Hideki Irabu

Irabu fascinates me less for his stat line than for what he represented: a flamethrowing kid from Okinawa who forced his way onto the New York stage when very few Japanese pitchers dared. The media painted him as volatile, but I read that as a fierce, almost stubborn faith in his own arm. He bounced between Japan and the majors, never quite settling, and his early death at 42 lends his story a melancholy weight. To me he's a reminder that talent and temperament often travel together, and that being misunderstood is sometimes the price of going first.

Name (English)

Hideki Irabu

Name (Japanese)

伊良部秀輝

Reading

いらぶ ひでき

Born

May 5, 1969 – July 27, 2011

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Rooster

Origin

Koza, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

193 cm

Occupation

baseball player

High school

Jinsei Gakuen High School

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki%20Irabu
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%8A%E8%89%AF%E9%83%A8%E7%A7%80%E8%BC%9D
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q485712

Tags

• Okinawa Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.