With all the hoopla over Barry Bonds's chase of Hank Aaron's home run record, you seldom hear the name of Sadaharu Oh.
You should. We all should.
The guy's not gettin' proper props on this homer thing.
A fellow by the name of Jim Albright, at his BaseballGuru.com, makes an impressive case for Oh's enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I concur. Oh-san belongs there.
My introduction to Mr. Oh (as opposed to my clumsy intro to Ms. O in my youth, HAHAHAHAHA) was about twenty years ago, in the superb biography Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball by Sadaharu Oh and David Falkner. (It's actually quite difficult to find this truly excellent book; I should check out that blogger again who was paring down his library for free; now who was that?).
Oh suffered discrimination because of his mixed ancestry; was a pitcher early on, just as Babe Ruth was; played through excruciating pain in a critical game; and -- get this -- swung a samurai sword at a tissue dangling from a string tied to the ceiling to perfect his swing. The key is waiting, waiting. Very Zen. Very Haruki Muakami. Oh. And he hit 868 homers. That's 8-6-8.
Anyway, great baseball players (including Tom Seaver, Davey Johnson, Pete Rose, Hal McRae, Don Baylor, Frank Howard, Greg Luzinski, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and Don Dyrsdale) have attested to Oh's greatness -- and have all said he would have excelled even in American Major League Baseball. (This is underscored now by all the great Japanese players forging very fine careers over here. Many players can be named. I personally saw Masanori Murakami play at Shea Stadium with my brother in 1964 before a crowd of more than 50,000. It was not only Murakami's debut; he was the first Japanese-born player to play in an American game. And, according to the linked story, he said it was easier to pitch in the U.S. than in Japan.)
So, why the cold-as-fresh-shushi shoulder?
The youth of sports reporters? Xenophobia [which isn't very Zen-like; and why doesn't that word start with a Z, huh?]? Just-plain ignorance?
Don't know.
But, way to go, Mr. Oh!
