Posted on 09/18/2018 10:51:24 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Sachio Kinugasa, the Japanese slugger who in 1987 broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played, only to see his testament to durability exceeded nine years later by Cal Ripken Jr., died on Monday. He was 71.
The cause was colon cancer, according to reports in the Japanese news media, which did not specify where he died.
In Japan, Kinugasa embodied consistency and effort by playing in game after game for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp over 17 years despite broken bones, slumps and age. Even after a pitch fractured his left shoulder blade in 1979 — about halfway through his streak — he continued to play. He reasoned that it would have been more painful for him to sit out.
“If we have a game, I want to play, that’s all,” he told The New York Times in May 1987, several weeks before he was to tie Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games. “The record is not the goal. It’s only the natural outcome of my determination to play.”
Kinugasa was no ordinary player. A third baseman who stood 5-foot-9 and weighed about 165 pounds, he was nonetheless a hard-swinging force who amassed 504 home runs, tied for seventh-best in Japanese baseball history, and 2,543 hits, tied for fifth.
“I loved to watch him swing,” Rick Lancelotti, an American teammate of Kinugasa’s in Hiroshima, said in a telephone interview. “He could really take a hack.”
Lancelotti recalled that Kinugasa acted humbly while fans around him “went nuts” as he approached Gehrig’s record.
“I thought, God forbid he got hurt,” he said. “You kind of wanted to send him up with a bodyguard. He’s one of those guys you would’ve done anything to protect. You wanted to make sure nothing happened to him.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A lot of colon cancer in Japan.
A lot of good ball players, too.
I don’t think they’re related.
Time conquers almost everything.
It can dissolves pain.
It can bring wisdom.
It will take it’s toll on us.
Only God can defeat it’s worst affects.
There is no institution with greater diversity than baseball. One would think that would endear baseball to leftists, but then the issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.
They’re dogpiling on Frank Oz on Twitter for having the temerity to state that Bert and Ernie are not gay. These people are insane.
ff
RIP.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.