Home / Birthday profiles / Masanori Murakami
Portrait of Masanori Murakami

Birthday profile

Masanori Murakami

Masanori Murakami, Japanese baseball player

Find birthday twinsOpen interactive profile
Born
May 6, 1944
Age in 2026
82
Zodiac sign
Taurus
Birth year
1944

About Masanori Murakami

Masanori Murakami, nicknamed "Mashi", is a Japanese former baseball pitcher. He is notable for being the first Japanese player to play for a Major League Baseball (MLB) team. Sent over to the United States by the Nankai Hawks, Murakami saw success as a reliever for the San Francisco Giants, debuting at the age of 20 in 1964. In 1965, he struck out over one batter per inning pitched, posted an ERA under 4 and earned eight saves. Following this season, however, Murakami headed back to the Nankai Hawks due to contractual obligations, where his success continued for another 17 years. He pitched the final three innings of an 11-inning 5-4 win by the Giants on September 29 over the Houston Colt.45s to get his first career win.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Masanori Murakami timeline

  1. Sent over to the United States by the Nankai Hawks, Murakami saw success as a reliever for the San Francisco Giants, debuting at the age of 20 in 1964.
  2. In 1965, he struck out over one batter per inning pitched, posted an ERA under 4 and earned eight saves.

The world when Masanori Murakami was born

Masanori Murakami was born in 1944. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1944

  • #1 song"Swinging on a Star" – Bing Crosby
  • Top movieGoing My Way
  • Best-selling bookStrange Fruit – Lillian Smith

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentGreen Bay Packers win NFL Championship
  • Top headlineD-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6
  • Technology milestoneHarvard Mark I computer begins operations
  • Defining fadBobby socks
  • Notable inventionKidney dialysis machine
  • World population2.39 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population138.4M

1944 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Masanori Murakami's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19442026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,800$435,000
Average income$4,200$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.27$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population138.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, MLB. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.