Nippon Professional Baseball players like the Lee brothers, Leron Lee and Leon Lee, Greg "Boomer" Wells, Randy Bass, and Ralph Bryant playing key roles on their NPB teams. In 1995, star pitcher Hideo Nomo "retired" from the Kintetsu Buffaloes and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Nomo pitched over the span of 14 seasons in the Major Leagues before retiring in 2008. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1995. He twice led the league in strikeouts, and also threw two no-hitters (the only Japanese pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Major League Baseball until Hisashi Iwakuma achieved the feat in
World Series Baseball '95 Also, players are selected to the All-Star Game purely based on statistics from the first half of the regular season. Unlocking a code allows a fictional team in exhibition mode. In Japan, this game is sponsored by Hideo Nomo and is called "Nomo's World Series Baseball" in English and "Nomo Hideo no World Series Baseball" in Japanese. The players are asked how many innings they want to play and if they need a designated hitter prior to starting the game among other options like an optional digitized voice (for all the umpire's decisions) and the way that the game is