Kunio Shimoda…I hear the Trost - Levine regime is hiring.

After months of denial and an inexplicably huge surge in home runs, Japan’s baseball chiefs have admitted they secretly switched the design of the ball to make the game more exciting.

Players and fans had repeatedly quizzed Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) bosses after seeing a 40 percent rise in the number of balls that were slugged out of the park so far this season.

In April NPB said the specifications of their ball—each of which ...

A-Rodzilla?

Apparently there was a team interested in acquiring Alex Rodriguez during the offseason, prior to the Yankees disclosing his hip injury and long before the Biogenesis scandal.

Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks contacted the Yankees “through an intermediary” in November to express an “interest in obtaining” A-Rod, according to the New York Times.

New York chose not to return serve due to Rodriguez’s injury, which likely would have ended talks right then and there, the ...

I thought only industry insiders voted for The Reuben Sturman Award.

Hideki Matsui, Most Valuable Player in the 2009 World Series, and his former manager Shigeo Nagashima received Japan’s People’s Honor awards at a ceremony today in Tokyo, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Matsui set a record for Japanese players with 175 home runs in 10 Major League Baseball seasons, seven with the New York Yankees, after smashing 332 homers in 10 seasons with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan. Nagashima, who ...

According to Baseball America’s Ben Badler, Japanese high school pitcher Tomohiro Anraku has taken on a workload this week that might make Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo pass out or consider checking into an institution.

In just five days, the 16-year-old Anraku has been asked to throw an astounding 22 innings and 391 total pitches during tournament play in his home country.

Then ran 3 miles to school uphill in the snow.

We’re not in Sarkhan anymore!

The March 7 decision by Japanese baseball’s executive committee to drop the 3½-hour time limit on extra-inning games came as welcome news. We have observed the second anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, the subsequent tsunami and nuclear power plant problems that led to a period of setsuden (power-conservation measures).

In spite of the passing of the two-year mark, however, normalcy has not returned in some places. For example, ...

Two-time defending World Baseball Classic champion Japan endured a scare on Saturday one week before the start of the 2013 tournament, but backup catcher Ryoji Aikawa rescued his team with a three-run, eighth-inning homer in a 3-2 victory over Australia.

Koji Yamamoto’s Samurai Japan prevailed in the first of its two exhibition games as the teams prepare for the start of the WBC on March 2. Japan will open the defense of the titles won in 2006 and 2009 in Fukuoka in Pool A, while Australia ...

It would have gone even worse if they were facing the Gyarados.

Koji Yamamoto’s hopefuls for Samurai Japan in the upcoming World Baseball Classic got off to a lackluster start Sunday, falling 7-0 in a warmup game against the Hiroshima Carp.

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles right-hander Masahiro Tanaka allowed two runs on three consecutive hits in the first inning at Sunmarine Stadium.

“I was a little off from what I had imagined,” said Tanaka, who went 10-4 with a 1.87 ERA for the Eagles ...

With the third World Baseball Classic less than three weeks away, the 33 invitees to manager Koji Yamamoto’s Samurai Japan training camp will gather Thursday in Miyazaki and begin training the following day.

For comparison, most of the western teams don’t gather for national team camps until early March, when the Asian brackets will already be playing games.

Explains why one of the better MLB bat-flips I’ve seen came from, of all people, Dodgers LHP Hong-Chih Kuo after he took John Maine yard in 2007.

It’s interesting that this is acceptable in Japan, where scores of Western movies have taught me that they’re big on honor and subtlety. In MLB, these bat flips would be considered showing up the pitcher and would lead to brushbacks the next time up. Oh ####: Vicente Padilla just signed with a Japanese team. This could get bloody.

Tony “Takitani” Plush?

A pair of players who played for the Brewers the past two seasons have found new homes for the 2013 season.

Outfielder Nyjer Morgan has agreed to a $1.6 million contract with the Yokohoma BayStars of Japan’s Central League, and right-hander Shaun Marcum reportedly has signed a one-year deal with the New York Mets.

Morgan, 32, had a big year for the Brewers in 2011, batting .304 over 119 games. Morgan also delivered one of the biggest hits in franchise history when ...

Former major league pitcher Masumi Kuwata has spoken out against corporal punishment in sports following the suicide of a Japanese high school student who endured repeated beatings by his basketball coach.

Good for Kuwata.

Kosuke Fukudome was re-introduced to the media on Saturday as the Central League’s Hanshin Tigers unveiled their biggest offseason signing.

The 35-year-old outfielder met the media after signing a three-year deal that will pay him ¥150 million next year with additional performance-based incentives. Second-year Tigers skipper Yutaka Wada also attended the press conference that attracted roughly 100 members of the media.

“My feelings are split 50-50. On the one hand my mind is clear. I ...

Ichiro has a museum too. And Hideki Matsui. What US baseball players have museums besides Babe Ruth? Don’t Bob Feller and Yogi Berra have museums?

Things got a little steamy today at the press conference introducing new A’s shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima:

Susan Slusser@susanslusser
Nakajima says he wanted to sign with #Athletics because “Billy Beane is extremely sexy and cool.”

18 Dec 12

Susan Slusser@susanslusser
And now Billy Beane calls Nakajima “extremely sexy and cool.” Best press conference ever. #Athletics

This puts the hard in hardballtalk.

Kaat Said: Orientalism.

A couple of short stories about Asian pitchers and Irabu: I was announcing Yankee games in the mid-90s when I said over the air, “I wonder if we’ll ever see an Oriental position player in the Major Leagues?” Dion James was playing for the Yankees at the time, and told me about an exciting 19-year old named Ichiro Suzuki who had a chance to be the first. We all know that story. Big fan of Bernie Williams from watching Yankee games in Japan. Wears number 51 because ...

Apparently there’s an opt-out for Darvish after the fifth season.  All seems fair enough.

The Texas Rangers and Japanese pitching star Yu Darvish have agreed on a six-year contract, the team announced Wednesday.

The deal is worth close to $60 million, one major-league source confirmed to FOXSports.com. It does not include deferred money.

This “slugger” hit four home runs and slugged .360 in 643 PAs. In Japan.

The Milwaukee Brewers have signed three-time year contract with a club option for 2014.

The Brewers won the negotiating rights to Aoki on December 19.
The 30-year-old Aoki has played his entire eight-year professional career with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, batting .329 with 84 HR, 385 RBI and 164 stolen bases in 985 games.

The Central League batting champion in 2005 (.344), 2007 (.346) and 2010 (.358), Aoki won the CL ...

The Athletics and Seattle Mariners open the regular season with a two-game series at Tokyo Dome on March 28-29. Many hoped the series would feature a showdown between Matsui and countryman Ichiro Suzuki, but Melvin said the A’s likely wont be re-signing the 37-year-old free agent Matsui.

“Matsui was a great fit for us last year and we all loved having him on our team,’’ Melvin said at a press conference on Monday to promote the series. “But this year it doesn’t look like a fit for us based on ...

The Yankees announced on Thursday that they were unable to sign infielder Hiroyuki Nakajima, who will instead continue to play for the Seibu Lions of Japan’s Pacific League.

“We unfortunately could not come to an agreement with Hiroyuki,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in a statement. “We wish him the best of luck during the upcoming 2012 season.”

The Yankees acquired the rights to negotiate with the 29-year-old Nakajima through the posting process on Dec. 7, offering a reported ...

The Texas Rangers won the rights to negotiate with star Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish by placing a record $51.7 million bid in a posting auction, sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Darvish’s team in Japan, the Nippon Ham Fighters, will accept the bid, which means the Rangers have 30 days to negotiate a contract with Darvish. If they cannot work out a deal, Darvish would return to Japan for the 2012 season and the Rangers would be refunded the posting fee.

The identity of the team that won the right to negotiate with Yu Darvish has yet to be revealed, but it was not the Nationals. Washington did not submit a posting bid, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, opting to stay on the sideline of a sweepstakes that will cost whomever lands the Japanese superstar upward of $100?million.

Damn it.

By the way, there’s another wonderful WaPo headline for Andy. Time to go back to grammar school.

Hardly seems fair that large market teams like the Brewers can just replace their MVP left-fielder with a three-time batting champ.

The Brewers reportedly submitted a winning $2.5 million bid to negotiate with Japanese outfielder Norichika Aoki, a three-time Central League batting champion with the Yakult Swallows.

According to a tweet by Yasuko Yanagita of Hochi Shimbun, the Swallows announced that they accepted the Brewers’ bid for Aoki. The Brewers now have negotiating rights for Aoki for ...

This news is actually a couple of weeks old, but I’m posting it mainly because I thought people might be interested to know that a set-up man, Chunichi Dragons reliever Takuya Asao, won the MVP Award in Japan’s Central League. After the controversy about Verlander’s MVP win, and some writers questioning whether pitchers should be eligible for the MVP at all, it’s interesting to look overseas and see not a starting pitcher, not a closer, but a set-up man walk away with the hardware…

“I can’t ...

Wada relief.

The deadline for bids on Darvish is today at 5 pm (eastern time).  Passan makes the whole process sound like executives have spent several years in Australia bulding up an immunity to iocane powder just for this moment.

The Texas Rangers, for example, have told rivals they’re cash-poor this offseason. A TV deal that will net them $80 million annually doesn’t kick in until 2015. The purchase price of the team for the ownership group – jacked up in an auction by Mark Cuban – wound up tens ...