Some fun YouTubing on a lazy (hungover) Sunday morning. These are courtesy Simon Currie. First take a look at a home run contest between Hank Aaron and Oh Sadaharu from 1974.
And also a highlight reel of Oh’s climb toward 868.
I also dug up this article written by HOFer Brooks Robinson, who played against Oh in a series of exibitions in Japan after the 1970 World Series. Robinson said there were only two players he thought could have played Major League Baseball and that was Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima. Anyone want to refute this? I’m not sure what teams he played against.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Christian » Oh Sadaharu versus Hank Aaron // Jan 13, 2008 at 1:18 pm
[…] aaron@tvbarn.com (Aaron Barnhart/TVBarn.com) wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptaaronoh.bmp. Some fun YouTubing on a lazy (hungover) Sunday morning. These are courtesy Simon Currie. First take a look at a home run contest between Hank Aaron and Oh Sadaharu from 1974. […]
2 Philip C // Jan 14, 2008 at 1:44 am
Aaron and Oh were both great players at their time but to compare them would be compare apples to oranges. Although they played in the similar era, Oh retired a few years later than Aaron, however, they were playing in different leagues with different ballparks, players and strategies.
Oh and Nagashima were referred to as the ON line in the Yomiuri Giants (Tokyo) line up. Oh is the son of a Chinese father and a Japanese mother and was born in Tokyo, Japan. He didn’t have Japanese citizenship when he was born and later changed his nationality by his family soon after the end of WWII as claimed by Wikipedia. One cannot obtain Japanese citizenship by marriage to a Japanese citizen so Oh is still holding Republic of China (Taiwan) passport.
Oh was given an “honourary citizenship” on the field after he broke Aaron’s record although he wasn’t considered a gaijin because he played highschool and university ball in Japan.
Nonetheless, Oh and Aaron are still the greatest homerun hitters of the 20th century, in their respective leagues of course.
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