Yuki Saito was convinced the moment he decided to play Osaka Toin, who has Sho Nakata, in the second round of summer Koshien. “I could see the victory at once” | Professional baseball | Shueisha’s general sports magazine Sportiva official website web Sportiva

Series “Yuki Saito, Baseball Journey ~ Confession of Handkerchief Prince” Vol.14

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2006, Summer Koshien. Hayami made his first appearance in 10 years as a representative of West Tokyo. The final with Nihon University is August 1st, and the Koshien opening ceremony is August 6th. In the combination lottery, Hayami’s captain, Takashi Goto, draws the lottery for the first day. It was supposed to be a tough schedule for Yuki Saito.

Yuki Saito of early production who took three strikeouts from Osaka Toin and Sho Nakata in the second round of summer Koshien
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Only sliders cannot be thrown

The morning after I won Koshien, I woke up with a terrible pain in my right wrist. I think it’s probably because he threw 221 pitches in the final against the third high school (Nippon University). And he threw a lot of curveballs. Mitaka was a batting line that could not be controlled without using the straight in-course and the outside slider, so it may be that he overworked his wrist and felt like tendonitis.

I was fine on the night of the match, but the next day, all of a sudden, I was in pain. When I rushed to the hospital, I was told that I had to get an injection, so I immediately got an injection of hyaluronic acid on the spot.

That eased the pain a little, but when I tried pitching in practice, throwing a slider hurts a lot. I can throw straights, forks, and curves, but I couldn’t throw sliders as I expected. I thought he had lost his pitching career.

Even though I was in such a state, the first match was the first day of the tournament, so normally I should have said, “Please forgive me.” But I don’t remember thinking so. Why?

In the first match against Tsurusaki Kogyo, I remember having a hard time throwing, but I didn’t think I was running out of time. I didn’t have any pain in my daily life, and I didn’t have any pain when I was throwing a straight ball, so maybe I didn’t take it seriously. Maybe you thought you could compete with a pitch that wasn’t held down without throwing a slider (laughs).

We were in the second game. After attending the opening ceremony at Koshien, he moved to Naruohama Stadium, which is used by the second team of the Hanshin Tigers, for practice. Then I went to the match against Tsurusaki Kou. What I remember is the scenery from the lights rather than the pitching.