Video Gems: Meet Randy Bass, The Baseball MVP in Japan Who Became An American Politician
A baseball pro who never quite made it in MLB found stardom in Japan, and a lengthy tenure in the Oklahoma State Senate after his career on the diamond.
YouTube’s algorithm is responsible for creating a toxic feedback loop on a massive scale, feeding our current atmosphere of political and cultural divisiveness by propping up the bad-faith actors who most effectively. But, at the same time, the YouTube algorithm introduced me to the treasure trove that is Gaijin Baseball, so who’s really to say whether the algorithm is good or bad?
A random1 search for highlights of Nippon Professional Baseball brought Gaijin Baseball into my recommendations. It features a bevy of DIY mini-documentaries on baseball in Japan, loaded with interesting facts and historical information. If you are into that sorta thing — and given you are reading The Press Break, I suspect you are — give the channel a browse.
In the meantime, this edition of Video Gems spotlights one particularly fascinating entry from Gaijin Baseball on an American journeyman who had little more than a cup of coffee in Major League Baseball but developed into an NPB superstar.
Bass went .105 in 19 at-bats for the Minnesota Twins in 1977; was hitless in two at-bats for the Kansas City Royals in 1978 and again went without a hit in his one at-bat for the 1979 Montreal Expos. His most notable stretch in MLB was with the San Diego Padres, going 14-for-49 with eight RBI and three home runs over the final few weeks of the 1980 season. In his lone extended season at the Major League level, Bass hit .210 in 176 at-bats over 69 games for the 1981 Padres.
All that is to say Randy Bass was no Warren Cromartie, another American with MLB experience who transitioned to NPB. Cromartie, who became a cultural phenomenon in Japan as “The Black Samurai,” was a full-time starter for the Expos from 1977 through 1983 and standout of Montreal’s 1981 playoff team.
Cromartie was an established name when he signed with the Yomiuri Giants in 1983. The same cannot be said of Bass when he debuted for the Hanshin Tigers that same year. Whereas the Associated Press reported on Cromartie’s signing with an update that appeared in newspapers across both the American and Canadian sides of the border, I could not find any such fanfare for Bass going to the Tigers.
But Bass made his name known in Japan in short order. Gaijin Baseball’s breakdown explains just how excellent the Lawton, Oklahoma native was during the 1980s. He hit .320 or better in four consecutive seasons, including a 1985 in which he batted .350 with 54 home runs.
The 1985 campaign was the first of two in which Bass hit for the NPB Triple Crown, a feat unmatched in nearly 40 years since. He won Most Valuable Player of NPB’s Central League that season, becoming the first foreigner of non-Japanese lineage2 to do so. Bass was just the third non-Japanese foreigner ever to win MVP in either of NPB’s two leagues, following Greg Wells of the Hankyu Braves who won the Pacific League’s top honors a year prior; and Joe Stanka in 1964.
An interesting through line connecting Randy Bass and Stanka, who posted a 2.40 ERA and 26-7 record for the Nankai Hawks in ‘64, is that both came from Oklahoma. One doesn’t exactly think of the Sooner State as a pipeline to the Pacific. However, Stanka followed a baseball path from his native Hammon to Oklahoma State before a domestic pro career comparable to Bass’.
That is to say, Stanka had little impact on MLB; even less than Bass, actually, pitching all of two games for the 1959 Chicago White Sox.
Sports Illustrated published a feature on Stanka’s transition to Japan in 1962, and it’s a terrific read that includes the dynamic of baseball in a nation not 20 years removed from the end of an especially violent and devastating war. Randy Bass played in a much different Japan; a nation that, by the mid-1980s, was viewed as a tenuous ally but still a threat for its burgeoning economic status.
Geopolitics have to be touched on, even if tangentially, when discussing the remarkable journey of Randy Bass. That’s because after his baseball career ended with Bass firmly established as an NPB legend — and “legend” isn’t a hyperbolic term for Bass — he became a State Senator in Oklahoma.
Bass was elected in 2004 and served through 2018 until he reached the end of the state’s term limits. His notoriety in Japan remained a close part of his public identity throughout Bass’ political career: To wit, here’s an official press release from 2009 when a statue bearing his…erm, “likeness”…was fished out of a river on the other side of the world.
This statue is noteworthy because it’s a big part of why the word legend does indeed apply to Bass in Japan, and in a quite literal sense. He’s the central figure in a Chicago Cubs billy goat’esque curse of the Hanshin Tigers that only ended last year.
Hanshin won the 1985 Japan Series, besting the Seibu Lions in six games. For more Video Gems, check out the below playlist featuring each game from the Series.
The Tigers endured an almost 40-year drought after the 1985 Japan Series, attributed to a curse stemming from the statue of Kentucky Fried Chicken mascot Colonel Sanders being repurposed as a Randy Bass statue before it was pushed into a river.
Hanshin ended its championship drought last season, taking down the Orix Buffaloes in seven games despite the Game 6 heroics of Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
That the Tigers’ ended the Curse of the Colonel in 2023 of all years is apropos: In January 2023, Randy Bass was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame alongside Venezualan Alex Ramirez.
Actually, it wasn’t that random. A perhaps corny confession: I have been working on a Vision Board, part of which includes my dream of and goal to visit Japan. I plan to go in the summertime in part to visit NPB ballparks for games, and to catch New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax live.
Wally Yonamine, won Central League MVP in 1957, was born in Hawai’i in 1925.