Former Japanese baseball star Kazuhiro Kiyohara has been arrested on suspicion of possessing stimulant drugs, Tokyo police said yesterday, in a humiliating fall from grace for the one-time sporting idol.
The 48-year-old former Yomiuri Giants slugger, once one of the biggest names in Japanese baseball, was taken into custody and accused of possession of about 0.1g of an undisclosed substance after police raided his home in the plush Azabu district of Tokyo on Tuesday night.
Kiyohara admitted the drugs belonged to him and did not resist arrest, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said.
Photo: AFP
He is set to undergo medical examinations to determine whether he was using the stimulants himself, it added.
Japanese television yesterday showed Kiyohara with head bowed being taken away for questioning in the back of an unmarked police car, reporting that a pipe, syringe and four mobile phones were among items seized.
“I’m lost for words,” Nippon Professional Baseball commissioner Katsuhiko Kumazaki told local media. “Baseball is a beacon for young children and ex-players too must continue to be role models.”
“We must double our efforts to reject and stamp out this kind of harmful behavior and [the use of] illegal substances,” Kumazaki added.
A top draft pick out of high school, the Osaka-born Kiyohara smashed 31 home runs in his rookie year in Japanese baseball with the Seibu Lions in 1986 and went on to win six Japan Series titles with the team.
After joining former Major League star Hideki Matsui at the Giants in 1997, Kiyohara won two more Japan Series crowns, although he was often criticized for spending long periods on the bench with a variety of injuries throughout his 22-year career.
He retired in 2008 ranked fifth on the list of career home runs with 525.
However, Kiyohara has been no stranger to controversy and a weekly magazine reported in 2014 that the former player had been hospitalized because of a drug problem, but his management denied the rumor, insisting he had been undergoing treatment for diabetes.
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