Hitoshi Watarida

Hitoshi Watarida is one of those figures who spent a career holding the game together from the shadows — a professional baseball umpire in Japan's NPB, the kind of guy fans only noticed when they disagreed with his call. Born in 1958, right in the thick of Japan's postwar boom, he came up through an era when baseball was basically the national religion, which makes the discipline and grit it takes to become a career umpire all the more impressive. Umpiring isn't glamorous — you're the target when things go wrong and invisible when they go right — but someone has to be the last word on the field, and doing that job for years at the pro level is genuinely tough. He passed away in July 2020, and honestly, guys like him are the quiet backbone of any sport. No highlights reel, no fan chants, just decades of showing up and making the call. Respect.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Hitoshi Watarida (born May 1, 1958; died July 6, 2020) was a Japanese professional baseball umpire. A native of Hiroshima Prefecture and a former college rugby player, he joined the Central League as an umpire in 1982, made his first-team debut in 1985 and later served as a crew chief. He passed away in July 2020 at the age of 62.

Name (English)

Hitoshi Watarida

Name (Japanese)

渡田均

Reading

わたりだ ひとし

Born

May 1, 1958 – July 6, 2020

Origin

Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Baseball Umpire

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Dog

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B8%A1%E7%94%B0%E5%9D%87
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11561957

Tags

• Baseball Umpire

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.