Interviews

1. Nomo Press Conference

2. Nomo's American Debut

3. Japanese Fans

4. Nomo's Risk

5. Baseball Hall of Fame

6. The Nomo Tornado in 1995 (Japanese)

7. How the Dodgers internationalized MLB (Japanese)

Narumi,Margaret

Producer at NHK Cosmomedia America, Inc.

Nomo's Risk

Well, here’s a guy, that…he could have made a lot of money in Japan – just staying in Japan – maybe with a different team, but he risked everything, came over here, and he couldn’t speak much English…I don’t know how he spoke with his pitching coach…but he wanted to challenge himself, challenge…probably Japanese baseball also because he probably thought that American baseball fans looked down at Japanese baseball.

So he had two things to prove – to prove to everybody that Hideo Nomo can make it and also that Japanese baseball is quite…great, so he had two big pressures on his back.

And of course everybody remembers his delivery – very, very…unusual – and I believe somebody named it the tornado, but no…a lot of young baseball players and little leaguers – they copied him. I thought that was really fascinating.

Date: December 20, 2013

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Mark Langill

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Margaret Narumi, Producer at NHK Cosmomedia America, Inc., in Santa Monica, California, for two decades has produced broadcasts to Japan of Major League Baseball in the United States, featuring Japanese players such as Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui and Yu Darvish. Her interview for Discover Nikkei was conducted in both English and Japanese as part of a documentary on Hideo Nomo for the Japanese American National Museum exhibit, Dodgers—Brotherhood of the Game. (September 2014)