As you can read in boston.com, Koji Uehara has retired from baseball. He started in the Japan Central League in 1999, at age 24, as a starter. In 2009, he moved to the American League, playing out of the bullpen for the Orioles. In 2011, he was moved to the Rangers, where he spent 2012 as well. In 2013, he had one of the best seasons by a reliever that I've ever watched; among the many outstanding statistics was his 0.565 WHIP over 74.1 innings. I also recall that he retired 36 batters in a row at one point, and did not give up a single earned run for over two months. And he did it with two pitches: an ordinary fastball, and an unhittable changeup.
He played with verve and excitement, as the many videos of his high-fives attest. He remains one of my favorite Sox of all time. If you'd like to relive a bit of those happy times from 2013, you might visit an old thread which, I am unaccountably happy to say, I started in the late stages of that season. I'd hazard a guess that the answer to the thread's title question is "yes."
Thanks for all the memories, Koji-san!
p.s. How did I hear about this? I'm working in Japan this summer, and this was the lead story in the sport section of today's "Shinano Daily Shinbun." Koji is remembered well here in Japan, too.
He played with verve and excitement, as the many videos of his high-fives attest. He remains one of my favorite Sox of all time. If you'd like to relive a bit of those happy times from 2013, you might visit an old thread which, I am unaccountably happy to say, I started in the late stages of that season. I'd hazard a guess that the answer to the thread's title question is "yes."
Thanks for all the memories, Koji-san!
p.s. How did I hear about this? I'm working in Japan this summer, and this was the lead story in the sport section of today's "Shinano Daily Shinbun." Koji is remembered well here in Japan, too.
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