Todd Hollandsworth Todd Hollandsworth Todd Mathew Hollandsworth (born April 20, 1973) is an American former professional baseball outfielder in Major League Baseball (MLB). In , he won the National League Rookie of the Year Award, setting a record as the fifth consecutive Los Angeles Dodgers rookie to do so (preceded by Eric Karros, Mike Piazza, Raúl Mondesí, and Hideo Nomo). Hollandsworth was born in Dayton, Ohio, and graduated from Newport High School in Bellevue, Washington, in . He was drafted in the third round of the 1991 Major League Baseball draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of high school. Over four
Hideo Nomo control. Instead, in 1988, Nomo joined Shin-Nittetsu Sakai, an Industrial League team representing Nippon Steel's branch in Sakai, Osaka. During this time, Nomo slept with a tennis ball taped between his fingers in order to perfect his forkball grip. Nomo honed his forkball and his control while pitching in the Industrial League. At the 1988 Summer Olympics, Nomo played for the silver medal-winning Japanese baseball team and the Kintetsu Buffaloes drafted him in . Nomo debuted with them in 1990 and was an immediate success, going 18–8 but more impressively striking out 287 hitters in just 235 innings. The strikeout