Lawton native and Lawton High School graduate Randy Bass has been selected as part of the 2023 Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame Class.
Bass, a member of the Wolverine class of 1972, was an All-State selection in both football and baseball while attending Lawton High. Despite holding scholarship offers for football at Kansas State and the University of Oklahoma, Bass chose to pursue a baseball career after being drafted in the seventh round of the 1972 Major League Baseball (MLB) draft. He made his MLB debut in 1977 for the Minnesota Twins and played for the Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos, Dan Diego Padres, and Texas Rangers during his six-year run in the MLB.
Bass’ career really took off when he signed with the Hanshin Tigers of the Nippon Professional Baseball’s (NPB) Central League. He played with the Tigers from 1983-1988 and finished his career with a .337 average, 202 home runs, 486 TBI, and a 1.078 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS). During the 1985 season, he was one of the driving forces behind the Tigers’ only Japan Series Championship, winning the first of his back-to-back Triple Crowns and being the named the Central League MVP.
After his playing career ended, Bass was regularly invited to Japan to participate in the Suntory Malts old-timers’ games alongside other NPB luminaries and was considered one of the most famous foreign players in the league’s history. In 2004, Bass was elected to the Oklahoma Senate where he served until 2019.
Getting into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame was a process for Bass. He was not inducted in his 15 years on the ballot in the Players Division and came close in 2022 in the Experts Division, falling just four votes shy of induction. This year, he received 78.6-percent of the vote, surpassing the required 75-percent mark.