RHODES CRACKS 450TH JAPANESE HOMER

Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes once hit three homers on Opening Day for the Chicago Cubs in 1994, but he was not regarded as a home run hitter during his major league career after knocking out just 13 longballs in 590 at-bats in 225 MLB games between 1990 and 1995. That has changed since he left the United States to play in Japan in 1997.

Rhodes had another three-homer performance for the Orix Buffaloes in an 11-3 win over the Nippon Ham Fighters last week to become the first American player to reach 450 home runs in Japanese baseball. The 40-year-old Rhodes now has 452 dingers for his career, tops among all active players in Nippon Professional Baseball. Hanshin’s Tomoaki Kanemoto is second on the list at 429.

In the win over Nippon Ham, Rhodes cracked a solo homer in the fourth inning to become only the 12th player in Japanese baseball history to reach the 450-homer mark, then whacked a three-run homer in the fifth inning before capping off his night with a two-run bomb in the eight.

Now in his 13th season of NPB ball, Rhodes has topped 50 homers twice (including a record-tying 55 roundtrippers in 2001), and has surpassed 40 homers on four other occasions.