Thanks to the commenter in the below post who passed along the info, which seemed to eminate from a David Lennon tweet this afternoon indicating the the Mets’ new reliever,Ryota Igarashi, will suit up in No. 18 this year.

Lennon (and a good number of commenters at MetsBlog where the news was dissected and blown up in 45 seconds) focused in on what a crime it was to re-issue Darryl Strawberry’s number — as if they hadn’t noticed they’d given it to Jeremy Reed, Art Howe and Craig Paquette, to name only three, in the years since Strawberry left town, and they all missed the real significance of the number to players from Japan.

It’s been a tradition in Japan dating to the 1930s to give an ace pitcher No. 8 or 18. Eiji Sawamura, the 1930s legend for whom Japan’s equivalent of the Cy Young Award is named, wore No. 8 for the All-Nippon team that hosted a team of American stars for a 1934 tour that sparked the creation of a professional baseball league in Japan. Hall of Fame pitchers including Masao Date (an All-Nippon teammate of Sawamura’s) and Motoshi Fujita were 18. The tradition carries to modern players like Daisuke Matuzsaka, who now wears 18 for the Red Sox, and Hideaki Wakui, who today wears 18 for Matuzsaka’s former team, the Seibu Lions, and who this year won the Sawamura Award. The Mets issued No. 18 to their first pitcher from Japan, Takashi Kashiwada.

The passing along of numbers with significance is in my opinion an admirable tradition in the Japanese game and is echoed in pro soccer where its common to see a team’s top player wear No. 10.

Thanks to Rob Fitts, a writer and Japan baseball researcher, whose collection of photos andbaseball cards helped illuminate this post.

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