Shigeo Nagashima, known in Japan as 'Mr. Pro Baseball,' dies at 89

TOKYO (AP) — Shigeo Nagashima, who was known in Japan as “Mr. Pro Baseball” and was one of the most famous people in the country during his playing days, has died. He was 89.

His death was confirmed Tuesday by the Yomiuri Giants, the team he helped make famous and eventually managed.

His passing was also announced in special extra editions of newspapers that are handed out on street corners — a throwback to breaking news in an earlier time.

He was famous in a period before Japanese players like Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani began to star in North American MLB.

Ohtani posted three photos of himself with Nagashima on social media before the Los Angeles Dodgers’ game on Monday night — including two that were clearly taken during the Dodgers’ visit to Tokyo last March for the first two games of the regular season.

“May your soul rest in peace,” Ohtani wrote.

Ohtani didn’t speak to reporters after he hit his major league-leading 23rd homer and later drove in the tying run during the Dodgers’ 4-3 loss to the New York Mets.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Nagashima “gave bright dreams and hopes to the society.”

Nagashima helped lead the Giants as they won nine straight Japan Series titles — the counterpart to the World Series — from 1965 through 1973.

His equally famous teammate was Sadaharu Oh, who hit 868 home runs in his career.

Nagashima played third base, finished with a .305 batting average, had 2,471 hits, 1,522 RBIs and 444 home runs.

He played for 17 seasons and retired in 1974, then returned to manage the Giants in 1975 through 1980. He was fired after the 1980 season when the Giants failed to win the Japan Series during his stint.

He returned to the dugout in 1993 and led the Giants to the Japan Series title in 1994 with Hideki Matsui, who eventually joined the New York Yankees. He also won the championship in 2000.

He was to set to manage Japan in the 2004 Athens Olympics, but had a stroke a few months before that left him partially paralyzed and unable to participate.

AP Sports Writer Greg Beacham contributed from Los Angeles.

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A person receives an extra edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting that Shigeo Nagashima passed away Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Tokyo. Nagashima, who was known in Japan as “Mr. Pro Baseball” in Japan and was one of the most famous people in the country during his playing days, has died. He was 89. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

A person unfurls an extra edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting that Shigeo Nagashima passed away Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Tokyo. Nagashima, who was known in Japan as “Mr. Pro Baseball” in Japan and was one of the most famous people in the country during his playing days, has died. He was 89. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

A person reads an extra edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting that Shigeo Nagashima passed away Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Tokyo. Nagashima, who was known in Japan as “Mr. Pro Baseball” in Japan and was one of the most famous people in the country during his playing days, has died. He was 89. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

A person reads an extra edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting that Shigeo Nagashima passed away Tuesday, June 3, 2025, in Tokyo. Nagashima, who was known in Japan as “Mr. Pro Baseball” in Japan and was one of the most famous people in the country during his playing days, has died. He was 89. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

FILE - Wearing traditional Japanese "Hapi" coats San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, left, is watched by Japanese baseball legend Shigeo Nagashima standing near New York Mets manager Art Howe after breaking open a barrel of sake with baseball bats at a party in Tokyo in this Nov. 7, 2002.(AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has arrived at a delicate moment as he weighs whether to order a U.S. military response against the Iranian government as it continues a violent crackdown on protests that have left nearly 600 dead and led to the arrests of thousands across the country.

The U.S. president has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force against antigovernment protesters. It's a red line that Trump has said he believes Iran is “starting to cross” and has left him and his national security team weighing “very strong options.”

But the U.S. military — which Trump has warned Tehran is “locked and loaded” — appears, at least for the moment, to have been placed on standby mode as Trump ponders next steps, saying that Iranian officials want to have talks with the White House.

“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday. “However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”

Hours later, Trump announced on social media that he would slap 25% tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately” — his first action aimed at penalizing Iran for the protest crackdown, and his latest example of using tariffs as a tool to force friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.

China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among economies that do business with Tehran. The White House declined to offer further comment or details about the president’s tariff announcement.

The White House has offered scant details on Iran's outreach for talks, but Leavitt confirmed that the president's special envoy Steve Witkoff will be a key player engaging Tehran.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and key White House National Security Council officials began meeting Friday to develop a “suite of options,” from a diplomatic approach to military strikes, to present to Trump in the coming days, according to a U.S. official familiar with the internal administration deliberations. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Trump told reporters Sunday evening that a “meeting is being set up” with Iranian officials but cautioned that “we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.”

“We’re watching the situation very carefully,” Trump said.

Demonstrations in Iran continue, but analysts say it remains unclear just how long protesters will remain on the street.

An internet blackout imposed by Tehran makes it hard for protesters to understand just how widespread the demonstrations have become, said Vali Nasr, a State Department adviser during the early part of the Obama administration, and now professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“It makes it very difficult for news from one city or pictures from one city to incense or motivate action in another city,” Nasr said. “The protests are leaderless, they're organization-less. They are actually genuine eruptions of popular anger. And without leadership and direction and organization, such protests, not just in Iran, everywhere in the world — it’s very difficult for them to sustain themselves.”

Meanwhile, Trump is dealing with a series of other foreign policy emergencies around the globe.

It's been just over a week since the U.S. military launched a successful raid to arrest Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power. The U.S. continues to mass an unusually large number of troops in the Caribbean Sea.

Trump is also focused on trying to get Israel and Hamas onto the second phase of a peace deal in Gaza and broker an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly four-year war in Eastern Europe.

But advocates urging Trump to take strong action against Iran say this moment offers an opportunity to further diminish the theocratic government that's ruled the country since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The demonstrations are the biggest Iran has seen in years — protests spurred by the collapse of Iranian currency that have morphed into a larger test of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's repressive rule.

Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, has warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.

Some of Trump's hawkish allies in Washington are calling on the president not to miss the opportunity to act decisively against a vulnerable Iranian government that they argue is reeling after last summer's 12-day war with Israel and battered by U.S. strikes in June on key Iranian nuclear sites.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on social media Monday that the moment offers Trump the chance to show that he's serious about enforcing red lines. Graham alluded to former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012 setting a red line on the use of chemical weapons by Syria's Bashar Assad against his own people — only not to follow through with U.S. military action after the then-Syrian leader crossed that line the following year.

“It is not enough to say we stand with the people of Iran,” Graham said. “The only right answer here is that we act decisively to protect protesters in the street — and that we’re not Obama — proving to them we will not tolerate their slaughter without action.”

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another close Trump ally, said the “goal of every Western leader should be to destroy the Iranian dictatorship at this moment of its vulnerability.”

“In a few weeks either the dictatorship will be gone or the Iranian people will have been defeated and suppressed and a campaign to find the ringleaders and kill them will have begun,” Gingrich said in an X post. “There is no middle ground.”

Indeed, Iranian authorities have managed to snuff out rounds of mass protests before, including the “Green Movement” following the disputed election in 2009 and the “woman, life, freedom” protests that broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of the state’s morality police in 2022.

Trump and his national security team have already begun reviewing options for potential military action and he is expected to continue talks with his team this week.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said “there is a fast-diminishing value to official statements by the president promising to hold the regime accountable, but then staying on the sidelines.”

Trump, Taleblu noted, has shown a desire to maintain “maximum flexibility rooted in unpredictability” as he deals with adversaries.

“But flexibility should not bleed into a policy of locking in or bailing out an anti-American regime which is on the ropes at home and has a bounty on the president’s head abroad,” he added.

Activists take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters at the White House, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)