'Sushi Boy' Brandon Laird looking like perfect fit for Marines
Whenever Brandon Laird hits a home run, Chiba Lotte Marines fans know it's time for sushi. Laird became famous for his sushi-making home run celebration while with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and brought it to Chiba when he signed in the offseason. He's added ...
Giants beginning to hit stride ahead of All-Star break
Following a spring training game against the Seattle Mariners in March, Yomiuri Giants manager Tastunori Hara mused that the MLB club's lineup looked similar to his own. Hara was specifically referencing the Mariners using one of their best hitters, Mitch Haniger, in the No. 2 ...
Hitting for cycle no common occurrence for NPB players
Let's talk about the cycle for a minute. Shohei Ohtani made history on Thursday in Tampa, Florida, when he became first-ever Japanese player to hit for the cycle (single, double, triple and home run) in MLB. Ohtani already gets a ton of attention from Japanese ...
Hanshin's Fumihito Haraguchi has already written inspiring story in comeback from cancer
The past week was one of returns in Japanese baseball. Interleague play is back, with the annual competition between the Central and Pacific Leagues having kicked off on June 4. So is Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks pitcher Rick van den Hurk, who returned from a nagging ailment, ...
Stewart's bold move to Japan could shake up MLB, NPB
Hiroshima Carp pitcher Kyle Regnault doesn't know what he'd do if he were in Carter Stewart's cleats. Stewart, a 19-year-old pitcher from Melbourne, Florida, finalized a deal with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks on Saturday that has the potential to be groundbreaking. Stewart skipping the MLB draft ...
Stanka's family reunited with '64 MVP trophy
Joe Stanka's Pacific League MVP trophy was missing for over 30 years. He won the award with the Nankai Hawks during the 1964 season. Pitching to catcher Katsuya Nomura, "Big Thunder" went 26-7 with a 2.40 ERA and 1.08 WHIP in 277⅔ innings. He was ...
'Home Run Jizo' testament of bond between Sadaharu Oh and ailing boy
It's raining hard at Shinbanba station in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. Pouring, actually, real cats-and-dogs-type stuff. Sac Bunts is here, on the Keikyu Line platform, with Marty Kuehnert, former general manager of NPB's Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles and currently a senior GM with the B. League's ...
Home run celebrations becoming commonplace in Japanese game
Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks infielder Kenji Akashi briefly went viral across baseball late last week when he hit a three-run sayonara home run and celebrated with a backflip onto home plate. Well, near home plate, as he had to go back and actually step on ...
Playing in Japan means sacrificing family time for many NPB players
David Huff, a left-handed reliever for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, is the pro athlete in the Huff household. But his wife Lisa, he says, is the real MVP. "Not only dealing with me, with the ups and downs of a season, but dealing with kids (two ...
Swallows' hot-hitting lineup firing on all cylinders
Anyone who watched the Tokyo Yakult Swallows play this past week probably still has the Tokyo Ondo stuck in their head. When they close their eyes, they might still see a sea of small, mostly green umbrellas bobbing up and down in rhythm to ...
Fighters' experiments with openers not going well early
The ironic thing about the Seibu Lions blowing up the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters' "opener" strategy — in such a magnificent explosion of hits and runs on Saturday it might close the book on the opener — is that Fighters starter Takayuki Kato, the ...
Eagles' Takahiro Norimoto leads NPB group chasing Giants ace Tomoyuki Sugano
Tomoyuki Sugano is the best pitcher in Japanese baseball. The Yomiuri Giants ace has won the past two Sawamura Awards, hasn't posted an ERA higher 2.14 (or an fielding independent pitching over 2.80) since 2015 and is 32-13 over the past two seasons. There's no real ...
