There was no secret agreement,” recalled a reporter who followed Masumi Kuwata’s father.

The professional baseball draft will be held in Tokyo on March 20. It is said to be a year in which there are many outstanding college players, and there is no end to the interest in “who will be selected and to whom,” including the outcome in the case of overlapping selections.

The 1985 draft, in which none of the players who will be selected this year are thought to have been born, is still talked about today. It was a controversy surrounding the draft of Masumi Kuwata and Kazuhiro Kiyohara, the “KK duo” of PL Gakuen, who continued to excite Koshien until the summer of that year. Former Daily Sports reporter Toshinori Tanikawa, who was present at the PL Gakuen press conference and followed Kuwata’s father Taiji (deceased) until Kuwata decided to join the Giants, looks back on the incident, which was later dubbed the “KK draft incident.

Oh, the Giants manager, did not hide his love for Kiyohara.

November 20, 1985. More than 100 reporters were waiting at PL Academy in Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture. But they were not looking for Masumi Kuwata, but for Kazuhiro Kiyohara.

The two have been pitching and hitting mainstays at the prestigious PL Gakuen since the summer of their freshman year, and over the past three years they have transcended the boundaries of high school baseball to become the talk of amateur baseball as a whole. However, as for his future plans after high school, Kuwata has announced that he will go on to Waseda University, and he has not even submitted a notice of resignation, which would allow him to contact professional baseball officials. Kiyohara, on the other hand, had stated that he would become a professional baseball player if he was selected by the Giants or Hanshin.

On November 19, the day before the draft, Kiyohara was interviewed by the press and stated again, “I am not thinking about anyone other than the Giants and Hanshin,” while Kuwata only announced through PL Academy that he would not hold a press conference (even if he was selected first in the draft the following day). The day of the draft arrived.

The day of the draft arrived. In recent years, the draft has been held at 5:00 p.m., but at the time, it started at 10:00 a.m. The late Pancho Ito’s voice came from the TV set up in the press conference room: “Yomiuri, Masumi Kuwata, 17 years old, pitcher, PL Gakuen. There was a pause between the words “Yomiuri” and “Masumi Kuwata,” and the PL Gakuen venue, packed with more than 100 members of the press, was abuzz. In my first year with the company, my boss told me to get information from Kuwata’s family, and from that day on, I started going to Kuwata’s parents’ home in Yao City, Osaka.

Looking back 37 years ago, using newspaper scraps as reference, the following is my recollection.

On November 18, two days before the draft, the scouts of the Giants held a scouting meeting in Tokyo and did not clearly state to the press that they would go with Kiyohara as the first pick. On the contrary, they did not specify whether the first choice would be a pitcher or a fielder.

Furthermore, regarding the possibility of selecting Kuwata as the No. 1 pick, the following day’s Nikkan Sports dated November 19 reported the following statement from the scout in charge of the matter.

Kuwata has been removed from the 50-man slate. No, no, it’s not that we are leaving him out, it’s more that we are keeping him in our mind.

The scout did not say flatly that “Kuwata will not be nominated,” but rather implied that he was aware of the possibility.

In addition, on the 19th of the same month, the paper carried a comment from then Giants manager Sadaharu Oh. Oh, who was interviewed at the Miyazaki fall training camp after the team finished third that year, stated, “Kiyohara was a very good player, but he was not a good player.

The strong impression that Kiyohara made at the summer Koshien is not something that can be easily erased. Avoiding Kiyohara?　That is only if there is a pitcher who can win 10 games next year for sure,” (November 19, 1985, Nikkan Sports, Tokyo edition, page 1).

At the time, the two pitchers drafted from the working class draft were Akimitsu Ito, selected by the Yakult baseball team, and Hiroshi Nagatomi, selected by the Hiroshima team. Manager Oh evaluated the two pitchers’ good control of their breaking pitches and hinted, “Next season, it will be whether they can be used as relay pitchers. On the same day, the Nikkan Sports newspaper carried a handwritten autograph on a piece of paper, “To Kazuhiro Kiyohara-kun, my effort,” indicating that at least Oh, the top manager on the scene, did not hide his love call for Kiyohara.

The “Kuwata No. 1 pick” by the Giants occurred under such circumstances. The son of a scout for the Giants was on the baseball team at PL Gakuen, where Kuwata and Kiyohara were then, and the newspapers were rife with rumors of a “secret agreement” between the scout and Kuwata’s father, who had already discussed the matter.