Sadaharu Oh

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Sadaharu Oh or officially Wang Chenchih (Japanese: 王貞治, Pinyin: Wáng Zhēnzhì, Hepburn: Ō Sadaharu, born May 20, 1940, in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan), is a former baseball player and manager of the Yomiuri Giants and the current manager of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. As of July 5th, 2006, Oh is on medical leave to receive treatment for stomach cancer.

Oh is the son of a Chinese father and a Japanese mother. Because of nationality laws at the time, Oh has never been a Japanese citizen, but in fact a national of the Republic of China on Taiwan, and speaks only Japanese. Taiwanese president Chen Shui-Bian happily appointed him as an "itinerant ambassador" twice, and decorated him with a medal.

Contents

[edit] Playing Career

[edit] Prep Career

In high school, Oh made many appearances at Koshien and suffered several tough defeats. In 1957, Waseda Jitsugyo High School made it to the Spring Koshien Tournament with the second-year Oh as their ace pitcher. Right before the tournament started, Oh suffered serious blisters on two fingers of his pitching hand. The only way to heal the injury was with rest, but Oh refused to let his team down. Hiding his injury so as not to demoralize his team, Oh pitched the entire first game at Koshien and won. Oh's catcher noticed the bloodstained ball, but agreed to keep the injury secret from the rest of the team. The next day, Oh pitched another complete game and earned the victory, and again his catcher kept the injury a secret, but the blisters worsened. The pain and infection was unbearable, and now Oh faced the prospect of pitching two more games — on back-to-back days — for the championship. All the same, Oh pitched and won another complete game, enduring the worst pain of his life. After the game, on the eve of the Final, he had already lost all feeling in his fingertips, and was convinced he couldn't pitch in the Final.

That night, Oh was paid a surprise visit by his father, who had noticed the subtle injury while watching his son pitch on television. Oh's father had traveled 350 miles from Tokyo to bring him a Chinese herbal remedy. The miracle treatment worked, and Oh was able to just make it through his fourth complete game in four days, squeaking out a one-run victory. Oh had won the Championship, proved his fighting spirit, and earned fame and the respect of the nation.

[edit] Professional Career

In 1959, he signed his first professional contract as a pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants. However, Oh was not a strong enough pitcher to succeed professionally and soon switched to first base, working diligently with coach Hiroshi Arakawa to improve his hitting skills. This led the development of Oh's distinctive "flamingo" leg kick. It took the left-handed hitting Oh a few years to blossom, but he would go on to dominate baseball in Japan for the next twenty years.

Oh led his league in home runs fifteen times (and for thirteen consecutive seasons) and also drove in the most runs for thirteen seasons. More than just a power hitter, Oh was a five-time batting champion, and won the Japanese Central League's batting triple crown twice. With Sadaharu Oh at first base, the Yomiuri Giants won eleven championships, and Oh was named the Central League's Most Valuable Player nine times and to the All-Star team eighteen times.

Sadaharu Oh retired in 1980 at age 40, having amassed a Japanese baseball record of 2,786 hits, 2,170 RBIs, and a lifetime batting average of .301. Moreover, his record of 868 career home runs is 113 more than Hank Aaron's Major League Baseball home run record of 755. However, the title of being "Home Run King" is consistently disputed, as Japan League baseball fields are shorter than MLB fields. The effect on home run hitting this shorter field has is shown when foreign sluggers experience a marked increase in their home run output in the Japan Leagues and vice versa when Japanese sluggers like Hideki Matsui experience a substantial drop in home run output in MLB.

His hitting exploits benefited from the fact that, for most of his career, he batted third in the Giants' lineup, with another very dangerous hitter, Shigeo Nagashima, batting fourth; the two players forming the feared "O-N Cannon." In his autobiography, Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way Of Baseball, Oh said he and Nagashima were not close, rarely spending time together off the field. Nagashima, in fact, was and is more popular than Oh, possibly due to Oh's mixed heritage.

Oh was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994.

[edit] Career Stats

    
Yr   Ag Tm  Lg  G    AB    R   H   2B  3B HR  RBI   BB    K   AVG   OBP   SLG   TB   
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1959 20 YOM CL  94  193   18   31   7  1   7   25   24   72  .161  .253  .316   61  
1960 21 YOM CL 130  426   49  115  19  3  17   71   67  101  .270  .369  .448  191
1961 22 YOM CL 127  396   50  100  25  6  13   53   64   72  .253  .357  .444  176
1962 23 YOM CL 134  497   79  135  28  2  38   85   72   99  .272  .364  .565  281
1963 24 YOM CL 140  478  111  146  30  5  40  106  123   64  .305  .448  .640  306
1964 25 YOM CL 140  472  110  151  24  0  55  119  119   81  .320  .457  .720  340
1965 26 YOM CL 135  428  104  138  19  1  42  104  138   58  .322  .488  .666  285
1966 27 YOM CL 129  396  111  123  14  1  48  116  142   51  .311  .493  .715  283
1967 28 YOM CL 133  426   94  139  22  3  47  108  130   65  .326  .484  .723  308
1968 29 YOM CL 131  442  107  144  28  0  49  119  121   72  .326  .471  .722  319
1969 30 YOM CL 130  452  112  156  24  0  44  103  111   61  .345  .474  .690  312
1970 31 YOM CL 129  425   97  138  24  0  47   93  119   48  .325  .472  .713  303
1971 32 YOM CL 130  434   92  120  18  2  39  101  121   65  .276  .434  .597  259
1972 33 YOM CL 130  456  104  135  19  0  48  120  108   43  .296  .431  .654  298
1973 34 YOM CL 130  428  111  152  18  0  51  114  124   41  .355  .500  .755  323
1974 35 YOM CL 130  385  105  128  18  0  49  107  158   44  .332  .527  .761  293
1975 36 YOM CL 128  393   77  112  14  0  33   96  123   62  .285  .455  .573  225
1976 37 YOM CL 122  400   99  130  11  1  49  123  125   45  .325  .486  .725  290
1977 38 YOM CL 130  432  114  140  15  0  50  124  126   37  .324  .477  .706  305
1978 39 YOM CL 130  440   91  132  20  0  39  118  114   43  .300  .444  .611  269
1979 40 YOM CL 120  407   73  116  15  0  33   81   89   48  .285  .413  .565  230
1980 41 YOM CL 129  444   59  105  10  0  30   84   72   47  .236  .343  .462  205
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TOTALS        2831 9250 1967 2786 422 25 868 2170 2390 1319  .301  .445  .634 5862
22 Seasons

[edit] Speculation on an MLB Career

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Oh's legendary career has led baseball fans to wonder how well he would have played in Major League Baseball. The differences in play between Major League Baseball and Puro Yakyū during the span of Oh's career are easily noticeable — the parks in the Japanese leagues were smaller than MLB parks, the season was shorter, and Japanese league managers typically used a three-man starting rotation. Oh also used a compressed bat through his entire career; illegal in MLB, compressed bats weren't banned in Japanese leagues until 1982.

[edit] Managing Career

Oh was the assistant manager of the Yomiuri Giants between 1981 and 1983. He became the manager of the Yomiuri Giants between 1984 and 1988. He led the Giants to one Central League pennant in 1987.

In 1995, he returned to baseball as the manager of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks (later the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks). Oh led the Hawks to three Pacific League pennants in 1999, 2000 and 2003, and two Japan Series titles in 1999 and 2003.

In 2006, Oh managed the Japan National team, winning the championship in the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic over Cuba. On July 5, he announced that he was taking an indefinite leave of absence from the Hawks to combat a stomach tumor.[1] On July 17, 2006, Oh underwent laparoscopic surgery to remove his stomach and its surrounding lymph nodes. The surgery was considered to be a success.[2] Although the tumor was confirmed to be cancerous, it was caught in early stages. He has since returned to coaching the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

Oh's tenure as a manager has not been without controversy. On three occasions, foreign players have challenged his single-season home run record of 55 (Americans Randy Bass in 1985, 54 HRs, and Karl "Tuffy" Rhodes in 2001, 55 HRs; and Venezuelan Alex Cabrera in 2002, 55 HRs). Each of these men played against teams managed by Oh late in the season with the record on the line. In each instance Oh's pitchers were either instructed or refused to throw hittable pitches, in order to safeguard Oh's record. This maneuver disgruntled Bass to the point that he left Japan and never played baseball again anywhere. Reacting to treatment of Bass in 1985, Japanese baseball commissioner Hiromori Kawashima termed Oh's team's behavior "completely divorced from the essence of...fair play."

The Bass/Oh record incident was used as a plot point in the Tom Selleck movie Mr. Baseball in which Selleck's character, preparing to break his team's manager's record for consecutive home run games, starts getting walked by pitchers when he comes to bat. And similar to Bass, Selleck would challenge the pitchers to throw strikes by gripping the bat upside down.

In the case of the Rhodes incident, Oh's pitching coach, Yoshiharu Wakana, took the blame by saying he gave the order to pitch around Rhodes. He then bluntly added, "I just didn't want a foreign player to break Oh's record.". Hawks pitcher Keizaburo Tanoue went on record saying that he wanted to throw strikes to Rhodes and felt bad about the situation[3].

In the wake of the most recent incident involving Cabrera, ESPN ranked Oh's single-season home run record #2 overall on its list of The Phoniest Records in Sports.

[edit] Others

In 1988, Oh and Hank Aaron created the World Children's Baseball Fair (WCBF), to increase the popularity of baseball by working with youngsters.

Oh was married to Kyoko Oh (王恭子 Ō Kyōko) and has three daughters.

Kyoko Oh died of stomach cancer in December 2001 at age 57. In December 2002, her ashes were stolen from their family grave. The reason for this theft is still unclear.

Ō is the Japanese rendering of the common Chinese surname Wang, which literally means "king". This is a coincidence considering he is considered a "Home Run King" in Japanese baseball.

Oh is referenced in the Beastie Boys' song "Hey Ladies" ("I've got more hits than Sadaharu Oh").

[edit] External links

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