Sadaharu Oh Against Major League Talent

A brief look at the past

Sadaharu Oh Against Major League Talent

While researching today’s video, I came across some interesting statistics about Sadaharu Oh’s performance against major league pitching in exhibition games. The following comes from Jim Albright’s excellent research:

25 home runs in 338 at bats is quite impressive, as is the fact that he was walked 88 times. Note that this includes a quiet 8 game series against the San Francisco Giants in 1960, when a 20 year old Oh went 0 for 12 and struck out 8 times. It also includes 6 at bats as part of a Japanese All Star Team in 1979, when Oh was nearly 40 years old and didn’t manage to hit anything.

Of course, we can find American newspaper coverage of at least some of these games. For example, there was this coverage of the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers postseason tour of Japan:

From The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), November 17, 1966, page 16

The Dodgers were missing both Koufax and Drysdale, which puts a bit of an asterisk on their performance. However, it’s still pretty notable that the Yomiuri Giants went 4-3 in 7 games against the World Series winners.

The San Francisco newspapers had extensive coverage of the San Francisco Giants’ trip to Japan in spring 1970:

Above from The San Franscisco Examiner, March 20, 1970, page 59

The two Giants teams played against each other only once — and Oh, who was in his prime, was the clear standout:

From The San Francisco Examiner, March 21, 1970, pages 27 and 28

Willie Mays had a lot of positive things to say about Oh:

From The San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1970, page 45

And then there was this from 1974:

From The New York Daily News, October 27, 1974, page 164

It doesn’t mean all that much, of course. A few exhibition games aren’t the same thing as the rigor of a complete campaign.

Still — you’ve got to admit that Sadaharu Oh knew how to hit.