The strange baseball life of “Amami’s prodigy” who left the island and “Kazuo Ohno” who remained on the island “I wanted to fight with everyone on the island at Koshien” | High school baseball, etc. | Shueisha’s general sports magazine Sportiva official website web Sportiva

This spring, I published a book called Remote Island Hotball Stadium Kagoshima Prefectural Oshima High School Miracle. Oshima High School participated in the Koshien tournament despite being a high school on Amami Oshima, a remote island in Kagoshima Prefecture, and played a great battle with the prestigious Kagoshima Business in the final of the Kagoshima tournament last summer. I was allowed to summarize the back side of the rapid advance in one volume.

Kazuo Ohno (currently Softbank) was a big ace, but they were neither a one-man team nor an elite team. They are high school students from the island who each have their own weaknesses and worries.

When I asked them about their childhood baseball experiences, they all said the following.

“Motome Koutarou was a special case.”

Motomu is a talented player who has been noted for his pitching and hitting at Tokai University Sagami in Kanagawa. After graduating from high school this spring, he will go on to Tokai University and continue playing baseball. Mogu was born and raised on Amami Oshima, and was a child prodigy whose name was not unknown to anyone in the island’s schoolchild baseball world.

Taro Gukko, who will enter Tokai University from this spring
See photos related to this article
Ohno talks about his desire when he was in elementary school.

“Even though he was in elementary school, he was about 175 centimeters tall, and he was a fast baller. His batting was uncontrollable.

Shintaro Nishida, who teamed up with Ohno at Oshima High School, also testified, “Mogu was the most outstanding player on the island, both in physique and technique.”

Why did such a demand experience spring senbatsu domination at the prestigious Tokai University Sagami in Kanagawa and become a draft candidate? I would like to focus on the baseball life of Amami Oshima prodigy Taro Kukou.

[The trigger was the national tournament in the fifth grade]

Motomu was born and raised in Setouchi Town, in the southern part of Amami Oshima. In a seaside town far from downtown Amami, Motomu recalls, “When I was little, I used to play in the sea all the time.” A year above Koniya Elementary School, there was Katsutoshi Tai, who would later go on to Kamimura Gakuen on the mainland and join Rakuten. Although he had never been on the same team, Mogu said, “We used to play dodgeball together.”

Playing in the sea, dodgeball, baseball, and cycling up and down steep slopes were the pastimes for young boys.