White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami is latest Japanese player to request bidet

Munetaka Murakami has been the premier offseason signing for the Chicago White Sox after leaving the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in the Nippon Baseball League to play in MLB for the first time. Upon his arrival, the Japanese infielder had an interesting request for White Sox management: Murakami wanted a bidet in the locker room.

“One thing he did notice is we didn’t have a bidet in our locker room,” White Sox general manager Chris Getz told Scott Merkin of MLB.com. “That’s new to him. It was like, ‘Okay, that’s new. We can do that.’”

Murakami isn’t the first Japanese player to request a bidet in the locker, as he makes the trip stateside for the first time. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki made it clear to the organization when he was being courted last offseason that installing a bidet was important to him.

“I was telling him about all the amenities we were adding,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten told Bill Plunkett of the OC Register in April. ‘We’re going to have this and this and this. And he asked, ‘Are you going to have Japanese-style toilets?’”

The Dodgers obliged, and Sasaki agreed to sign with Los Angeles.

“It sounds like a joke,” Sasaki later said through an interpreter. “But for me, it’s pretty important.”

This serves as a message for MLB teams looking to attract Japanese talent: Bringing a bidet into the locker room might help win a negotiation.

Nonetheless, Sasaki and Murakami don’t qualify for the strangest request from a new signing in MLB. That very well may belong to former big league reliever Charlie Kerfeld. After a dominant 1986 season with the Houston Astros, where he finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting, Kerfeld entered into contract negotiations with Houston. He asked for and received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O as part of a new deal, with the specific tally a nod to the lucky No. 37 he wore during the prior season.

“My mind works in different ways,” Kerfeld said.