Ignorance in Baseball Journalism

This is from a while ago, but when the Chiba Lotte Marines won the Japan Series in October, many articles in the U.S. included lines like this:

He's the only foreigner to manage in the Japan Series and only the fifth to head a team in the 70-year history of the league.

This is just wrong. Sadaharu Oh, the home run king in Japan with 868 in his career, was the manager of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks when they won the Japan Series in 1999 and 2003. Though Oh's mother is Japanese, he himself is a citizen of Taiwan.

What these reporters meant was that Valentine is the first white manager to win the Japan Series. How hard is it to do some fact checking when writing these articles? I guess since we all look the same it's safe to assume that every Asian-looking person playing baseball in Japan is Japanese? Dumbasses.

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