Carp Tales: Gail Hopkins

After a seven-year MLB career Gail Hopkins joined the Carp in 1975 helping the team to its first Central League title. I had the pleasure of interviewing Gail for nearly 5 hours in December 2024. The full interview will appear in a future book of Carp Tales, but for now please enjoy Gail's recollections of the 1975 Carp-Dragons riots.

Nagoya was our main rival. What is not understood by most Americans is that there are regional rivalries in Japan and there was a big rivalry between Nagoya and Hiroshima. We were playing an important game [on September 10, 1975]. In the ninth inning, Mimura, our short stop, was on second with two outs and Koji Yamamoto hit a line drive base hit into center field and so we're going to win because with two outs, a runner on second is always off running as soon as the ball is hit. Mimura came around third and I don't know what he was doing, but he was thrown out by 25 feet. The catcher caught the ball, and Mimura tried to sidestep him, and the catcher tagged him in the chin. Mimura went down and then he jumped up, and the two of them started yelling at each other. It was the third out and the bottom of the ninth, and we were past three hours, so no new inning could start. So, the game ended in a tie.

The next thing you know, Mimura hit the catcher with an open hand slap and then the guys went at it. Both teams came out on the field and they're just all boisterous. Shiny and I walked out to the mound and Ron Woods and Gene Martin, who played for the Dragons, came out. We were standing on the mound and laughing at this sort of a fight because [it seemed more] like a love fest going on. All of a sudden, we realized we weren't alone.

We turned around and it was like one of those crazy movies where the alien monsters are dropping over things. All these people were climbing up on top of the fence surrounding the field and they were dropping down these 10-foot fences onto the field. By the ninth inning, there's been a lot of sake and beer drunk in the stands and most of them were drunk. All I could think of at the time was the movie Jason and the Argonauts, where the skeletons would climb over things and fall down into a heap of bones, and then all of a sudden, they would resurrect. Then we realized that all these people were coming at us!

Ron and Gene took off for their dugout, and then all the other players realized what was happening and they ran for the dugouts. That was the fastest those two teams probably moved all season! The fans started going after the Nagoya players. Shiny and I ran over to their dugout and we're throwing people out of the dugout. The only other person in there from the Carp was a guy named Titi from the front office. He was a big dude who had played ball, and he was trying to protect the players until they could get behind this metal door that led to the clubhouse.

The riot went on for a couple hours. The fans tore the field up. They ended up breaking most of the windows at the front of the stadium. It was surreal to watch. In right field, we had a concrete fence about three feet high and then above it a chain link fence came up out of the concrete. There were 200 fans who were up on the fence, and they were singing and grunting in a rhythm, pushing that fence. Once they got it bent over a little bit, they all ran up on the end of the fence and in unison started chanting something and they all jumped together. So, the chain link fence from right field to center field was [pushed almost flat].

My wife and kids were sitting in the stands near the press box, so I was concerned. I went back and managed to get my family out of there. Wally's team stayed inside the clubhouse until around 11:00 PM. I went in my clubhouse, got dressed, and then came back out to see what was going on. There were probably 2000 or more people in the parking lot. The Dragons’ bus was sitting right outside the door to the locker room on the left field side of the stadium where the main road was. The people weren't leaving, so the Dragons couldn't come out. And they were yelling. I don't know what they were saying. Finally, five or six flatbed trucks with police on the back came down the street into the stadium. The police started pushing and clubbing people and finally cut a path for the Dragon players to get on the bus. As soon as they got on the bus, the fans overwhelmed the cops and ran at the bus, and they started breaking the windows. The guys in the bus were keeping their heads down because the fans were throwing things at them. These fans would climb up and try to get in these broken windows, and every now and then you'd see a fist come up and hit the guy who was trying to get in and knock him off. Some guys laid down in front of the bus and they punched out the tires. Finally, the police started clubbing the fans. It probably took half an hour for the cops to clear the parking lot. The bus then got started and they got it out on the street. By that time, it was probably 11:30 at night and it went down the main street with flat tires headed for their hotel.

Earlier, I had told Gene and Ron, “Why don't you guys come over to the house afterwards and we'll get something to eat at our place tonight.” So, after they got to the hotel, they took a cab over. We had dinner around 1:00 AM at night at our place. Ron couldn't play for about a week because his hand was all swollen from where he had punched guys. It was funny in retrospect. But as I watched it, it wasn’t. It was dead serious. The next day, they had a big press conference in front of the stadium with Mr. Sugimatsu, Koba, and the Commissioner, and for the first time in Japanese baseball history, they had to cancel a game because of fan behavior, and the fact that the stadium was unplayable. It was crazy. I've never seen anything like that … until we went to Nagoya.

We went to Nagoya later in the season. We were in first place, and they were in second by a game. These were important games. We ran out on the field in the first inning and there was something weird going on. They had two light banks with about 200 lights in each bank. These were enormous light banks, and they had great light. But the whole right field light bank was out, no lights. We started playing the game, and I remember talking to the umpires and saying, “We can't play with this. This is too important a game. These lights have got to be fixed.” Somewhere at the start of the second inning, the umpires pulled together and decided to pause the game and get the lights fixed. Well, after an hour and a half, they still hadn't fixed them. And after an hour and a half of drinking sake and beer, the 35,000 people sitting in the stands were getting restless. Then the umpires decided that they couldn't fix the lights. So, they came to us to give us a forewarning. They told us, “OK, this game is going to be called. We want you guys, just one at a time, to pick up your gloves and stuff and slowly walk back into the locker room, which can be locked.” When about half the club had gone, some guy walked out to home plate, set up a microphone, and then walked away. Everybody in the stands was getting the idea of what was going to happen. Then our manager walked out to home plate. Wally Yonamine, the Dragons manager, walked out, their officials walked out, and the umpires walked out. As soon as they did that, the rest of our players headed for the locker room and locked this great big door because the fans went wild. They had a riot. We were in there for an hour and a half until they got the thing calmed down. Our bus was way out in center field in back to the stadium, but we waited for hour and a half before we could walk to our bus. So, the Japanese fan was very different from the American fan. I've never seen those things here. There was nothing in the United States that came close to those things.