I was doing some research this past week and I unexpectedly came across something interesting that was completely unrelated to what I was researching. I have often pointed out that the Yomiuri Giants have never had a manager who wore the uniform of any other professional team before managing the Giants. What I discovered, to my surprise, was that this wasn't completely accurate - Masahiro Kawai, who had played for the Dragons for three seasons after he'd spent 20 years with the Giants, was "acting manager" of the team on two occasions in 2014 and 2015 while Tatsunori Hara was away from the team. Hara's father suffered what proved to be a fatal heart attack in 2014 and Hara missed a game in Nagoya to rush to the hospital. In 2015 Hara caught the flu and missed five games. Kawai also managed the Giants in training camp in 2013 when Hara went to the US to support Japan in the WBC semi-finals. So I guess it's a little more accurate to say that the Giants have never had an "official" manager who wore any other professional team's uniform.
Hara plays into the story of how Kawai ended up playing for the Dragons. At the end of the 2003 season, Kawai had announced his retirement. Hara, who was finishing his second year as Giants manager, wanted him to become the defense and base running coach for the ichi-gun squad. The Giants held a retirement game and ceremony for Kawai in mid-September. However, Hara and the front office had been feuding all season due to the Giants' poor performance in their first post-Hideki Matsui season. The Giants had won the Nippon Series in Hara's first year behind the wheel but 2003 had not gone as well. Despite hitting over 200 home runs, the offense only hit .262, fourth in the league. The pitching was also pretty dismal, with the team's 4.43 ERA only being better than then-perennial Central League doormat Yokohama's. The team struggled to keep up with the eventual pennant winning Tigers and a nine game losing streak in September contributed to them ending the season in a third place tie with the Yakult Swallows, some 15 1/2 games behind Hanshin. Keep in mind that this was four years before the Central League would have playoffs so third place had no consolation prize. The upshot of all this is that Hara somewhat abruptly resigned as manager about two weeks after Kawai's retirement game.
With Hara gone, the coaching job offer to Kawai was kind of in limbo. The team eventually offered him the defense and base running coaching job on the farm team and Kawai decided to not only decline their offer, but rescind his retirement and continue playing. The Giants then essentially said "well, that's nice but we don't have a place for you anymore on our roster", forcing Kawai to look for another team.
Luckily for Kawai, the Dragons had just hired a former teammate, Hiromitsu Ochiai, as manager. Ochiai wanted the 39 year Kawai for two primary roles - a pinch hitting bunting specialist (Kawai holds the records for most career sacrifice bunts with 533, 21 more than the all time MLB leader Eddie Collins) and late inning defensive replacement for Kazuyoshi Tatsunami. Kawai played three seasons in Nagoya, helping the Dragons win two Central League pennants, before retiring for a second and final time after the 2006 season. He spent the next four years coaching for Chunichi before returning to the Giants and Hara (whose second stint managing the team began in 2006 after the team suffered two disastrous years under Tsuneo Horiuchi's leadership) in 2011. He left the team after the 2018 season but returned for 2023 and continues to be a Yomiuri coach going into the upcoming season.
Here's a card of Kawai from his first spring with Chunichi (2004 BBM 1st Version #236):
One last thing about Kawai - his son Takuya was briefly a development player for the Giants while Kawai coached them. Takuya Kawai was the second round pick of Yomiuri in the 2014 ikusei draft. He spent three years with the team although he never was registered to the 70 man roster and, therefore, never made an appearance with the top team. His father let him know the team was letting him go after the 2017 season and he spent a couple years playing for AJEC in the corporate leagues. He eventually became a coach for the team and is now the head coach for AEC's women's team. This is the only baseball card I know of him. It's #059 from the 2015 BBM Rookie Edition set. I'm amused that they posed him in a kind of bunting stance, echoing what his father had been famous for.
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