Victor Starffin

Victor Starffin (Виктор Константинович/Фëдорович Старухин, May 1, 1916 - January 12, 1957), nicknamed nihongo|"the blue-eyed Japanese"|青い目の日本人|aoi-me no Nihonjin, was an ethnic Russian baseball player in Japan and the first professional pitcher in Japan to win three hundred games. [cite web|url=http://english.baseball-museum.or.jp/baseball_hallo/detail/detail_010.html|publisher=Japan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum|title=Victor Starffin|accessdate=2007-05-25] cite book|title=Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia|pages=pp. 70-71|last=Reaves|first=Joseph A.|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|date=2002|id=ISBN 0803239432]

Biography

Born in Nizhny Tagil, Ural area of Russia, he moved with his family to northern Hokkaidō, where he attended Asahikawa High School. He was first scouted by Matsutaro Shoriki in the autumn of 1934 as a member of the national baseball team for an exhibition game against the United States that year. At the time, the Ministry of Education had a regulation stating that high school baseball players who played professionally would forfeit their eligibility to enter higher education, and so Starffin was reluctant to turn pro. However, the family had entered Japan on transit visas, and his father, Konstantin Starffin, was in jail awaiting trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, both of which put the family at risk of deportation; Shoriki blackmailed Starffin, stating that if Starfin refused to play professionally, Shoriki would use his connections with the "Yomiuri Shimbun" to publicise the details of Konstantin Starffin's case.

Starffin was signed by the Tōkyō Kyojingun (now the Yomiuri Giants), outside the draft, in 1936, and played for them until 1944. He was one of the premier pitchers in the Japanese baseball "dead-ball era" (pre-1945), when many of Japan's best players were serving in the Imperial Japanese Army. He won two MVP awards and a Best Nine award, and won at least 26 games in six different years. winning a league record 42 games in 1939. He followed his record setting 1939 performance with another 38 wins in 1940. Later during World War II, wartime paranoia resulted in Starffin being placed in a detention camp. He was already forced to change his name to be Japanized, "Suda Hiroshi", since 1940. He returned to professional baseball in 1946 with the Pacific, played for the Shochiku Robins (now the Yokohama BayStars) in 1947, and finally signed with the Takahashi Stars/Unions (now the Chiba Lotte Marines) in 1948.Fact|date=May 2007 In 1955, his last season, he became the first career 300-game winner in Japanese professional baseball. He retired in 1955 with a career record of 303 wins and 176 losses.

In 1957, Starffin was killed when the car he was driving was struck by a train. In 1960, he became the first foreigner elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Asahikawa City has nicknamed its municipal baseball stadium, as Asahikawa Starffin Stadium, since 1984.

His firstborn daughter Natasha worked for Japan Airlines as a stewardess.

Professional Statistics

*Bold = lead league

ee also

* Russians in Japan
* White Emigre
* Koji Ota

References

Further reading

* Puff, Richard. "The Amazing Story of Victor Starffin". "The National Pastime", no. 12 (1992), pp. 17–20. ISBN 091013748X.

External links

*
* [http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright37.html#Starffin Jim Albright's analysis of Starffin's candidacy for the American Baseball Hall of Fame]