Professional baseball in Japan the first American to play professional baseball in Japan when he joined the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu (Tokyo Giants) in December 1934, touring with them in 1935. Jimmy Bonna, Kiyomi "Slim" Hirakawa, Fumito "Jimmy" Horio, Kazuyoshi "George" Matsuura, Andrew "Bucky" Harris McGalliard (Japan's "Bucky Harris"), Herbert "Buster" North, Yoshio "Sam" Takahashi, and Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi became the first Americans to play in Japan's professional baseball league in 1936. The American writer Robert Whiting wrote in his 1977 book "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" that, While others have objected to characterizing the sport in these terms, many Japanese players and
Knuckleball be contributing to its demise. Says Bob Humphrey, a former major-league knuckleball pitcher: "you just don't have time to mess with it." A fast-track scheme is developing, eliminating the knuckleballer pitcher's chief ally: time. Tom Candiotti said: "to get signed, you have to be impressive on the radar guns." The knuckleball takes time to master and is not an attractive pitch on the radar guns, both of which may be contributing to its demise. Perhaps as a result, knuckleball pitchers often view themselves as members of an exclusive club, with its own uniform number (49, first worn by Wilhelm) and