The Oldest Active Female Pitcher in Women’s Hardball Baseball: Nanae Chiba’s Inspiring Journey

I woke up to baseball around the time of the commercial “Baseball is a giant, gum is Lotte”

The Venus League is held with the aim of popularizing and developing women’s hardball baseball. The league “Lipovitan Cup”, whose main battlefield is the Kanto region, will be played in 2023 with a total of 11 teams, including the women’s team of the Giants Seibu, universities, corporate teams, and club teams. Nanae Chiba, a left-hander who belongs to the glove team “Samurai” who participates in it, is the oldest active pitcher in women’s hardball baseball at 58 years old.

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Mr. Chiba was born in Tokyo in 1965 (Showa 40) and grew up in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, a city of trees. She started playing ball when her father gave her a pair of left-handed gloves as a birthday present for her five-year-old.

In 1974, the 400-win Lotte, directed by Shoichi Kaneda, became Japan’s No. 1 baseball team based in Sendai’s Miyagi Stadium (now Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi). In the same year, the giant missed V10, and from the following year, “Shigeo Nagashima/Giant” was born. At that time, Kaneda and Nagashima co-starred in a surreal commercial for Lotte called “Baseball is a giant, gum is Lotte.”

In 1975, when Mr. Chiba was in the fourth grade of elementary school, he suddenly became interested in professional baseball, and loved watching TV games while comparing player directories in magazines. He was a fan of Taiyo (currently DeNA), but he admired the same left-handed hero Sadaharu Oh (giant). “I remember well that in 1975, the year after Mr. Oh won the triple crown for the second year in a row, he only hit 33 home runs due to a strained muscle.” The fact that the number “33” comes out without hesitation makes me feel “a real baseball fan.”

When I got home from school, I threw down my bag and played “triangle base” with a few friends in an empty lot. It was a daily routine to play like a baseball boy.

At that time, there were almost no “girls’ baseball teams.” Nanae, a girl who started playing softball in earnest in the 5th grade, continued from junior high school to high school, and went to Tokyo to hit the gates of the softball team of a strong university. But her life doesn’t always go as planned.

The reality of recruiting female players who can drink together at an izakaya after the game

“The practice of the softball club was many times more difficult than I had imagined, so I left the club after about a year.” Taking advantage of another of her talents, the piano, she turned into an accompanist pianist for the rhythmic gymnastics club. It will lead you to.

After graduating from university, Mr. Chiba, who was in his twenties and wanted to play baseball, continued his music activities while living a part-time job. In her thirties, she became a gym trainer. Shortly before that, when she was 26 years old (1991), she found a solid article on the message board page of a baseball magazine, “recruiting female players,” and her eyes lit up, and she finally started rubber baseball. became.

When I joined the club, my expectations were high, but my disappointment was great. In reality, it was a recruitment of female players, “uncles have a drink together at an izakaya after the grass baseball game.” Mr. Chiba will go through a total of 4 teams over the next 10 years.

At the age of 35 (2000), a junior high school baseball team formed a women’s baseball team. Mr. Chiba has always wanted to hold a “hardball”. Although he joined the team immediately, only 3 to 4 members can gather and they cannot play games. She was in middle school and she ended up spending four years as a trainee.

“It was difficult to play baseball with a junior high school boy who was a strange age. I couldn’t invite you to

About a quarter of a century ago, women’s hardball baseball was not popular. There were many curious eyes about “girls playing baseball”.

(Hiroya Ishikawa)

2023-08-14 17:03:53
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