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
Sports in Asia 1949, and reorganized into the Nippon Professional Baseball in 1950. Teams have been historically identified with their corporate owners, not where the team is based, and have often relocated to other cities. Over 50 Japanese-born players have played in Major League Baseball, including Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Koji Uehara and Hideo Nomo. The Japan national baseball team has won the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic. High school baseball is also popular in Japan. In South Korea, baseball was introduced in the 1900s and the KBO League was established in 1982. The Taiwan-based Chinese Professional Baseball League was established in