Todd, our resident umpire, passed on an email about an upcoming documentary that’s being filmed this season. Entitled ‘Samurai Umpires in the USA’, the filmmaker, Takayuki Tanaka, is following the actions of the six Japanese umpires that are in the US professional baseball system right now. All six are in the minors right now but of course, have aspirations to make it to the bigs someday.
The six Japanese umpires currently in the US minor league baseball system:
- Taro Hamano (Northwest League)
- Takeshi Hirabayashi (Southern League)
- Masaki Nonaka (California League)
- Atsushi Yoshioka (Arizona League)
- Yuta Niide (Pioneer League)
- Koyu Inoue (South Atlantic League)
‘Samurai Umpires’ will be a full-length feature film Most of the footage we’ll see will have been shot from July 2008 to end of the minor league season.
It looks like it won’t be a high budget film and perhaps not the most “polished” product. For me, that’s a good thing. We’ll get to see some raw footage rather than over-edited, perhaps contrived scenes. That would be great.
Good luck to Mr Tanaka and I’m looking forward to seeing ‘Samurai Umpires’ when it comes out (target date is sometime next spring).
Here are a few news articles about the upcoming documentary “Samurai Umpires in the USA”: