Hiroki Kuroda
Kuroda had a 20-year career, spent with the Hiroshima Carp, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the New York Yankees. Baseball came naturally to him – his father, Kazuhiro, was also a professional baseball player. Kazuhiro spent seven seasons roaming the outfield, mostly for the Hawks. Offensively, his dad was a bit below average, mostly because he drew very few walks. If he had a really good glove he might have been a decent player, or maybe he would have been okay as the short side of a platoon.
His father was apparently a positive influence; for a while his dad was his coach, and he said that he enjoyed playing under him. But other formative experiences with baseball were not so good. He said that when he was in elementary school, if he performed poorly he would be hit on the butt with a bat so hard that it hurt to sit down the next day. And in high school, practices started at 6am and didn’t end until 9pm. Presumably during the school year there were classes the broke up the practice routine, but he also played summer ball, and during the summer the team really did have 15-hour practices. Once, as punishment for having poor location during a game, his coach told him to run laps, without water, for the entire duration of practice, for four days. After each day, he returned to the dormitory, and was not allowed to bathe. Now, he says that he did walk (instead of run) when the coach wasn’t looking, and that his teammates snuck him water when they could, but this is rather shocking all the same. In college things did not get much better. Freshmen, he says, were “basically slaves,” required to work for upper classmen (e.g., by doing their laundry), and that punishment for performing these duties below expectations included things like kneeling on the hot roof of the dormitory for hours on end. (
Source)
The only professional Japanese team that he played for was the Hiroshima Carp. Historically, the Carp have not been good. They had a moment in the late-70s and into the 80s, but mostly they have been doormats. And Kuroda played for during their “dark years.” While he was playing, he was one of the highest paid players in team history, making (after adjusting for inflation) about $1.7 million per year. Now, the Carp had a policy of not negotiating with players who had declared free agency (to the point of refusing to bring a player back who had declared free agency, regardless of their asking price), but in 2006 their pitching staff was so thin, they agreed to re-sign Kuroda, although his salary increase (25%) was presumably smaller than he could have gotten on the open market.
The Dodgers and the Yankees were quite a bit more successful than the Carp were, although during his time in the US, Kuroda never got to play in the World Series. I would characterize his US performance as “good.” He had a career ERA+ of 115, which isn’t ace material exactly but is better than average. ERA+ takes a player’s ERA, adjusts it for the park that they play in, compares it to league average, and then puts it on a scale where 100 is average and higher is better. If you want to compare that to a few pitchers: Andy Pettitte 117, David Cone 120, David Wells 108, Tim Hudson 120. He had 21 career WAR over seven seasons, aged 33-39. That sounds pretty good to me. Over those same ages, Hudson had 13, Wells had 25, Cone 20, Pettitte 20. That sounds like a pretty good comp list; think of Kuroda as a Japanese Andy Pettitte. His performance in Japan was comparable to his performance in MLB too. He struggled early in his career, but settled into being a generally good pitcher.
As a hall of fame candidate, I guess he’s okay. If Pettitte got in to Cooperstown, it wouldn’t be a disgrace. I wouldn’t support it, but, oh boy, are there worse pitchers in the hall already. If they are going to count work that he did while in the US, Kuroda is probably qualified for the hall. They don’t really
need him there, sort of like the one in Cooperstown isn’t really any worse-off for not having Andy Pettitte in it. But he was an above average pitcher for 20 years, and if they want to honor him for that, that’s fine.
The card is from the Diamond Heroes subset of the 2000 BBM set.