Curse of the Home Run King

Is this another curse of legendary home run king, Sadaharu Oh, whose sir name actually means king? The commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball, Ryozo Kato, announced his resignation in the climax of regular season of this year, taking responsibility of the scandal over changing the regulation on official ball used in each game. Why did he do that in this timing? One hint would be that it was made four days after a foreign slugger broke the annual record of home runs of fifty-five achieved by Oh in 1964.

Kato explained his stepping down as a consequence of the scandal, in which he said he had disturbed many related people. The scandal was exposed in June. Answering the request of Players Union about doubts on apparent difference of the impact of official balls this season, the board of NPB admitted the change. Although the Secretary General of the organization revealed that he had consulted the commissioner about the change, Kato denied his acknowledgement on it. Regarding it as inappropriate for the commissioner, the Union demanded Kato’s resignation. It was the story before this summer.

So, the question is why now? Obedience to the Union meant a defeat of the commissioner, which he had rejected. He could not delay the decision, on the other hand, until the investigation committee would submit report on the scandal later this month, because it would be dishonorable for him to be pushed out of the organization. If he would choose to step down in a manner of taking responsibility for causing new home run record by a foreign player, he could save his face as a patriot.

Actually, foreign players have been deterred from overtaking seasonal home run record. Randy Bass, a distinguished home run maker of Hanshin Tigers, suffered from consecutive intentional bases of balls at his fifty-fourth home runs in 1985. He recalled that Japanese pitchers had been threatened to be posed $1,000 penalty, if they hurled a strike ball to him. Two other foreign players also were blocked at their fifty-fifth home runs in 2001 and 2002.

This year, Wladimir Balentin broke the record, may be with a help of juiced balls. It was possible that pro-baseball community in Japan looked for a person who was responsible for Japanese version of the Curse of Bambino to be broken, and Kato might have voluntarily made himself a scapegoat of this finger pointing, rather than being ousted from the organization. It would be baseball fans that suffer from the deception of secret renewal of official balls this year. Kato left a bad taste in the mouth just as a hidden-ball trick.