Friday, January 4, 2008

Nomo Sighting

Former big-name players signing minor league contracts over the winter usually don't interest me (they're almost always practice fodder), but a Hideo Nomo signing seems a bit more random than usual:

Hideo Nomo, who once blazed a trail for Japanese players heading to the US major leagues, said Friday he had signed a minor league contract with the Kansas City Royals.

More than a decade after his major league debut, the 39-year-old right-handed pitcher said he was not ready to retire just yet. "I want to hang in there no matter how, without getting injured," he said in a brief message on his official website.

While Nomo actually making the Royals would say some pretty awful things about the state of KC's pitching, I've always liked the guy and wouldn't mind seeing him latch on somewhere.


FYI: the Etch-A-Sketch artwork was done by a guy named George Vlosich, who's work can be found here. Lots of baseball stuff.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry Shyster, I live in Venezuela and in the winter league Nomo has been awful: 13IP,18 hits allowed, 7 SO,7 BB and 6:59 ERA.

BTW your blog is a favorite mine, thanks!

Molo

Craig Calcaterra said...

Alas, Molo, your facts seem to indicate that I will not get to see that crazy windup much past the end of February. A sad day.

Molo said...

Yeap. sorry for the bad news. Regarding to swisher trade, is not curious that Kenny could got swisher free (not mention Blanton)in 2002 draft instead to give his 2 best prospects 5 years later?

Anonymous said...

The KC Star is reporting that Nomo is a friend of and shares an agent with Yasuhiko Yabuta, whom the Royals recently signed. So Nomo might be more of a translator/mentor than an actual player in this situation.