
Wally Yonamine: The Hawaiian Star Who Helped Shape Japanese Baseball
Sports Global Exchange Books- English
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A Nisei Athlete Heads Back to Japan
On June 24, 1925, Kaname Yonamine was born in Maui in the Territory of Hawaii to immigrant parents hailing from Okinawa and Hiroshima. His was a tough childhood spent on sugar and pineapple plantations, but his deep athleticism shone through from an early age, and he excelled in football and baseball competitions on Maui before heading to Oahu for education at Wallace Rider Farrington High School—an institution from which he took his nickname, Wallace, almost always shortened to Wally thereafter.
The 2008 biography Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, by the baseball historian Robert K. Fitts, is a detailed overview of the life of this pioneering athlete. Football was Yonamine’s first love, and he became the first Japanese American player to make it into the pros, opting for a contract rather than a college scholarship and taking the field as a halfback for the San Francisco 49ers in the 1947 season.
His football career was not to be, though; in the following off-season he broke his wrist playing baseball back home in Hawaii. However, this would soon open another door for him, when in 1951 he answered the call from the Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo and brought his batting skill and aggressive American base-running style to Nippon Professional Baseball.
Tokyo Giants Trivia
Kitts goes into great detail in his review of the ins and outs of Yonamine’s time playing with the Giants—baseball fans who love the trivia associated with the sport will enjoy delving into the batting averages, wins and losses in pennant races, and other data outlining the Hawaiian’s performance in the Central League. But more fascinating to most readers are the memories Yonamine shared with his biographer in multiple interviews, along with the details gleaned from the numerous sources spelled out in the book’s comprehensive bibliography.
One day in late August 1951, for instance, Yonamine stopped to sign autographs for children hanging around the Giants dugout during a home game, something few players were willing to do at the time. One 11-year-old who got an autograph that day—none other than legendary Giants slugger Oh Sadaharu—would treasure it forever, describing “the joy Wally Yonamine brought into my life one afternoon in my boyhood” as the reason he was always willing to give autographs to his own fans.
The reviewed copy of this book came complete with proof of Yonamine’s willingness to give autographs. (© Nippon.com)
More impactful facets of his career on the Japanese diamond are also discussed. Yonamine swiftly developed a reputation for fierce base-running, being one of the first NPB players to use the hook slide to avoid a tag or to come in hard, spikes up, to get the baseman to drop the ball if possible. A naturally talented hitter, he was also willing to learn new techniques from the players around him, including altering his grip to hit foul after foul on purpose, running up the opponent’s pitch count.
The success of his first season with the Giants, which took the pennant and won the Japan Series, inspired other teams to scout Nikkei American talent for their own rosters. Yonamine would be joined on the Yomiuri team in 1952 by two fellow Hawaiians, the catcher Jyun Hirota and pitcher Bill Nishita. They were not the first foreign players in the Japanese leagues—the Russia-born Victor Starffin famously became the first 300-win pitcher in the prewar and wartime era—but this postwar wave of overseas talent marked a new phase for the sport in Japan.
Changing Times on the Japanese Diamond
It would take time for these newcomers to receive the full support of Japanese fans, or even their own teams, in some cases. Despite putting up great numbers in his early seasons, Yonamine languished in popular voting for the league’s all-star squad for some years.
Kitts paints a revealing picture of Yonamine’s career as forming a bridge from one era of Japanese baseball into another. Many of his teammates in his early seasons were war veterans (including one hurler described as having wrists so strong he could “throw a grenade seventy yards”), hailing from a time when baseball was approached as an almost martial pursuit. Away games came at the end of 10-hour train rides in third-class seating, taking a brutal toll on the players—a far cry from the Shinkansen and airplane rides they were enjoying toward the end of his managing career.
Yonamine often found himself competing with the veteran Giant Kawakami Tetsuharu, the “god of hitting,” for the batting crown, and tended not to receive much respect from the senior slugger. After the 1960 season, his tenth with Yomiuri, Yonamine was let go by a team with Kawakami rising to the helm. (The Giants would dominate in the Kawakami era, winning nine straight Japan Series championships from 1965 to 1973 on the strength of batting by Oh—still cherishing his Yonamine autograph, no doubt—and Nagashima Shigeo, who the Hawaiian had enjoyed watching during his standout seasons at Rikkyō University, even as the young batting prodigy had attended Giants games, telling himself “if he could play like Wally, he would make it in professional ball.”)
The Hawaiian went on to play for the Chũnichi Dragons in the 1961 season and part of 1962, but his numbers were slumping and he and his manager agreed that his playing days were coming to an end. He would stay with the Nagoya team on and off through 1977, though, serving as batting coach, head coach, and finally manager in 1972–77, in addition to coaching stints with the Lotte Orions, the Giants, the Nankai Hawks, the Seibu Lions, and the Nippon Ham Fighters. The Giants had originally declined to keep him on as a coach following his playing days there, citing his lack of Japanese language ability, but he was clearly valued in the dugout and batting cage through the end of his career in 1988.
A Force in a Growingly Global Sport
Kitts also recounts international tours by the Yomiuri Giants in the 1950s, taking them in 1954 to Australia and the Philippines (where anger still smoldering over Japanese actions during World War II was assuaged somewhat by the presence of four US citizens on the team) and in 1955 to Latin America. International play took place on Japan’s fields as well, with teams of NPB all-stars taking on the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956 during their post–World Series tour.
Just as the war-era players made room for rising numbers of Nikkei American and other imported players in the early postwar years, and Wally Yonamine and his generation stepped aside for brilliant young players like Oh and Nagashima, once Yonamine was in his coaching era, new players arrived who would make an impact on both sides of the Pacific. Kitts describes Wally’s emotional appearance at a 1994 ceremony celebrating his induction into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, held just before that year’s all-star game, which featured the pitchers Irabu Hideki and Nomo Hideo, along with the slugger Matsui Hideki—all of whom would make their way to the Major Leagues in years to come.
In all, the book shows a convincing picture of Yonamine, who made his mark on the Japanese baseball scene as an inspiring player, an innovative coach, and a hall of famer who was additionally honored in 1998 by the Japanese government with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his “outstanding service and achievements in strengthening the bonds of friendship between Japan and Hawaii.” He passed away in his home state on February 28, 2011, at the age of 85, but a century after his birth in a poor farming community on Maui he is remembered and revered by fans around the world.
Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball
By Robert K. Fitts
Published in 2008 by University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 978-0-8032-1381-4
(Originally written in English. Banner photo: Manager Wally Yonamine, at front right, carries the Central League championship flag around Chũnichi Stadium after the Chũnichi Dragons clinch the pennant on October 12, 1974. © Jiji.)