Victor Starffin
| Victor Starffin | |||
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| Pitcher | |||
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Born: May 1, 1916 Nizhny Tagil, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire |
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Died: January 12, 1957 (aged 40) Tokyo, Japan |
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| NPB debut | |||
| 1936, for the Tokyo Kyojingun | |||
| Last appearance | |||
| July 12, 1955, for the Tombow Unions | |||
| NPB statistics | |||
| Win–loss record | 303-176 | ||
| ERA | 2.09 | ||
| Strikeouts | 1960 | ||
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| Career highlights and awards | |||
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| Member of the Japanese | |||
 Baseball Hall of Fame
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| Inducted | 1960 | ||
Victor Starffin (Russian: Виктор Константинович Старухин, tr. Viktor Konstantinovich Starukhin, May 1, 1916 – January 12, 1957), nicknamed "the blue-eyed Japanese" (青い目の日本人 aoi-me no Nihonjin?), was an ethnic Russian baseball player in Japan and the first professional pitcher in Japan to win three hundred games. With 83 career shutouts, he ranks number one all-time in Japanese professional baseball.
Victor (or Viktor) Starffin was born in 1916 in Nizhny Tagil, in the Urals region of what was then the Russian Empire, but after the Russian Revolution he moved with his family to northern Hokkaidō, where he attended Asahikawa Higashi High School.
Starffin wanted to get into Waseda University, but he was scouted by Matsutaro Shoriki in the autumn of 1934 as a member of the national baseball team for an exhibition game against the United States. At that time, the Ministry of Education had a regulation stating that high school baseball players who played professionally forfeited their eligibility to enter higher education, so Starffin was reluctant to turn pro. However, he and his family had entered Japan on transit visas, and his father, Konstantin Starffin, was in jail awaiting trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, both of which put the family at risk of deportation. Shoriki effectively blackmailed Starffin, stating that if Starffin refused to play professionally, Shoriki would use his connections with the Yomiuri Shimbun to publicise the details of Konstantin Starffin's case.
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Wikipedia