The Baseball Report: Bonds & Oh — Sluggers in Arms
May 25, 2007
Every baseball fan worth their “We’re No. 1” foam finger knows that 755 is among the most cherished numbers in U.S. major league baseball history. The grand figure representing the all-time home run record set by beloved slugger Hank Aaron in 1976 will soon be eclipsed by vilified San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds.
But another formidable yet all-but-forgotten number, 868, beckons on the horizon, tallying the most homers ever crashed by a single player in professional baseball history. And Bonds arguably has more in common with the man who owns the rights to that record — legendary Chinese-Japanese superstar Sadaharu Oh — than he does with Aaron.
Because Oh never ventured outside of Japan to play professionally — spending his entire 21-year career with Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants — he is rarely mentioned alongside the game’s great sluggers. The general opinion is that Oh did not compete with the game’s elite: the Japanese major leagues have strict limits on non-Japanese players. They also play in generally smaller ballparks, and Oh batted with harder “composite” bats.
What’s rarely mentioned however, is that prior to 1947, non-whites were barred from playing big league baseball in America. Also, an agreement between Japanese and American team ownership curtailed Japanese players from signing with U.S. clubs prior to 1995.
When asked if Oh should at least be in the conversation of Bonds breaking the “all-time” home run record, one Bay Area baseball broadcaster scoffed, “No. (Japan) is minor league.” But anyone who has witnessed the impact Japanese pitchers have made on American baseball in the past dozen years knows that Oh faced a good number of pitchers who were potential all-stars in the U.S.
A high school baseball prodigy, Oh received a slap of ethnic realty at age 16 when he was banned from playing in a prestigious Japanese high school tournament because his father was Chinese. Oh never forgot and never pursued Japanese citizenship, remaining a Taiwanese national. As a result, despite his Tokyo birth, Oh — like Bonds, for his notorious surliness and alleged ties to performance enhancing drugs — has never been fully embraced in his homeland.
Both spent most of their careers with one team and hit left-handed with choke-up grips, unusual for power hitters. Oh played 21 seasons in the Japan major leagues; Bonds is currently in his 21st campaign. Each had a fine batting eye, walking at record rates. Oh received 2,390 career free passes, Bonds is closing in on 2,500 bases on balls. Oh’s career on base percentage was an amazing .445. Prior to the 2006 campaign, Bonds’ was a nearly identical .443.
Both are the picture of longevity. Bonds has been roasted for getting better with age — a sign that he’s taken performance enhancing drugs, his critics claim. Oh — never accused of ingesting anything stronger than a cup of green tea — put up Bonds-esque numbers deep into his career too. From the ages 35-40, Oh socked 283 home runs. During the same age span Bonds has gone deep 292 times.
Once Bonds passes Aaron, someone is surely to bring up No. 868.
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