Choji Murata pitched for the Orions for 22 years – 1968 to 1990. He was 18 in his first taste of pro ball, and retired at 40 with a 3.24 ERA in 3331 innings. (He couldn’t manage just two more innings?) The mid-to-late 70s were his best period. During this stretch he regularly logged an ERA in the 2s with innings totals that wouldn’t be embarrassing in MLB. 1976 was his single best season: he went 21-11 with a 1.89 ERA in 257 innings.
Murata was the second Japanese pitcher to get Tommy John surgery. The arm abuse that Japanese pitchers put up with took its expected toll, and in 1982, at 32, he, like so many pitchers before him, simply couldn’t pitch anymore. He tried basically everything else that you can do to get your arm working again, including, unwisely, trying to pitch through the pain. Predictably, it didn’t work. As a 32 year old he pitched 40 innings, and then that looked like that. In a last-ditch effort he flew to LA to get ligament-replacement surgery and missed the entire 1983 season and almost all of the 1984 season. He would never again manage the kind of innings pitched that he did as a young man, but by the time he was back on the field he was in his mid-30s, so some age-related decline is to be expected. By age 35 Murata was again pitching more-or-less full-time. He was reasonably successful in 85 and 86, dipping to below-average production for a couple seasons afterwards, and then led the league in ERA in his penultimate season. The same year he was named the all-star game MVP and given a $14,000 prize. (Presumably the amount is approximate. The figure is from the AP.) If forced to pick a comparable American player, I might come up with someone like C.C. Sabathia.
He was a three-time ERA leader, but made only a single best-nine and never won a Sawamura Award.
Post-career, Murata stayed in shape. In what appears to have been a publicity stunt NPB had Kazuhiro Kiyohara-he was retired already, this was in 2013-try to hit a home run off of a few old-time pitching greats. Anyways, Murata struck him out, topping out at 83 mph. Now, 83 mph is really slow for a professional, but considering that Murata was
sixty four years old at the time, I think that we can forgive him.
Here’s a
short clip of Murata pitching.
The card is a Calbee, from the 1989 set. The last (I think) of the super small cards that Calbee produced in the 80s.