Beyond 756: Next Stop, The Road To 869
Part II
 



Misconceptions are a part of reality that stems from people's lack of knowledge about a particular subject or issue.

    Here's one myth and misconception tossed around: Barry Bonds kidnaps children, chops them up and puts them in his mother's famous chili.   He's been demonsterized as a cantankerous, truculent and pompous jerk as well as an inconsiderate teammate.  But I digress... 

    Right now it seems appropriate to address and inform you on the misconception of Barry Bonds as baseball's home run champ, yet this has nothing to do with steroids, asteriks, BALCO, HGH or Jose Conseco.  

    More and more frequently, the once exclusive 500 home run club has seen it's membership breached at a blistering pace over the past 15 years, while the 300 win club has seen it's membership possibly completely halted, there is one mythical club in baseball which even Barry Bonds has not grazed, even as he continues lumberjacking baseballs out of San Fran and beyond until his home run totals have surpassed mythical proportions. 

    However, he is no more the Home Run champ than the San Antonio Spurs are basketball's World Champions.  (Last time I checked Argentina's national team was the reigning Olympic Gold Medalist while the US has come away with a pair of dull bronze medals in the 2004 Olympics and at the 2006 FIBA World Championships.) 

    Unfortunately, the emotional lovefest has to end sometime and now the real home run chase begins but not for A-Rod, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera or Prince Fielder but for Barry Bonds who is still not yet Baseball's Home Run King. That title belongs to the Nippon Professional Baseball League's Sandurah Oh who accumulated 868 career home runs during his prestigious career in Japan as a 5-11, 180 pound 1st basemen. 

    In the post game press conference after hitting his 756th home run, Bonds who is having a dissapointing season by his standards offered up a scary thought to opposing pitchers when he remarked,  "Now I'm gonna hit a lot better[without the pressure]."  Well, he's going to need to if he expects to become Baseball's True Home Run King.

    Negro League's star and Baseball Hall of Famer Josh Gibson's plaque says he hit "almost 800" homers in his 17 year career, although the home runs are not recognized as Major League achievement, Gibson is still considered one of the best home run hitters of all time. He is credited with several amazing years, slugging 69 home runs in 1934 and batting .467 with 55 home runs in 137 games in 1933. His lifetime batting average is said to be higher than .350, with other sources putting it as high as .384, the best in Negro League history. It was reported that he won nine home-run titles and four batting championships playing for the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. In two seasons in the late 1930s, it was written that not only did he hit higher than .400, but his slugging percentage was above 1.000.

    Unfortunately, there is no sufficient statistical base to do proper statistical projections for Negro Leaguers therefore baseball historians have relied heavily anecdotal evidence to choose Negro Leaguers for induction to the Hall of Fame. 

    For example one tale goes like this: In the last of the ninth at Pittsburgh, down a run, with a runner on base and two outs, Gibson hits one high and deep, so far into the twilight sky that it disappears from sight, apparently winning the game. The next day, the same two teams are playing again, now in Washington. Just as the teams have positioned themselves on the field, a ball comes falling out of the sky and a Washington outfielder grabs it. The umpire yells to Gibson, "You're out! In Pittsburgh, yesterday!"

    While the old Negro League storyteller's spin the tale of Josh Gibson's achievement of almost 800 career home runs, Oh is the only documented and validated member of baseball's 800 HR Club.  

    In a league which emphasized the art of small ball, de-emphasized the long ball and where the pitchers are considered the best prospects, Oh was the ultimate home run hitter and more so than Barry Bonds, the epitome of a winner.   

 

    Oh's single season record of 55 HR's pales in comparison to to Roger Maris' single season 61 HR's, Mark McGwire's 70 in '98, Barry Bonds' 73 in 2001 or even Ryan Howards 59 in 2006.

    The man was a master of his craft, the supernova of his generation, Asia's Babe Ruth-like figure and a Japanese legend.  As one of the foremost figures in the history of Japanese baseball along with his powerful hitting prowess the comparisons to Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron are inevitable. 

    Oh who spent his entire playing career with the Yomiuri Giants(Japanese baseball's NY Yankees) led the Japanese Central League's in home runs fifteen times, for thirteen consecutive seasons and also drove in the most runs for thirteen seasons. More than just a power hitter, Oh was also a five-time batting champion, and won the Central League's batting triple crown twice. With Sadaharu Oh at first base, the Yomiuri Giants won eleven championships, and Oh was named the Central League's Most Valuable Player nine times and to the All-Star team eighteen times.

    Oh’s dominating regular season performances helped his teams win the Central League 14 times, thereby earning a berth in the Japan Series against the best team from the other Japanese league, the Pacific League.  Oh’s teams won 11 of those series, and he was the MVP of the series once.  He played in 77 Japan Series games and hit .281 with 29 homers in 242 at bats with an on base percentage of .465 and a slugging percentage of .665.  He scored 58 times and drove in 63 runs. 


    Oh was such a prominent player in Japan, it was speculated that umpires would often give him four strikes per plate appearance.  Late in his career umpires so respected Oh’s command of the strike zone that if Oh took a close pitch, it must have been a ball.  However, in his defense much the way NBA refs turn a blind eye to the occasional traveling in the lane and superstars are afforded a high rate of foul calls in their favor, he had to earn that respect to get those calls.
 

    As simple as it may be to place an asterik next to his accomplishments because of the quality of pitching in Japan, the same could be said for Babe Ruth who played during an era in American Baseball when quality African Americans as well as Latin Americans were banned from playing in the Major Leagues.

    In my opinion Babe Ruth's 715 career home runs was like winning the Boston Marathon without any Kenyans running in the race. It should also noted that Japanese players of Oh’s time trained at a level major leaguers of the same era would have regarded as fanatical, which would have given him a higher level of endurance late in the season when other players were beginning to fatigue and greater strength than the average player of his size and stature.

    The question which looms over the baseball like Dennis Rodman's Basketball Hall of Fame candidacy is does Sadaharu Oh belong in Cooperstown?  It's likely Barry Bonds will be a Hall of Famer, but the conundrum continues will Oh be joining him?

    Oh never had the opportunity to play Major League Baseball in America because of Japan's de facto ban on player defections to the U.S. , however, recent rocket science attempts have been made to translate Oh's Japanese League statistics to MLB projections. 

    Regardless of the calculations, baseball gurus and players who faced Oh have alll conceded that his blend of power, and average wuld have made him one of the best 1st basemen in MLB history.  Keep in mind the projections below assume Oh would not have reached the majors until he was 22 instead of as a 19 year old teenager, thus eliminating the first three seasons of his illustrious career.

Games    AB      Hits        2B      3B        HR      TB      walks      avg      OBP      Slg
2995     9939       2778     372       39     527       4809       2235     0.279       0.412       0.484

    Though Oh had the benefit of playing in the Japanese major leagues as early as age 19, and never received walks at a rate similar to Bonds, thus giving him more opportunities at bat, Oh did so playing in a league which schedules between 130, 135 or 140 regular season games per year.  Baseball Hall of Famers such as Pete Rose, Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson among others have attested to his remarkable hitting ability, which was perfected with the aid of a samuri.

    But we're not here to play that game and it's not fair to Oh, who did what he could against against the quality competition he had in front of him.  Let's not forget, Japan is the defending champion at the inaugural World Baseball Classic.  

    From the Baseball Guru: Oh wasn’t blooping fly balls over short fences, either.  There is a breakdown which purports to estimate the length of Oh’s homers in the book by Tetsuya Usami entitled Oh and Nagashima:  Every Record, it has been translated to English and posted here. According to that chart, 191 of Oh’s homers were hit 394 feet or more, which would have put them out over the fence in straightaway right in almost every major league park of Oh’s time, much less down the right field line.  Another 286 were hit 361-393 feet, which means many to straightaway right would have gone out, and virtually all down the right field line would have been out of every major league park.  Another 289 would have gone out of most major league parks if they had been pulled to the right field corner (361-393 feet).  Only 102 were less than 328 feet, and even a few of those would have gone out down the right field line in some major league parks, like Yankee Stadium.  Don’t forget, too, that one of the hallmarks of Japanese pitching of Oh’s time is they didn’t throw as hard as major leaguers.  That means Oh was generating more of his own power to propel the balls that far than he would have to against major league pitching.

    In Japan Oh is 14th in career batting average, 1st in runs scored, 3rd in hits, 1st in homers, 1st in RBI, 1st in walks, 3rd in doubles, 4th in at bats, 1st in slugging percentage, 1st in total bases, and 2nd in plate appearances.  Not only that, but his first place marks over second place are often by large margins:  311 runs scored, 211 homers, 182 RBI, 547 total bases, 43 points of slugging average, and 915 walks.

    The night Barry Bonds hit his 756th, San Francisco, ironically a city with a considerably large Asian population celebrated as the world watched but now you know what the rest of the world knows.  Long live Sandurah Oh, Baseball's Undisputed Home Run King. 

--D.J. Dunson Jr.

Quote of the Week
Erin Andrews: "You will now be forever linked to Barry Bonds what'll that be like?" 
Mike Bacsik: "You know we'll go out, have dinner, golf. You know... the usual." 

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