• Increased season length, going from 149 to 225 games played in Japan per year. The MLB was still 162 games per year.

Some would call this cheating, others would call this advancement. Whatever it was, it was popular, and it spread all throughout Asia and beyond.

Asia League Baseball (2050)

During the age of cyborgization in baseball (as well as with regular, rich, people), Asia as a whole gets better at baseball (as long as your definition of “better” means “more cyborgs”). Due to this advancement, as well as the general level of baseball in Asia increasing, we start to see that not just Japan is good at baseball, but Korea (all one country at this point), China, India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Russia all are quite good as well.

In 2050, Japan, Korea, and China come together to form the Asia League Baseball, a direct competitor to the now waning MLB, consisting of three leagues, nine divisions, and forty-two teams all across Asia. In 2052, India would add four teams. 2053 saw the Middle East join in, bringing the team total to forty-eight. Russia and Hawaii would only join five years after that, but they would bring ten teams to the table, making it by far the largest and best baseball section of the world.

For the first ten years, it is Japan and Korea that dominate, with Japan winning 6 of 10, Korea winning 3, and China winning the last. Baseball comes down to the level of technology that you can produce for your players to use. Japan and Korea tend to be at the forefront in this regard. China also does well, but still has the problem where they need to play catch-up in quality (putting a lot of strong players on the disabled list for repairs). After the first ten years, however, Asia League Championships seem to be all over the board. By this time the draft has helped the weaker teams, and technology has evened out as well.

Now it would be the MLB that had to try to keep their players from defecting to the other league. Asian baseball was hitting on all cylinders here.

The Jackie Robinson Of Robot Baseball (2064)

Not “Taro” pictured above. Due to time travel restrictions any photo from the future may not be shown in the past

While cyborged up people were commonplace now in the ALB, robots were not. Although some robots had turned sentient years previous due to some amazing(ly dangerous) robot brain technology created by Dr. Nakamats Junior (a clone version of the great Dr. Nakamats), it wasn’t until 2064 that we see one of them attempt to play baseball. Just as there was “technically” no rule against African Americans playing baseball when Jackie Robinson joined the MLB, there was “technically” no rule against full on robots either.

And boy was the first one hated. Joining the Nippon-ham Fighters, ASI-43099b aka “Taro,” he was booed by the fans right from the start, even before taking an at bat. It was clear that Taro would have a hard time in the Asia League due to the venomous feelings towards sentient robots that Asia as a whole had. Despite doing well his first and only year for the Nippon-ham Fighters, he was a robot with feelings, so he packed up his bags and moved to the MLB, which was surprisingly more receptive to the idea of robots playing baseball.

By now even the MLB was allowing some forms of cyborgization, but they knew they needed to do something to keep baseball alive in America. 2065 saw not only Taro, but six other robots make their career debut as well to varying success. The ALB eventually warmed up to “The Sentients” coming back to the Asia League, but by then it was too late. The MLB had regained much of its popularity in the same way that cyborgization popularized the Asian leagues. The MLB and the ALB were on fairly even footing, which could only mean good things for baseball as a whole.

World League Baseball (2099)

It’s nearly a new century and advances in travel technology have made it possible to travel across the world in mere hours (hint: we travel in tubes now). It’s fairly unclear which league is greater: The MLB or the ALB? Also, by now the All Europe League, The African League, and the Australian / Southeast Asia Leagues were getting stronger too. South America would join the MLB, doubling the number of teams, but as you can see baseball has reached a “professional” level by the year 2099.

It is appropriate then that in this year, the MLB and the ALB agree to inter-league play. Each team would play thirty games a season against the other league. In the following decade the other leagues would join in (except for the All Europe League and Southeast Asia League, which were still at too low of a level to join), forming the first truly worldwide League.

At the end of it all? Well, of course there was a World Series. A real one this time, not one that’s only in North America. Finally, there is no need to fight outside the baseball diamond. The world is united in terms of baseball, and a lot of it is thanks to Japan. While some still hate Japan’s contribution to the world baseball stage, others would never have known baseball in the first place if it wasn’t for the robots and cyborgs that people take for granted today.

While I don’t want to comment on this for fear of changing the future, I will say that it is entertaining to watch. I don’t know if it’s good or bad (or rather, I won’t say if it is or not), but it is different, and it is where baseball will head… that is, unless one of you mucks up the future somehow, at which point this article will have been rendered useless and you only have yourself to blame.

One more thing: GO KENYAN PANDAS! (don’t ask about the name… the team moved from China to Kenya and never changed the name…) I love their chances at winning it all this year.

If you have any questions about the future of (Japanese) baseball, feel free to ask. While I don’t know everything, I did spend a lot of time watching games all over the world, reading up on the stats, and just enjoying a lot of future baseball culture. I’ll answer whatever I can so long as I don’t think it will alter events and create a future where we are ruled by Neo Nazis (aka the Nazi baseball team is not something you are allowed to ask about).

P.S. Have yourself a full sized header illustration to support your favorite future team, the Honda Hawks!

Occupation Baseball (1945-)

For some reason, it was right after the war when Japanese baseball really blossomed, I would say. It took only nine months into the occupation for the Japanese pro leagues to make their way back, thanks to the support of the Allied troops (they rightly thought it would be good for morale) and large corporations (who financed the baseball teams’ returns). Things started up again with eight teams playing 105 games. Not bad considering they only played an average of 77 games per year from 1941-1944.

Obviously, baseball needed quite a bit of help to bounce back from the war. If you think about it, most of the players were probably drafted. On top of that, a lot of the talent also probably met injury or death. Still, the teams were back and people were playing baseball… but who could be the icing on the cake? Who could bring the fire back into Japanese baseball? How about the man who was known as the “Father of Japanese Baseball”? That’s right, good ol’ Lefty O’Doul is back for round… er… inning two.

Return Of The Lefty (1949)

Lefty O’Doul was pretty upset by the militarism shown by Japan leading up to the war. He was also, understandably, not too happy about Pearl Harbor. But, this was a new era now, so Lefty let bygones be bygones and came back to Japan in 1949 to rekindle that Japanese-American baseball bond that had gone missing.

In October of 1949, he took the San Francisco Seals to Japan so everyone could become friends again. Even though he was getting old (already 52 at this point) he pitched in some games. Turns out, people hadn’t forgotten ol’ Lefty O’Doul. Emperor Hirohito and Prince Akihito greeted him. 500,000 people came to watch 10 games. It was, just like every Lefty O’Doul baseball event in Japan, a grand slam.

In Lefty O’Doul style, he kept coming back. In 1950 he and Joe DiMaggio. In 1951, he went big again and led Joe DiMaggio, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Billy Martin, Mel Parnel, Bobby Shantz, Ferris Fain, and Yogi Berra on an All-Star tour of Japan. This was a big deal, to be sure, but the even bigger deal was when the Japanese Pacific League All-Star squad beat O’Doul’s All Stars 3-1. This marks the first time an American professional team lost to a Japanese professional team. Japanese baseball was like that kid whose dad always would beat him in basketball to show him that life wasn’t fair, then one day the kid beats the dad, and so the dad buys his kid a beer. One of those days. To say the least, it was historical for Japanese baseball.

In 1952, O’Doul went to Japan again to help train Japanese baseball teams. Then, in 1953, he joined the New York Giants on a trip to Japan. This would be the first time an entire single team would go to Japan. Even Marilyn Monroe was there (she was married to Joe DiMaggio, so that helped, I suppose). In 1954, O’Doul flipped things around and took a Japanese team on a baseball tour of Australia.

O’Doul would continue to support Japan and their baseball endeavors for years to come, though this is where we have to loop back around to take a look at one particularly revolutionary Japanese baseball player that came about in the years of O’Doul’s return.

Wally Yonamine, The Jackie Robinson Of Japan (1951)

You may have noticed that the name “Wally” isn’t a Japanese one. That’s right, Wally was American, though still fairly Japanese. He was a nisei (second generation) Japanese American from Hawaii (also super Japanese, though technically a part of America). Although he is most known for his baseball time, he was also the first Asian to play professional American football. Before being injured playing baseball in the off season, he spent a year with the San Francisco 49ers as a running back. He has 19 carries for 74 yards and caught 3 passes for 40 yards.

After injuring himself, he switched to baseball, joining a minor league team. He was lucky enough to have met good ol’ Lefty O’Doul, though, who encouraged him to try out baseball in Japan. Luckily for Japan, he went for it and became the first American to play on a professional Japanese team. In 1951, Wally Yonamine became a Tokyo Giant.

Now you have to understand. It’s not like everyone loved the whole American occupation thing. There were many nationalists (and non-nationalists) who wanted the Americans out, so letting an American play Japanese baseball even though he was a nisei??? That’s just crazy talk. In many ways, he was the Jackie Robinson of Japan, though the divide was more about nationality rather than skin color.

He was still American, though, and the most interesting thing he brought to Japan was that American baseball style. People didn’t know what to do with him. He would run out bunts (unheard of in Japan at the time, apparently). He would do football style rolling blocks to position players blocking the base paths. He would dive in the outfield. He wore those iconic glasses. Basically, he had that American baseball hustle, where an individual could be a star if they stood out in the right ways, and boy did he stand out.

Now, it would be one thing if he turned out really bad, but he dominated the Japanese leagues. He had a .354 rookie season, which won over the fans and his teammates… though one particular player, Tetsuhara Kawakami (the 1951 MVP), particularly didn’t like him. He is disrespectful of Japanese baseball! His parents turned their back on Japan by moving to America! He doesn’t play the “proper” way! This, mixed with the fuel of ultra-nationalism fueled Kawakami’s dislike towards Wally, and the two formed a rivalry which only made them better players. During his career, Wally would win four Japan Series Championships, be the Central League MVP (1957), win seven “Best Nine Awards” in a row, play in eleven All-Star Games, have three batting championships, and then eventually become the manager of the Chuunichi Dragons.

All of these achievements and more got him into the Japanese baseball hall of fame in 1994, though I think it was his style of play that really made an impact on Japanese baseball. Before Wally, there really weren’t any “stars” in Japanese baseball. No nails that stuck up, because that just wasn’t the “Japanese Way.” I think Wally was the spark that set off a new style of play for Japanese baseball. It took a while, but if you compare present day Japanese baseball with Wally’s days, it’s night and day. There still is that very deep rooted team mentality, but there are stars now too. People who stand out. Also, there’s more hustle, people show less “respect” (like walking after bunting or not running into you if you’re in the way) in Japanese baseball as well. It’s a totally different game, and I think we have Wally Yonamine to thank for that.

Sadaharu Oh (1959)

Perhaps the greatest Japanese baseball player of all time (at least when it comes to hitting things hard) was Sadaharu Oh. Despite holding the Japanese home runs record (868) he was originally signed with the Yomiuri Giants as a pitcher. He soon got converted to being a first baseman and developed his unique “flamingo” batting style with Hiroshi Arakawa, his hitting instructor. This involved a one-footed stance and swing which supposedly helped him with his balance and ability to hit quite a bit.

It showed, as he went to go to eleven Japan Series Championships as well as win the Central League MVP nine times. If you ask me, that’s too many, and someone else deserves a consolation MVP from time to time. He retired with a .301 batting average, 868 home runs, 2786 hits, and 2170 RBIs. By almost any standards, even in a “lower level” Japanese league, this was pretty good. I have no doubt he would have done quite well in the MLB if he had gone over.

He went on to become a manager (where his home run record had some controversy). Still, he made a huge mark on Japanese baseball. He was one of the first really great Japanese baseball players, showing the world that yes, even Japanese players can hit for power, even if it was in the Japanese League (which had shorter seasons, too). You have to remember, Barry Bonds (the current MLB career home runs leader) has 762 total home runs. Sadaharu Oh hit 868. Even if you consider the differences of the leagues, Sadaharu Oh is still going to hit a lot of home runs no matter where he plays. Even though many people don’t consider this to be “the” home run record, when asked who would break it, Oh seemed to think it would be Alex Rodriguez. “I think the 868 record will be broken. There’s nobody near that mark in Japan, but I think Alex Rodriguez can do it. He has the ability to hit 1,000.”

We’ll see. Once he gets anywhere too close to the record he’ll probably just choke.

Masanori Murakami Debuts (1964)

While Wally Yonamine was the first American to play baseball in Japan, it wasn’t until 1964 that we see the first Japanese player to play for an American professional team. Most people think that Hideo Nomo of Nomo-Mania fame was the first Japanese player to come over, but Murakami beats him by 31 years.

In high school, he was signed by the Nankai Hawks. His team had won the prestigious Koshien Taikai (a ridiculously popular high school baseball tournament), which probably is what sped up his progress. Turns out, they moved him along a little too quickly, and after pitching just two innings for the Hawks in 1963, they sent him to the San Francisco Giants in the US to train in the minor leagues. It was expected that he’d then come back to Japan after a couple years of this, but he did so well for the Giants that they ended up promoting him to the Majors in 1964.

What made things worse, surprisingly, is that he did quite well. He posted a 1.80 ERA in nine games and fifteen innings pitched, starting things off with eleven scoreless innings. After finishing the 1964 season, the Hawks were “ready” for him to come back. That being said, so were the San Francisco Giants. According to a clause in the contract that sent him to America, the Giants could buy him from the Hawks for $10,000, so that’s what they did. But, Murakami also didn’t want to break his promise to the Hawks, so he signed a contract with the Hawks. Now both teams owned him, and that was obviously a problem.

The two teams came up with an agreement, though. He would pitch the 1965 season with the Giants, then after that he’d go back to the Hawks. He did exactly this, and pitched for seventeen more years in Japan. Poor guy should have just stayed in America. He had this to say about his decision:

If I had returned to the Major Leagues, I would have realized my dream, but I would have betrayed Mr. Tsuruoka. Yet, because I kept my promise to Mr. Tsuruoka, I forever carry this sense of regret.

Possibly because of this situation, it wasn’t for another 31 years that a Japanese player would make the trip to America. Masanori Murakami would be forgotten in the history books, and Japanese baseball wouldn’t make an impact on America again until 1995.

Hideo Nomo (1995)

Hideo Nomo is one of the most well known Japanese baseball players to make the trip to America. For one thing, he really stood out with that unique (by American standards) windup. Secondly, he pitched really well, winning the Rookie Of The Year Award in his 1995 debut season. His situation was a bit interesting, though. Normally Japanese teams don’t want their players to move to the MLB. They lose ratings because they lose their best players. Hideo Nomo figured out a loophole in his contract, “retiring” from baseball so that he could sign with the LA Dodgers. If the Buffaloes wouldn’t give him what he wanted (a multi-year contract and an agent).

He made his US debut with the Bakersfield Blaze, a Class A team for the LA Dodgers at the time. He threw 90 pitches and 5 1/3 innings in a 2-1 loss. After spending a month in the minors he was called up to the Major Leagues, partly thanks to a player’s strike, making him the second Japanese League player to come to the majors. The Japanese media went crazy, showing up in huge numbers for his games and making him a star. The games in which he started were even broadcast live in Japan, despite the time difference. His “Tornado Delivery” also became something of a spectacle. If you’re going to stand out, do it in America where they appreciate it more, I suppose.

He had a great career in the MLB, and here are some of the highlights:

• 1995 – Rookie Of the Year Award, just beating out Chipper Jones, leading the league in strikeouts, throwing 11.101 stikeouts per 9 inning (beating the previous franchise record of 10.546), and starting that year’s All-Star Game.
• 1996 – Threw a no-hitter on September 17 in Coor’s Field, a stadium notorious for being a hitter’s park. Also had his own Nike sneaker, the Air Max Nomo.

• 1997 – Greatest honor of them all, appeared in a Segata Sanshiro commercial.

• 1997 – Joined Dwight Gooden as the only other pitcher to strike out at least 200 batters in each of his first three seasons.
• 2001 – Playing for the Boston Red Sox, he throws his second no-hitter, making him one of the few pitchers to have thrown a no-no in both leagues. He also leads the league in strikeouts again.
• 2002 – Returns to the Dodgers where he pitches well again.
• 2003 – Begins showing signs of his age :(
• 2008 – Nomo retires from Major League Baseball.

Nomo and his Nomo-mania were a big deal in both Japan and America. After the Japan Baseball League lost Nomo to the MLB, the two leagues came up with a “posting” solution, where MLB teams could make bids to talk to Japanese players, so that way if they lost the player they’d get compensated. This posting system would get used a lot in the coming years. Nomo really opened the doors for Japanese players to come to the MLB, and a good number of players have followed since.

Ichiro (2001)

Being the biggest Mariner’s Fan in the world, it pains me to write about Ichiro, just a little bit. I could go into the goods and bads of him being a Yankee right now, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on his contribution to position players coming to America, because before Ichiro, only pitchers would make the jump from Japan to the MLB.

Before becoming the MLB’s most well-known Japanese player, Ichiro was a mere child with a father that was really into training him. After joining a baseball team at the age of seven, he asked his father to help him to get better. They began a regiment that included throwing 50 pitches, fielding 50 infield balls, fielding 50 outfield balls, and hitting 500 pitches (250 from his father, 250 from the machine). By age 12, he dedicated himself to pursue a career in baseball. In high school, his father told the coach to never praise Ichiro because he needed to be spiritually strong. Joining Nagoya’s Aikodai Meden High School, he was used as a pitcher due to his strong arm (which we’ve all seen in the majors). He batted .505 in high school with 19 home runs. Other strange training regimens that Ichiro did included hurling car tires, hitting wiffle balls with a heavy shovel, and practicing in the batting cages by getting closer and closer to where the ball shoots out the hole. To say the least, he worked really, really hard, much of it due to the training (which bordered on hazing, according to Ichiro) of his father. Anyways, it worked out.

Probably on their way to the batting cages

In 1992 at the age of 18, he made his Pacific League debut, though had to spend much of his first two seasons in the Japanese minors. The manager at the time didn’t like his unorthodox swing. Obviously, the “nail that sticks up” mentality was still prevalent in Japanese baseball, even in the 90s. Two years later a new manager was hired, and Ichiro then got playing time every day. His “pendulum” swing proved effective, and he broke the then Japanese single-season record with 210 hits in a season. He hit .385, had 13 home runs, and stole 29 bases. This would be the first of three straight MVP awards.

As if the nail that was Ichiro didn’t stick up enough, in 1994 they changed his jersey to read “Ichiro” instead of “Suzuki,” which is the most common last name in Japan. It was the management’s idea, not Ichiro’s (he was embarrassed by it, apparently), though it ended up catching on and helped him to achieve a greater fame.

It wouldn’t be until 1998, though, that he would see some major league action. In a seven-game exhibition between Japanese and American All-Stars, Ichiro batted .380 and collected seven stolen bases. He was now officially on people’s radars.

“Wanna hit for power? I got this guy, I can hook you up…”

Of course, in 2001 he joined the Seattle Mariners after they paid a $13 million posting fee, and then signed him to a three year $14 million contract. Apparently at first he didn’t feel too good about wearing ex-Mariner Randy Johnson’s number (51), so he sent a message to Johnson promising to not bring shame on the uniform. He turned out to do pretty well, batting .350 with 56 stoeln bases, making it to the first of ten All-Star games, winning Rookie Of The Year, and the AL MVP award. Pretty big stuff for a short guy from Japan who’s never played a “grueling” American 162 game season.

Ichiro went on to many other successes as well (and still plays for the Yankees to this day). Some highlights include:

• Ten All-Star Games (2001-2009)
• Rookie Of the Year Award (2001)
• 10-time Gold Glove winner.
• 200 hits in 10 consecutive seasons.
• 256 hits in one season, a Major League record.
• “The Throw”

People stopped running on Ichiro after this fateful day. Actually, people didn’t stop, but they were punished for their mistakes. With Ichiro becoming such a huge star in Seattle as well as the world, other Japanese players would make the leap across the pond. Some have done well, some have not. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.

The Japanese Player Flood

All in all, 52 Japanese League players have come to the MLB, most of them arriving after Ichiro. While there are this many players, only some of them had seasons of great success. They include:

• Ichiro (10 All Star Games)
• Kazuhiro Sasaki (2 All Star Games)
• Hideki Matsui (2 All Star Games)
• Hideo Nomo (1 All Star Game)
• Shigetoshi Hasegawa (1 All Star Game)
• Hideki Okajima (1 All Star Game)
• Takashi Saito (1 All Star Game)
• Kosuke Fukudome (1 All Star Game)
• Yu Darvish (1 All Star Game)

Of course, more will come, and with the higher level that is the Major Leagues, better and better Japanese baseball players will come out of Japan too. If all the good players don’t just come over to the MLB, Japan’s teams may become comparable too, though we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Awards And Notables

According to Wikipedia, here are the awards that have been given to Japanese League players in the MLB.

• Most Valuable Player Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 2001 AL
• Rookie of the Year: Hideo Nomo, 1995 NL; Kazuhiro Sasaki, 2000 AL; Ichiro Suzuki, 2001 AL
• Gold Glove Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 10 times, 2001–2010 AL OF
• Silver Slugger Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 3 times, 2001, 2007, 2009
• All-Star Game MVP: Ichiro Suzuki, 2007
• World Series MVP: Hideki Matsui, 2009
• Player of the Month: Ichiro Suzuki, August 2004 AL; Hideki Matsui, July 2007 AL
• Pitcher of the Month: Hideo Nomo, twice, June 1995 & September 1996 NL; Hideki Irabu, twice, May 1998 & July 1999 AL
• Rookie of the Month: Ichiro Suzuki, 5 times, April, May, June, August, September 2001 AL; Kazuhisa Ishii, April 2002 NL; Hideki Matsui, June 2003 AL; Hideki Okajima, April 2007 AL; Yu Darvish, April 2012 AL
• Player of the Week: Hideki Matsui, 4 times, June 23–29, 2003, May 24–30, 2004, June 14–20, 2005, July 18–24, 2011 AL; Ichiro Suzuki, 4 times, August 2–8, 2004, May 29-June 4, 2006, September 20–26, 2010, September 17-23, 2012 AL
• MLB Players Association Outstanding Player of the Year Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 2004 AL
• MLB Players Association Outstanding Rookie of the Year Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 2001 AL
• Sporting News Rookie Player of the Year Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 2001 AL
• Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year Award: Hideo Nomo, 1995 NL, Kazuhiro Sasaki, 2000 AL
• MLB.com Defensive Player of the Year Award: Ichiro Suzuki, 2005
• MLB.com Setup Man of the Year Award: Hideki Okajima, 2007

There are a lot of names that get repeated (*cough* Ichiro *cough*), though this should give you an idea of some of the talent that’s coming out of Japan.

So, that’s the history of Japanese baseball, from the early days to present day. I wonder what the future holds for Japan. I suppose you’ll just have to wait and see. When it comes to Japanese baseball, it’s like they’re on first base, getting ready to steal second. There’s a lot more life yet, and I’m looking forward to seeing it spring forth from Ichiro’s loins.

Who’s your favorite modern-day Japanese baseball player? If you say Munenori Kawasaki maybe I’ll do the Mune dance for you.

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Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideo_Nomo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanori_Murakamihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichiro_Suzuki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_from_Japan
http://www.psacard.com/Articles/ArticleView/2836/a-short-history-of-japanese-baseball-part-1
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b820a06c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefty_O’Doul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_in_Japan
http://www.baywell.ne.jp/users/drlatham/baseball/yakyu/history/history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadaharu_Oh