Sachio Kinugasa

Sachio Kinugasa (1947-2018), Japanese baseball player. Kinugasa was born in Kyoto, the son of a Japanese mother and an African American soldier. His father abandoned the family when he was young, and he spent years studying English in the hopes of traveling to America to meet his father, but that never happened. Like other children of black ancestry born in Japan during and after World war II, Kinugasa suffered racial abuse during his childhood. He turned to sports to escape these problems, initially competing in judo but then shifting to baseball. Inspired by his favorite player, San Francisco Giants star Willie Mays, he twice led his high school to the national championship series before signing with the Hiroshima Carp of the Nippon Professional League, Japan's equivalent of the major leagues. After several years in the minors, he made his major league debut in 1968. Kinugasa initially played first base but then moved to third base, where he won several fielding awards. He also became one of the best home run hitters and base stealers in the league, leading the Carp to five championships between 1975 and 1986 and winning the Most Valuable Player award in 1984. He used a long, aggressive swing that led to many strikeouts and was considered more American than Japanese, but his batting coach refused to tamper with it, saying "Kinugasa wasn't really Japanese, so it couldn't be helped." This statement aptly summarized his treatment in Japanese society. Although people of African ancestry were often mistreated, he became immensely popular with fans, who nicknamed him "Tetsujin" ("iron man") after a comic book robot who in America is known as Gigantor. This name came in honor of his durability. Between 1970 and 1987 he did not miss a single game, playing through broken bones (including a shoulder blade), the flu, and countless strains. On one occasion doctors ordered him not to play after being hit in the back with a pitch, but he took the field anyway, saying "If I had played and swung the bat, the pain in my shoulder would last only an instant. If I had to stay home and watch the game on TV, I'd hurt all over for three hours."

In 1987, Kinugasa broke Lou Gehrig's world record of 2,130 consecutive games played. On the day of the record-breaking game he took the field to thunderous applause, was presented with bouquets by both teams, and bowed to the spectators, saying "I thank God for making it possible for me to play baseball." Although American baseball fans had dismissed another Japanese player for breaking the world home run record, saying that the Japanese league had smaller ballparks and inferior pitching, no one could doubt the validity of Kinugasa's accomplishment, which had taken two years longer than Gehrig's. When he retired in 1987 he not only held that record but was also ranked in the top ten in Japanese history for home runs, hits, and runs batted in; he was also the all-time leader in strikeouts. That same year he received the People's Honour Award, given by the prime minister for excellence in sports and entertainment. After his retirement he wrote newspaper articles on baseball and became a popular sports commentator. In 1996 his world consecutive games record was broken by American player Cal Ripken, Jr. Kinugasa attended the game at which this happened, threw out the first pitch, and told reporters "The point of having records is for new players to come along and break them." He also frequently worked with Ripken in youth baseball clinics in Japan and the U.S. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996, he was the first player to have his number retired by the Carp, and a baseball stadium in Nagasaki was named after him. His success helped pave the way for African Americans like Cecil Fielder and Leon Lee to become star players in Japan and for the accomplishments of other people of black and Japanese ancestry like tennis star Naomi Osaka and beauty pageant winner Ariana Miyamoto. Sachio Kinugasa died of colon cancer in 2018. One member of the government summarized his legacy by saying, "He performed exactly as one would expect of someone called 'Iron Man'...Because he always worked his utmost to the very end, I feel he truly was an iron man."

©David Brodnax, Sr.