Sadaharu Oh Was A Major Hit

Way before Ichiro Suzuki hit it big in America, another Japanese baseball player caught the attention of major-league players and fans.

His name: Sadaharu Oh.

He’s the sport’s home run king, with 868 in Japan’s major leagues — more than Barry Bonds, more than Hank Aaron.

And he did it with style. He would plant his left leg, then lift his right one high before he swung. Fans called the gyration the Flamingo.

To capture the exact moment to strike, Oh practiced batting with a samurai sword. He stood in front of a sheet of paper hanging on a string. The moment the paper stopped spinning, he slashed it in half.

His Zen-like focus, diligent practice and record alone didn’t make him the biggest legend of Japanese baseball. It was his demeanor.

Oh, 68, always treated fans with respect. If they wanted an autograph, he wrote one. In 1977, Japan’s government reciprocated by giving him the People’s Honor Award.

Twenty-nine years later, he managed Japan to the World Baseball Classic title.

“Oh is one of the most humble, gracious people you ever want to meet,” Robert Whiting, who wrote the Japanese baseball book “You Gotta Have Wa,” told IBD. He’s a “first-class human being.”

Oh was born in 1940 in Tokyo. His father was Chinese, his mother Japanese, quite a combination as China and Japan battled in World War II.

His parents ran a Chinese noodle shop in a relatively poor, close community divided by a river from the richer area of Tokyo.

Passion For The Game

Oh and brother Tetsujo loved baseball, but their dad kept them off the field and pushed them toward careers in engineering and medicine.

That didn’t work with Oh. He hid his baseball equipment in the house and continued to play. “It was the only time in my life that I consciously disobeyed him,” he wrote in his book “A Zen Way of Baseball.”

Oh was left-handed, but his father told him to use his right hand for chopsticks and writing. One day when he was 14, playing a game in a park, pro outfielder Hiroshi Arakawa was walking a dog nearby.

Seeing Oh pitch and hit, Arakawa approached him and said, “How come you pitch left-handed and bat right-handed?”

Arakawa suggested that swinging lefty would help his game. Oh nodded, stepped to the plate on the left side and struck a clean double.

Oh was on the way up.

In 1957, at the national high school spring tournament, Oh pitched four games in four days. He suffered bloody blisters on his hand.

He hid his injury from teammates, but Oh’s father noticed something wrong with his son’s finger while watching on TV. He took a train from Tokyo to Hyogo — 350 miles away — and surprised Oh by showing up at the team’s boardinghouse.

The father put a ginseng root mixed with a Chinese wine on Oh’s finger. It was an ancient remedy. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Tomorrow, pitch with all your strength,” the father told son.

Oh recovered. And when the blisters returned, he kept pitching until his team won the title.

Soon, Japan’s National Sports Festival chose Oh’s team as Tokyo’s representative. But he couldn’t play. The competition was for Japanese nationals only. Even though he was born in Japan, his handicap was carrying a Taiwanese passport. “I was more hurt than I have ever been in my life,” Oh wrote in his book. Until that moment, “It never entered my mind that I was ‘different.’”

“That devastated him,” said Warren Cromartie, who played for Oh during their days with Japan’s heralded Yomiuri Giants in the 1980s. “That shows he had many, many mountains to climb.”

Cromartie, who lives in Florida, told IBD that he grew close to Oh because “we were different. I am not Japanese, and he was half-Japanese, and we knew the difficulties and challenges of being new faces in Japanese society.”

Shaking off the disappointment of the national snub, Oh signed with the Giants — owned by the Yomiuri newspaper — in 1958. He was 19 and a prospective pitcher. Soon he switched to first base, where he would stay throughout his career.

Oh didn’t get any hits in his first 26 at-bats his first season, 1959. He also struck out 72 times in 193 at-bats that year. Spectators derided Oh, whose name means king in Japanese and Chinese, as the Strikeout King.

Arakawa, who had urged Oh to bat left-handed, joined the Giants as batting coach to help Oh. He noticed the rookie striding too fast without firmly gripping his bat. The coach’s advice: Try a one-legged stance.

Now Oh struck back. With the Giants slumping in 1962, he did the Flamingo and sent the ball flying into the right-field stands.

Arakawa and Oh continued their one-on-one training, with coach watching and player swinging on a tatami mat. The mat turned ragged after thousands of shadow swings.

Arakawa, a devotee of Zen, suggested Oh use a real sword for batting practice. One day, the coach said: “Well, what do you say; shall we try beating Babe Ruth?”

Oh laughed.

The coach didn’t. “You think this is a joke. It’s not. We can beat Babe Ruth,” Arakawa said.

In 1964, Oh hit 55 home runs, a Japanese record. He eventually passed Ruth’s 714 homers. And on Sept. 3, 1977, he swatted his 756th home run, surpassing Aaron’s record. He amassed his 868 total in 22 seasons while collecting nine league Most Valuable Player trophies.

Behind Oh’s power, the Giants simply dominated, winning the Japan Series — the country’s equivalent of the World Series — nine straight times from 1965 to 1973.

Whiting, who lives in Japan, says that many American fans refuse to recognize Oh’s number as the world record, that they view the level of play in Japanese baseball as lower, the parks smaller.

If fans feel that way, Cromartie is ready to debate. “I know many American players who played against Oh say Oh could have played in the major leagues and become a superstar,” the former big-league outfielder said.

Hard Hits

Siding with Cromartie is Whiting, who once wrote in the Japan Times that Oh’s home runs were usually wicked line drives that caromed off the outfield seats.

Tom Seaver, the Hall of Fame pitcher, said in Oh’s book: “He sure hit me. He was a superb hitter. … If he played in the United States, he would have hit 20-25 home runs a year. What’s more, he’d hit .300.”

Oh retired from playing in 1980. As the Giants’ manager, he led them to a Central League pennant in 1987.

He added to his title collection as manager of Fukuoka’s Hawks, producing three Pacific League pennants and two Japan Series titles.

Cromartie, who named his son Cody Oh Cromartie, recalls that Oh never missed a game as Giants skipper, even when his father died.

“I was with Oh-san when his papa died,” Cromartie said. “I watched his face. That was a very private moment between me and Oh. I felt my heart break. He still was trying to prove himself, facing all this pressure. And he succeeded.”