As Yu Darvish threw pitches and toyed with his grips in the bullpen at Sapporo Dome on one summer day in 2005, Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters pitching coach Mike Brown came to a startling realization.
He'd never seen anything like this before.
Brown was a baseball man who had been around. He'd pitched in the majors for the Red Sox and Mariners, had been a bullpen coach for the Yankees and was on the Indians' coaching staff in 2002. He then came to Japan and was Trey Hillman’s pitching coach with the Fighters. Now he was watching the team’s first pick from the 2004 draft go to work in his first session in Sapporo since being called up. Brown had seen a lot of pitchers, but Darvish was different, which is what he’d later tell Hillman.