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
Again, it was the same right fielder who made that catch at Tokyo Dome. It changed a situation from one where we could have scored to one in which we did not. It has been indicative of the way momentum has flowed in this tournament.
This was for all of the fans back home in Japan.
We gave everything we had. We learned that our opponents' desire was higher than ours.
To be honest, I haven't felt this thrilled in a long time.
If we can win, there won't be any problem, we'll be happy with that. What happened happened. It's already in the past. It's done. So it's over. So what we're looking at is in the future.
I don't know about the politics, but since it's named the World Baseball Classic, I would like to see the Cuban team there.
Personally, I think Japan is the strongest team in Asia and we want to finish Pool A as the top team in the group.
I was really surprised the American team lost to the Mexican team.
I was really surprised that the American team lost to the Mexican team, because we thought somehow the Americans would be the world's best. And because of that notion, when we lost the second game in the second round, we never thought that we would be able to be playing in the next round here.
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.
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 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.
I thought I would never, never get a chance to manage a team like this.
That was the mindset of the entire team. We kept pushing hard and our players played with all their might.