10:27 PM
12/21/24
12/21/24
February 16, 2021
SportsFilter: The Tuesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
Boston Red Sox reportedly have signed Japanese pitcher Sawamura Hirokazu (surname first as is the Japanese convention). He's projected as a 'bridge reliever, 7th or 8th inning specialist. This ordinarily is no big deal, and certainly not post-worthy, but the surname is interesting. The Nippon Professional Baseball annual award for the best starting pitcher is the Sawamura Award. The equivalent of the Cy Young Award, it is named for Sawamura Eiji, a superstar in the pre World War 2 years for the Yomiuri Giants. I did some digging, but I cannot come up with any family connection between the two. I'm almost sure there's no direct ancestry because Sawamura Eiji was a wartime casualty at age 27 when a ship in which he was a passenger was torpedoed.