The Ace from Russia: The Glory and Anguish of Victor Starffin, the Giants' 300-Win Pitcher

The strange phenomenon where the more you learn about Starffin, the more you dislike the Giants (2020/12/28)

Starffin's daughter, Natasha Starffin, wrote this book in 1986.
That was the year Kazuhiro Kiyohara and Masumi Kuwata took their first steps as professionals, and the year Mr. Red Helmet, Koji Yamamoto, retired. It was also the year that 39-year-old Senichi Hoshino was appointed manager of the Chunichi Dragons during the off-season. Incidentally, the shopkeeper was a fourth-grade baseball-loving boy at the time.
Since Starffin had already been dead for 29 years by that point, you can see just how long ago he was a professional baseball player. Incidentally, Starffin was a teammate of Eiji Sawamura, and the likes of the 'God of Batting' Tetsuharu Kawakami and the Giants' retired number legend Shigeru Chiba were his juniors.

A great pitcher of the past, a stadium named after him (Asahikawa Starffin Stadium), and he played under the name 'Hiroshi Suda' during the war—
I felt like I knew about Starffin, but in reality, I didn't know much at all. I suspect many baseball fans are the same, aren't they?

The reason I wanted to read a book about Starffin now is that I became interested in him after he appeared in 'The Weakest Team: The Youth of the Takahashi Unions' (Shoichi Hasegawa / Byakuya Shobo), which I read last year.

He escaped from the Soviet Union, where the winds of revolution were blowing, and fled to Japan at the risk of his life. Born as the son of an officer in the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia, he was bullied as a 'White Russian' in his adopted home of Japan. His father committed a murder, was imprisoned, and Starffin spent his childhood in abject poverty. He eventually encountered baseball, displayed rare talent, became the pride of his local area, and climbed to become Japan's first 300-win pitcher. However, his end was not a happy one. Was his life a success story, or a tragedy...?

I arrived at this book wanting to know more about Starffin, but the more I learned, the more a feeling of unbearable anger welled up inside me.
Most of that anger must be directed at the Yomiuri Shimbun, which toyed with his life.
Using the same tactics they used to force Eiji Sawamura to drop out of Kyoto Commercial High School, the newspaper company plotted to poach Starffin for the 'Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club' (later the Yomiuri Giants). They pulled strings with the Special Higher Police, hinted at the forced repatriation of the Starffin family to the Soviet Union, and forced him to drop out of school and join the team through what was essentially blackmail.
Even Jun Ikeido couldn't come up with such a hateful plot.

After that, Starffin contributed greatly to the team's six consecutive championships, achieving a Japanese record of 42 wins in a season and becoming the first and fastest player in history to reach 100 career wins, playing an active role as the Giants' ace. However, it was wartime. As the war situation worsened and the backlash against baseball as an 'enemy sport' intensified, the Giants, who had forcibly brought Starffin into the team, did not protect him at all; instead, they expelled him from the baseball world. What a nasty team.

When professional baseball was revived after the war, Starffin joined the Taiheiyo Pacific team to follow his mentor, manager Sadayoshi Fujimoto. The Giants then claimed that they still held his player rights and continued to drag Starffin down for several years. What a bottom-tier team.

And then, Starffin's final years. Unable to hide his declining strength, Starffin showed a desire to continue his career, but because he received an offer for a retirement exhibition from the Giants, the team he once belonged to, he took off the uniform of the Tombo Unions, where he was currently playing. However, that retirement exhibition was canceled without any legitimate reason. In this book, this is described as a 'surprise attack.' What an unforgivable team.

Starffin was affectionately called 'Sta-ko' by his seniors and 'Sta-san' by his juniors. Before games, he would wrap himself in a dotera robe and get absorbed in shogi. While he was said to be 'more Japanese than the Japanese,' his words, as he was tossed about by the times and the Giants, pierce the heart.
'In my baseball life, I was betrayed over and over again.'

Two years after his retirement, Starffin ended his life at the age of 40 in a mysterious accident.
I cannot help but feel pity for Starffin, who passed away stateless despite being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in recognition of his immense contributions to Japanese baseball.

At the very least, I hope the fact that a great pitcher named Starffin performed so incredibly well during the dawn of professional baseball will continue to be passed down.