Sadaharu Oh

Sadaharu Oh

Sadaharu Oh ( Chinese  王 貞 治 , Pinyin Wáng Zhēnzhì , Hepburn: Ō Sadaharu ; born May 20, 1940 in Sumida , Tokyo ) is a former player and manager in Japanese baseball . Most recently he was manager of the Hawks in the Pacific League from 1995 to 2008 .

Oh became famous in the 1960s and 1970s as a player for the Yomiuri Giants . From that time still be valid professional world record result of 868 home runs . As manager of the Japanese national team, he won the first World Baseball Classic in 2006 .

Life

Oh is the son of a Japanese mother and father from Zhejiang , Republic of China (now: People's Republic of China ). Like his three daughters, he is a citizen of the Republic of China, but has a right of residence in Japan through his Japanese mother. According to the nationality law of the time, Japanese citizenship could only be acquired through a Japanese father.

Player career

High school baseball

During his high school years Oh played several times as a pitcher of the Waseda commercial high school ( 早 稲 田 実 業 高等 部 , Waseda Jitsugyō Kōtō-bu ) in the Kōshien tournament, but suffered some heavy defeats. At the spring Kōshien 1957 he was finally the best pitcher of his team. Shortly before the tournament, he contracted two severe blisters on his throwing hand, which could only have healed with a break. Oh, however, did not want to let his team down and kept his injury secret from his teammates with the exception of the catcher. In the first game he pitched his team to victory with a complete game, which he repeated the next day. The injury was very painful and had become infected, but Oh kept it a secret. To win the championship, he had to pitch two more games on consecutive days. After another complete game win, Oh surprisingly received a visit from his father, who had seen the game on television in Tokyo, 350 km away, and had noticed the injury. The father treated his son with Chinese herbal medicine, and Oh pitched the fourth full batch in four days. The result was a close, one-run win and the championship that Oh made famous across the country for the first time.

Oh is to date the only pitcher who has pitched a no-hitter over more than nine innings in a Kōshien tournament .

Professional baseball

In 1959, Oh signed his first professional 15 million yen contract with the Yomiuri Giants . Since he could not keep up as a pitcher at the professional level, he soon switched to the position of first baseman. Together with his coach Hiroshi Arakawa he worked on his qualities as a hitter and developed the characteristic "flamingo" leg.

After playing 94 games in the first year, Oh was part of the Giants' regular line-up with at least 120 games per season from 1960 to the end of his career in 1980. Oh and his teammate Shigeo Nagashima , usually as an "ON cannon" (ON 砲 , -hō ) in third and fourth position in the Giants lineup, were among the dominant hitters in the league: Oh scored the most home runs fifteen times, five times the batter with the highest average and won the Triple Crown in 1973 and 1974 . On August 31, 1977, he set Hank Aaron's old world record with his 755th home run , although in Japanese professional baseball there are around 30 fewer games per season than in the major league and the Japanese game generally has less power hitting (home runs and Extra Base Hits ) than in America. Oh hit his final, 868th home run on October 12, 1980.

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

Managerial career

After the end of his playing career, Oh was first assistant manager of the Yomiuri Giants in 1981. In 1984 he succeeded Fujita Motoshi as manager. He stayed with the Giants until 1988, but measured against the Giants' demands with moderate success: only in 1987 he was able to win the league title with his team, but then lost the Nihon Series against the Seibu Lions . Oh's successor was his former teammate Shigeo Nagashima.

In 1995 Oh took over as manager of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the Pacific League. After three mixed years, he managed to bring the Hawks into the top three from 1998 to 2007 and thus into the playoffs (since 2006: Climax Series). In 1999 and 2003 he was able to win the championship in the Nihon Series. In 2000, his team played the series against the Giants, who were still managed by Nagashima; the meeting of the two was stylized by the media as an "ON Manager Showdown" (ON 監督 対 決 , ON-Kantoku-Taiketsu ). The Giants with Hideki Matsui won 4-2 games.

In September 2008, Oh announced that he would end his career as a club coach after the season. But he did not rule out a future role in professional baseball.

Japanese national coach

In 2006, the World Baseball Classic (after several failed attempts) was the first time a world baseball championship was created in which the national teams compete with their best players. Oh was selected to be the manager of the Japanese team; with the pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka (3-0 record, 1.38 ERA) and Kōji Uehara (2-0, 1.59) and above all the best batting average of the tournament (0.311), Japan won the title. In a play on words with his name ( 王 means king), Oh was celebrated by the public as "King of the World" ( 世界 の 王 , Sekai no Ō ) after he had already been referred to as the homerun king as a player.

In 2016 an asteroid was named after him: (61189) Ohsadaharu .

Web links

• Sadaharu Oh in the Hall of Fame (English)
• Entry of Sadaharu Oh in Meiyūkai (Japanese)
• Career Leaders Home Runs on Nippon Professional Baseball (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ton Japan's home-run king Oh quits as club manager. In: AFP. September 24, 2008, archived from the original on December 9, 2011 ; accessed on September 24, 2008 (English).