Hiromitsu Ochiai (落合 博満, Ochiai Hiromitsu; born December 9, 1953) is a Japanese former professional baseball manager and player. He is the former manager of the Chunichi Dragons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball. He is considered to be one of the most important players in the history of Japanese baseball, winning numerous batting awards and being the only player to receive the prestigious triple crown batting award three times. With 510 career home runs, Ochiai is sixth on the all-time NPB list. Ochiai's style is called Oreryu(オレ流). Oreryu means "to do with only my style." The word described how he acted according to his personal philosophies.
Contents
Biography
Ochiai was born in the town of Wakami in Akita, Japan, a rice-farming area of northern Honshū. Ochiai was the youngest of seven children and grew up enjoying spending time in the cinema rather than on the baseball field. During high school at Akita Tech, he did not like Japanese high school baseball's nature, even dropping out of Toyo University when he found out he was going to endure something similar. He joined Toshiba Fuchu, a team in the Japanese industrial league, after leaving Toyo University and went back to his home town and spent some years as a professional bowler.
In 1978, at 25 years old, the third baseman joined the Lotte Orions after being selected in the third round of the draft. The Lotte manager did not care for his unorthodox right-handed batting style and Masaichi Kaneda criticized Ochiai, but Isao Harimoto supported Ochiai and Ochiai did not quit. From 1981, Ochiai played a regular role for his team, and in 1982 he won his first triple crown batting title. He also won the Triple Crown in 1985 and 1986, and continued winning titles through 1991. The 1985 one was notable, as it wasn't an all-NPB one, as Hanshin Tigers player Randy Bass also put a Triple Crown season of his own. Because of that, Japanese media completely changed their stance on Ochiai. Instead of heavily disliking him due to his attitude about the tradition of Japanese baseball, he was instead seen as being "Japan's answer to Bass", and attempted to paint both as bitter rivals. However, they actually both respected each other.