{"id":1335,"date":"2010-01-13T20:14:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T20:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1335"},"modified":"2013-12-08T21:02:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T21:02:43","slug":"why-igarshi-was-issued-no-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1335","title":{"rendered":"Why Igarshi was Issued No. 18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217; new reliever,<strong>Ryota Igarashi,<\/strong>\u00a0will suit up in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/number\/18\">No. 18<\/a>\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n<p>Lennon (and a good number of commenters at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.metsblog.com\/2010\/01\/13\/note-ryoto-igarashi-to-wear-no-18\/\" target=\"_blank\">MetsBlog<\/a>\u00a0where the news was dissected and blown up in 45 seconds) focused in on what a crime it was to re-issue\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/strawberry-darryl\">Darryl Strawberry&#8217;<\/a>s number &#8212; as if they hadn&#8217;t noticed they&#8217;d given it to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/reed-jeremy\">Jeremy Reed<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/howe-art\">Art Howe<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/paquette-craig\">Craig Paquette<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a tradition in Japan dating to the 1930s to give an ace pitcher No. 8 or 18.\u00a0<strong>Eiji Sawamura<\/strong>, the 1930s legend for whom Japan&#8217;s equivalent of the Cy Young Award is named, wore No. 8 for the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.robfitts.com\/all_nippon_roster.htm\" target=\"_blank\">All-Nippon team<\/a>\u00a0that 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\u00a0<strong>Masao Date<\/strong>\u00a0(an All-Nippon teammate of Sawamura&#8217;s) and\u00a0<strong>Motoshi Fujita<\/strong>\u00a0were 18. The tradition carries to\u00a0modern players like\u00a0<strong>Daisuke Matuzsaka<\/strong>, who now wears 18 for the Red Sox, and\u00a0<strong>Hideaki Wakui,<\/strong>\u00a0who today wears 18 for Matuzsaka&#8217;s former team, the Seibu Lions, and who this year won the\u00a0Sawamura Award. The Mets issued No. 18 to their first pitcher from Japan,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/kashiwada-takashi\">Takashi Kashiwada<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s top player wear No. 10.<\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.robfitts.com\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Rob Fitts<\/a>, a writer and Japan baseball researcher, whose collection of photos and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.robsjapanesecards.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">baseball cards<\/a>\u00a0helped illuminate this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217; new reliever,Ryota Igarashi,\u00a0will suit up in\u00a0No. 18\u00a0this year. Lennon (and a good number of commenters at\u00a0MetsBlog\u00a0where the news was dissected and blown up in 45 seconds) focused &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1335\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Igarshi was Issued No. 18&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[451,465],"class_list":["post-1335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ryota-igarashi","tag-takashi-kashiwada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}