Oh and Kuriyama call for change as Japan’s baseball landscape shifts

Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh poses during a press conference in Tokyo on Friday. | AFP-JIJI

Nov 13, 2026

If Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh, who hit a world-record 868 home runs during his career with the Yomiuri Giants from 1959 to 1980, had played today, he might have been among the many players to leave Japan for MLB.

The trend that began in earnest with Hideo Nomo’s move to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the mid-90s has only grown since then, with NPB’s top stars leaving Japan and an increasing number of amateur players bypassing the Japanese game.

The outflow of young talent has sounded alarm bells for many about the future of Japanese baseball. But former NPB manager Hideki Kuriyama, whose protege Shohei Ohtani is the player so many of the MLB hopefuls are trying to emulate, says that instead of fighting against the tide, Japanese baseball should use the current moment as a way to make itself better.

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