Kazuhiro Sasaki
Baseball was introduced in Japan in 1872 and is currently among the country's most popular sports. The first professional competitions emerged in the 1920s. The current league, Nippon Professional Baseball, consists of two leagues of 6 teams each. The country's national team has also been successful, having won two Olympic medals (bronze and silver), while the World Championships team never placed worse than 5th in its 13 appearances, winning second place once and third place three times. Recently, several Japanese players have also entered the U.S. major leagues, such as Hideo Nomo, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, Kenji Johjima, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, and Masahiro Tanaka. Japan defeated Korea to become champions of the second World Baseball Classic on March 23, 2009 in Los Angeles.