The notification ceremony for entering the Baseball Hall of Fame this year was held on the 14th. As a result of the voting, it was former Chunichi Dragons Masahiro Yamamoto (Masahiro Yamamoto) and Yakult director Shingo Takatsu who met the criteria for the player awards.
Mr. Yamamoto is the oldest pitcher in history, “Uncle’s Star” who pitched at the age of 50, and at the same time, he is a famous left arm who has won a total of 219 wins. Masanori Ishikawa (Yakult) has the most active wins with 177 wins, and at the moment he is also the “last 200 win pitcher”. On the other hand, it is also known that he is the only pitcher who has achieved 200 wins and was unable to pitch in his first year as a professional pitcher. The first pitching is the third year. The first victory was in the fifth year.
A turning point for “non-elite” “Train for a year in Florida”
There is a foreign existence in the elite group “Showa Meikyukai”. The tide of baseball life, which could have decayed as it was, changed significantly in the fifth year of studying baseball. In the middle of 1988, a second camp was held at Vero Beach, Florida. Mr. Yamamoto slipped into the member, but could not return to Japan. He was ordered to stay in Florida and join the Dodgers-affiliated 1A team.
The year after his retirement, Mr. Yamamoto revisited Vero Beach on the TV program “Another Sky” (NTV). He looked back on “studying abroad”, which changed his life drastically, but at that time he was not what he wanted, and he was very disappointed. He was aiming for the opening army with the enthusiasm that he would bite into the stone. The order to “train in Florida for a year” means that it was positioned as a non-strength.
“When I hear the name Senichi Hoshino, my spine still stretches.”
From the dropout to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The two people involved in the turning point of “studying abroad” are also Mr. Yamamoto’s big benefactors. One is the director of the order, Senichi Hoshino. The other is Aiku Ikuhara (Akihiro Ikuhara), who took care of and instructed him locally.
