Japan had a love-hate relationship with Royals’ Nomo

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Hideo Nomo has always been an outsider. People sometimes miss this, but it’s crucial when thinking about Nomo’s remarkable life. There is a saying in Japan: The nail that sticks up gets hammered.

Nomo has always been that nail. He has always felt like he gets hammered.

“I know how Britney Spears feels,” says Don Nomura, Nomo’s longtime friend and agent.

Nomo was a latchkey child who saw baseball as the way to become someone, only baseball never loved him back. Japanese high schools recruit baseball players the way American universities go after football talent, and none of the big ones took a second look.

That tornado windup, the one thing Nomo found to give him the velocity he needed, turned off the Japanese baseball establishment. They thought he’d get hurt. Nomo’s style didn’t fit. Too much individualism, too much unknown. He was the nail sticking up.

Nomo ended up in an industrial league, where he learned the forkball. He quickly had success and made his way into Japan’s major leagues, where he led in wins and strikeouts four straight years. Then he started sticking up a bit too much for Japan’s tastes.

Workout routines there are legendary, with 100 max-effort pitches sometimes considered a warm-up. Nomo complained of a dead arm once. His manager thought the only way to beat a dead arm was to throw more.

Nomo refused, and immediately was sent down to the minor leagues. Once again, the outsider. The nail sticking up. The one getting hammered.

American baseball had always fascinated Nomo. He wanted to pitch against the best hitters in the world. He read Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible, which reinforced his belief in resting his arm and strengthened his skepticism of the Japanese way of doing things.

Quietly, he started to search for a way out. Japanese baseball contracts were a virtual copy of major-league contracts with one notable exception. Japanese teams held rights to a player only until he retired. After that, the player was free to join any team — worldwide — that would have him.

This was the loophole that Nomo would run through, his way out of Japan. It was an unprecedented move, a fast one pulled on the Japanese baseball structure, which responded by painting him as a traitor and eventually creating the posting system that exists today.

Ever since Nomo’s success, no Japanese player has taken advantage of the loophole that brought him to America. It took guts to do it. Took someone who thought for himself. An outsider.

A nail sticking up, though this time he would finally benefit.

“(Other Japanese players) don’t have the balls” of Nomo, a baseball executive said in Robert Whiting’s book The Meaning of Ichiro.

The Japanese didn’t see it that way. Many felt abandoned, like their favorite son moved out too early. They cursed his name. They called him a traitor, and worse. He required extra security.

This all changed immediately, on May 2, 1995, when Nomo pitched five innings for the Dodgers, struck out seven, gave up no runs and just one hit to the Giants. Right away, everything changed. The cries of sellout morphed into cheers for a fellow countryman.

“All of a sudden,” Whiting says, “it was, ‘Wow, wait a minute, he’s one of us, that’s great.’ ”

Nomo never felt the love in the first place, so when the people back home turned and started cheering him, it felt fake, superficial.

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To reach Sam Mellinger, national baseball reporter for The Star, call 816-234-4365 or send e-mail to smellinger@kcstar.com