A rising star in the Cleveland Indians baseball organization is coming clean about his past and why he was passed over in the Japanese baseball draft. Kazuhito Tadano, a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher, has come out to teammates, admitting that while attending college in Japan he appeared in a gay porn video. Tadano was the ace pitcher for his Rikkyou Daigaku University team, with a 92 mph fastball, good control and a nice slider. The promising young pitcher was in line to be one of the top prospects in the Japanese draft, with the Yokohama BayStars planning to draft him in the first round. But when tabloids released photos in a story exposing his involvement in the gay porn industry, teams began to pass him over in the draft to avoid any controversy.

“The commissioner in Japan came forward and told teams not to draft him,” his agent, Alan Nero, said in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “If that had happened in the United States, well, we have more attorneys here than they have people in Japan. But in Japan he was quietly banned from Japanese baseball.”

According to Nero, who has strong ties to the Asian baseball market, his client would have been the first or second pick in the draft and received a signing bonus between $2 million and $2.5 million. However, because of the controversy he ended up signing with the Cleveland Indians (after being passed over by the Padres, Braves, and Twins) for a mere $67,000 minor-league contract.

Over the course of his first season playing ball in the United States he chose to explain to teammates the controversy surrounding his past and get the issue out on the table to prevent rumors. Tadano held meetings with both of his teams, the Class A Kinston Indians and later the Class AA Akron Aeros, to explain his reasons for doing the gay porn.

Tadano, who says he is straight, told teammates that he appeared in the video as a 19-year-old freshman because he needed money. He received between $750 and $1,000 for his part in the film, and explained through a translator, “At the time it was a lot of money.”

Tadano, now 23, comes from a middle-class family in Tokyo where his mother works in real estate and his father is self-employed. In college Tadano said he did not have a baseball scholarship and needed money to live.

“I apologized to the team,” said Tadano. “I want to apologize to the fans and all the people who have supported me. I made a big mistake. All I can do now is play baseball and move forward.”

Cleveland Indians pitcher Jack Cressend, who was in Akron recovering from shoulder surgery when Tadano met with the team, said, “I told everyone that I felt we needed to support this guy. I thought we should give him a chance to be our teammate and friend…. We’ve all messed up in some shape or form in our life.”

Torey Lovullo, manager of the Class A Kinston Indians, was present during that team’s meeting and said, “Watching how our guys reacted to Kaz, how they encouraged him and supported him, was one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever had in baseball.”

While in college, Tadano pitched four years at Rikkyo University, going 20-14 with 334 strikeouts as a starter, and earned a degree in travel and tourism.

In the minors this season, Tadano saw most of his action as a relief pitcher, going 2-1 with two saves and a 1.89 ERA in seven games at Kinston. When he was promoted to Akron, Tadano went 4-1 with three saves. At the end of the season he was sent to Class AAA at Buffalo, the Indians top farm team, and in two appearances allowed three runs in seven innings. For the season, Tadano went 6-2 with five saves and a 1.55 ERA in 40 appearances, striking out 112, walking 22 and allowing 81 hits in 98 innings.

Despite his outstanding rookie performance and positive reactions from his teammates in the minors, skeptics are quick to point out that the majors may not be so friendly to Tadano.

“We know what guys say with a microphone in front of him or a note pad,” nationally syndicated sports radio talk show host Jim Rome said, editorializing on his website. “So we can only imagine what really is being discussed in clubhouses.… A baseball clubhouse is one of the last bastions of bigotry and intolerance. That’s not going to fly. You wait and see what happens when he gets to the Majors. Not all of us have made gay porn and there are more Todd Jones and John Rockers than Mark Graces in big league clubhouses. More so than anyone wants to admit.”

Just this past season, Colorado Rockies relief pitcher Todd Jones, commenting on the Tony Award winning Broadway play Take Me Out, in which a major league player comes out and says he is gay, said there was no place for an openly gay player in the big leagues. While the Rockies made Jones apologize for the statement, he stood by his word, saying that a gay player would be a distraction to a team.