A baseball player more well known for his "catching" than his work on any baseball diamond, Kazuhito Tadano previously pitched for the Cleveland Indians, the Buffalo Bisons, the Oakland Athletics, and currently plays for the Nippon Ham Fighters.
Kazuhito Tadano was born on April 25, 1980. He attended Rikkyo University, and was signed on the Cleveland Indians in 2003 as a free agent. He had been blacklisted from any of the teams in Japan.
"I was young, playing baseball and going to college, and my teammates and I needed money... I'm not gay. I'd like to clear that fact up right now."
In 2004, it was widely publicized that Tadano had appeared in a gay pornographic film in his native Japan, entitled "Babylon 34". In the film, Tadano plays a young man who accidently rear ends (tee hee) a yakuza's car. For this he and his associates are forced, at gunpoint, to have sex with one another for the man's entertainment, Tadano wearing a leash and a dog collar during the ordeal. To put it delicately, Tadano spends most of the film playing the passive role, "catching" if you will. Later on in the film the gun is taken from the aggressor and they give him a taste of his own medicine.
"This is the right team and the right organization for him. We have good guys here. Everybody has done something that they regret in their lives. He's a person just like everyone else." - C.C. Sabathia, pitcher for the Indians.
The Indians called a press conference over the incident, and Tadano delivered a statement in English characterizing the incident as an isolated mistake. His teammates seemed supportive of him, and he seemed genuinely contrite. In 2006, he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, and in 2007 he migrated to the Nippon Ham Fighters.
The entire incident was just embarrassing. The porn video was a non-issue, just as it is when anyone is filmed doing the horizontal samba. Tadano's insistence that he was a straight, red-blooded (Japanese) American male prevented a serious discussion of homosexuality in a sport that could seriously use it. A total waste of newsprint.