Kuwata and Kiyohara’s Legacy Ignites Revival: PL Gakuen High School Baseball Returns
Will the legend begin again?
The baseball team of PL Gakuen (Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture) boasts seven Koshien championships. The club has been on hiatus since 2005, but it is now known that it has welcomed a new student and is moving toward revival.
PL Gakuen is one of the most prestigious high school baseball clubs in Japan. The KK duo of Masumi Kuwata (55) and Kazuhiro Kiyohara (56) participated in the Koshien five times in spring and summer, winning the championship twice and finishing runner-up twice, and more than 80 of their former players have gone on to play professionally. Next season, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami (54) of Chunichi, Kazuo Matsui (48) of Seibu, and Toshiaki Imae (40) of Rakuten will serve as managers.
Senior students batting underclassmen
The school had been a powerhouse, and had been named a regular at the Koshien National Championships, but things changed when a member of the club became violent.
The PL baseball team had a strict hierarchical relationship, with underclassmen taking care of upperclassmen under the valet system, and there were frequent incidents of violence by club members and coaches. The reason for the suspension of the club was a violent incident in 2013 in which an upperclassman beat an underclassman with a baseball bat.
It is said that the school’s administrator, the PL Order, decided to suspend the baseball club after it was banned from playing outside games for six months. In 2015, the school quit recruiting members for the club, and in 2017, it withdrew from the Osaka Prefecture high school baseball league.
However, there is a strong desire among alumni and high school baseball fans for the club to be reinstated, and according to an official of the church, The third generation of the club is scheduled to join in 2020.
According to an official of the church, the reason for this is that the church’s attitude toward the baseball team has gradually changed since the death of the third Oyasama in 2020.
And this year, for the first time in nine years, the club decided to allow a new member to join.
