Why did Rakuten and Uchisei Ryu become Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s “complete copy” pitching form?

From a vertical no-windup, step forward with your left foot and swing your right arm down from a sharp take-back. A pitching form that all fans have a sense of déjà vu.

The form of Rakuten’s Uchisei Ryu, who made a perfect 3rd inning against Lotte on April 9th, which was his first army debut, was very similar to ORIX’s absolute ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Rakuten Uchisei Ryu in his third year of high school
See photos related to this article
It was so much that it was taken up as a “complete copy” on SNS such as the Pacific League’s official YouTube channel.

The inside speaks of the echoes with an embarrassed look.

“My friends also told me, ‘The number of views is really increasing.’ It makes me really happy that the fans know about it, and I feel like I can’t get more results.”

The inner “perfect copy” is not just a form. Two weeks after his much-talked-about debut, he won his first professional victory, and pitched in 12 games as a middleman for Rakuten with 1 win and 1 loss and an ERA of 1.38 (as of May 22). He is gaining more credibility from the bench with each passing day.

[Full-fledged pitcher conversion in the fall of the first year of high school]

6th in the draft. The 21-year-old, in his third year of high school, is about to open the door to a Cinderella story. However, looking from the inside, the current scenery was not what I could have drawn from the beginning.

“I couldn’t have imagined it at all. I wanted to become a professional, but I knew that I couldn’t do it with just that feeling, so I thought, ‘Isn’t it impossible to enter (professional) after graduating from high school?'”

I can understand the feelings inside. In the first place, he didn’t even throw properly until middle school. He was a fielder in the Kita-Osaka Boys, where he belonged, and the pitcher only pitched occasionally in practice games. At this time, he was already close to his current height of 190 cm, but it was in the autumn of his first year at Riseisha that he seriously wanted to be a pitcher.

Entered one of the strongest schools in the country as an outfielder, and when he announced his intention to change positions even though his batting was evaluated as such, the director at the time, Tatsuo Okada (currently Toyo University Himeji High School) and his parents were skeptical. It is said that the eyes were turned. Still, he made the decision because he “simply liked the pitcher.”