Former Rakuten Dora 1 Kohei Hasebe now challenges bakeries and baseball cram schools “Maybe you can find a job as exciting as professional baseball” | Professional baseball | Shueisha’s general sports magazine Sportiva official website web Sportiva

Interview with Kohei Hasebe (Part 2)

Interview Part 1: Click here for the sudden tragedy that struck Rakuten Dora 1’s left arm>>

Recession waves are no longer industry-specific. Even when a boom occurs, the momentum drops off like a roller coaster.

Recently, the closing rush of high-end bread specialty stores has become a hot topic. The Sendai head office of La Pan, which has a store in Miyagi Prefecture, is also said to be experiencing a decline in sales compared to a period of time, but Kohei Hasebe, who is actually in charge of the store, is not thinking about it backwards.

“People are happy when they receive souvenirs from corporate events or golf competitions. I want to think about how we can deliver our products to everyone who is happy with them.”

Mr. Kohei Hasebe, who works at a bakery and also teaches baseball.
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[My first job after retiring is a baseball team employee]

Hasebe, who oversees the La Pan Sendai flagship store, starts his morning at 4:00 at the earliest. While checking the operation status of the bread manufacturing factory, I sometimes help with bagging and finishing the baked products. From there, they move to the store in front of Sendai Station to manage schedules, prepare deliveries, and have meetings with store managers and sales representatives. “I’m basically a delivery person,” laughs the supervising manager, who is in charge of overseeing a total of about 40 staff members, including part-time workers, but who also helps out when there’s a shortage of manpower.

If you only take the text, Hasebe is a proper “baker”.

As fans know, he was a professional baseball player. Why did a former athlete who joined Rakuten in the first round of the draft and played as a pitcher for 9 years become a baker?

Hasebe explains how it happened.

“From the time I started playing baseball in the second grade until I retired at the age of 31, that was all I did. Is this the beginning?”

Rakuten was out of the force in 2016, and he did not immediately work at La Pin after retiring from professional baseball. The start of his second career was a staff member of the Rakuten team.