The power of the “big three first-year sluggers” who will change the history of high school baseball

Well, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a first-year slugger of this magnitude. There were three of them. They all hit home runs on the same day as the mainstay of the team, and they all share the same left-handed hitter who plays first base.

Rintaro Sasaki (Hanamaki Higashi, Iwate)

Kyoshiro Sakura (Kyushu Kokusai University, Fukuoka)

Kei Manabe (Hiroshima, Hiroyo)

These are the three. Not only do they have powerful hitting power, but they also share a similar physique. Sasaki is 183cm and 117kg, Manabe is 189cm and 89kg, and Sakura is 183cm and 106kg. They are literally the “Big Three,” as they are as big as college students.

Hanamaki Higashi’s Sasaki: “I can hit a home run even if I have a broken bone.

The curtain came down on the 52nd Meiji Jingu Baseball Tournament, the high school division of the tournament that brings together the winners of the fall tournaments in 10 regions across Japan. Rintaro Sasaki was the first of the “Big Three” to appear on the field. In the opening game against Kokugakuin Kugayama (Tokyo). In the opening game against Kokugakuin Kugayama (Tokyo), he batted third in the first inning and hit the second pitch, a bullet liner, into the right field bleachers. This was already his 48th high school hit. This is the 48th homer of his high school career, far faster than the 56 homers hit by Shohei Ohtani, a senior at Hanamaki Higashi, in his three years of high school.

I’m glad that so many people cheered for me and that I was able to score the first run in a good way. I don’t really think about home runs too much, because I think they’re just a result of how I’m feeling at the time.

He was very humble about it, but it was a terrifying hit because he was in “the same condition” as when he suffered a fatigue fracture in his left shin during the last Tohoku tournament. His intimidating swing was developed during his junior high school days at Kanegasaki Senior High School, where Otani’s father, Toru, was the manager. Sasaki told us.

I happened to win a lottery (laughs) and had the opportunity to be instructed remotely by Yoshinobu Takahashi. He taught me how to use the bat in a way that it is flicked from above, and I’ve been trying to do that.

The team lost to Hiroyo 9-10 in the semifinals, and pitching was an issue, but Sasaki was also an ace pitcher in junior high school, throwing as fast as 137 kilometers. He said he still practices pitching once in a while, so we may see him play a two-way game like Otani. Prior to the start of the tournament, Otani had won the A-League MVP award.

Before the tournament started, Otani won the MVP award in the A-League, and we felt strongly that we should do the same because of Shohei’s success.

The new monster candidate of Reiwa is fully aware of this. The number 17 he will wear until the summer is the same number Otani wore as an underclassman.

He reminds me of Tomoya Mori of Seibu,” said Sakura of Kyushu.

Next up was Kyoshiro Sakura in the second game of the same day. In the ninth inning against Clark International (Hokkaido), he hit a timely shot to end the game. His form, with a low center of gravity and a high bat, reminded me of Tomoya Mori of Seibu. His powerful batting line, which scored 43 runs in the four games in the Kyushu Tournament, was born from his daily routine of swinging a super-heavy bat weighing 1,800 grams, but Sakura, at 183 centimeters and 106 kilograms, can easily handle the weight that upperclassmen struggle with. With his power, he hit a home run in the second inning of the semifinal game against Osaka Toin on November 23. Although they lost the game.

He said, “I couldn’t use my long ball power until the second game, but I was able to show it.

It was the eighth home run of his high school career.

Koshiro Sakura, Kyushu Kokusai University, “Amazing swing speed of 150 km/h” Manabe, Hiroyo

On the same day, November 23, in the first semifinal game between Hanamaki Higashi and Koryu, Sasaki hit his second three-run shot of the tournament, and Kei Manabe also hit a three-run shot to right field in the second inning. In the first game of the semifinals, Sasaki scored the second three-run shot of the tournament, and Toshi Manabe also hit a three-run shot to right field in the second inning.

Manabe, a first-year fourth baseman, also hit a grand total of three hits in the first game. According to manager Tetsuyuki Nakai, Manabe has the fastest swing speed of any player he’s ever seen. He was nicknamed “Bonds” after Barry Bonds, who hit 762 home runs, the most ever in the majors. Manabe said.

Since junior high school, I’ve been using water weight training equipment to build up my power.

The average swing speed for high school students is around 120 kilometers per hour, so this is an impressive figure. This is his tenth home run, which is not as many as Sasaki’s, but if he can become strong on the big stage like Shosei Nakamura (Hiroshima), an alumnus of the same school who hit six home runs in one tournament,” Nakai said, he may be able to catch up with him at a high pace.

In three games at the Jingu Tournament, Manabe had 15 hits, eight runs, and six runs batted in for runner-up Hiroyo. Sasaki of Hanamaki Higashi, one of the top four teams, had “10 hits, 6 runs and a whopping 9 runs”, and Sakura of Kyushu Kokusai University, another top four team, had “9 hits, 3 runs and 2 runs”. They had a high batting average. And again, all of them are first-year students. One of the coaches of a high school told me.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen first-year players play so well in the past Jingu tournaments. The current second-year players must have had limited team practice and fewer games due to the Covid-19 disaster last year.” In terms of “high school baseball” experience, the freshmen who entered this year may not be as different from the sophomores as they usually are.

In addition, as mentioned above, the three are literally the big three, with physiques comparable to college students. As mentioned above, the three of them are as big as college students in terms of physique. It’s not surprising that they are aware of each other, as Sakura says, ” Right now, they are way ahead of us, but we want to be known as the Sasaki of the East and the Sakura of the West.

Anyway, it is certain that the three of them will be together in the Senbatsu tournament next spring, and it should be very exciting. By the way, …… Sasaki’s name Rintaro was named after the childhood name of Kaishu Katsu by his father, Hiroshi Sasaki, who is also a social studies teacher. The most home runs ever hit in high school baseball is said to be 111 by Kotaro Kiyomiya (the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters), who also played for Waseda Jitsu from his first year. Like Kaishu Katsu, who changed the course of history from the Edo period to the Meiji period, Rintaro Sasaki and the Big Three may rewrite Kiyomiya’s record and the history of high school baseball.