4th grade special feature“My baseball life”Now, we will ask each of the fourth-year students, who are entering their final season, to look back on their baseball careers thus far.
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“My Baseball Life” vol.20 Takashi Yamamoto Manager (4th year/Kaishiro)
Hello everyone
This is Takashi Yamamoto, a 4th year manager.
Since I became a fourth year student, I have had many opportunities to sit on the bench, and I sometimes see my photo posted on X (Twitter). After joining the bench, I always do an ego search for “Takashi Yamamoto,” “Manager Yamamoto,” and “Yamamoto from the University of Tokyo,” leaving behind a search history full of ugly self-expression desires. I’m so happy, so please take as many photos as you like and post them on SNS. Add tags like “#Yamamotoko” and “#YamamotoManager” to make everyone’s photo folder and X (Twitter) look my own.
Well, at the end of last timeBansho Manager (4th year/Toyama Chubu)As previously announced, I would like to read about Takashi Yamamoto’s life in baseball.
As you will understand if you read the next paragraph, I think I have significantly less attachment to baseball than other people. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you could relax and read this article.
I had no interest in baseball.
I had no interest in professional baseball and had no interest in amateur baseball.
In the 10 years I played as a player, from the age of 8 to 18, I don’t think there was ever a time when I truly enjoyed baseball.
His first experience with baseball was when he was in the second grade of elementary school, when he joined the youth baseball team that his older brother was on. It wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t fun either. However, I was too timid to tell the truth, even to my parents, so I lied and said it was fun.
However, I feel like I enjoyed baseball relatively when I was in elementary school. I remember that he liked small tricks such as stealing bases and bunting because he was fast on his feet.
And I’ve always liked the culture of making baseball players look like monks.
When I was in elementary school, I remember that my parents forced me to shave my head.
For this reason, I feel like I should spit on the opinion that I’ve seen recently, such as, “We don’t want all children to have a shaved head, so we should stop forcing them to have a shaved head.” (Of course I don’t think it’s a good idea to force it on everyone)
However, I enjoyed studying more than baseball.
When I was an infant, my mother noticed that I got excited when I saw numbers (the bigger the number, the more excited I was), and thanks to her fine play, I started going to Kumon School from the age of 3.
As a result, by the time he was in the first grade of elementary school, he had mastered factoring.
If you have had the experience of being praised and treated like a prodigy just for solving problems in your childhood, it is only natural that you will love studying.
I think it’s because I had an escape through studying that I didn’t like baseball even more.
(By the way, Nichinoken’s national mock exam rankings often includeBlack Musha Outfielder (4th year/Shibuya Makuhari)The name was on it. Due to the rarity of that last name, the students at Nichinoken Akabane Campus always talked about their own rankings, as well as how “Kromushatetsuta” ranked. )
After taking the junior high school entrance exam, I entered Kaijo Junior High School and for some reason ended up joining the baseball club.
When recruiting for club activities, he made boastful comments such as “We don’t need people who are not motivated,” even though he was not very strong.The truth behind why he decided to join the baseball club is still a mystery.
If you think about it,Pitcher Watanabe (4th year/Kaijyo)It was at this time that I realized that.
At the time, a player on the baseball team who was in the same class as Watanabe (Pitcher Yoshida (4th year/Ayozen)), but after seeing “Shunsuke Watanabe” written in the parent section of the documents he submitted to school, it became a hot topic that he had a son who was a former professional baseball player. (Now that I think about it, it’s not good for privacy)
However, I don’t think we talked about it much when I was in middle school because I was on the B team, and even on the A team, I was the second catcher.
The B team players are packed into a tennis court next to the field and are not taken to practice matches, so they have almost no competitive experience, and during official matches they are forced to stand next to the net for several hours cheering. This system is in place because there are so many players that the coach can’t keep track of their practice, but it’s a pretty good rule.
Other than starting a new team, the only way to climb up from the B team is to catch the attention of the coach and get him hired, so he sometimes makes a point at the AB joint practice, and when the B team passes the ball, he makes a loud noise and makes the coach who is far away hear it.
When I was on the B team, I thought it was not fun to be in this kind of environment, so I raised my voice, or rather, I screamed, to the point where it would cause complaints from outsiders, in order to quickly move up to the A team.
I was made the vice captain of the B team because the coach praised my loud voice and my attitude towards practice. why?
However, the manager seemed to have a really good impression of me and taught me a special batting form, which was good for a B team.
Even though I was treated well, I still didn’t think baseball was fun. I actually started hating him because of the treatment he received from the B team. I’m sure basic practice will be boring without being able to participate in games.
At the final match, everyone was crying, but my eyes were dry. In fact, I thought it would end sooner.
Even though I hated baseball this much, for some reason I ended up joining the high school baseball team.
The reason is parents’ expectations. After being enthusiastic about cheering for his older brother’s high school baseball team, it seemed natural that he would continue playing baseball. I think I would have been under a lot of pressure if I hadn’t gotten in.
I entered high school baseball thinking that there was no way a player who was not good at playing, had no experience in the game, and had no passion for baseball would be able to succeed.
Fortunately, the high school baseball team had a good practice environment, and even if I wasn’t good at it, I could practice extensively and was given at least the opportunity to play.
However, no matter how good his practice environment was, he still wasn’t good at it.
He didn’t practice on his own because he lacked motivation, and due to coronavirus and other factors, he had put on weight and his field of defense was narrow.He was a complete burden to the team, switching defensive positions from first to catcher to left field.
However, because he gained weight, he gained more power and his batting was fairly good.
I could easily tell that the coach was having trouble with my defensive position.
The turning point came in the fall of my second year of high school.
He hit a double as a pinch hitter in a practice game, hit a double as a pinch hitter in an official game, and immediately after that, in a practice game, he had 6 hits in 6 at-bats and 8 consecutive hits in 8 at-bats.
With this, he has completely settled into the 4th left field position. The director seemed very happy.
However, I have no idea why he was able to hit. He didn’t have any particular passion, so it wasn’t like he practiced as hard as anyone else. Even in his senior year, he remained the same and would go home without participating in independent practice after general practice.
At that time, I was addicted to online mahjong, and I was winning an impossible number of wins, so I think my luck was probably just good at that time. If I had bought a lottery ticket, I might have won about 1 million yen.
As a result, his luck converged, and the blow was a bit unsatisfying for a No. 4 player.
Furthermore, in the spring of his third year of high school, his batting became worse and worse. As expected, I became impatient, so I watched some batting videos on YouTube and went to the batting center. This may have been the period in my life when I worked the hardest on baseball.
However, even if someone who has no motivation to begin with suddenly tries hard, there is no way they will succeed.
Finally, at the general meeting after the spring tournament, the coach said, “Yamamoto doesn’t know what he wants to do.”
The players around me consoled me, telling me that I had told them to motivate me during the practice match the next day.
However, due to the resurgence of the coronavirus, there was no practice match the next day.
I felt like I had been completely abandoned by God.
After that, he quietly faded out of the starting lineup and was appointed as a pinch hitter, and since then he has almost no memory of baseball.
The appointment was entirely my own, and I was completely satisfied with the appointment, so unlike in middle school, I gave my full support and encouragement.
However, after the last game, no tears were shed. A person who didn’t make much effort during the three years of high school has no right to cry.
My baseball career as a player ended in a terrible way.
In the end, he was unable to reconcile with baseball.
I feel like I had a lot of fun when I hit 8 consecutive hits, but I don’t think it made me love baseball itself, just because I was happy to get praise for hitting.
By the way, it wasn’t until high school that I started hanging out with pitcher Watanabe.
We were in the same class during our second and third years of high school, and we started talking often as we both aspired to the University of Tokyo.
After retiring, he began studying for entrance exams. How much more fun studying is compared to baseball!
I went to my desk every day with the same feeling as someone who was happily practicing baseball.
I studied a lot in my favorite subjects (mathematics, science) and was accepted into the University of Tokyo.
When I retired from high school baseball, I had decided to quit being involved in baseball, so I never thought about joining the baseball club.
At Shinkan, they didn’t let me pass by the rugby club or the American football club. On the other hand, in tennis circles and badminton circles, you couldn’t get flyers unless you talked to them.
I was angry, so I joined a badminton club.
Badminton was at least more fun than baseball. I think it was the most fun time I’ve had playing sports in my life. In the summer, I had a rare experience, such as going to a training camp where all my friends were absent.
However, I felt something like a blockage.
The friends I used to go to the club with at first stopped coming, and I went to the gym alone.
Then I received a phone call from Mukateru Watanabe.
The baseball team didn’t have a male manager, so he asked if he would like to join the club as a manager.
By the time I got this call, I had almost decided to join the club.
The reason is that there are many benefits, such as being better able to get a job or being able to take easy classes. It’s not that I started liking baseball.
Before joining the club, I was invited to a game at Jingu, but I forgot my contact number and couldn’t see most of the game.
I’ll just pretend that I forgot to bring my contacts because I was planning on joining the club even if I didn’t watch the game.
Immediately after that game, I told my classmates that I was joining the club and was greeted by my classmates at Jingu, but I remember not knowing what was going on because I hadn’t made any contact with them.
I was in my third year of college, spending my days carelessly as a manager.
I heard that two members of the Kaijo High School baseball team were accepted to the University of Tokyo.Higuchi infielder (2nd year/Kaishiro)andOda infielder (2nd year/Kaijo)It is.
Higuchi had already decided to join the baseball club, but Oda seemed unsure at first, so he and Watanabe recruited him.
At that time, I took the invitation lightly, but later on I began to feel that recruiting to the club was a serious responsibility.
After Higuchi and Oda joined the baseball club, I started to think that recruiting someone to a club might be an act that could change a person’s life, as I felt a little regretful about choosing a club because I couldn’t do anything with it.
The same goes for Higuchi, but I especially didn’t want Oda, who may have joined the club through our recruitment, to regret joining the Tokyo University baseball team.
It’s not like he won’t regret it just because he got results, but since he joined the club, he prayed that he would stand out.
Therefore, he was both happy and sad when he saw the results of the practice match.
As you all know, in this year’s league games, Higuchi played a major role as a shortstop, and Oda finally made his first appearance in the game against Rikkyo on October 13th.
Perhaps because of the relief and joy that Oda was able to play at Jingu in college, I think this game against Rikkyo was the most moving baseball game I have ever seen.
I cried for the first time while watching a baseball game that day.
Watanabe, my colleague, and my juniorPitcher Eguchi (3rd year/Kaijyo)In addition to Higuchi’s participation, Oda also made his first appearance.
Even though my baseball career didn’t produce any results, I felt like it was worth it in some way because I was able to play with such great players in high school and support them in college.
I feel like I’ve made peace with baseball a little bit now.
Thank you for visiting.
The only people who have been able to read this far into my bad writing are those who are related to me, or those who skipped the main text to just read the introduction of the next member. People who say they are neither are weirdos.
Next timeKotaro Uchida Analyst (4th year/Hiroshima Gakuin)is.
He has great ability as an analyst and is an unsung figure who has supported the University of Tokyo baseball team.
He has a connection to me in some way, such as he went to the same department of physics as me in the Faculty of Engineering, and for some reason his column in Excel used for accounting became a hotbed for bugs, but I’m curious about what kind of baseball life he has led.
For those who have persevered and read to the end, I will be presenting the gem “Kotaro Uchida Aru Aru”.
[There is something about Kotaro Uchida]
The character “倖” does not appear in the conversion, so I type in “Kodakumi” and then erase “Tanumi”.
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The next meeting will be tomorrow, October 19th (Sunday), with analyst Kotaro Uchida.
