Wally Yonamine

Wally Yonamine
Wally Yonamine on a 1951 baseball card
Outfielder, coach, manager
Born: June 24th, 1925 Maui , United States
Died on: February 28, 2011 Honolulu , United States
Suggested: Left	Threw: Left
Debut in Nippon Professional Baseball
June 19,  1951  with the  Yomiuri Giants
NPB statistics (until 1962)
Batting average	, 311
Runs Batted In	482
Home runs	82
Victory rate as a manager	, 526
Teams
Yomiuri Giants (1951-1960) Chūnichi Dragons (1961–1962, manager 1972–1977)
member of
Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame
Recorded	1994

Wallace Kaname "Wally" Yonamine ( Jap. 「ウォーリー」与那嶺要 , "Uōrī" Yonamine Kaname * 24. June 1925 in Maui , Hawaii Territory ; † 28. February 2011 in Honolulu , Hawaii ) was an American American- Football players , baseball players and coaches . The outfielder was the first post-war American in Japanese professional baseball, a star player for the Yomiuri Giants in the 1950s, and manager of the Chūnichi Dragons in the 1970s . In 1994 he was inducted into the Yakyū Dendō , the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yonamine was a Nisei , a second generation Japanese American . His father was from Nakagusuku , Okinawa Prefecture , and his mother was from Hiroshima Prefecture . After the Second World War, he first played professional football: In the San Francisco 49ers in the AAFC , he had three appearances as a running back in their second season in 1947 , making him the first Asian American in today's NFL. After a wrist injury, the 49ers fired him in 1948 and Yonamine switched to baseball.

After a short time with the Salt Lake Bees, a C minor league team affiliated with the San Francisco Seals , and in AJA Baseball in Hawaii with the Asahi Club, a symbol of the Japanese-Hawaiian community, Yonamine was scouted in 1951 the Yomiuri Giants discovered. During the season he was signed, had his first 54 appearances in the Central League and won the first of four championship titles with the Giants, the team's second "golden era". By 1957 he had batting averages over .300 in each season , three times (1954, 1956 and 1957) the highest in the league. In 1957 he was also named MVP of the Central League. From 1952 he was inducted into the Best Nine seven times in a row and took part in the All-Star Games eight times in a row . Most of the time, Yonamine with its strong buns, effective base running and aggressive slides was used at number 2 in the lineup behind Chiba Shigeru . After the 1960 season, when the Giants missed the Nippon Series for the first time in six years , he moved to the Chūnichi Dragons, where he ended his career after only 83 appearances in two years. A record from his time as a player that is still valid today is eleven stolen home bases.

From 1969 Yonamine worked as a hitting coach, initially for the Dragons, from 1967 for the Tōkyō Orions , before returning to Chūnichi as head coach three years later. At the end of the 1971 season, manager Mizuhara Shigeru retired and Yonamine became his successor. After two third places, he managed in 1974 to break the nine-year series of the Giants, to lead the Dragons to the league title and thus the first Nippon Series participation in 20 years. However, Chūnichi was defeated by Lotte Orions under Kaneda Masaichi with 2–4. In 1977 he resigned as Dragons manager and continued to work as a coach for various teams, most recently from 1985 for the Nippon Ham Fighters .

After the 1988 season, Yonamine returned to the United States and lived in his native Hawai'i. In 1994 he was elected to the Hall of Fame. In the 2000s he returned to Japan several times for an appearance in the Pro Yakyū Masters League and a symbolic opening of the game. In 2011 he died of prostate cancer in Honolulu .

Web links

• Yakyū Dendō: Yonamine Kaname
• Former Giants star Yonamine dead at 85. In: The Japan Times . March 2, 2011, accessed March 2, 2011 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 与 那 嶺 要 さ ん 死去 県 系 ２ 世 巨人 、 中 日 で 活躍 ８５ 歳 . (No longer available online.) In: Ryūkyū Shimpō . March 1, 2011, archived from the original on March 6, 2011 ; Retrieved March 2, 2011 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ 日本 野球 変 え た 「ウ ォ ー リ ー」 与 那 嶺 要 氏 、 死去 . In: Suponichi . March 1, 2011, Retrieved March 2, 2011 (Japanese). 

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Yonamine is the family name, Kaname the first name.