▲ Chang Hoon poses at a memorabilia donation ceremony held in Seoul in 2018. (Photo: Yonhap News)
Chang Hoon (Japanese name Isao Harimoto), the all-time hit leader in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), passed away on September 9 at the age of 86.
The Meikyukai, an association consisting of former and current NPB players, announced on September 10 that "Analyst Chang Hoon passed away on the morning of September 9 at a hospital in Tokyo, Japan."
Born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1940 as a second-generation Zainichi Korean, Chang enjoyed a stellar career in NPB from 1959 to 1981 as a left-handed pitcher, left-handed hitter, and left fielder.
Debuting with the Toei Flyers (the predecessor of the Nippon-Ham Fighters), and later playing for Nippon-Ham, the Yomiuri Giants, and the Lotte Orions, he recorded 3,085 hits, the most in NPB history.
He remains the only player to surpass 3,000 hits while playing exclusively in NPB.
He recorded nearly 100 more hits than Katsuya Nomura (2,901 hits), who ranks second in this category.
The legendary slugger also ranks third all-time in NPB batting average (.319), tied for seventh in home runs (504), and fourth in RBIs (1,676).
Combining precision with power, he was a feared hitter who also ranked second in career intentional walks (228).
He claimed four consecutive Pacific League batting titles from 1967 to 1971. When he played for Yomiuri, Japan's most popular team, for four years from 1976 to 1979, he was named Yomiuri's 39th cleanup hitter.
Yomiuri maintains a distinct lineage of its cleanup hitters. Following Chang, Lee Seung-yeop, the current Yomiuri hitting coach of Korean descent, served as the 70th cleanup hitter.
Conquering the Japanese baseball world with just a single bat, Chang faced discrimination as a Korean yet maintained his South Korean nationality with indomitable spirit. Late in life, last year, he revealed that he had naturalized as Japanese, surprising fans in both South Korea and Japan.
After retirement, he worked as a commentator for the Japanese private broadcaster TBS for over 20 years from 1982 to 2006.
He also gained popularity as an outspoken critic, appearing as a regular panelist on the TBS current affairs and sports program "Sunday Morning" for over 20 years from 1999 to 2021.
It was no coincidence that TBS was the first to notify the KBO secretariat of Chang's passing and inquire about condolence plans.
The deceased actively engaged with South Korean professional baseball and the South Korean sports community.
He served as a special advisor to the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) commissioner from 1982, when South Korean professional baseball was launched, until 2005, and received South Korea's Mugunghwa Medal of the Order of Civil Merit in 2007.
Chang also helped former manager Baek In-cheon, who passed away on Liberation Day on August 15 last month, advance into Japanese professional baseball.
Mourning Baek by saying, "Baek was a colleague who ran through the same era," Chang departed to join Baek in less than a month.
The KBO is currently considering sending a condolence delegation for Chang.
Before Chang, legends of Japanese professional baseball had departed this world one by one.
Masayichi Kaneda, a Korean-descendant pitcher with the most wins (2019), former manager Katsuya Nomura, who boasted over 10,000 plate appearances and at-bats (2020), and former manager Shigeo Nagashima, known as "Mr. Baseball" (2025), have passed away.
Sadaharu Oh, a Taiwanese-descendant chairman of the NPB SoftBank Hawks who is the same age as Chang and holds the world record of 868 home runs, is still active.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
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