Sadaharu Oh, Home Run King August 15, 1977

It is as revered in the Far East as it is in Far Rockaway, N.Y.,
a cause for celebration whether your game is baseball or
beseboru. "Whether you're in America or Japan," says Sadaharu
Oh, "the home run is the ultimate challenge."

Oh in Japanese means "king," which describes the 58-year-old
Oh's rank among the nobility of home run hitters. He hit 868
homers in his 22-year career with the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo,
including 55 in 1964 to set the Japanese single-season record.
Oh developed his lefthanded stroke by repeatedly swinging a
samurai sword until he could cut a straw doll in half with one
slice. On Sept. 3, 1977, he delivered his most memorable blow.
Swinging from his familiar flamingo stance--his right foot aloft
as he awaited the pitch--he supplanted Henry Aaron as the
world's alltime sayonara leader when he deposited number 756
into the rightfield bleachers of Tokyo's Koraku-en Stadium.

Oh retired in 1980 and became the manager of the Giants in '84.
Though he guided his club to a Japan Series appearance in '87,
he resigned after five seasons. Following a stint as a
television analyst, he returned to the field in '95 to manage
the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks. He and his wife, Kyoko, who have three
adult daughters, live in Fukuoka.

With the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa being played up
on the front pages of Japan's dailies and on NHK-TV, Oh followed
this year's home run chase as if he lived on Waveland Avenue.
"The games were on television very early in the morning, so they
were hard to watch," he says. "But I always checked the
highlights." He is convinced that McGwire, despite his sumo
wrestler-like strength, would never hit 70 homers in Japan.
"Pitchers wouldn't go right at him," says Oh, who had 2,504
bases on balls during his career. "I think Mark would be very
frustrated here." He thinks McGwire, who was walked 162 times
this season, could have received at least 200 free passes from
Japanese pitchers.

Whenever Oh is interviewed by a Western journalist, he's asked
to partake in the parlor game of imagining how he would have
fared against the likes of Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver and Nolan
Ryan. "Out of four levels, my fielding at first base would have
been top-level, but my hitting would have been just
second-level," Oh says. "American stadiums are much bigger, and
everything about the game is faster. I was a fastball hitter, so
it would have been quite a challenge. But I would have liked to
have tried."

--Richard Deitsch

COLOR PHOTO: T. TANUMA [Sadaharu Oh on cover of August 15, 1977 issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED]

COLOR PHOTO: COURTESY OF FUKUOKA DAIEI HAWKS BASEBALL CLUB [Sadaharu Oh]

Oh developed his batting stroke by repeatedly swinging a samurai
sword.