Do NPB Players Spit?

Considering that chewing tobacco is pretty much unheard of here in Japan, no, they don't spit nearly as much as Major Leaguers. On the other hand, I understand that the percentage of players who use smoking tobacco is much higher.

You certainly don't see it. I don't know if it's explicitly forbidden, or if the players just don't do it, but I don't remember ever seeing it.

Weird, considering that blokes (especially here in the [rear] end of Osaka) hoick all over the place.

Many Japanese consider the playing field "sacred" similar to the reverence shown the sumo grounds.

Ha! You certainly don't see anyone spitting in the dohyo at a sumo tournament. I can't imagine a grand champion yokozuna performing the daily ring purification ritual, then "qqqqhuiiiiiioock...PTOOEY!"

Anyway, I like the idea of players not depositing their sputum all over the park.

Tsuneo Horiuchi used to spit. He did as a 19 year old rookie for the Giants in 1966, when he won his first 12 games in a row, led the league in ERA, and won the Sawamura Award. He'd do it on the mound before going into his windup. With 50 million people watching on TV. This caused a major scandal and was the subject for much handwringing in the national press. The Giants were always supposed to be gentlemen and spitting was not a gentlemanly thing to do. It was considered a filthy, disgusting habit. It took a while, but Horiuchi (who was unbelievably cocky at the time), finally mended his ways.

Hi Whiting-san. That's very interesting. Was there a particular time at which he stopped, or did he just sort of stop over time?

Hi. If memory serves, it was over time. It took a while for him to grow up. He was always rubbing people the wrong way. He called the old Yakult Atoms a bunch of amateurs. Called himself a pitching genius who could win without having to train -- an assumption which was proved false in his second year when he was banished to the farm team for a stretch. There he got into major trouble with the coaching staff over his lackadaisical, arrogant attitude and was eventually forced to do a famous hands-and-knees apology to the farm team manager to get himself out of permanent hot water. That marked the beginning of his slow ascent into to maturity.

- Ha! You certainly don't see anyone spitting in the dohyo at a sumo tournament.

No, sumo wrestlers spit before and after the match.

I was just looking at some old video tapes of NPB games from April 1995. One clip had Chiba Lotte Marines' Hideki Irabu spitting on the mound. This video brings back memories: Valentine, Oh, Franco, Mitchell, Ishige, Akiyama - wow!

Just caught up with this thread today.

Thanks for that interesting info, Whiting-san; good story.

As for Irabu, well maybe he knew what he was destined to do even back then (although I don't think he knew he'd be called a "fat [expletive] toad" by his own kantoku!).

Actually, Irabu was called a "fat, puffy toad" by the Boss himself, not the kantoku.

By the way, the original question was a bit lame. If you watched "Mr. Baseball," you would know that they don't really spit on the field here in Japan. In that movie, Dennis Haysbert's character Max tells Tom Selleck's character not to spit on the field.

Nowadays, a lot of Japanese players want to act like Major Leaguers by doing the whole Sammy Sosa routine and things like that, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Japanese players spit or grab their groin area just like the big leaguers do.

> Actually, Irabu was called a "fat, puffy toad" by the
> Boss himself, not the kantoku.

I beg your pardon, and stand corrected. Incidentally, the much maligned "toad" is looking pretty good since recovering from injury and a spell with the second-stringers during spring camp. He's been pencilled in as the starting pitcher for Hanshin's second game on the 29th. (NB: according to SanSpo, a likely rotation is Igawa, Irabu, Moore, Yabu, Shimoyanagi/Kawajiri, and Fujita.)

Getting back to the spitting thang, you're right about NPB players wanting to emulate their MLB counterparts (and why not? If you're going to copy someone, it might as well be the best), but I wonder if spitting will catch on. I get the feeling that if any Hanshin player spat on the pitch, Hoshino Kantoku would give him a whippin'.