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
South Africa national baseball team 17th November 1945, a South African exhibition team made up of players from the Transvaal, Natal, Eastern and Western Province provinces took on a US Navy team from the USS Tennessee and USS California battleships. 'Nearly 20,000 cheering fans witnessed the principal game, which the ships company was hard pressed to win by two tallies (six to four)'. In Johannesburg, on 19th March 1950, the Australian cricket team ended their tour with a baseball match against a combined South African baseball team, in front of a reported record crowd of 12,000. During a visit to Battle Creek in Michigan, USA