Suketto Trivia
I don't know who the Hall of Fame inductee is
who played in Japan, but the one who came over
to the Land of the Rising Sun having hit the most
dingers of any foreign player in their MLB career
was Reggie Smith with 314, I believe. And the ex-batting champs who finished up in Japan were
Julio Franco and Bill Madlock for sure, the third one may be Bobby Avila, though that's a wild guess
since I don't know if Avila ever played in Japan.
Incidentally, Franco also played in Korea a couple
of years back, making him perhaps the first MLB
former batting champ to play in NPB and KBO, too.
But that's just a guess on my part.
2. Frank Howard was one of the tallest (6'8") and the most powerful hitter to play in the MLB. He played between 1958 and 1973 for the Dodgers and the Washington Senators. He won the rookie of the year award with the Dodgers and won the HR crown for the Senators in 1968 and 1970 blasting 382 hrs and hitting 0.273 for his career. He came to the Taiheiyo Club Lions in 1974 but injured after only 1 AB when he hurt his back striking out.
#2= Cecil Fielder 319 hrs
#3= Reggie Smith 314 hrs
#4= Larry Parrish 256 hrs
#5= Larry Doby 253 hrs
3. Batting Champions in MLB
Matty Alou played for the Taiheiyo Club Lion won his title in 1966
Bill Madlock played for the Lotte Orions won his title in 1975, 76, 81, and 83.
Julio Franco of Lotte Marines won his title in 1991.
NY Times
Fielder doesn't really count, since it was
AFTER he played for Hanshin that he became a prominent MLB slugger. The item about Howard was interesting, though. I had no idea he was signed over there.
Incidentally, If you look at Matty Alou, him and Ichiro are rather similar: Alou hit his prime at 27 when he went to the Pirates after six up and down seasons with the Giants (and was replaced by
Bobby Bonds) Ichiro has it all over Alou defensively, but they were/are very similar in that both struck out only about 6% of the time and hit the ball mostly on the ground or whacked line drives with little power production (lifetime slugging of .381 for Matty), seldom walked, and got on base about 36% of the time as things stand now. Alou finished with a lifetime average of .307 and hasn't a chance of seeing the inside of the Hall of Fame despite that.
The question is, then, if Ichiro has a Matty Alou-like 10 year career (albeit again with better defense and more stolen bases), would he, too, be
left out in the Hall of Fame balloting or would he
get in because he was the first Japanese position
player to make an impact in the states? And is the latter fact enough to make his entry valid? Interesting question to ponder.
My mistake in the previous submission I wrote.
Bonds didn't move into the San Francisco outfield
until 1968, when he became the first player ever to hit a grand slam in his first major league at
bat, not 1966 when Alou went to the Pirates as I
wrote. Sorry for the error. But to keep this sort of on topic, Alou did play behind Masanori Murakami during his SF Giants days.
Matty Alou, on the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a great pinch hitter, and along with Matty Alou, may be the best pair of PH's on one team ever...
Felipe Alou became a good manager.
I only know one other threesome of brothers, Joe, Dom, and Vince DiMaggio, but they never played for the same team.
A web page listing every baseball player to hit 49 homers or more in a regular season is at:
http://www.mindspring.com/~luckyshow/49%20HR,%20one%20season.htm
It includes all Japanese, Major League, and KBO players to have done this. If any one knows of any such home run hitters in Korea this season, I would be interested as it has proved impossible so far to find out any information.
I have never seen anything about the Chinese (Taiwan/Taipei) baseball league for this statistic. Anybody know?
This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
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These are tough trivia: