Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh, also known as Wang Chen-chih, is a retired Japanese–Chinese baseball player and manager who played 22 seasons for the Yomiuri Giants in Nippon Professional Baseballfrom 1959 to 1980. Oh holds the world lifetime home run record, having hit 868 home runs during his professional career. He established many NPB batting records, including runs batted in, slugging percentage, bases on balls, and on-base plus slugging. In 1977, Sadaharu Oh became the first recipient of the People's Honor award. He...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth20 May 1940
CountryJapan
Since Korea won two games, we felt we had to win tonight's game. And Tamura's three-run home run in the first inning took off the pressure.
I did mention small ball, but I didn't think we'd need it in this round because we are the most powerful team. In Asia, we're strong and we have speed and we were able to show that tonight. When we get to the United States, we may have to change our tactics.
We gave everything we had. We learned that our opponents' desire was higher than ours.
This was for all of the fans back home in Japan.
It's unfortunate the play was overruled. It's just unimaginable this could have happened, this did happen, in the United States, where baseball is very famous and very popular.
It's just unimaginable that this could have happened, or this did happen, in the U.S. where baseball is very famous and popular. And it's a pity that it was overruled.
It will be a very tough competition. The level of play will be very high and there will be teams that want to beat us, so we knew we had to go with a strong team.
We heard that TV ratings for our games surpassed 30 percent and 40 percent in Japan and we also got warm fan support in the United States. I feel very happy that we responded to such enthusiastic support with this title.
We have a saying in Japanese that 'the third time will reveal the truth' and since we've lost twice to South Korea and both were games that we lost by one run and gave up two runs in the eighth inning, we would love the opportunity to meet them again and win.
We respect that they fought their heart out to show the best game ever.
We struggled to score runs against some very good pitching.
Tomorrow if we can win, we'll be happy. What happened (on Sunday), happened. It's in the past now and it's time to move on.
They've been supporting us so much. That's why we were able to accomplish this. So we'd like to share this great moment with all those fans back home in Japan and also here.
There was a wrong impression of Ichiro that he is sort of selfish. But as people can see, he really committed himself to this team, and he put so much time into this.