Watch Hiroki Kuroda bid a tearful farewell to baseball in Japan
Hiroki Kuroda enjoyed a very successful seven seasons in Major League Baseball -- winning 79 games (an average of 11 per year), compiling a 3.45 ERA and striking out nearly 1,000 batters. He was about as reliable a starter you could find -- even in the postseason, where he started five games (three for the Dodgers, two for the Yankees) and held a 3.94 ERA. One of his best performances was 2012's ALDS Game 2, when he took a perfect game into the sixth and struck out 11. Unfortunately, the Yankees lost:
After the 2014 season, at the age of 39, Kuroda left the big leagues and went to finish off his career with the NPB's Hiroshima Carp -- the team he had pitched for from 1997-2007. Kuroda recorded a 2.55 ERA and let up just eight homers all season in 2015, starting the All-Star Game against 22-year-old pitching/hitting phenom Shohei Otani. And this year, his last, he went 10-8 with a 3.09 ERA -- helping the Carp win the Central League pennant for the first time in 25 years. They ended up losing to former Yankees prospect Brandon Laird and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
A week after the Series loss, during a pennant parade that finished up in the stadium, Kuroda walked one more time out to the mound and bid a tearful goodbye to his fans after 20 professional seasons. Check it all out around the one-minute mark:
