Hanshin Tigers manager Akihiro Yano won’t have to win a pennant to make the 2022 season memorable. The 53-year-old fourth-year skipper ensured that Monday when he announced that he would step down at the end of the Central League club’s season.
He made the announcement at a team meeting and according to Yukan Fuji, took the team by surprise.
Yano won the Western League pennant as Tigers farm manager in 2918 and was dragooned into managing the major league club after his former teammate Tomoaki Kanemoto quit that post.
Last year, the final year of his original three-year deal, the Tigers blew a large lead and just barely missed out on the CL pennant. He re-signed for 2022 on a one-year contract.
Yano continues to do things his way
Although everyone and their family is calling it unprecedented, it is so only because it came the day before camp. The SoftBank Hawks played the 2008 season knowing it would be Sadaharu Oh’s last in charge and finished last for the first time since 1996.
