The Answer - Six Cases, Three Kinds of Penalty, and Two Players Brought Back
Of the cases involving Yomiuri players and managers between 1948 and 2000, this chronicle sets out the five in which a penalty from the league or the club is on record, together with the 1973 case of Toshihiko Yuguchi, in which the criticism was aimed not at a penalty but at the way the club handled him.
The penalties fall into three kinds. In the first, the league penalized the club: Yomiuri was fined over the Kuwata case of 1990, and is said to have been fined 100,000 yen over the Bessho poaching case of 1948 and 1949. In the second, the league penalized a player or manager: Mihara in 1949 and Gálvez in 1998 were suspended, and Bessho is said to have been barred from official games for the first two months of the 1949 season. In the third, the club penalized its own people: Kuwata in 1990, Gálvez in 1998 and Sugiyama in 2000. Kuwata and Gálvez were both used again by the club after their penalties.
| Year | Who | Case | Penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 to 1949 | Yomiuri, Bessho | Poaching | Fine; ban |
| 1949 | Mgr. Mihara | Hit a catcher | 100-day ban |
| 1972 to 1973 | Yuguchi | Died in hospital | Club criticized |
| 1990 | Kuwata | Gifts, false denial | Ban and fine |
| 1998 | Gálvez | Threw at umpire | Rest of season |
| 2000 | Sugiyama | Arrest | Released same day |
1948 to 1949 - The Bessho Poaching Case and Manager Mihara's Blow
After the 1948 season, Nankai's Akira Bessho is said to have broken off salary talks, signed a provisional contract with Yomiuri and received an advance of 100,000 yen. In the inquiry by the league's disciplinary committee, a loan note dated November 27, 1948, recording that Yomiuri had lent Bessho 100,000 yen, is said to have been found, written on the premise that he would join the club. The league is said to have treated this as tampering with a player under contract to Nankai and to have fined Yomiuri 100,000 yen before its ruling of March 17, 1949.
Because Bessho kept refusing to sign with Nankai, the disciplinary committee ruled on March 17, 1949, according to accounts of the case, that Nankai would have ten days of exclusive negotiating rights and that he would be barred from official games for the first two months of the season. His contract with Yomiuri was concluded on March 28, and Yomiuri is said to have paid Nankai a transfer fee of 210,000 yen. With the move, Bessho is said to have changed his given name from Akira to Takehiko.
On April 14, 1949, with games between the two clubs tense over the affair, a game against Nankai at Korakuen reached the ninth inning. Nankai catcher Keizo Tsutsui, running from first base, slid in a way that seemed meant to break up a double play and argued with shortstop Toshio Shiraishi. Manager Osamu Mihara appealed for interference, was turned down, and on his way back struck the still-arguing Tsutsui on the head from behind. The next day, April 15, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun called it an unprecedented disgrace for Japanese baseball.
Mihara was suspended at once, and Haruyasu Nakajima stood in as player-manager. On April 19 the league imposed a suspension for the rest of the season, but a campaign on his behalf is said to have cut it to 100 days, and Mihara was cleared on July 21 and returned on July 23. Yomiuri held on to win the game and went on to take its first postwar title in 1949. The state of the game at the time is covered in the article on baseball's revival during the Occupation.
1972 to 1973 - The Sudden Death of Toshihiko Yuguchi and Criticism of the Club
Toshihiko Yuguchi was a left-hander who joined Yomiuri as its first-round pick in the 1970 draft out of Gifu Tandai Fuzoku High School. In an intrasquad game on fan appreciation day, November 23, 1972, he was hit hard through the whole batting order and was reportedly scolded by manager Tetsuharu Kawakami and farm manager Hiroshi Nakao. He did not return to the dormitory that night, and Nakao is said to have struck him. At the year-end gathering on November 27 he stayed silent when spoken to, and the next day the team doctor reportedly diagnosed depression and he was rushed into a hospital in Tokyo.
On January 10, 1973, he is said to have been moved to Seiwa Hospital in Shinjuku, whose director was Commissioner Yushi Uchimura. He reportedly returned to the Tamagawa ground on February 15 at the club's wish and joined the Miyazaki camp on February 19, but was admitted to Seiwa Hospital again. In March, the club is said to have stopped paying his hospital costs under its internal rules.
On March 22, Yuguchi died in the hospital. The club and the hospital announced the cause of death as heart failure, and a doctor at the hospital explained it as “heart failure, a sudden death.” Rumors of suicide circulated, and about two weeks later the weekly Shukan Post ran a feature saying that it had been suicide.
Kawakami said, “Please do not blame Nakao. If it is Nakao's responsibility, it is mine,” and Uchimura said, “I examined Yuguchi two or three times myself. He was introverted. He could not assert his views and let himself be pushed around by others.” A statement in which Kawakami said that “the one small mercy is that it was not a car accident with a woman in the car” is reported to have been the decisive blow that turned criticism on the club. In the 1973 draft, four of the seven players Yomiuri chose are said to have refused to join: first-round pick Shuichi Kobayashi, second-round Yukio Kurosaka, third-round Yuji Nakamura and fifth-round Kazuo Onishi. Yomiuri's draft controversies are covered in the article on Yomiuri's draft controversies.
1990 - Masumi Kuwata's Gifts and Two Penalties, From the Club and the League
In the spring of 1990, sports papers reported that Masumi Kuwata had accepted money and gifts from an acquaintance and leaked the days he would pitch. Kuwata at first denied both, but those denials later proved false.
On March 30, the club ruled that taking the gifts and related conduct breached Article 17 (model conduct) of the uniform player contract and gave him a one-month ban from pitching after the season opened and a fine of 10 million yen. The case was also raised in the Diet. On April 2, Central League president Hiromori Kawashima fined Yomiuri 20 million yen over the Kuwata case.
At the same time, a Tokyo District Court ruling of March 28, 2002 confirms that Kuwata was not involved in baseball gambling with that acquaintance. Kuwata's troubles away from the field are covered in the article on Masumi Kuwata's off-field troubles.
1998 - Gálvez's Throw, a Suspension, and a New Contract
On July 31, 1998, Balvino Gálvez started against Hanshin at Koshien. In the bottom of the sixth, an inside fastball to Tomoya Tsuboi was called a ball, the next pitch was hit for a home run, and Gálvez protested to plate umpire Atsushi Kitta. Manager Shigeo Nagashima took him out, and on his way back to the dugout Gálvez threw a ball toward Kitta. It hit no one. He was ejected, a brawl broke out between Kitta and Gálvez, and catcher Kosuke Yoshihara, stepping in to separate them, was struck in the face by Gálvez's elbow and cut inside his mouth.
The next day, August 1, the Central League suspended Gálvez for the rest of the 1998 season, and Yomiuri also suspended him indefinitely. NPB's history of the Central League records under July 31 that he “committed the outrage of throwing a ball at the umpire and was ejected. The next day the president suspended him until the end of the season.” In the game of August 2, coach Shiro Takegami assaulted a player and was ejected, receiving a three-game suspension and a fine of 300,000 yen.
On August 4, Gálvez met club president Yamamuro at the club office for about three hours, and the club told him it would cut his pay under Article 7 (deductions for misconduct) of the uniform player contract. For Gálvez, on an annual salary of 100 million yen, four months' pay from August, the months of his suspension, an estimated 40 million yen, was expected to be deducted. Asked about a fine, Yamamuro said, “It means a pay cut.”
After the season, Yomiuri signed Gálvez again. NPB's umpires are said to have sent the league a letter of protest asking for the contract to be cancelled, but it was not withdrawn. In 1999, Gálvez became the first foreign player to start on opening day for Yomiuri. Violence against umpires and how penalties for it have changed is covered in the article on the umpire abuse problem.
2000 - Naoki Sugiyama's Arrest, and a Release and Penalties for Officials on the Same Day
On October 25, 2000, the Miyazaki-kita Police Station of the Miyazaki Prefectural Police arrested Yomiuri catcher Naoki Sugiyama, who was in Miyazaki training ahead of the Japan Series, on suspicion of indecent assault causing injury. Sugiyama denied the allegation. That morning he had handed the club a request to leave, and shortly after 3 p.m. the club accepted it and released him at the same time. Owner Tsuneo Watanabe, with effect from the same day, October 25, cut club president Yamamuro's pay by 10 percent for one year and issued a reprimand to manager Shigeo Nagashima.
The commissioner's office announced the next day, October 26, that he had been placed on the released list. A settlement was later reached with the victim, and, partly because he had already faced social sanctions, prosecution was suspended. It was the first arrest of an active player since Hiroaki Nakayama of Yokohama Taiyo in 1991.
Assessment - How the Club Recruited, How It Treated a Player, and Bringing Players Back
The first two cases read less as problems of individual players than as a question of the club's conduct. Yomiuri's recruiting method was penalized by the league as tampering, and in a game still charged with that grievance, the manager himself struck an opposing player. Yomiuri still won its first postwar title that year. How heavy the penalties were is left to the reader to judge.
In the Yuguchi case of 1973, the club's explanations and its treatment of the player drew strong criticism at the time. The scolding and the reported blow, the reported decision to send a hospitalized player back at the club's wish, the reported halt to his hospital costs, and the words of the statement were all targets, and in the following draft four of the players the club chose are said to have refused to join.
The 1990 and 1998 cases follow a pattern in which the club penalized a player and then brought him back. Kuwata returned after his one-month ban, and Gálvez, after an indefinite suspension, was signed again and started on opening day the following year. Signing him again amid what is said to have been a protest from the umpires can be read as showing where the club drew its line on violence against umpires.
In the Sugiyama case of 2000, the club accepted his request to leave and released him on the day of his arrest, and issued the pay cut for the club president and the reprimand for the manager with the same date. It did not stop at letting the player go; it also penalized a club executive and the manager.
How to Read This and Its Limits
Because these cases are old, the newspaper pages of the time have not themselves been checked. In this chronicle, facts backed by newspapers, court rulings or NPB's history of the Central League are stated plainly, while accounts that rest only on secondary sources are written as what “is said” or “is reported.”
Yuguchi's cause of death is not asserted, and where the date of a penalty is unknown, no date is given. No information about victims is included. The chronicle does not assess individual players, and its assessment is directed only at the club's policies and at the system.