Japan National Team Candidate Camp for Adults Held at Two Places for the First Time Adult Baseball Express vol.21
= Fukunaga who hit a full-base home run in the open game with NTT West
40 players will participate in anticipation of next year’s Asian Games
Training camps for Japan National Baseball Team candidates for the Asian Games (Hangzhou, China), which were postponed next year, were held in Tokyo and Kansai from the end of June to the beginning of July, respectively. This is the first attempt to divide the representative training camp into two locations, east and west.
Distributed holding was introduced with the aim of reducing the burden of movement for each player. 20 players from each of the east and west participated.
= The starting lineup of Funasako
Each player appeals to become a representative
On July 1st, an open battle with NTT West was held in Kyoto Prefecture, and 10―I drew at 10. Daimasa Funasako (Seino Transportation), who started the game with a right sidearm, scored 3 goals in the 2nd inning. Although the fastball with a high number of spins was sharp, the slider was not bent smoothly, and many goals were conceded. However, I feel that the response at the representative training camp is sufficient. “I measured it for the first time, but my grip strength has dropped significantly before and after pitching. I want to work on improvement,” he recalls.
It was Yuki Fukunaga (Nippon Shinyaku Co., Ltd.), a smasher on the right who was named as a draft candidate as well as Funasako. He appealed by hitting a grand slam in the second inning, but the defensive aspect of the game has been an issue since he could not regard it as a harvest. He is said to have learned the basics of movement such as steps when aiming for a double play from Shoji Kitamura (Toyota Motor). “This is the first training camp in my life, but I learned a lot,” he said.
= Staff members watching the movements of representative candidate players
Director Akio Ishibashi, who observed the movements of the players, said, “Honestly, there are some players who are at their peak this year, but I want to calmly judge that” based on the fact that the Asian tournament has been postponed for one year. He talked about his thoughts on.[Mainichi Shimbun Sports Club, Yu Kishimoto]
