Hideo Nomo Hideo Nomo Hideo Nomo (野茂 英雄/Nomo Hideo, born August 31, 1968 in Minato-ku, Osaka, Japan) is a retired Japanese baseball pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball (MLB). He achieved early success in his native country, where he played with the Kintetsu Buffaloes from to . He then exploited a loophole to free himself from his contract, and became the first Japanese major leaguer to permanently relocate to Major League Baseball in the United States, debuting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in . Although he was not the first Japanese person to play baseball professionally in the
History of baseball outside the United States Hideo Nomo, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, Kenji Johjima, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, and Masahiro Tanaka. Japan defeated Korea to become champions of the second World Baseball Classic on March 23, 2009 in Los Angeles. Baseball was introduced in the Philippines shortly after the start of American rule in 1898. In 1954, the Philippines won the first Asian Baseball Championship, its only ever victory. Since the 1960s, it struggled to keep up with Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese teams. While the Philippines remained high for an Asian country in the World Baseball Classic rankings, it