A Toss Leads to a Quest

Irabu’s road back to baseball began with a bit of serendipity. In 2007, a Japanese television crew visited Irabu in California to see how he was faring nearly three years into his retirement. They visited his restaurants, followed him as he rode his three-wheel motorbike and filmed him on a sandlot field in Torrance, obligingly tossing a ball in jeans and flip flops.

Irabu had not pitched in several years, but he seemed genuinely pleased that his knee did not hurt and that his arm felt good. The pitching session was brief, but it planted a seed in Irabu’s mind that he might just have a shot at returning to baseball, according to Don Nomura, his longtime agent.

Image Irabu received a standing ovation as he left his Yankee Stadium debut in the sixth inning on July 10, 1997. Credit... Barton Silverman/The New York Times

“He just picked up a ball and fired the hell out of it,” Nomura said by phone from Japan.

Nomura did not give it much thought, but a year or so later, Irabu started working out with two other players. Takateru Iyono, who was Irabu’s teammate in Japan, traveled to Los Angeles to seek guidance from his sempai, or elder, on how to revive his career. They recruited Hajime Nishimura, who had played on a Japanese industrial league team and moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, to be a personal catcher. He now is a youth baseball coach.

While training with Iyono at the M.L.B. Urban Youth Academy in Compton, a gritty part of Los Angeles, Irabu began to take his conditioning more seriously. Tentative at first, he gained confidence when his knee showed no signs of faltering. So in early 2009, with Iyono having left, Irabu picked up the pace. Each weekday, he took two half-hour whirlpool baths in the morning. Nishimura would arrive at 10 a.m. to work on fielding and pitching for two hours. Then they would go for a vegetable-heavy lunch before Irabu returned to the academy to take another bath.

The regimen helped Irabu shed more than 40 pounds, buoying his spirits.

“At first, I wondered if he could do it,” Nishimura said. “But he was very serious about baseball. He loved the game and didn’t think about how old he was. As long as he could play, he wanted to play.”

With the season approaching, Nomura discussed the options with Irabu. It would be hard to find a major league club in the United States that would sign an aging pitcher who had not played in years. But with his mix of pitches, big-league savvy and brand name, Nomura thought that Irabu could become a useful reliever in Japan.