Yu Darvish, pitching ace, saver of dogs

Yu Darvish, pitching ace, Japanese icon and dog saver.

After seeing a tweet Thursday night about a female blue pit bull named Sage a day from heading to the pound, Darvish adopted her. He now has six dogs, including one he adopted in 2014 when teammate Tanner Scheppers found a stray.

“She’s doing really good right now,” said Darvish, a dog-lover from way back who had four dogs growing up as a kid. Darvish saw a retweet from Rangers dugout reporter Emily Jones, who retweeted KTCK/1310 AM producer Danny Balis’ original tweet about the dog. Darvish saw the tweet just as he was about to go to sleep around 11 p.m. Thursday.

He talked it over with his wife and made arrangements to pick up the dog Friday morning. Adding a sixth dog was not in his immediate plans but he couldn’t stand the thought of the doomed dog.

“When I’m on the road my family will take care of them but at the same time you think what’s going to happen to him if nobody picks her up. That was the thing that kind of stuck in my head,” he said. “I have five dogs already so I’m still thinking about what we’re going to do.”

It’s Darvish’s second pit bull. He also has a Cane Corso, a miniature schnauzer, French bulldog and miniature pincher.

Darvish took the opportunity to remind people that taking care of pets takes responsibility.

“Before you get a dog think about what you need to do to take care of it,” he said. “I don’t want people to think, ‘oh, he can take care of 20 dogs, 30 dogs. I got what I can be responsible for. Make sure you take care of your dog.”

Six dogs? Wow, that’s a lot of clean up, isn’t it?

“We have gardeners that take care of that,” Darvish said.

This story was originally published April 28, 2017 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Yu Darvish, pitching ace, saver of dogs."