Only one player in NPB history hit 500 or more home runs and finished his career with 300 or more stolen bases. That’s a succinct summary of what Isao Harimoto accomplished.Â
Harimoto, NPB’s all-time leader in hits (3,085), passed away on September 9 at a Tokyo hospital. He was 86.
Known as “Hit Machine,” the Hiroshima native was a model of consistency throughout his career. He had a .319 batting average, won seven Pacific League batting titles and hit .300 or better 16 times in his 23-year career (1959-81). From 1966-74, the left-handed hitter had nine straight .300 seasons, including four consecutive years in which he won the PL batting crown (1967-70).Â
In 1970, he had career-best numbers in batting (.383), homers (34) and RBIs (100).
A son of Korean immigrants who arrived in Hiroshima in 1939 during Japanese colonial rule, Harimoto spent the majority of his career with the Toei Flyers/Nittaku Home Flyers/Nippon-Ham Fighters (1959-75). The Toei portion of the team’s name was replaced by Nittaku Home for the 1973 campaign. Nippon-Ham took over the ownership prior to the 1974 season.
During this stage of his career, he established himself as a perennial All-Star and a sensational batsman, driving in 1,676 runs (fourth on NPB’s all-time list).
He retired as an 18-time All-Star and was a 16-time Best Nine Award recipient as an outfielder.
Isao Harimoto clouted 504 homers. He had 319 stolen bases in 2,752 career games.
To put his statistics in their proper context, consider this: Willie Mays (660 homers/339 stolen bases), Alex Rodriguez (696/329) and Barry Bonds are the only members of MLB’s exclusive 500/300 club.
Isao Harimoto, MVP of NPB’s second All-Star Game in 1962. (©SANKEI)
Tributes to Isao Harimoto
In recognition of his notable career achievements, the Golden Players Club, known as Meikyukai in Japanese, issued a statement upon learning of Harimoto’s death.
“He carved an immortal footprint in Japanese baseball history by becoming the first player to achieve the great feat of 3,000 hits,” read a portion of the statement.
To this day, Harimoto remains the only player to reach the 3,000-hit milestone in Nippon Professional Baseball.
In addition to his power-hitting ability and speed on the base paths, his commitment to his craft endeared him to baseball fans throughout his career. Following his retirement in 1981, he was a popular baseball analyst on TV for many years.
Isao Harimoto in a 1970 file photo. (©SANKEI)
“His overwhelming batting statistics and rigorous approach to the game earned him the affection of a wide range of fans,” the Golden Players Club noted in its statement. “Even after his retirement, he continued to convey the appeal of baseball for many years through his candid and forceful commentary as a baseball analyst and commentator.”
The Golden Players Club, founded in 1978, honors NPB standouts for their career accomplishments. Automatic induction is given to ballplayers with 2,000 or more hits, 200 or more wins and 250 or more saves. Harimoto far surpassed the first of the three benchmarks!
The Japanese national government remembered Harimoto for his fervor for baseball, both as a player and broadcaster.
“He made a big contribution to our country’s development of baseball,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said, according to Kyodo News.
Kihara added, “He was loved by baseball fans for his candid yet passionate commentary. We would like to express our renewed respect and condolences.”
The Horror of War
Decades before he became a Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1990, the Hiroshima native experienced the horror of war. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on his home city, instantly killing tens of thousands of people. Â
Harimoto remembered what he experienced as a 5-year-old on that tragic day.
“When the bomb exploded, I was at a row house in Danbara-shinmachi, about 2.3 kilometers from the hypocenter. There was a flash and an enormous roar,” Harimoto recalled in a 2011 interview with The Chugoku Shimbun. “The next thing I knew, my mother was shielding me and my sister, three years older, with her body, though her back was covered in blood due to flying shards of glass. We were urged to run, in Korean, and we fled to a vineyard.
“Even now, 65 years after the bombing, I can still vividly recall the people groaning and the strange stench. There were dozens of people in the vineyard. When I tried to go see people who were screaming for water and jumping into a canal nearby, my mother stopped me.”
The future baseball great, whose Korean birth name was Jang Hun, suffered a family tragedy due to the US military attack in World War II on Hiroshima. His eldest sister, Jang Jeom Ja, who was 12, died in the aftermath of the bombing due to exposure to the radiation.
Isao Harimoto in a November 2024 file photo. (©SANKEI)
Advocating for a Nuclear-Free World
In the 2011 interview, Isao Harimoto spoke about his involvement in efforts to push for a world without nuclear weapons.
“Because I’m part of the last generation of those who can speak from personal experience about the bombing, I felt I had a duty to hand down the truth,” Harimoto was quoted as saying by The Chugoku Shimbun. “I offered my help to a petition drive seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons and I responded to other calls for my support from peace-related organizations.”
Harimoto became a naturalized Japanese citizen within the past decade, according to published reports.
He posed a thought-provoking question in the aforementioned interview.
“Which is more important: protecting human lives or holding onto nuclear weapons?” Harimoto said. “These two things are poles apart. It’s inhuman to permit the existence of weapons that can annihilate people in an instant, when they’re just trying their best to live.”
Baseball legends Sadaharu Oh of the Yomiuri Giants and Isao Harimoto of the Toei Flyers in a 1970 file photo. (©SANKEI)
Steely Determination as a Ballplayer
When he was 4 years old, Harimoto suffered severe burns on his right hand in an accident. He was hit by a three-wheeled truck while baking sweet potatoes, The Chugoku Shimbun reported. In 2011, he remembered that his “fourth and fifth fingers became stuck together.”Â
As a result, he learned to cope with limited use of his right hand.
To play baseball, which he became enamored with as a fifth-grader in elementary school, he developed into a left-handed hitter and also started throwing with his left hand.
Eventually, Harimoto transformed into a baseball star.
He was the 1959 Pacific League Rookie of the Year, hitting at a .275 clip in 125 games.
Three years later, Harimoto was the PL MVP with a .333 average, 31 homers and 99 RBIs. And he helped lead the Toei Flyers to the 1962 Japan Series title.
NPB great Isao Harimoto in a May 1963 file photo. (©SANKEI)
After leaving the Nippon-Ham Fighters more than a decade later, Harimoto spent four seasons with the Yomiuri Giants. As Sadaharu Oh‘s teammate, he made quite an impression.
The veteran outfielder was a formidable presence in the Giants lineup, hitting .355 at age 36 in the 1976 campaign, followed by .348 and .309 the next two seasons.
After Harimoto’s passing, Oh reflected on his contemporary’s career.
“Sturdy is the best word to describe him,” Oh said, according to Kyodo News. “We saw each other as a rival and that helped us get better numbers, as well as prolonging our pro careers.”
Oh added, “He was handicapped [with the burns], but I felt his stubbornness and competitive spirit strongly at any moment.”Â
Born in May 1940, one month before Harimoto, Oh retired in 1980 as pro baseball’s all-time leader in home runs (868).Â
NPB icon Isao Harimoto encourages Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki before an MLB game at Safeco Field in April 2009. (©SANKEI)
A Legend’s Prediction Came True
Harimoto wrapped up his career with the Lotte Orions. A year before he hung up his spikes, he got his landmark 3,000th hit, a sixth-inning homer, on May 28, 1980, at Kawasaki Stadium against the Hankyu Braves.
Twenty-nine years later, Ichiro Suzuki recorded the 3,086th hit of his NPB/MLB career, one more than Harimoto’s astonishing total from his 23-year career in Japan.
On that night in September 2009, the then-Seattle Mariners star remembered something that Harimoto predicted more than a decade earlier.
“Mr Harimoto, in 1995 ― 14 years ago! ― told me, ‘The only guy who could break my record is you,’ ” Ichiro said at Safeco Field (now known as T-Mobile Park). “For him to have that vision of the future, for him to say that to a player that has only one year under his belt, I’m amazed.”
Amazing, I believe, is an appropriate word to describe Isao Harimoto’s life and baseball career.
Lotte Orions star Isao Harimoto raps his 3,000th career hit, a sixth-inning home run, against the Hankyu Braves at Kawasaki Stadium on May 28, 1980. (©SANKEI)
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Author: Ed Odeven
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