Masanori Murakami

Masahiro Tanaka has been on a tear this spring training season, giving New York Yankees fans hope that their newly signed Japanese star will help their team get back into the playoffs. While it has become commonplace for Major League Baseball to sign Japanese players from the Nippon Professional Baseball league, things were not always this way.

In 1964, three Japanese baseball players from the Osaka Nankai Hawks arrived in Arizona at the San Francisco Giants' Spring Training camp in Casa Grande, Arizona. These three pitchers were all headed to Single-A Fresno in what was termed an "exchange-student" type of event. It was expected the the Giants would eventually send over three players as well. On September 1st, one of those three, Masanori Murakami, was called up to pitch in the bigs (pitching a scoreless inning against the New York Mets), thus becoming the first Japanese pitcher in Major League history. In that final month of the season, the southpaw had nine relief appearances, a 1.80 ERA and a save. He came back the following year, where he appeared in 45 games, starting one of them, and going 4-1 with eight saves and a 3.75 ERA.

Alas, he would not return to MLB after 1965 and that ended what could have been a potentially good Major League career. There were still fresh wounds from World War II and resentment towards Japan, with Giants manager Herman Franks receiving death threats for pitching Murakami. In fact, Franks ended up needing FBI protection for a period of time. It took another 31 years for Hideo Nomo to become the second Japanese player to play for a Major League team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.