Hideo Nomo to active status. This led to him heading to the U.S., where in February 1995, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed him. Nomo made his U.S. pro baseball debut with the Bakersfield Blaze on April 27, 1995, against the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. Placed on a 90-pitch limit, and throwing mainly fastballs, Nomo pitched 5⅓ innings, taking the 2–1 loss against the Quakes. On May 2, after a month in the minors necessitated by a player's strike, he became the first Japanese-born Major Leaguer to appear in a major league game since Masanori Murakami in . He was also the first Japanese-born
Robert Whiting "gaijin" ballplayer in Japan, entitled "Reggie", and published by Kodansha Comic Morning that sold 750,000 copies in graphic novel form. His latest work is a biography of the Japanese pitcher, Hideo Nomo, who played in the US Major Leagues and was National League Rookie of the Year in 1995. The book was published in 2011 by PHP in Japanese. (Whiting has publicly praised Nomo, asserting that the history of Japanese baseball can be split up into “pre-Nomo and post-Nomo” eras.) The English-language "The Book of Nomo" was published in January 2017. In addition to his books, Whiting has been published