Lefty O’Doul: Batting Champion, Baseball Missionary, & San Francisco’s “Man in the Green Suit”

Francis Joseph “Lefty” O’Doul

I f not for the baseball missionary work of Lefty O’Doul there might have never been an Ichiro Suzuki.

O’Doul was baseball’s polymath: star pitcher, batting champion, father of professional baseball in Japan, successful manager, innovative batting coach, conduit to major league’s expansion to the west…