Finally, a new NPB commissioner

And he looks to be a very interesting fellow with the international pedigree, passion for the game, and the potential to direct NPB (and maybe even baseball in Japan as a whole) in a positive direction, instead of the current “interim”, useless, owners’ (especially the Evil Empire Yomiuri’s Nabetsune) puppet, and lame duck commissioner Negoro.

Officially, for the last 6 1/2 years, Ryozo Kato’s title in Washington has been ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States of America.

Unofficially, he’s just “a baseball nut.”

This week, upon leaving the most prestigious post a Japanese diplomat can hold, the 67-year-old returned to Tokyo to begin a new job next month, one he never sought yet accidentally spent his whole life preparing for: commissioner of baseball in Japan.

“A lot of people in Japan have been green with envy. They want to know what I did to become commissioner,” said Kato, who, after a 60-year affair with the game, may have no rival anywhere in grasping the sport in both its Eastern and Western forms. Binding encyclopedic knowledge with decades of firsthand connections in the United States, Kato is unique. Not that he’d say it.

Hopefully he’ll bring the positive parts from MLB into NPB and fuse them together into a better product, that would the traditionally Japanese thing to do.