The Braves took Kenshin Kawakami out of their rotation last year, and last week they demoted him to Double-A. The hope was that they could find someone — possibly an NPB team — to take him and pick up some of his $6.67 million salary for 2011. They may have a sucker — er, I mean a taker — for Kawakami: The SoftBank Hawks of the Pacific League.
I’m not terribly knowledgeable about Japanese baseball, but I do remember that the Hawks were the team — managed by the great Sadaharu Oh — who went out of their way to keep American Tuffy Rhodes and Venezuelan Alex Cabrera from breaking Oh’s single-season home run record by refusing to throw them strikes down the stretch.
While Oh is no longer the Hawks’ manager, if the team ever finds a need to not throw strikes again for some reason, Kawakami should come in handy.
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- Rosenthals Speling Instrukter - Nov 15, 2010 at 1:14 PM
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The Hawks did win the Pacific league title last year. They aren’t too far off winning another Japan Series. Kawakmimi could get them over the top. Or destroy their payroll.
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- Rosenthals Speling Instrukter - Nov 15, 2010 at 1:15 PM
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Also there is a rumor that when Rhodes would go up to bat Kenji Johjima used to say: “Don’t even waste your %$# time.” as Rhodes would take four balls.
