Time Machine: Bump Wills and Hankyu never meshed

Oct 28, 2023

∙ Paid

This story was originally published in 1984.

TOKYO — Bump has gone. The Hankyu Braves are out $1.6 million. And another sorry chapter in the history of Nichibei baseball relations is over.

It was a classic case of misjudgment, because Bump never really did fit Hankyu. He was the wrong man at the wrong time and he was chosen for all the wrong reasons: because he had been a major-league All-Star, because his father Maury had been a major league great, and a spring coach for the Braves for several seasons, etc.

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