This year's baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony was held in Tokyo on the 15th, and Nippon-Ham Fighters Chief Baseball Officer Hideki Kuriyama (64) was inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of the Expert Awards.
When discussing Kuriyama's career as a manager, one person who is inseparable from him is Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani, now the world's number one player. In the 2012 draft, his first year as manager, he forcefully selected Ohtani from Hanamaki Higashi High School, who had hoped to go straight from high school to the US. He visited Hanamaki many times and, in a document titled "Shohei Ohtani's Guide to the Dream," he outlined a development plan for the two-way player, which persuaded Ohtani to join the team. Ohtani later reflected, "If it weren't for Manager Kuriyama, I wouldn't have even joined The Fighters."
Many people have called for Shohei Ohtani to focus on pitcher or fielder, given his unprecedented dual talent, but Kuriyama stuck to his belief, saying, "I believe Shohei Ohtani will transcend the world of manga." Ohtani was instrumental in Japan's championship in 2016, winning 10 games as pitcher and hitting 22 Home Run as hitter. He then moved to the majors in 2018. He was a four-time MVP, becoming the world's best player in both name and reality. As manager of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, he led Japan to victory, with an even more evolved Ohtani at the center of the team. The memorable moment of Ohtani pitching as closer in the final against the United States was a move only Kuriyama, with whom he shares a deep bond of trust, could have made.
◆Kuriyama Hideki (64 years old) was born on April 26, 1961, in Kodaira, Tokyo. He attended Soka High School and Tokyo Gakugei University, and joined Yakult as a non-draft player in 1983. He won the Golden Glove Award in 1989 as a right-handed, switch-hitting outfielder. Due to Meniere's disease, which causes dizziness and nausea, he retired in 1990 at the age of 29. After serving as a baseball commentator and professor at Hakuoh University's School of Business, he became the manager of Nippon-Ham in 2012. He led the team to a league championship that year, a second league championship in 2016, and a Japan Series championship, winning the Shoriki Matsutaro Award. He developed Shohei Ohtani (currently with the Dodgers) as a two-way player. He retired in the off-season of 2021 and became manager of Samurai Japan in December of the same year. With Ohtani and other players, he led Japan to its first World Baseball Classic title in three tournaments in 2023. He is currently the Chief Baseball Officer (CBO) Nippon-Ham-Ham Fighters. In his 494 professional games, he had a batting average of .279, 7 Home Run, and 67 RBI. As a manager, he had a record of 684 wins, 672 losses, and 54 ties in 1,410 games. He is a right-handed pitcher and switch hitter.
◆ Expert Awards Top Voting Rate
(150 valid votes, 113 required to win = 75%)
Hideki Kuriyama 114 votes 76.0%
Akinobu Okada 95 votes 63.3%
Tokushi Nagaike 95 votes 63.3%
Boomers 61 votes 40.7%
Anniya Sohachi 36 votes 24.0%
Kenichi Tanizawa 35 votes 23.3%
Keiji Osawa 34 votes 22.7%
Isao Shibata 32 votes 21.3%
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