Alex Ochoa Number Change

I don't know if Alex Ochoa really wanted to change his number. The year that he changed his number was the year that Hiromitsu Ochiai took over as manager, and it sounded like Ochiai decided to rearrange the numbers of his players without consulting the players involved.

I recall reading an article about the number changes, and he said that he wanted "traditional" numbers on his players. Therefore, he had catcher Tanishige change from a single digit number to #27 (a number favored by catchers in Japan for some reason), Ochoa from #22 to #4, etc.

I guess it helped, because a year or two later the Dragons won the Central League Pennant.

I found the answer to this question while doing a search on Google. After Alex had a successful first season and he was retained for another year, the Dragons gave him number four because they have a history of winning pennants with a foreign player wearing number four being a central figure. Alex had his best season in Japan in '04 and helped the Drags finish first in a year in which Fukudome was out a long time with an injury. Woods did not arrive until the following year and got the number 44, interestingly enough. Alex ended up being an everyday player on two pennant winners, winning a Gold Glove, and playing in the All-Star game. Not bad.

[by Moderator: How about the link(s)? It's good to site the source(s).]

It was in the Asahi Shinbum, written by David Wiggins, who calls himself MAS (Man About Sports), and the story was written during the summer of 2004.

One reason for the popularity of #27 is that it was worn by Carlton Fisk when he was with the Red Sox in the 1970s.

What I've never understood is how in Japan the numbers between 11 and 20 are almost completely closed off to non-pitchers. Even 20-30 years ago you sometimes saw position players wearing them, but now, hardly ever.

Also, coaches and staffers seem to always have numbers 70 and over, except for super-elite types like Nagashima and Nomura who get to keep their playing numbers. (I wonder if Terry Collins negotiated for this?)

The other question about Alex's uniform is why he's called "ALEX" on the back of it, and not "OCHOA." Any reason why he chose to use his first name only, or was that Ochiai's doing also?

"ALEX" on the back pre-dates Ochiai-kantoku taking over.

The reason I read was that "OCHOA" reminds people too much of "ochokochoi" - slang for clumsy. (There are apparently some other slang words beginning with ocho- that I won't repeat here.) Rather than subject him to the cruelty of immature children's jokes, they went with his first name.

Is he playing in Japan this year? I did not see his name on the Dragons roster.

He's currently with the Boston Red Sox during the warm ups in spring training.

Although I hope he can stay with the team when regular season opens up, I suppose he will be sent down to the minor leagues.

He seems to be real happy to be in the Red Sox organization. He had a 10th inning game winning hit for Pawtucket tonight. He's wearing number three. His fielding and especially that laser beam arm made a big impression in spring training and he'll be up in the "show" pretty soon, I'm sure. It's a long season and teams have to make roster adjustments from time to time, it's just the natural course of baseball.