Word: nomo
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...Dodgers would seem to be the best fit. Los Angeles has a large Japanese population (about 37,000) and an even larger hole at short. On top of that, two Dodgers pitchers are Japanese (Hideo Nomo and Kaz Ishii), and the team's managing partner (Bob Daly) was once the boss of Tellem's wife, Nancy, who is currently the president of CBS Entertainment. The only factor working against L.A. is money: the franchise is up for sale, and the transition to new ownership might clog the team's cash flow...
...made it to the major leagues. Reliever Masanori Murakami appeared in a total of 54 games for the San Francisco Giants in 1964 and '65, and then only because his parent club sent him to the U.S. for seasoning. But in the winter of '95 Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Hideo Nomo and his agent, Don Nomura, exploited a loophole in the agreement between Japanese baseball and the major leagues: if a player retired, he was free to play for whomever he wished. Nomo announced his retirement and promptly struck a deal with the Dodgers, and all Japan reacted...
...Nomo opened the gate, and at the time people said, 'He's a traitor to Japanese baseball,'" says all-time homer king Sadaharu Oh, who manages the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks. "Now if you're a good player, people ask, 'Why don't you go to the United States?'" Oh likes it better this way. "Why not?" he says. "I wish I had the chance...
...Nomo's success?he was the 1995 National League Rookie of the Year and at week's end was 10 wins short of 100 for his major league career?led so many other pitchers to take the leap, that in 2000 Inow devised the current system of player "posting." Instead of losing talented players when they became free agents after nine seasons, Japanese clubs could now sell them to American teams...
...Japanese television. In his homeland he has even been called the Asian version of outspoken NBA-great Charles Barkley. While he hasn't been nearly that outrageous in the U.S., Ishii has a temperament that is better suited to being the center of attention than those of players like Nomo and Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki. Ishii is far more comfortable with the media, perhaps because he is married to a Japanese TV personality, Ayako Kisa, with whom he has a five-month-old son, Kanta...