Former Lotte player Ikuhiro Kiyota reveals his “deepest anguish” over whether he will return to baseball or not

I’ve been thinking a lot about ……. As a result, I decided not to take the tryout.”

Ikuhiro Kiyota (35) told FRIDAY in a phone interview.

On December 13, the second oral argument was held in the high-profile lawsuit filed by Kiyota against Lotte for a total of 97 million yen, including status confirmation and compensation. There was a lot of attention on how Lotte would argue against Kiyota’s claim that his dismissal was illegal. However, it seems that little progress was made. Shuichi Okubo, a lawyer at Junpo Law Office who is representing Kiyota, said.

The team’s stance was that there was a clear reason for his dismissal and that he hadn’t signed a multi-year contract, but the legal arguments against that were left for the next meeting.

Kiyota also claimed that he had been restricted from practicing and that he had asked the team to correct the reports of his affair, but they had refused.

The team has strongly denied some of those claims. The team has strongly denied some of those claims, and I got the impression that they were just saying what they wanted to say and trying to stall the trial.

Lotte responded to FRIDAY’s interview by saying, “We will refrain from commenting. Kiyota has not given up on his comeback and hopes to settle the case as soon as possible. That is why he is troubled by the team’s strategy of stalling the case.

Kiyota told FRIDAY about his painful feelings.

I still don’t know if I will continue to play baseball. I really haven’t decided anything yet. I haven’t been able to train as much as before. I’m thinking about a lot of things. I can’t talk about my feelings in detail right now, but I’ll tell you about them when the time comes. ……”

The next trial is scheduled for February of next year.

From the December 31, 2021 issue of FRIDAY