Hardball Talk is reporting that the former New York Yankees, Montreal Expos and Texas Rangers pitcher Hideki Irabu was found dead in his California apartment. While no further details are being provided right now, it appears suicide by hanging was the cause of his death.
While Irabu never truly flourished in the United States as a baseball player like he did in his native Japan, he did manage to be a part of two World Series championships for the Yankees in 1998 and 1999.
Irabu’s best season came as a starting pitcher for one of the greatest teams in baseball history, the 1998 New York Yankees. For the Yankees, he went 13-9 with a 4.06 ERA, a WHIP of 1.295 and an ERA+ of 109.
After retiring following the 2002 season, Irabu had issues with alcohol and the law.
If the reports are true and he did commit suicide, it is a sad end to what was once a promising life and caree
That he triumphed on the diamond again and again in spite of his perceived shortcomings was certainly a source of his popularity. So was the delight with which his famous, if not always documentable, pronouncements — somehow both nonsensical and sagacious — were received.
“You can observe a lot just by watching,” he is reputed to have declared once, describing his strategy as a manager.
“If you can’t imitate him,” he advised a young player who was mimicking the batting stance of the great slugger Frank Robinson, “don’t copy him.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” he said, giving directions to his house. Either path, it turned out, got you there.
“Nobody goes there anymore,” he said of a popular restaurant. “It’s too crowded.”
Whether Berra actually uttered the many things attributed to him, or was the first to say them, or phrased them precisely the way they were reported, has long been a matter of speculation. Berra himself published a book in 1998 called “The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!” But the Yogi-isms testified to a character — goofy and philosophical, flighty and down to earth — that came to define the man.
