In Hiroshima, a group of gangsters once threatened to have him killed. In Nagoya, a mob of baseball fans pursued him into the dugout. In Osaka, they launched rocks at him from the stands.

More recently, over the past three years and 42 radiation sessions, he's fought off prostate cancer.

So, yes, it will be a big deal when Wally Yonamine celebrates his 80th birthday Friday.

Actually his birthday was last month, but when it comes to rounding up all the grandchildren and some 400 of his closest friends from a few countries spanning careers in both professional baseball and football, certain allowances are required.

Predictably, however, while the party will be in Yonamine's honor, many of the gifts will be going elsewhere. His family is hosting the event with the proceeds going to the Wally Yonamine Foundation that underwrites the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association state baseball tournament and holds youth clinics.

Among the attendees at the Farrington High gathering will be a handful of Governor athletes born about the time his 37-year career as a Japan Baseball Hall of Fame player, coach and manager was ending. And long after this alum's days with the San Francisco 49ers.

Yet, as the documentary that will be shown illustrates, the legacy of the all-around athlete from Olowalu, Maui, continues on several fronts. Americans playing baseball in Japan have Yonamine, the first American of the post-war era, to thank for their lucrative paydays. And an emerging group of players from Japan, including Yankees' outfielder Hideki Matsui, can say much the same thing. And have. Indeed, Matsui has said it was "studying tapes" of the technique of his friend with the Yomiuri Giants that helped pave the way to a major league career.

But in 1951 such an impact hardly seemed imaginable much less the eventual Imperial Order of the Sacred Treasure bestowed by Japan's government. For Yonamine was a daring social experiment, the point man of a plan by the U.S. occupation authorities to bring two nations together through a common pastime, baseball.

What Japan's game got in the go-for-broke Yonamine instead often threatened to ignite another conflict. In a land where it was form not to run out sacrifice bunts, Yonamine dashed. In a game where sliding had been perfunctory, he came in hard and, at first, wasn't much appreciated, either.

But in the course of a career in which he hit .311, won three batting titles and an MVP award, Yonamine became a force for change.

Now, at age 80, he is not alone in marveling at the still-growing magnitude of it.