Yomiuri Giants legend Hideki Matsui will be the next manager of the storied franchise, according to multiple media reports on Friday. Matsui is one of the most famous players in the history of the Giants, Japanese baseball’s most popular franchise. He spent 10 seasons with the club, mostly as the cleanup hitter, and hit 332 home runs while recording 889 RBIs.
Matsui, nicknamed “Godzilla,” left the Giants after the 2002 season to embark on a career in MLB. Matsui spent 10 seasons in the majors, most famously with the New York Yankees from 2003 to 2009. He finished his MLB career with a career average of .282 and hit 175 home runs.
He helped the Yankees win the World Series in 2009 and was named MVP of the Fall Classic. Matsui retired in 2012 and has continued to live in the United States. He returned to the Yankees in 2015 as a special advisor to the general manager.
The Giants have been without a permanent manager since previous skipper Shinnosuke Abe was arrested for allegedly assaulting his 18-year-old daughter during a dispute at their home in late May. Abe stepped down on May 26. Hideki Hashigami assumed the reins as the interim manager and guided the team to a second-place finish in the Central League this season.
The Giants were eliminated in the first stage of the CL Climax Series by the Yokohama DeNA BayStars earlier this month. Hashigami, though, was not seen as a favorite for the full-time job, as Yomiuri has a long-standing — though unofficial — tradition of only hiring managers who spent a significant portion of their careers with the team and were star players. That was the case with the team’s three previous managers: Abe, Tatsunori Hara and Yoshinobu Takahashi.
The club has next hired an “outside” manager. Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh has also served in the role. Yomiuri has reportedly long sought to put Matsui, in the manager’s chair, and the former great has served as a special coach during spring training in recent years.
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