I was saddened to hear of the passing of former baseball player Bob Horner this week at the age of 68 due to yet unannounced causes. Horner arrived on the scene just as my curiosity about Japanese baseball was achieving critical mass.
I got into the game here because my first posting as an English teacher in 1984 was in Toyama City, on the Sea of Japan coast, where the edition of the Japan Times we received at my office had to go to the printers in Tokyo before west coast night games were finished.
As a lifelong San Francisco Giants fan, I got my daily results fix from the most popular sports paper, which published the scores, winning and losing pitchers, saves recorded and home runs for each game. The Nikkan Sports became my gateway drug into Japanese baseball through its elaborate color-coded graphic scoresheets of each pro baseball and high school championship game.
