Thrilled to be back in Japan last month as the pitching coach on the 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Japan Tour was Jim Colborn, former pitching instructor for the Orix BlueWave and currently mentor to the mound staff of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The return to Dai Nippon was like a homecoming for Colborn, who tutored the Orix mound staff for four seasons and still uses his Japanese language ability in his work in California.
Colborn began his Japan career with the Orix Braves in 1990 when the team still went by that nickname and played in Nishinomiya Stadium, the old factory of a ballpark which the Hankyu Braves called home for so many years before Hankyu Railways sold the club to Orix in 1988.