Players By Nationality

Hmm. Considering the number of questions I get from people wanting to know about players from various countries, this is a very good idea. I take it you're looking for a "Nationality" field for each player?

If so, I'll add it this weekend and make it so that you (and anyone else who requests it) can update the nationality on the fly (while logged in). I'll also setup a page to sort players by nationality. That should be a good first step.

I've got birth locations, but the place of birth is often not the same as nationality. Petagine is a good example. He was born in New York, yet he is generally regarded as Venezualan. This little project should help sort people out a little better in that regard.

Sorry, but I didn't have time this weekend to finish this. I have everything setup except updating. The site was unreachable from my ISP for the three hours I had slated to do this. I'll work on it Monday evening, and should have it finished then.

Please note that this thread was moved from "Ask the Commish" as it's more appropriate as an administrative task.

Sorry, no time tonight. Had a PTA meeting at Kamioooka. Need sleep. Good night.

OK. I've finished setting up a Players by Nationality page. This works for all players or by specifying "?Year=2005" (without the quotes) at the end of the URL, where 2005 can be any year between 1936 and the present year. I fear you won't find many people listed before 1995, though. That's still a work in progress.

I've primed all of the players' data based on the country that the players were born in. I've fixed Petagine to be from Venezuela rather than the U.S. I'm sure there are more that need special attention, like I think Browers is American despite being born in Germany.

FrankIsTheMan, when you are logged in and pull up a player profile page, you'll see a pull down list of countries. You can change players to the appropriate country by selecting the country in the list and clicking "Submit" to commit the change. Please let me know if you have any problems.

This is another great idea. I'll now be better able to process information by nationality, which a lot of requests come in for. Thanks again for the suggestion.

Pending player: Brian Shouse. P B:L THR:L 9/26/68. Effinham, Illinios, USA. (source: Baseballrefence.com)

[Thank you. Profile updated.]

- ... like I think Blowers is American despite being born in Germany.

Blowers is American. Wurzburg, Germany is the home to the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division. So I almost postive Blowers is American, as he went to the University of Washington, too.

[Baseball-Reference]

瀬間中ノルベルト (Norberto Semanaka), #65 on the Chunichi Dragons, is going by his native (?) surname ホッシャ these days, and if I recall correctly, the spelling isn't "Hossha" but rather "Rocha." It caught my eye when looking at one of the Dragons' publications, since I hadn't heard of a Portuguese "r" sounding like a Japanese "h" before.

Hi, I would like to point out that Sadaharu Oh [王 貞治], the home run record holder, actually has never had Japanese citizenship. Till now he still holds a Taiwanese passport. So his nationality should be Taiwan, not Japan.

By the way thanks for creating a very informative website about Japanese league baseball. =)

I won't be surprised if he doesn't have Japanese citizenship. Earning a citizenship in Japan is not like in the U.S. where anyone can apply and get it after a certain amount of time. I have a cousin who was BORN in Japan and still hasn't been granted a citizenship.

Forgot to add support to my post above. Do a search on "Sadaharu Oh passport" on Google and you'll find numerous sources about Sadaharu Oh holding a Taiwan passport.

For example here are some of them:

Wiki Gonzalez
The Free Dictionary

A tiny detail about Jolbert Cabrera and Colombia. Colombia, the country in South America, is spelled with an O as in Col'O'mbia, not Columbia.

Thank you. It's now been corrected.

Apparently you cannot track down all Korean players from Nippon Professional Baseball league, as the majority of those players hide their nationality since many Koreans are getting harsh treatment in Japan. Isao Harimoto, only player to hit over 3,000 hits in Japan, is pretty much the only one who actually spoke out about his nationality as Korean. I heard that 80% to 90% of players from the Osaka region have Korean background. Even now, there are rumors saying over 60% to 70% of the players in the Nippon league are somehow related to a Korean background, whether they are first, second, or even third generation.