There's a brief mention of Tatsunori Hara here on ESPN.
As a young boy, Japanese manager Tatsunori Hara often raced to the library after school to read his favorite book: the biography of former American slugger Babe Ruth.
Hara idolized the bombastic American icon, and the tales of Ruth begat a love of baseball that carried Hara through a 15-year playing career with the Tokyo Giants, and later a managerial career with those same Giants.
Even now, Hara modestly smiles at the thought of those days as a boy spent learning about the American baseball game through Ruth.
But in this World Baseball Classic, Hara is trying to build his own legacy and one for his country, perhaps one that young Japanese boys will read about in books in the future.
If Hara leads Japan to a victory against the United States on Sunday in the World Baseball Classic semifinals at Dodger Stadium, then a new era in Japanese baseball will take form.
Beating a team of major league players would surely be a boost for the country's baseball morale, one that took a hit last year when a team of American minor leaguers defeated Japan twice in the Beijing Olympics, including an 8-4 thumping in the bronze-medal game that was seen as an embarrassment in the home country.
"I'm very excited about playing against the Americans," Hara said. "When I first started watching the major leagues, I was very impressed. We needed to catch up to the major leagues and then we needed to go beyond that. That was my education and the circumstances of how I played baseball. I have a great deal of respect for American baseball, and here is a great opportunity sitting right in front of me."
I don't know about you, but to me, that's a slightly patronising account of the dude. I went digging around in Wikipedia late last night and stumbled on the Japanese page for Tatsunori Hara, the current WBC manager for Japan. My memory of Hara is vague and fragmented. I heard about him a lot in the 1970s as a kid and never saw him play as a highschooler and varsity player. He set all sorts of records, so he was a little like the Nagashima of his day. He was drafted by the Tokyo Giants in 1980, making his debut in 1981.
My maternal grandfather was a big fan of the Yomiuri Giants. They're a bit like the Yankees in the sense that they're the team that sets the benchmark for fame in Japan., but being an actual Yankee fan straight back from NYC, it was a bit hohum for me. I was in Japan for only 5 months so I didn't really get a grip on who was playing or how in the NPB.
The next time I saw Hara was in August 1993, during his worst season, later in his career. He just didn't look anything like any kind of slugger, let alone hitter. This was way before anybody introduced to me to sabermetric thinking so I was left to judge players by things like Ave and RBIs alone. The stats flashed on the screen didn't look anywhere near good. Hara was somewhat better when I saw him again in 1994, but he retired as of 1995. If you look at his English page in Wikipedia you see his career average was .279, and he hit 1675 hits in 15 seasons. It doesn't even tell you his HR total, OBP or anything like that. He sure didn't hit anywhere near 500HRs, so even the impression of him as a slugger seemed weak after Sadaharu Oh hit 868, and Nagashima hit 444. Hara hit 382 - not even half of Oh's tally.
So my impression of Hara was of somebody that was more hype than substance, a player who never fulfilled the massive potential that was promised in the 1970s. I don't know how I got that in my head, but it goes to show just awful he looked in 1993, and basically how disconnected I was from Japan in the 1980s.
If you go to the lengthy entry in Japanese, there's his career chart.
The column on the far right is his OBP and the second from the right is his Slugging percentages. The guy had a career OBP of .357 and SLG of .523, peaking with an OPS of .999 in 1986.his miscellaneous awards include Rookie of the Year in 1981, a MVP in 1983, 2 Golden Gloves as a thirdbaseman. He's not quite Nagashima, but in his peak years he was slugging .570+. He also drew a good sum of walks and his K/BB throughout his career is very respectable 894/705.
The thing that gets me when I look at Hara's career is how the last 3 season sort of see him sputtering as injuries robbed him of power. One of the supsects in all this is the move by the Giants from Korakuen Stadium to the current Tokyo Dome which is on artificial turf. The artificial turf has been hard on many players, including Hara and Kiyohara, and even arguably Hideki Matsui's knees. I have a feeling Hara might have had at least 3-4 more productive years had it not been the transition to artificial turf in 1988.
Here are some links to Youtube that shows him hitting:
A collection of his homers. He's got a sweet pull swing that comes around nicely. Apart from the first shot in the montage that is hit to the opposite field, he naturally slams them into Leftfield stands.
Playlist result for Tatsunori Hara.
In 1975 as a 16-17 year old, playing in the national comp. This is his only homer at Koshien as a highschooler, but he hits a triple in the following at-bat. Goodness it's 34years ago! He crouches deeper in this video.
An At Bat in 1989's post-season. Trademark swing on a 2-2 pitch sends the ball out over left.
His final Homerun on the day he retired. He comes around on a slider fading out of the zone and takes it deep to Left. Classic Hara swing.
So I kind of wish I saw him in his best years in the early to mid 1980s but alas I was here in Australia watching cricket, so what can you say? Thanks to the wonder of Wikipedia and Youtube, I got to figure out just what kind of player he was in his heyday (and what I missed), and I'm actually bummed that I missed watching him with my grandfather who passed away in 1983. More poignantly, the man himself is now 50.
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