Hideki Irabu

Hideki Irabu showed up in the Bronx in July 1997 already carrying a nickname he never asked for: "the Japanese Nolan Ryan," courtesy of scouts and the New York press who'd clocked his high-90s fastball in Japan and decided that was close enough to a promise. He debuted at Yankee Stadium on July 10 in front of 51,901 people on a Thursday night -- a near sellout for a team that was drawing about 26,000 on an average weeknight -- struck out nine Tigers in 6.2 innings, and won 10-3. For one night, the hype looked earned. It would take less than two years for that same fastball to get him called a "fat, pussy toad" by his own owner, in print, and that's the version of Irabu most people remember.

The Standoff Before the Debut

Irabu didn't come to New York cleanly. The Chiba Lotte Marines sold his rights to the San Diego Padres in January 1997, and Irabu simply refused to sign there. "I have absolutely no desire to conclude a contract with San Diego," he told the AP. "My first pick is the Yankees." He got his way -- after months of him sitting out, San Diego finally shipped his rights to New York for outfielder Ruben Rivera, pitcher Rafael Medina, and $3 million cash. Irabu signed a four-year, $12.8 million deal on May 29, 1997.

George Steinbrenner, to his credit, didn't oversell it beforehand. Asked if he'd be embarrassed if Irabu turned out to be ordinary, The Boss shrugged it off: "I've been embarrassed so many times in New York, one more won't hurt me. You've got to stick your neck out sometimes." That's a fair way to describe what happened next -- 1998 was genuinely solid (13-9, 4.06 ERA, a real rotation piece on the 1998 World Series champions alongside David Wells, David Cone, and Andy Pettitte), and 1999 was fine (11-7, 4.84 ERA). Across three years he went 29-20 with a 4.80 ERA in 74 games. That's a perfectly usable back-of-the-rotation arm. It isn't Nolan Ryan, Japanese or otherwise, and in New York the gap between those two things gets measured in back-page headlines.

The Toad

Then came spring training 1999, with Joe Torre managing and everybody trying to defend a title. In an exhibition game, Irabu jogged -- didn't sprint, just jogged -- over to cover first base on a comebacker. Steinbrenner watched it happen from the stands and lost it. "A fat, pussy toad," he called him, on the record, to reporters. He briefly barred Irabu from flying with the team to Los Angeles before apologizing two days later (Steinbrenner apologizing to anyone was its own small miracle). The line stuck to Irabu for the rest of his career and, honestly, for the rest of his life -- it's still the first thing that comes up when his name does.

Here's the part that actually makes me like the guy: a few months later, for Steinbrenner's birthday, Irabu sent him a large mechanical toad. Push the button, it ribbits. The Boss reportedly kept it in his office for years. Say what you want about the theatrics of that whole era -- somebody in that clubhouse had a sense of humor about it, and it wasn't the guy throwing the insults.

Irabu made exactly one postseason appearance as a Yankee, and it wasn't the redemption kind. Game 3 of the 1999 ALCS at Fenway, Roger Clemens got knocked out early, and Irabu came on in relief and got worse -- 4.2 innings, 7 earned runs, in a 13-1 laugher Pedro Martinez owned start to finish. Still, he'd been under contract for the entire 1998 and 1999 championship runs, which makes him a two-time World Series winner whether or not October ever cooperated with him. The Yankees traded him to Montreal that December for Jake Westbrook and two players to be named -- Ted Lilly and Christian Parker -- both of whom outlasted him by years.

After the Bronx

The stuff didn't hold up outside New York. He bounced through Montreal and a final stop in Texas before his last MLB pitch in 2002, tried an independent-league comeback with the Long Beach Armada in 2009 (5-3, 3.58 ERA, which is a nice footnote nobody remembers), and spent his last years dealing with problems that had nothing to do with baseball -- a 2010 DUI arrest in the Los Angeles suburbs among them. On July 27, 2011, he was found dead at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. He died by suicide. He was 42.

Irabu was never the pitcher his nickname promised, and the nickname was never fair to begin with -- nobody's supposed to be the Japanese Nolan Ryan at 26 years old with a body that never quite matched his own hype photos. He was, for three years, a legitimate member of two championship rotations who got reduced to a punchline by an owner who was better at inventing nicknames than living with the ones he handed out. The toad outlived the joke. So, in a much sadder way, did Irabu's reputation -- frozen at a spring training first-base jog instead of the two rings he actually has to show for it.