Randy Bass
| Randy Bass | |
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| First baseman | |
| Born: March 13, 1954 Lawton , Oklahoma , United States 
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| Strikes: Left | Throws: Right |
| Debut in Major League Baseball | |
| September 3, 1977 for the Minnesota Twins | |
| Last MLB assignment | |
| June 7, 1982 with the Texas Rangers | |
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| Awards | |
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Randy William Bass (born March 13, 1954 in Lawton , Oklahoma ) is a retired American baseball player in the US professional league MLB and the Japanese professional league Nippon Professional Baseball . His field position was first baseman. With the Hanshin Tigers he won the Japanese championship in 1985 and won the Triple Crown in 1985 and 1986 . Bass currently serves on the Oklahoma Senate for the Democratic Party .
Career
In the 1972 MLB draft, Bass was signed by the Minnesota Twins , where he made his debut in 1977. There neither there nor later with the Kansas City Royals , the San Diego Padres or the Texas Rangers , he prevailed, so that he left the MLB in 1982. In six years he had only played 130 games.
Bass went to Japan to the Hanshin Tigers, where he was called Ba-Su . There he surprisingly established himself as a service provider and used u. a. from the fact that Japanese baseballs are sewn more tightly and therefore “slip away” differently than American baseballs. He broke the 200 home run barrier faster than any other NPB player before him. In 1985 Bass hit 54 home runs, just one less than the all-time NPB home run record (details see below), won the Triple Crown for infielder (.350, 54 home runs, 134 runs batted in) and took the Tigers with the Japanese championship. In the same year he was the first non-Asian to be honored as Japan's “Sportsman of the Year”. In 1986 Bass achieved a batting average of .389, which is the all-time NPB record. His 47 home runs and 109 RBIs meant the Triple Crown again. Although the Tigers did not get any more success due to poor management, Bass holds eight NPB records to date. In Hanshin, Bass became a crowd-pleaser, and the slogan "Kami-sama, Hotoke-sama, Basu-sama" (God, Buddha, Bass) was memorized for "Basu".
After his career as an athlete, Bass went into politics for the Democrats. He was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 2004 and confirmed in 2006. He also advocates maintaining Japanese-American relations.
The curse of Colonel Sanders
Bass is indirectly responsible for a curious "curse" with which Tigers fans explain the sporting bankruptcy that has been going on since 1985. In Hanshin it is the custom that after a great Tigers success (e.g. entry into the final round) the Tigers players are called individually and a fan who looks like the respective player jumps into the Dotonbori river. This ritual took place again at the championship celebration in 1985. Since no Tigers fan resembled the gaijin (foreigner) at Bass enough, a statue of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland D. Sanders was stolen from a nearby KFC restaurant and thrown into the river. When the Tigers couldn't find a green branch after that, it was interpreted as “revenge” for the sunk statue, and for this the name “The Curse of Colonel Sanders” became common. In 2009 the statue was finally pulled out of Dotonbori. KFC plans to donate the statue to the Tigers.
1985 home run controversy
In the 1985 championship season, Bass was well on the way to breaking Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh's all -time season home run record . Before the final regular season game against the Yomiuri Giants , he was 54, one less than Oh's 55. But instead of throwing at bass normally, the Giants pitchers deliberately missed four times in a row ( intentional walk ), so that bass always reached 1st base, but had no chance for a home run. This was to protect the “sacred” record of Oh, who was himself a former Giants player. Bass later said he had lost "a lot of respect" for Oh since then.
Private life
Bass is married to his wife Kelley and has one son, two daughters and four grandchildren with her. In his spare time he plays a lot of golf . When he was five years old, Bass broke both legs in a boat accident and was cast in plaster for six months. His family considers the greatest miracle that he learned to walk again at all, let alone become a professional athlete.
Web links
- Player information and statistics from Baseball Reference or Fangraphs or The Baseball Cube (English)
- Official homepage of Senator Randy Bass
- Sports Illustrated article on Randy Bass
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Craig Neff: The Hottest American Import In Japan. Hanshin's Randy Bass found fame a long way from home. Retrieved January 25, 2016 .
- ^ Senator Randy Bass - District 32
- ^ Colonel Sanders pulled from river after 24 years , msnbc.com
| personal data | |
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| SURNAME | Bass, Randy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bass, Randy William (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American baseball player and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 13, 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lawton , Oklahoma |