The Book of Nomo: Chapter 1 - Thanks, Hideo

TOKYO — The history of the Japan-America baseball relationship can be divided into two eras: Pre-Nomo and Post-Nomo.  The importance of that distinction can not be exaggerated.  It may seem strange to some younger readers, but before Nomo went to the States, most Americans did not even know Japan played baseball. Those few who did know about the Japanese game viewed it with a kind of bemused condescension. It was a place for aging, over-the hill MLB stars past their prime to go to get one last fat contract. And a place for big league teams to tour in the offseason and make some extra money. That was all.  

Japan for its part suffered from a bit of a complex in regard to their rivals from across the sea, because up until the 1980’s, those postseason “Good Will” encounters with visiting MLB clubs were usually one-sided defeats. Although Japan’s stars showed flashes of brilliance in those games and were coveted by some MLB front office executives,  a longstanding reserve clause and a protectionist sentiment among the powers-that-be combined to keep Japanese players from trying their hand in the U.S.  

The only Japanese who managed to play big league ball in that era was Masanori Murakami, who had been sent by the Nankai Hawks to the U.S. for training in the minor league system and was unexpectedly called up to pitch for the San Francisco Giants. He became the center of a dispute that that threatened to destroy U.S.-Japan baseball relations. 

But, then Hideo Nomo came along and stood everything on its head. He defected to the U.S. in 1995, starting a parade of Japanese stars who followed in his path, showing just how much the Japan game had improved. Now, ironically, it was they, not over-the-hill Americans in Japan, who were drenched in money and media. Their collective success led to the formation of the first WBC in 2006, which Japan would win, as well as the second WBC in 2009, thereby earning the right to be called the best in the world. Condescension had been replaced by respect.

Nomo had always been an outsider, a maverick, the “nail that sticks up,” so his escape to the U.S.A. fit right in with his personality. He developed his tornado style windup, as a boy. But the unorthodox throwing style did not impress orthodox-form minded scouts and Nomo wound up in the industrial league, where he learned to throw his forkball. After pitching in the Seoul Olympics, he burst upon the pro scene, leading the Pacific League in wins, strikeouts, innings pitched, complete games (as well as walks and wild pitches). He became only the second man in history to win the Rookie of the Year and the MVP in the same season, then continued that level of excellence for the next three years.  

Trouble came with new manager Keishi Suzuki who wanted Nomo to pitch with a sore arm. Nomo, who had read Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible, and believed in resting the arm, resisted. He had always wanted to try his hand in MLB and so he turned to agent Don Nomura, who found the now famous loophole in the Uniform Players Contract that allowed him to voluntarily retire and go to the U.S. to play.

He signed a deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers but did it in the face of massive opposition, earning in the process, the enmity of everyone from the NPB commissioner’s office, to the fans, to the pro-owner mass media. He was branded a traitor. He received death threats. Even his own father stopped talking to him for a while. Few ordinary people could with have withstood the intense rancor. But Nomo barely appeared to blink. 

In the beginning, few fans in America expected much success on Nomo’s part. But he quickly proved doubters wrong. Nomo pitched his first game in early May, hurling five solid innings in San Francisco against the Giants, in a no-decision performance. He went without a decision in his next four starts, as well, but again, performing respectably. Americans had never seen anything quite like Nomo’s unusual pitching style: a  tornado — or corkscrew, as some called it — windup, by which he delivered 95 mile per hour fastballs, combined with 85 mile per hour forkballs that broke so much it seemed the bottom dropped out of them.

Said the MLB’s best hitter, home run king Barry Bonds, after a hitless game versus Nomo, “I’ve never seen a pitcher quite like him. It is impossible to pick up the ball with that bizarre motion. You have no idea what’s coming.” 

By the end of May, Nomo was leading the National League in strikeouts. In June he set a Dodgers rookie record when he struck out 16 Pirates in Pittsburgh and was chosen the Pitcher of the Month. By the end of his abbreviated first half of a season, he had an ERA of 2.05, with 109 strikeouts and was the starting pitcher in the All-Star Game.

In the process, a phenomenon called Nomomania burst upon the scene. Attendance at Dodger Stadium increased by 4% whenever Nomo started, thanks in part to the presence of Asian spectators, many of them part of the L.A. area’s large Asian-American population. In the Dodgers souvenir shop, Nomo jerseys, caps, and t-shirts were flying off the shelves. When Nomo toed the mound, the crowd could often be heard chanting “Hideo, Hideo, Hideo” in rhythmic unison during the game. Said venerable Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, who had been broadcasting games since 1955, “Nomo is the most exciting player to join the Dodgers in a generation.”

Nomo was also popular on the road, thanks to his bizarre form and mounting strikeout total. The crowds he drew all over North America helped revive overall MLB attendance, which had slid south in the wake of labor strife and a strike the previous year which forced the cancellation of last one-third of the 1994 season as well as the playoffs and the World Series. The dispute had not been resolved until April of ’95 and the American fan was still angry about what had happened, disgusted that super-rich ballplayers and owners could not decide how to divide their spoils. Many had promised to boycott the games once they started up again. But Nomo, was so new, so refreshing, that he made many people change their minds. As Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda put it, “It’s not too much to say that he saved Major League Baseball.” 

Nomo also helped create a vast new market for MLB in Japan. All of Nomo’s games were telecast live back home across the nation to huge audiences. He was continually featured in the sport dailies and weekly magazines, reported on by hordes of reporters who also followed his every step off the field, (even camping outside his L.A. home, hiding in the brush and sifting through his garbage). The Prime Minister of Japan had called him a national treasure. It was a remarkable turnaround for the man who had been a pariah only months earlier and the attention he received was even more remarkable when you consider that he hardly ever played before capacity crowds as a Kintetsu Buffalo and hardly ever appeared on nationwide TV.  I still remember a Japanese TV announcer standing in Arlington Stadium in Texas on the day of the 1995 All-Star Game breathlessly saying, “Can you believe it? Can you believe it? A Japanese pitcher wearing the uniform of the MLB L.A. Dodgers will be starting the MLB All-Star Game right here. Can you believe it? Can you believe it?” 

This phenomenon certainly said something about the Japanese national ego. Japan was a country that had always measured itself against the U.S. and the fact that one of its own players was putting powerful American batters to shame did wonders for the country’s self-esteem. The country was almost bursting with pride.

Nomo himself, took it all in stride. He was aware of his awe-inspiring place in history and appeared to be completely unawed by it himself. He treated the mob of Japanese reporters that trailed him like hound dogs with barely disguised contempt, remembering how they had pilloried him after his decision to leave Kintetsu. When an NHK reporting crew made the mistake of ignoring Nomo’s instructions to keep their distance, Nomo blacklisted that station for three years. It was one of the many media organizations that Nomo (and Nomura) boycotted. He charged others outrageous fees for the brief interviews, during which he would lambaste the Japanese system of “baseball slavery ”as he put it.

Nomo went on to finish at 13-6, with an ERA of 2.54 and led the N.L. in strikeouts with 236. He helped the Dodgers make the playoffs for the first time since winning the World Series in 1988. And he also won the N.L. Rookie of the Year honors. 

And by the end of that season, the U.S.-Japan baseball equation had changed significantly. The powers-that-be in the MLB had come to realize that the NPB had more to offer than they originally thought and began actively recruiting Japanese stars. The ‘voluntary retirement’ clause was replaced by the Posting System, and the stranglehold that the NPB owners had on their players began to loosen. Over the next several years, Japan would lose its best hitter, its best slugger, two of its best infielders among others. The act of going to the MLB, once considered traitorous in Japan, was now commonplace and even expected. It had become the thing to do. You can credit Hideo Nomo with that. 

You can also credit Nomo for helping to repair U.S.-Japan relations, which had been in tatters because of trade disputes. Not so long before Nomo had arrived in America, the relationship was at a 40-year low. The speaker of the Japanese parliament had labeled Americans “uneducated and illiterate,” while American congressmen had been railing at Japan over “unfair trade practices” and its fanatical corporate warriors. A group of U.S. congressmen had even smashed a Japanese car to pieces on the Capitol lawn. But the love affair of MLB fans with Nomo helped to dissipate the acrimony between the two countries. Nomo was on the cover of Time and Sports Illustrated and was the subject of more than one TV documentary. The New York Times noted with approval a shift in the mood in Japan. “Nomo’s arrival in MLB,” wrote that prestigious newspaper,  “signifies that the Japanese penchant for closed door exclusivity is receding.” 

Of course, not all was sweetness and light. Occasionally, nationalism and prejudice reared its ugly head. MIT professor David Friedman openly castigated Japanese expatriates in America and the media back home in Japan for focusing on Nomo as a symbol of national validation and the superiority of the Japanese, instead of just celebrating the beauty of watching first class baseball. Japanese critics, for their part,  cited the anti-Japanese feeling still existing in certain quarters of America, and occasional incidents where groups of white American fans in cities the Dodgers visited would cause confrontations with Japanese fans sitting in the stands cheering Nomo on. But Nomo remained detached from that particular arena, as well.  He had  received death threats from American fans — crude letters saying “Go Home, Jap. We don’t need your kind here.” (As well as poison pen missives from Japanese fans back home who were angry over his defection.) But Nomo, being Nomo, simply ignored them. “There are stupid people everywhere,” he shrugged. 

Nomo’s second year in the MLB was perhaps his finest. He finished fourth in the Cy Young race with a record of 16-11, an ERA of 3.19, and struck out 234.  But, unquestionably, the highlight of the year was the no-hitter he pitched  against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. It was a feat that had previously been considered impossible to accomplish at that ballpark, because of the high-altitude thin air which made throwing breaking pitches problematical. Moreover, the night Nomo pitched, it was also freezing cold and raining, which made gripping and throwing the ball doubly difficult. Yet, Nomo somehow managed to pull it off. Said Lasorda, “It was an incredible accomplishment. Nomo did something I thought nobody alive was capable of doing.”

After that, Nomo’s career was erratic. He suffered through two injury filled years then  departed L.A. for the Mets. He went on to play for seven different teams in all. He suffered assorted arm troubles and underwent various surgeries. He was written off as finished several times. But somehow he always managed to reach deep down and stage another comeback. He put in a solid season at Boston in 2001, winning 13 games and pitching another no-hitter — this time against the Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore. Following that, there was a triumphant return to L.A. in 2002 and 2003 when he won 16 games back to back and earned gushing praise from his manager Jim Tracy, who announced repeatedly to anyone who would listen that Nomo was a “true warrior,” one whom all major league pitchers should attempt to emulate. 

In all, he won 123 games in MLB to go along with his 78 wins in Japan. He won two MLB strikeout titles to go along with his four in Japan, and had over 3,000 total strikeouts, counting both MLB and NPB play. He won 12 or more games in MLB, seven times. He was the first Japanese pitcher ever to pitch on Opening Day and also the second. His no-hitter against Boston was the earliest in the MLB history (April 4) and he was one of only five players to throw a no-hitter in both leagues. He also made a ton of money in commercials and TV appearances and interviews. Lasorda once joked that Nomo knew only one word in English, “millions.” As in “millions of dollars.”

In 2005, it seemed Nomo had reached the end of the line. He was released by three different MLB teams in the same season, which has to be some kind of record. He spent three years toiling in obscurity, pitching in Mexico and then Venezuela. Then, in early 2008, he asked for a tryout with the Kansas City Royals. Dayton Moore, the K.C. GM said OK. “How do you say no to a pitcher as great as Nomo was who still wants to pitch. You can’t. You just have to admire his tenacity.”

By then, Nomo was 38, a middle aged man, and was 20 pounds overweight. He was the slowest person on the team — and that included the coaches. Still, he managed to make the team. But then his arm stiffened, pitching in the early spring cold. He gave up nine runs and three homers in 4.3 innings and was released. Said Royals manager Trey Hillman, “His forkball was just as good as it ever was. But he doesn’t have that 95 mile per hour fastball to go with it. It was sad to see him go.”  

Throughout his career, Nomo’s public persona was that of an aloof, unsmiling individual who seldom showed emotions in public. His interviews consisted of terse, uninformative answers. As such, he was not popular with reporters. One American reporter noted that “Nomo was as personable as a toad.”  It was a far cry from the friendly, engaging sort of person he was in private.

Nomo had a core of close friends to whom he was fiercely loyal, including Nomura and former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley, with whom he met every single spring he was in the U.S. He also donated money to tsunami victims, and gave time to children’s hospitals, and even bought semi-pro teams in Japan and America, so that the next generation of Japanese ballplayers may have opportunities. 

Nomo was the kind of person ordinary Americans admired — an outsider, a loner, a man of few words, a man who never shied away from any challenge, a man who never gave up and a man who always gave his best. That was the type of character John Wayne and Clint Eastwood played in the movies. Said Jim Colborn, Nomo’s former pitching coach in L.A., “Hideo had more character than any player I have ever met. He had great talent. But it was his character that combined with that talent to make him a winner. The talent was just one part of the Nomo formula.” 

His role in changing forever the global view of baseball can not overstated. As one MLB executive intimately familiar with the Japanese system said,  “Nomo had courage. He was the only Japanese ballplayer I knew who had enough balls to stand up to the system. If he hadn’t done what he did, maybe there wouldn’t be any Japanese in the States now. Imagine if Irabu had gone first?”

American interest in ballplayers from Japan appeared to be diminishing by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. One scout I know said he believes that the MLB has reached a tipping point in acquiring ballplayers from Japan, given the huge contracts paid to Hiroki Kuroda, Kosuke Fukudome, and the disappointing results they have produced. The so-so performance of Yasuhiko Yabuta and Masahide Kobayashi only added to the negative sentiment. But global baseball is certainly here to stay.

So say thank you, Ichiro, and Godzilla and Dice-K. Because without Hideo Nomo, you probably  never would have made it to the U.S. and never would have those huge contracts you now earned. Accordingly, Seattle Mariners executives owe Nomo a big thank you, as do officials of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Because without Nomo and his tremendous courage, those star Japanese players might never  have been available. While we’re at it, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig should thank him too, because without Nomo, they would not have pulled in multimillions of dollars in TV revenue annually, as they do now.

Without Nomo, it could be reasonably argued, none of the big changes that have happened in recent years, would have happened — the fall in popularity of the Yomiuri Giants, the advent of player agents, the institution of interleague play and  postseason playoffs to restore interest in the NPB that had been lost in the wake of the attention paid to the MLB on NHK, the creation of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, the WBC, and other such developments. 

For all that, Nomo deserves a place in the Hall of Fame, in both countries, along with I might add, his agent Nomura. 

So in conclusion, just let me say thanks Hideo. All in all, you made quite a difference in this world in your life. Without you, the baseball landscape would look much different today.

(Originally published in NUMBER magazine)