Victor Starffin

Victor Starffin (Russian: Виктор Константинович Старухин, tr. Viktor Konstantinovich Starukhin,[1] 1 May 1916 – 12 January 1957), nicknamed "the blue-eyed Japanese" (青い目の日本人, aoi-me no Nihonjin), was an ethnic Russian baseball player in Japan and the first professional pitcher in Japan to win three hundred games.[2][3] With 83 career shutouts, he ranks number one all-time in Japanese professional baseball.[4]

Victor Starffin
Pitcher
Born: 1 May 1916 Nizhny Tagil, Verkhotursky Uyezd, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire
Died: 12 January 1957 (aged 40) Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
Batted: Right Threw: Right
JBL debut
1936, for the Tokyo Kyojingun
Last NPB appearance
July 12, 1955, for the Takahashi Unions
JBL/NPB statistics
Win–loss record	303-176
Earned run average	2.09
Strikeouts	1960
Shutouts	83
Teams
Tokyo Kyojingun (1934–1944) Pacific/Taiyo Robins (1946–1947) Kinsei Stars/Daiei Stars (1948–1953) Takahashi Unions/Tombow Unions (1954–1955)
Career highlights and awards
Japanese Triple Crown (1938 Fall) 2× Japanese Baseball League MVP (1939, 1940) Best Nine Award winner (1940) Pitched a no-hitter on 3 July 1937 6x 20-game winner (1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1942, 1949) 3x 30-game winner (1938, 1939, 1940) 1x 40-game winner (1939) All-Star selection (1952) Japanese record 83 career shutouts
Member of the Japanese
Baseball Hall of Fame
Induction	1960

Biography

Early years

Victor (or Viktor) Starffin (Staruhin) was born in 1916 in Nizhny Tagil, in the Urals region of what was then the Russian Empire, but after the Russian Revolution he moved with his family to northern Hokkaidō, where he attended Asahikawa Higashi High School.[5]

Starffin wanted to get into Waseda University, but he was scouted by Matsutaro Shoriki in the autumn of 1934 as a member of the national baseball team for an exhibition game against the United States. At that time, the Ministry of Education had a regulation stating that high school baseball players who played professionally forfeited their eligibility to enter higher education, so Starffin was reluctant to turn pro. However, he and his family had entered Japan on transit visas, and his father, Konstantin Starffin, was in jail awaiting trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, both of which put the family at risk of deportation. Shoriki effectively blackmailed Starffin, stating that if Starffin refused to play professionally, Shoriki would use his connections with the Yomiuri Shimbun to publicise the details of Konstantin Starffin's case.[3]

Tōkyō Kyojingun/Yomiuri Giants

Starffin was signed by the Tōkyō Kyojingun (now the Yomiuri Giants), outside the draft, in 1936, and played for them until 1944. He was one of the premier pitchers in the Japanese baseball "dead-ball era" (pre-1945), when many of Japan's best players were serving in the Imperial Japanese Army.[3] He won two MVP awards and a Best Nine award, and won at least 26 games in six different years, winning a league record 42 games in 1939. He followed his record-setting 1939 performance with another 38 wins in 1940.

World War II

In 1940, as xenophobia increased in Japan, Starffin was forced to change his name to Suda Hiroshi. Later, during World War II, wartime paranoia resulted in Starffin being placed in a detention camp at Karuizawa with diplomats and other foreign residents.

Post-war career

After a brief period working as an interpreter for the U.S. Occupation authorities (SCAP), Starffin returned to professional baseball in 1946, but chose not to return to the Giants, instead signing a contract with a new team, the Pacific, an offshoot of the team now known as the Yokohama BayStars. The Pacific's contracts with several famous players, including Starffin, led to a serious conflict, and Pacific was forced to forfeit four games. However, this decision ultimately resulted in the Giants losing the first Japanese championship after World War II, as one of Pacific's forfeited games had been a loss to Great Ring (now the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks): the change from a loss to a win gave Great Ring the title over the Giants.

Starffin was the first pitcher to win 300 games in Japanese baseball

Starffin also played for the Shochiku Robins (now the Yokohama BayStars) in 1947, and the Kinsei/Daiei Stars (now the Chiba Lotte Marines) after 1948. He finally signed with the Takahashi/Tombow Unions (a forerunner of the Chiba Lotte Marines) in 1954-55. In 1955, his last season, he became the first career 300-game winner in Japanese professional baseball. He retired in 1955 with a career record of 303 wins and 176 losses.[3]

Retirement

After retirement, he became an actor and presenter of radio programs.

Death

In 1957, Starffin was killed in a traffic accident when the car he was driving was hit by a tram on the Tōkyū Tamagawa Line (now the Tōkyū Den-en-toshi Line) in Setagaya, Tokyo. The exact circumstances of the incident are debated to this day, with speculation ranging from a simple accident to suicide or drunk driving.

Starffin is buried in Tama Cemetery in Tokyo.[6]

Tributes

In 1960, he became the first foreigner elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

Asahikawa City has nicknamed its municipal baseball stadium, as Asahikawa Starffin Stadium, since 1984.[3]

Personal life

Starffin spoke fluent Japanese and was said to be "more Japanese than Japanese" with respect for his in-laws, but he was worried that his friends would never cross the line with the labels "foreigner" and "exile". It was said to be the case. Therefore, he went to the Orthodox church "Nikolai-do" in Ochanomizu (neighborhood in Tokyo) where white Russians gathered. He searched for friends and even found a bride.[7]

Family

In 1939 Starukhin married a Russian emigrant, Elena. In 1941, their first-born son George was born.[8] After staying in the Karuizawa camp, Starukhin's pleurisy and financial disorder, his personal life went wrong. At the first opportunity presented in 1948 in the person of Alexander Bolovyov, Elena filed for divorce and left with Bolovyov for the USA, leaving her seven-year-old son Starukhina.

The second wife was a Japanese woman Kunie [8] in 1950, whom they met on Christmas at the Russian Club in Tokyo in 1948. She took care of George, and soon they had two daughters - Natalija Starffin Ogato (Japanese journalist and nutritionist, born 1952) and Elizaveta (began to live in the United States).[9] After the death of her husband, Kunie worked several jobs to support her family.

He has two daughters (Elizaveta and Natalija) and a son (Georgij). Starffin's oldest daughter, Natasha, worked for Japan Airlines as a flight attendant, opened the first tanning bed salon in Japan, and attended the renaming ceremony for the stadium named after her father, as a pitcher with the uniform number 17, which had been her father's number. She is now a dietician.

Professional Statistics

Year	Team	G	W	L	IP	K	BB	HR	ERA
1936 Summer	Kyojin	1	0	0	3.0	4	1	0	0.00
1936 Autumn		3	1	2	21.0	19	7	0	3.00
1937 Summer		25	13	4	147.1	92	58	1	1.53
1937 Autumn		26	15	7	164.2	95	51	0	1.86
1938 Summer		24	14	3	158.2	76	57	5	2.04
1938 Autumn		24	19	2	197.2	146	59	0	1.05
1939		68	42	15	458.1	282	156	4	1.73
1940		55	38	12	436.0	245	145	3	0.97
1941		20	15	3	150.0	58	45	3	1.20
1942		40	26	8	306.1	110	119	3	1.12
1943		18	10	5	136.0	71	57	2	1.19
1944		7	6	0	66.0	27	23	0	0.68
1946	Pacific	5	1	1	31.2	11	16	1	1.99
1947	Taiyo	20	8	10	162.1	77	48	3	2.05
1948	Kinsei	37	17	13	298.1	138	80	6	2.17
1949	Daiei	52	27	17	376.0	163	69	24	2.61
1950		35	11	15	234.1	86	48	21	3.96
1951		14	6	6	100.2	47	22	5	2.68
1952		24	8	10	150.1	44	43	9	3.05
1953		26	11	9	201.2	61	42	11	2.68
1954	Takahashi	29	8	13	178.1	52	45	12	3.73
1955	Tombow	33	7	21	196.2	56	30	9	3.89
Total	―	586	303	176	4175.1	1960	1221	122	2.09

*Bold = lead league

See also

• Russians in Japan
• White Emigre
• Koji Ota

References

1. http://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/insignificance/204537.html (in Russian)
2. "Victor Starffin". Japan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
3. Reaves, Joseph A. (2002). Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN 0-8032-3943-2.
4. Wilbert, Warren N. The Shutout in Major League Baseball: A History (McFarland, 2013), p. 108.
5. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/sb20080720wg.html
6. http://www6.plala.or.jp/guti/cemetery/AREA/list_00.html (in Japanese)
7. ナターシャ・スタルヒン著「ロシアから来たエース」（PHP文庫）. "Ace from Russia" by Natasha Starhin (PHP Bunko).
8. Bjarkman, Peter C. Victor Starffin . Baseball Biography Project (eng.) . Society for American Baseball Research . Date of treatment July 25, 2020.
9. Natalia Vakhonina. "A Hollywood director makes a film about a Tagil citizen . " Between the lines news agency (September 17, 2013). Date of treatment July 25, 2020.

Further reading

• Puff, Richard. "The Amazing Story of Victor Starffin". The National Pastime, no. 12 (1992), pp. 17–20. ISBN 0-910137-48-X.

External links

• Nippon Professional Baseball career statistics from JapaneseBaseball.com
• Jim Albright's analysis of Starffin's candidacy for the American Baseball Hall of Fame
• Examples of Victor Starffin baseball cards