Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh
Sadaharu Oh, also known as Wang Chen-chih, is a retired Japanese–Chinese baseball player and manager who played 22 seasons for the Yomiuri Giants in Nippon Professional Baseballfrom 1959 to 1980. Oh holds the world lifetime home run record, having hit 868 home runs during his professional career. He established many NPB batting records, including runs batted in, slugging percentage, bases on balls, and on-base plus slugging. In 1977, Sadaharu Oh became the first recipient of the People's Honor award. He...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth20 May 1940
CountryJapan
I never coached a team for a tournament like this, and never thought the pressure to be so high. Baseball is the best sport. Everyone has to work together. There is nothing more wonderful than that Japanese players did such a wonderful job and showed that to everyone in the world.
If we can win, there won't be any problem, we'll be happy with that. What happened happened. It's already in the past. It's done. So it's over. So what we're looking at is in the future.
This first World Baseball Classic is a great success and it showed a lot of positives to the baseball world, but I don't really know how the Olympic committee would perceive this success.
Wada didn't really have a lot of control tonight. But that doesn't change my overall trust in him.
We gave everything we had. We learned that our opponents' desire was higher than ours.
The efforts you make will surely be rewarded. If not, then you are simply not ready to call them efforts.
At the heart of all things is love.
My baseball career was a long, long initiation into a single secret: At the heart of all things is love.
The opponents and I are really one. My strength and skills only half of the equation. The other half is theirs. An opponent is someone whose strength joined to yours creates a certain result.
I enjoy baseball more than anything and would like to be involved with it forever, but the reality is your survival is determined by how well you compete, not by your fondness for the game.
We fought each game as best as we could, and as a result we've been able to bring you good news.
We struggled to score runs against some very good pitching.
We respect that they fought their heart out to show the best game ever.
We have a saying in Japanese that 'the third time will reveal the truth' and since we've lost twice to South Korea and both were games that we lost by one run and gave up two runs in the eighth inning, we would love the opportunity to meet them again and win.