As most baseball fans taking the time to read this article are probably aware, the 2025 Major League Baseball season began March 18th with a quick two game series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs in Tokyo, Japan. Despite the fanfare and excitement that most were experiencing prior to the 2025 Tokyo Series, I found myself less interested in these games featuring current Japanese superstars on American teams and wondering more about the players from the past whose contributions helped pave the way for high profile international games like these to exist.
The first Japanese player I remember playing in the Major Leagues was Hideo Nomo. He was a right-handed starting pitcher who signed with the Dodgers in 1995 and found immediate success, being named the starter in the 1995 All-Star game and winning the National League Rookie of the Year award. In September of 1996, he threw the first and still only no-hitter in the history of Coors Field against the Rockies. Besides Nomo, the other early Japanese player that I could remember was a pitcher whose name I couldn’t recall but whose 1960’s baseball card I had seen in the past. This gap in knowledge led me to begin researching. Before long I was reminded that his name was Masanori Murakami. Beyond his baseball card, I really didn’t know anything about him or his story. What I found was that his journey to the big leagues was quite an adventure and had a large impact on the future of the game of baseball.
As I started looking into Masanori Murakami, I learned that the left-handed relief pitcher made his MLB Debut in 1964 at the age of 20. Listed at 6’ 0” and 180 pounds, his father, who had been a prisoner of war in Manchuria after WWII, was very strict and did not initially support his interest in playing baseball, hoping that his son would become a doctor. Not only did Masanori find ways to play and excel in baseball as a teen, he also became interested in American culture and enjoyed watching American westerns on TV. It turns out that this was relevant to his eventual journey because in 1963, after initially refusing to sign a contract to play with the Nankai Hawks of Japan Pacific League, thinking that he would go to college instead, he changed his mind when he was offered the chance to go play in America as part of his deal.
While only getting into 3 games for the Hawks during the 1963 season, he did share his spot on the roster with former big leaguers Kent Hadley, Buddy Peterson and Joe Stanka. It wasn’t until the spring of 1964 that Murakami was given a contract, written in English, and told by his manager that he would be heading to the United States to join the San Francisco Giants. Two teammates, Hiroshi Takahashi and Tatsuhiko Tanaka, were also invited to make the trip.
Spring Training for the three sounded like quite an adventure. According to the Masanori Murakami SABR Player Bio article written by Will MacLean, once the three players arrived in Arizona, their interpreter left them after only one week. Murakami and the other two Hawks, who spoke only Japanese, would have to rely on a Japanese-to-English pocket dictionary to get by. For transportation, they hitchhiked into town when they were not playing ball. Maybe these setbacks were not as daunting as one might think considering Murakami found the baseball activity to be a little boring compared to the training he was used to in Japan.
Prior to the start of the 1964 regular season, Takahashi and Tanaka were assigned to the Giants Pioneer League affiliate the Magic Valley Cowboys, while Murakami was sent to the Fresno Giants of the California League. Despite having its own set of challenges, being assigned to Fresno turned out to be a pretty good thing for Murakami. Unaware until getting deep into my research, I learned that Fresno has a rich history of “Nikkei (Japanese American) baseball”. While Masanori was there, he was able to connect with some Japanese American legends like ‘The Father of Japanese American Baseball’ Kenichi Zenimura. Though Zenimura was listed at only 5′ 0″ and 105 lb, he made a big impact on the global game in many ways, including helping organize some of the American barnstorming tours in the 1920’s that brought stars like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Japan. He had a fascinating life that you can read about in a great SABR Bio written by Bill Staples Jr.
Masanori had an excellent season for the Fresno Giants in ‘64. In 49 games he went 11-7 with a 1.78 ERA and won California League Rookie of the Year, which was good enough to get a September call up to the San Francisco Giants. His journey to join the big club was not quite as excellent and would be difficult to imagine happening to a ballplayer today. A few days before his September 1st debut, he was notified of the call up by the Fresno front office who told him he needed to fly to New York. When he arrived at the airport, no one was there to meet him. After realizing this, he took a bus to the team hotel. When he arrived at the hotel, he was initially told that he was not a registered guest.
The next day was September 1st. He was given a contract to sign just prior to the first pitch, again written in English. It took a search of the grandstands to find a fan that spoke Japanese to translate for Masanori, who signed it in time to be added to the roster for the game.
Later that night, in the bottom of the 8th inning, Masanori Murakami made his major league debut, becoming the first Japanese player to play in the Major Leagues. He threw a scoreless frame, facing four batters, striking out two and giving up only a single to Chris Cannizzaro
in a 4-1 loss to the Mets. After his debut, there was no TV coverage in Japan and only a single Japanese reporter called his hotel room, around 4:00 the next morning. He pitched in eight more games that season going 1-0 with a save and a 1.80 ERA.
Because of contract issues between the Giant and the Nankai Hawks, he was not able to start the 1965 season until May 9. By the time he joined the team the Giants were 5.5 games behind the eventual National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers. After he joined the team, they had the best record in the National League. Masanori expressed regret in an interview found on YouTube that, if he could have been on the roster from the start of the season, the Giants would have been able to top the Dodgers and take the 1965 National League pennant. With a 0.69 career ERA and 2 saves against the Dodgers, along with a .500 batting average against Sandy Koufax, he just may have a case to argue. As with many things in the game of baseball and in life, we can only speculate at what might have been.
After the 1965 season, Masanori flew back to Japan and never played in another MLB game again. He was still only 21 years old, leaving us, again, to speculate at what might have been. When his career as a player was done, he had pitched in 20 professional seasons. Among his teammates were Hall of Famer’s Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Duke Snider, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry. After his pitching days were done, he had a long career as a broadcaster and is still a great global ambassador for the game today.
The contracts that Murakami signed, written in English, included clauses that allowed the Giants to control where he played in 1964 and 1965. This created a tension between Major League Baseball and the Nippon Professional Baseball that eventually kept Japanese players from competing in the Major Leagues for over 30 years. In 1994 Hideo Nomo retired from his Japanese Pacific League club at the age of 25 and became, in essence, the first Japanese free agent. As far as what has happened with Japanese players coming to the big leagues since then, well, let’s just say that there is no need to speculate.