Masao Kida

Masao Kida made his major league debut in 1999, at a moment when a Japanese pitcher crossing the Pacific was still an experiment rather than a career path. He pitched in MLB from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2005, with the long gap in between telling you something about how hard it was to hold that ground. He was born in Kokubunji, Tokyo in 1968, stands 188 cm, and came up through Nihon University Meisei High School. What interests me is the shape of the whole career rather than any single season. He left, he came back, he kept pitching, and he is now managing the farm team of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in the Eastern League. Player development is where former pitchers with unglamorous statistics often turn out to be the most useful people in the organization, because they know exactly what it costs to survive when your stuff is not overwhelming. A man who spent years learning to adapt is a reasonable choice to teach adaptation.

Name (English)

Masao Kida

Name (Japanese)

木田優夫

Reading

きだ まさお

Born

September 12, 1968 (age 57)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Monkey

Origin

Kokubunji, Tokyo, Japan

Height

188 cm

Occupation

baseball player / baseball coach

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao%20Kida
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%A8%E7%94%B0%E5%84%AA%E5%A4%AB
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6782610

Tags

• Tokyo
• baseball player
• baseball coach

Last updated

2026-08-07

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.