The Making of An Agent - Chapter 2 (Part 4)

The Don Nomura Story

This book, about super agent Don Nomura, the man who took Hideo Nomo to the Major Leagues and opened the long-closed door door to MLB for Japanese baseball players, was originally published in 1999 in Japanese by Bungei Shunju as

日出づる国の奴隷野球: 憎まれた代理人団野村の闘い

Japan was not an easy environment for an agent interested in representing Japanese players to operate in. Given the reserve system in place in Japan at the time, which tightly controlled player movement, there was little wiggle room to maneuver. Furthermore, because management had exercised such iron clad control over the players for such a long time, treating them like chattel, they fiercely opposed any attempts to change that system and improve players’ rights. They were deathly afraid of being infected with the American agent disease. Finally, there was the players’ social mindset itself. Very few players wanted to be the nail that stuck up to challenge the system. Thus, the arbitration and free agency systems in place in Japan could realistically be described as a joke.

One could logically blame this sad state of affairs on the failure of the great superstars Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Masaichi Kaneda, and Katsuya Nomura to change baseball when they had enough power to do so. They did absolutely nothing to organize players’ rights, instead allowing themselves to be influenced by ownership and, as many critics charged, by getting paid under the table for their cooperation.