Katsuya Nomura

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Katsuya Nomura (野村克也, Nomura Katsuya^?, born June 29, 1935 in Amino, Takeno District (Present: Kyotango), Kyoto prefecture, Japan) is a baseball player and manager who has played or managed in Japan since the 1950s.

[edit] Career

During a career that spanned from 1954 to 1980, he hit 657 home runs in his career and led the Pacific League in homers eight straight seasons. He closed out 2901 hits in his career. He set the best records in pure Japanese players, but Sadaharu Oh (Taiwanese of Japanese descent) was over his home run record and Isao Harimoto (Korean in Japan) was over his hit record. In 1965, he won the league's first Triple Crown. He was a playing manager between 1970 and 1977. He was retired in 1980. He was inducted into Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.

As a leading manager, Nomura managed in three Japan Series between 1990 to 2002. He lost his job managing the Hanshin Tigers because of his wife Sachiyo's tax evasion, and then lost a position leading the Nankai Hawks due to her interference with the club.

Nomura was hired to manage the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles for the 2006 season. He is originally a person with a sharp tongue and often causes considerable controversies. Before the season even began, he got into hot water for calling Atsuya Furuta, Kazuhisa Ishii and Shingo Takatsu "homo" and for calling on the Pacific League to forbid announcement of starting pitchers before game time and the elimination of external sources for managerial use for information during the game. He also banned facial hair and brown hair dye (even though Rakuten's owner dyed his hair brown).

In 2006, he became the oldest manager in the history of Nippon Professional Baseball. In Eagles, his attitude is a little different from the past. Currently, he praises Japanese young pitcher Masahiro Tanaka.