An update on past news
Wednesday, January 29, 1997
Wednesday, January 29, 1997
Ryan Kurosaki, the first AJA to play in a major league game, in 1975, is a firefighter in Little Rock, Ark.
He helped Kalani High School win the state high school baseball championship in 1970. One of his teammates was Lenn Sakata, who went on to play 11 seasons in the major leagues and coach in Japan.
The 1970 season launched Kurosaki into three years of pitching for Nebraska, where he was a big winner. The Cardinals drafted him and assigned him to their Little Rock farm team, where he quickly compiled a 4-0 record with four saves and no earned runs in 21 innings. He went up to the Cardinals and, on May 20, 1975, got called from the bullpen to shut down the San Diego Padres.
He came out of the bullpen seven times that season and pitched a total of 12 innings for the Cardinals. He had no decisions and no saves, and that was his entire major league career.
Kurosaki is now with a fire engine company in downtown Little Rock. He and his wife have three sons. Two play baseball.
Although the first AJA to play in the majors, Kurosaki was not the first person of Japanese ancestry to play in the majors. The first was Masanori Murakami, a Japan native who was a relief pitcher with the San Francisco Giants in 1964 and 1965.