A League Of Their Own

On This Day In History
1964: Masanori Murakami becomes the first Japanese baseball player to play in the United States' Major League

Quote Of The Day
"I think the Japanese professional baseball league did not want to become just a source of raw materials. They protected their best players with much more vigor afterwards."
(John Thorn, official MLB historian)

Mr. Thorn is right. It wasn't until 1995, 31 years after Murakami, that Hideo Nomo became the next Japanese player to join the MLB.