Randy Bass

Randy Bass
State Senator, Oklahoma
In office November 2004–Present
Personal details
Nationality	American-
Political party	Democratic
Height	185 cm (6 ft 1 in)
Spouse	Kelley Bass

Randy William Bass (ランディ・バース) (born March 13, 1954 in Lawton, Oklahoma) is a former American baseball player and current politician. He is less notable for his career in Major League Baseball than for his success in Japan's Hanshin Tigers of Central League, where he had the most spectacular run of any American to ever play in Japan. Currently, Bass is a Democratic State Senator from Oklahoma, representing District 32.

Baseball

Bass came up with the Minnesota Twins as a first baseman in 1977. In his six seasons in the Major Leagues (divided among five teams), he was never a day-to-day player, usually coming off the bench just to pinch hit. After his contract expired following the 1982 season, Bass signed with the Hanshin Tigers of the Central League, who made him their starting first-baseman. The Hanshin Tigers, located in the Kansai region, had the reputation of an eternal underdog as opposed to the Yomiuri Giants, still considered the king of Japanese baseball. As the devotional fans flocked to the stadium no matter how badly the Tigers played in the league, the corporate owner, Hanshin Railway, consistently underinvested in the team to milk profit. This resulted in decades of dismal performance. Bass is often credited as single-handedly turning the fortune of the Tigers which resulted in the team's miraculous run and eventual victory of the Japan Series in 1985.

Bass took advantage of the differences between Japanese and American styles of pitching, and immediately became the Tigers' star slugger. He won four consecutive league batting titles; in 1986, he nearly became the first player in Japan to bat .400, finishing the season with a .389 average, a record that still stands, despite Ichiro Suzuki's formidable challenges to it in 1994 and 2000. Bass won consecutive batting Triple Crowns (1985 and 1986), a feat no player has accomplished in the U.S. major leagues. In 1985, he was on a pace to break Sadaharu Oh's record of 55 home runs in a single season, but fell short by one, because in the last game of the season the pitcher from Oh's Yomiuri Giants threw only intentional walks (allegedly to prevent the Westerner from breaking Oh's record though Oh himself is not a Japanese national). In Japan, his spectacular performance is a legend, and among Tigers fans, he is nearly deified.

He is also famous in Japan for the "Curse of the Colonel." Following the 1985 Series victory, revelers celebrated by calling off the names of team members one by one. At each name, a fan who looked like that player would jump into the filthy Dotonbori canal. For Bass, someone threw a life-sized model of Colonel Sanders, the mascot of Kentucky Fried Chicken and the only close-at-hand likeness of a bearded American, into the river. The statue disappeared and is said to have caused the subsequent decade-long dismal performance in the Central League. In an attempt to remove the curse, fans have made repeated attempts to find the model, but so far the attempts have failed. Instead, the fans have been making offerings to the statues of the Colonel for forgiveness. In 2003, when the Tigers returned to the Japan Series after 18 years with one of the worst records in the Central League, many KFC outlets in Kōbe and Ōsaka moved their Colonel Sanders statues inside until the series was over to protect them from rabid Tigers fans. The newly replaced Colonel Sanders statue in the Dotonbori KFC branch is bolted down to prevent a repeat of the incident. The Tigers failed to win the series, so the curse is presumably intact.

After Baseball

After his 1988 retirement, Bass became active in community projects to promote baseball in his native state, while continuing to make trips to Japan as a cultural ambassador. Bass was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate as a Democrat in 2004. He was re-elected in 2006. In the Senate he serves as the Co-Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee Natural Resources and Regulatory Services. He also sits on the Appropriations, Retirement and Insurance, General Government and, Judiciary Committees.

Name spelling

Though the name Bass would conventionally be transcribed as バス (Basu) in Japanese, Randy Bass is known as バース (Bāsu) (pronounced /baːs(ɯ)/ when read phonetically). The owner of the Tigers, Hanshin Electric Railway Co., Ltd., requested the change because the company owns directly bus operation. Because "bus" is written exactly the same as Bass in Japanese ('basu'), Hanshin Electric Railway worried that Japanese media might create headlines such as "Bus unstoppable" (consecutive hits), "Bus explodes" (home run) or "Bus crash" (if he slumps), which would have a negative impact to the corporate image of Hanshin Electric Railway Bus.

See also

• Montreal Expos all-time roster
• San Diego Padres all-time roster

External links

• Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics and analysis
• Oklahoma State Senate page
• The Curse of Bass
• Lawton Politics
• Sen. Bass official Bio
• City of Lawton official Webpage