Best Breakthrough Athlete ESPY Award Best Breakthrough Athlete ESPY Award in 1993 was San Diego Pardres outfielder Gary Sheffield. The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo of Japan received the trophy in 1996, and is one of two sports persons born outside of the United States to have received the award, the other being Dominican Republican left fielder and second baseman Alfonso Soriano of the New York Yankees in 2003. It has been awarded to one woman in its history, Mo'ne Davis of the Little League Baseball team Anderson Monarchs.in 2015. American football players have been most successful at the awards with eleven victories and
Robert Whiting "gaijin" ballplayer in Japan, entitled "Reggie", and published by Kodansha Comic Morning that sold 750,000 copies in graphic novel form. His latest work is a biography of the Japanese pitcher, Hideo Nomo, who played in the US Major Leagues and was National League Rookie of the Year in 1995. The book was published in 2011 by PHP in Japanese. (Whiting has publicly praised Nomo, asserting that the history of Japanese baseball can be split up into “pre-Nomo and post-Nomo” eras.) The English-language "The Book of Nomo" was published in January 2017. In addition to his books, Whiting has been published