Toshitaka Sakurai, former Giants Dora 1 player, is now playing baseball for working people.

A number of turning points

Under the coldest weather of the winter, with a wintry wind blowing through the trees, a former Giant’s DRA1 player wearing a bright red outerwear greeted us with a smile at a field in Iga City (Mie Prefecture).

The clouds you see over there are snow clouds. It looks like it will snow soon.

Toshitaka Sakurai, 32, has hardly changed since his days with the Giants. The man who once stood on the mound with the cheers of the Tokyo Dome at his back has been a member of the Miki House baseball team for two years and is now the ace of the team.

When the Giants drafted me in the first round, I felt like my life had changed.

Sakurai joined the Giants in 2004 after graduating from Ritsumeikan University. It was not until his third year that he felt he could make it, and after a first-year injury he crawled back up the order, winning eight games in his fourth year as a member of the starting rotation. He was a right-hander who was considered a potential ace, but the professional baseball world can be cruel when results fail to materialize. In 2010, he was informed that he was out of the lineup and decided to retire. He became a scout for the Giants.

He said, “I had a family, so the independent league was not in my mind because of the financial burden. I thought about the reality of the situation and decided it was better to take a new path.

Suddenly he became a scout instead of a player, and his life changed drastically. Sakurai was assigned to the Kansai region and Shimane and Tottori prefectures in the San-in region. He moved from Tokyo to Kyoto and began his life as a scout.

The hardest part was the travel and scheduling,” Sakurai said. When I was a player, my manager arranged my tickets and other things, but as a scout, I had to do everything by myself. I had to put together a schedule like a puzzle, taking into account the travel time to the games I was going to visit.

However, this scouting experience also led Sakurai to broaden his view of baseball. By observing the behavior of the batter from behind the back net, he was able to understand what the batter was aiming for at bat. Ironically, taking off his uniform gave him the “vision” he needed as a pitcher.

In addition, a small coincidence also encouraged Sakurai’s return to active duty. A high school game in Kyoto that he was scheduled to observe in June 2011 was cancelled due to rain, and the team switched to using the practice field at Ritsumeikan University, Sakurai’s alma mater.

The president of the hardball team’s alumni association happened to be there, and when I told him in casual conversation that I would like to try baseball a little more, he said, ‘That’s one way to go.

The president of the alumni association, Shigeki Fujioka, had been the manager of Miki House when it was a club team, and as the off-season approached, the idea of a return to active baseball began to become a reality.

Even so, the draft was approaching, so the first thing I had to do was finish my job as a scout. That was all I could think about. I didn’t have time to train for my return.”

After the draft, he told Yuji Mizuno, 60, the head of scouting, and Tatsunori Hara, 67, then manager, of his intention to return to active duty. The two men gave him words of encouragement.

To the mound at Tokyo Dome

At the beginning of the new year, Sakurai resumed his activities with MIKI HOUSE after a one-year blank. The main game in baseball for working adults is a tournament game, which is completely different from professional baseball, where the game ends when the player loses.

Professional baseball has 143 games a year, but for working people it is over after just one game. There is a lot of excitement from the preliminary rounds, and the employees are united in their support. I feel the importance of this as a corporate sport.

One game that left a particularly strong impression on me after I returned to the team was in June 2012, my first year with the team, against Nippon Steel Setouchi in the second round of the Kinki Region Inter-City Tournament. He came on in the 8th inning of a game he could not afford to lose.

To be honest, from about the 6th inning, I was thinking, ‘I really don’t want to pitch’ (laughs). (Laughs.) I kept running through my mind the unpleasant images of being hit by a pitch. ……

During his time with the Giants, he reviewed footage of his opponents over and over again and worked out countermeasures. When the day of his pitching rotation approached, he revealed that he thought so much about it that he “felt like throwing up from nerves.

I’m negative until I get on the mound,” he said. But once I got to the mound, I was so focused that it was like I was lying and I was free of the tension. In the end, I gave up a walk to the first batter of the game, but struck out three in a row from there, and closed out the ninth inning with zero outs.

The winning team qualified for the main tournament, and Sakurai, wearing a red uniform, made a triumphant return to the Tokyo Dome.

That year, the team faced Nippon Steel again in the final Kinki regional qualifier for the Japan Championship Tournament. Sakurai took the mound as a starter and pitched an impassioned game, allowing only two runs until the middle of the eighth inning. He led Miki House to its first Japan Championship in 19 games.

In 1925, another former Giant, Yuuki Takahashi (28), a left fielder in the Dora 1 draft, also joined Miki House. He has recruited his former teammates and together they are aiming for the top spot in Japan.

He said, “Professional baseball is more of an individual sport, whereas baseball for working people is a corporate sport, so the company is the key factor. I can feel this aspect from my fellow players. I knew Takahashi’s personality well and thought he would be a good fit for baseball for working adults, so I invited him to join us.”

When practice began after the interview, powder snow was beginning to fall on the field. Sakurai will continue to take the mound this year, carrying the thoughts of the company and his fellow players on his shoulders.

Toshiki Sakurai
Born in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture in 1993. He is 181 cm tall and weighs 87 kg.
Throws right-handed and hits right-handed. Family includes a wife and two children.

From the February 13, 2026 issue of FRIDAY