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The Russian star of Japanese baseball. Son of a killer, Russian spy, legend

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victore starukin

The amazing story of Victor Starukhin, a native of Nizhny Tagil, who left a bright mark in the history of Japanese sports.

Victor Konstantinovich Starukhin (also known as Victor Starffin)

Victor Starukhin was born on May 1, 1916 in Nizhni Tagil (Permskaya Gubernia, Russian Empire).

For 21 years (from 1934 to 1955) he pitched for Japanese baseball clubs from Tokyo, Osaka and Kawasaki.

Twice he was named the best player of the Japanese Baseball League (1939, 1940).

Was included in the 1940 symbolic team and won The Best Nine Award, which is given to the best baseball player of the season according to journalists.

In 1952 he was selected to the league's All-Star Team.

In the 1955 season he won his 300th victory, becoming the first pitcher to reach that mark in Japanese Major League Baseball. He also set many records, some of which are still unbeaten today. In 1960, he was posthumously elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the first foreigner to receive this honor.

On January 12, 1957, he died in a car accident under unclear circumstances.


A national hero in Japan and one of the best baseball players of the twentieth century, whose contribution to the game is recognized even in his homeland in the United States, Viktor Starukhin is almost unknown in Russia. However, the tragic fate of the Russian star of Japanese baseball, which developed into a gripping drama amid the historical upheavals of the last century, only confirms that he is a flesh-and-blood Russian.


Escape from Russia and a new homeland

The future baseball player, then Victor Konstantinovich Starukhin, was born into the wealthy family of Konstantin Fedotovich and Evdokia Fedorovna of Nizhny Tagil. He was the fourth and only surviving child. Before it children in Starukhin's family died at infantile age. The year 1916 was the height of the First World War, the following year divides the history of Russia into before and after. In 1919, along with Kolchak's retreating army, the Starukhin family was forced to leave first their hometown and then the country.

The first place of the new emigrant life becomes the city of Harbin in China. Here, the Starukhins would live for almost ten years. In 1929, they move to one of the Japanese islands of Hokkaido. It was here, at a school in the town of Asahikawa, that the 13-year-old Victor took his first steps in baseball. Excellent physical data (over 190 cm tall and 100 kg of weight) allowed Victor to quickly become a sports star of the city, and in five years after starting baseball to get into a professional club. However, another important circumstance contributed to the Russian's baseball career.

Despite his notable athletic prowess, Victor never abandoned the dream of receiving a college education. He even set for himself a university - Waseda University, considered at the time one of the most prestigious in the country. But according to a new law passed just before that, it was forbidden to play professional sports and get higher education at the same time in Japan. It would have been all right, Victor had no doubts about his choice: for the sake of the university he was ready to give up baseball forever.

But an irreparable thing happened: in 1934 Victor's father, Konstantin Fedotovich, was arrested and accused of killing a woman. The accusation sounded like a bolt from the blue. Starukhin Sr.'s initial version was that he had killed the victim out of jealousy, but later he claimed that the murdered woman was a Soviet spy among Russian émigrés. What was the real reason for Victor's father's reckless action remained a mystery. But this whole situation threatened the Starukhin family with a real catastrophe. Given that all family members were in Japan on temporary visas for foreigners, the Starukhin family was at risk of being deported from the country. One could only hope for a miracle...

Miraculous salvation and national love

And a miracle happened. Matsutaro Shoriki, a newspaper magnate, fan and promoter of baseball in Japan, and owner of a baseball team, unexpectedly came to the Russian family's rescue. Shoriki made the family an offer they could not refuse. They were offered two possibilities: one - Victor would choose a career as a professional baseball player and become a player on his team, then Matsutaro would do everything to spare the father of an athlete the mercy of the sentence; the other - in case Victor refused, the head of the family would receive a large prison sentence, and the mother and son would be deported from Japan. Classic blackmail.

Victor agreed to the patron's terms, and as a result, his father received only two years for involuntary manslaughter thanks to Shoriki's efforts, and his son and mother were able to stay in their new homeland. Starukhin quickly became a favorite of local baseball fans. In the fall of that same year, 1934, Victor went to an exhibition baseball team in Japan in the United States. There he received a new offer, this time from the Americans, to stay and play in America, in Major League Baseball (MLB). He could not refuse the country which had become his second homeland. When this became known in Japan, the Russian baseball player became a household name.

In the Japanese league Starukhin played pitcher. In baseball, this is the same player who throws the ball from the pitcher's mound toward home, where the catcher (catcher) catches it, and the opposing hitter (batter) tries to hit it as hard as possible, preferably by hitting a home run (when the ball leaves the plate without touching the ground). Both statistically and according to reports in the sports press, the Russian-born baseball player was one of the best in his lineup.


Achieve such success largely helped by outstanding physical characteristics of the player: a very high growth and endurance. The player twice (in 1939 and 1940) was named MVP of the Japanese Baseball League, at the end of the 1940 season he was included in the championship's symbolic team.


Another turning point in Starukhin's life came after the outbreak of the new war.

War, Alcohol, Tragedy

With the outbreak of World War II, and especially after the entry into it of the USSR, formally Starukhin's former homeland, the baseball player began to have problems. Victor was not only twice refused Japanese citizenship, although he had lived in the Land of the Rising Sun for more than ten years, but because of the growing nationalist sentiment of the Japanese he had to change his Russian name and surname to Japanese. So he became Hiroshi Suda. That did not save him much: in the eyes of the Japanese the yesterday's idol turned into an enemy, he was constantly suspected of working for the Soviet intelligence.

In 1944 he was removed from the main Tokyo team, for which he played for ten years. Left destitute and without any support whatsoever, that same year the pre-war baseball legend ended up with his wife and three-year-old son in an internment camp in the village of Karuizawa near Nagano. In fact, in a concentration camp for foreigners, Starukhin contracted acute pleurisy.

After the war ended (after Japan was atom-bombed) and the Americans occupied the country, Victor changed his last name again (now his American name was Victor Starfin), and then tried to return to his old team, to which he had given ten years of his life. But received a categorical rejection from the club's management. For a while he even had to work at the Americans translated from Russian and Japanese, the three languages he knew perfectly. And yet in 1946, when peacetime began to gradually improve, and thanks to the troubles of his manager, he was able to return to his favorite baseball. True, he had to move to Osaka.


Despite a long hiatus from his playing career, Starukhin-Starffin was able to return to his high level of baseball. He set several records, which the Japanese baseball league has not been able to break until now. For example, the Russian baseball player ranks first in the league in the number of shutouts (the number of complete games played without a single missed injury, simply put, the number of "dry" games) - he has 83 of them. More no one in the whole baseball league in Japan could not yet. In 1952 he was selected to Japan's All-Star team, and in 1955 became the first pitcher in the history of Japanese Major League Baseball to score 300 runs (he had 303 total).

Unfortunately, the last years of his career and, as it turned out, of Victor Starukhin's life were marred by depression and the player's addiction to alcohol. Probably also caused by health and family problems that hit him during World War II and the first post-war years.

In 1939 he married a Russian immigrant Helen. In 1941 they had their firstborn son Georgy. After entering an internment camp, where Starukhin undermined his health, with chronic financial problems, family life began to crumble before his eyes. In 1948 his wife filed for divorce and left for the United States with her new husband, leaving their seven-year-old son Victor. To recover from the shock, the baseball player soon married again - this time to a Japanese woman Kunie, whom he met at Christmas in the Russian Club in Tokyo. In this marriage they had two daughters, Natalia and Elizabeth. And even after that, at the end of his brilliant career (he finished it in 1955), he did not leave a feeling of sadness and loneliness ...

On January 12, 1957, Starukhin died in a car accident in Tokyo when his car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing. He was only 40 years old. There are still no reliable details about the death of the Japanese baseball star. Existing versions suggest a variety of scenarios: from tragic confluence of circumstances to suicide and drunken driving. Victor Starukhin is buried in the same Tokyo cemetery, Tama.

The financial state of the Starukhin family is evidenced by the fact that after his death, the player's widow was forced to work in several places at once to support herself and the three children left in her arms.

Born and living in Russia for only three of his 40 years, Victor Starukhin, or "the blue-eyed Japanese," became a national hero in a country obsessed with baseball. Three years after his death, Victor Starukhin-Starffin became the first foreigner (and the only one so far from Russia) elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.


Interesting Facts

1979. Victor Starukhin's daughter Natalia wrote and published her father's biography in Japanese, "The Dream and Glory of White Baseball". The book was republished in 1985.


2016. Daughter participated in events celebrating Starukhin's 100th birthday - planting an alley of trees and opening a baseball stadium named after him.

1984. In the city of Asahikawa, where Victor Starukhin studied and began his baseball career, a street and baseball stadium with 25,000 seats were named after him, a bronze monument was erected in front of the grandstand entrance, and a museum in memory of the Russian baseball player was opened at the stadium itself.

1991. In honor of Victor Starukhin, the Kuntsevo baseball club in Moscow was renamed the V. Starukhin Baseball Club (until 1994). Since the same year, a baseball tournament in memory of the great player has been held in Moscow.


1993. The second book about Starukhin was published in Japanese - "The Great Pitcher from Russia".

2004. A Japanese television company released a film, "The Glory and Collapse of Stateless Pitcher Victor Starukhin," which won several international film awards.

2005. Victor Starukhin is included in the Diamonds around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball, published in the United States.

2012. Victor Starukhin's biography in English, The Gaijin Pitcher: The Life and Times of Victor Starffin, was published in the United States.

2013, fundraising was begun for the shooting of a Russian film about Victor Starukhin (working title - "Starffin. The Other Side of the Sunrise"). The film's teaser: "Far from native shores. Alone in the dark alien world. He didn't wait for the dawn. He illuminated the world himself, becoming its new star!" Due to a lack of sponsors and funds, filming has been postponed indefinitely.


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