List Of Major League Baseball Players From Japan
A total of 43 Japanese-born players have played in at least one Major League Baseball (MLB) game through the 2010 season. The first instance of a Japanese-born player playing in MLB occurred in 1964, when the Nankai Hawks, a Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) team, sent three exchange prospects to the United States to gain experience in MLB's Minor League system. One of the players, pitcher Masanori Murakami, was named the California League Rookie of the Year while playing for the Fresno Giants (the San Francisco Giants' Class-A team). Giants executives were impressed with this talent and on September 1, 1964 Murakami was promoted, thus becoming the first Japanese player to play in MLB. After Murakami put up good pitching statistics as a reliever, Giants executives sought to exercise a clause in their contract with the Hawks that, they claimed, allowed them to buy up an exchange prospect's contract. NPB officials objected, stating that they had no intention of selling Murakami's contract to the Giants and telling them that Murakami was merely on loan for the 1964 season. After a two-month stalemate the Giants eventually agreed to send Murakami back to the Hawks after the 1965 season. This affair led to the 1967 United States – Japanese Player Contract Agreement, also known as the "Working Agreement", between MLB and NPB, which was basically a hands-off policy.
For thirty years Murakami was the only Japanese player to appear in an MLB game. Pitcher Hideo Nomo, with the help of agent Don Nomura, became the second Japanese-born player to play in MLB in 1995. Nomo, who was not yet eligible for free agency in Japan, was advised by Nomura that a "voluntary retirement" clause in the Working Agreement did not specify that a player wishing to play again after retiring must return to NPB. Nomo utilized this loophole to void his NPB contract with the Kintetsu Buffaloes and play in MLB. He announced his retirement from NPB in late 1994 and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February 1995. Nomo's maneuver and Hideki Irabu's later MLB contractual complications were contributing factors to a major revision of the Working Agreement in 1998 that created the current posting system. Since its inception 11 Japanese-born players have been signed through the system, with Shinji Mori the only player not to have played due to injury.
Read more about List Of Major League Baseball Players From Japan: Table Key, Current Players, Former Players, Active Minor League Baseball Players, Awards and Notable Accomplishments, All-star Selection, World Series Appearances
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, major, league, baseball, players and/or japan:
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“Seeing our common-sense conceptual framework for mental phenomena as a theory brings a simple and unifying organization to most of the major topics in the philosophy of mind.”
—Paul M. Churchland (b. 1942)
“Were the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. Cmon be a glorified wreck like me.”
—Dudley Nichols (18951960)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945)