Tokyo 2020, baseball debuts with Japan-Dominican Republic »Baseball.it

Baseball served. Everything is ready at the Fukushima Azuma Stadium where at 12 local time Japan (in first place in the world ranking) and the Dominican Republic (seventh) will face each other for the inaugural match of the Olympic baseball tournament. Thirteen years of waiting, the last time was in fact in Beijing in 2008 when South Korea beat Cuba 3-2, but now we are finally there.

A total of 16 matches will be played by the 6 teams divided into two groups: Japan, Mexico and Dominican Republic in group A, Korea, USA and Israel in group B.

The first match will therefore be between Japan (a silver medal in 1996 and 2 bronzes in 1992 and 2004) of Atsunori Inaba and the Dominican Republic (a participation in Barcelona ’92 where he remedied a resounding 17-0 from the Japanese) of Hector Borg. Only Cuba and the United States have won more medals than Japan.

Inaba will entrust the first pitch to 22-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto, right-hand pitcher of the Orix Buffaloes (16 starts in 2021 in Nippon Professional Baseball with a PGL average of 1.82), while Borg will deliver the ball to 27-year-old left-handed Christopher Mercedes, who has been a pitcher since 2017 of the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo, belonging to the same Japanese pro league.

In their last match, in 2015, Japan defeated the Dominican Republic 4-2 during the Premier12 (parity 2-2 up to the seventh, then the 2 decisive points to the eighth).