[LansdowneSt]

In a move without precedent in Japan’s long baseball history, players from Oklahoma and Venezuela were inducted into the country’s Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday. For the inductees, Randy Bass and Alex Ramirez, the event was yet another in a long line of opportunities to exceed all expectations for players from the Americas in ***. Bass had back-to-back triple crowns and led the H******n Tigers to the franchise’s only championship in 1985. Ramirez, who struggled to get playing time in Major League Baseball, is the only foreigner to attain 2,000 hits in an *** career.

“The Japanese Hall of Fame was never on my radar growing up in that little town of Lawton, Oklahoma,” said Bass, who played only six seasons in *** but made an indelible mark on the game there. “I’m just grateful to the H*****n organization that despite the way it ended, all these years later, they still consider me like family and I’m sure this honor wouldn’t be possible without them supporting it.”

Drafted by the Minnesota Twins, Bass, a journeyman first baseman, played for five M.L.B. teams from 1977 to 1982, but he immediately broke out as a star after signing with H*****n for the 1983 season. He led the Central League in 10 different offensive categories over his first four seasons, including the triple crown categories — batting average, home runs and R.B.I. — in both 1985 and 1986. He was named the most valuable player in the regular season and the Japan Series in 1985. For all his accomplishments, though, Bass is often remembered for the one he did not attain: S******u Oh’s record of 55 home runs in a single season. Bass had 54 with two games left in 1985. But the Giants, managed by Oh, refused to challenge him, walking him six times in his final eight at-bats of the season. - New York Times, July 19, 2023

No conspiracy on the missing facegen. It was there. It was just one of the ones with a code that predated the switch to the BBR codes/IDs. Here it is (it has a 001 instead of the correct 002 in the middle). You can see why - after reviewing thousands of miscoded IDs, I'm content to delete them going-forward rather than save them.

Oh, and the asterisks are my own. That league wants to be ignored by the great baseball fans here. Fine by me... I'll ignore you just fine. Not interested in opinions on my using them. In a more relevant topic, he had an iconic beard over there but was exclusively sporting a mustache in MLB, and I default to a player's most associated facial hair in picking one for a facegen. I also defer to the MLB.