My experience in high school baseball allowed me to compete on the world stage

＜The professional baseball players and celebrities who love baseball had a tough and painful time in the baseball team. In this installment of our series of articles, we look back on the days of celebrities who spent their youth on the baseball field in tears and sweat, and this time, Akihiro Yamazaki, the Japanese Paralympic javelin thrower who was born without the tip of his right wrist but spent his days immersed in baseball despite his disadvantage, talks about his life.

The Tokyo Paralympics stage and the summer stage of my senior year of high school were similar.

Maybe it was because I was a no-show, maybe it was because I had grown up, maybe it was because I was more relaxed, maybe it was because I was competing in a different sport to begin with – I don’t know.

On August 30, 2021, when I stood in the newly renovated National Stadium for the Tokyo Paralympics Men’s Javelin Throw, my emotions were calm. But looking back now, I think they were similar. To the excitement of that summer in my junior year of the Yamamura International High School baseball team. I was impressed with myself for having made it this far. I knew the joy of tasting this emotion that summer. To put it extremely simply, I became addicted. That is why I have been and will continue to seek out similar emotions and sights.

If I had not had “that one summer at bat,” I wonder what would have happened now? I sometimes think about this. Perhaps I might have negated what I had done in high school. If I had done so, I might have left the sport. That is how much this summer affected my life.

The strength to believe in yourself without ever losing sight of who you are. This is what I learned in high school baseball.

Yamamura International High School, in its third year of existence

Yamamura International High School, a private high school in Saitama Prefecture, also known as “Yamakoku,” was my first choice. I started playing baseball in the third grade at Tsurugashima Daiichi Elementary School after watching a Seibu Lions game live and being moved by it. I wanted to play baseball, which I had been doing ever since, at Yamakoku, which was only in its third year of existence.

I thought about testing myself at a strong school, but I was attracted to the idea of shaping the history of a baseball team that had just been founded by ourselves. Although the school had not recorded a single win in the Saitama Prefectural Summer Koshien Tournament, I went to an information session and talked with the school’s coach at the time, Tsuyoshi Ito, and my feelings were strengthened.

I was actually accepted and joined the baseball team with high expectations and a sense of uneasiness. I still remember the first seat knock.

Yamamura International had a short history of a baseball team, but with the addition of my generation, all members from the first year to the third year were on the team for the first time. Therefore, there was no strict hierarchical relationship between seniors and juniors like in traditional schools, and we were not forced to run all the time immediately after joining the club. The coach was strict, but I think it was different from being scary.

I played in the outfield during the first sheet knock, and when I was leaving afterwards, Coach Hitoshi Osaka, who would later become my manager, called me into the manager’s office. It seemed that during the sheet knock, he recognized for the first time that I was one-armed.

He said, “Look, this is a world of competition. I’m going to look at you as an athlete.

I was very happy to hear those words.

Yes, I was very happy to hear that. Of course I came here with that intention!

If my play is not up to par, of course I am prepared to miss a game or even be on the bench. But I told them that I had come this far in my baseball career as a player. When the coach said, “You’ve come to the world of serious high school baseball,” I was impressed.

Self-devised and refined skills

I started playing baseball with the Tsurugashima Angels when I was in the third grade, and by the time I graduated from Tsurugashima Nishi Junior High School, I had experienced every position except catcher. During that time, I was taught by my instructors, but all the while I was devising and refining my skills on my own.

Until junior high school, I mainly played second and pitcher, but for example, if I tried to get a double play at second, it would not be possible with the same footwork as an able-bodied player. I would catch the ball with the glove on my left hand, switch gloves to my right hand, and throw with my left hand. In order to perform this series of movements smoothly, it sometimes makes sense to do the opposite of the so-called model kata.

The web is loosened to make it easier to pull the hand out of the glove, and the hand insertion slot is made wider on order. The ball is not caught in the pocket, but on the bank, as in the so-called “hit-and-catch” technique. When I catch the ball with my left hand, I usually put my left foot in front of the ball, but in my case, I can move more smoothly with my right foot in front of the ball. When I go into the relay, I dare to catch the ball with a reverse single …… and so on.

I always practiced while measuring with a stopwatch so that I could change gloves quickly. I learned everything from the direction of my body to how to apply power and glove handling, which are not found in baseball textbooks, by practicing on my own.

Before long, I got into the habit of wiping my left hand with the thigh of my uniform just before the pitcher went into the pitching motion when defending, and clapping my left hand with the rosin on the mound every time I went on the defensive. The problem was that sweaty hands interfered with my glove-switching technique. I was not particularly athletically gifted. But when it came to baseball, I thought, devised, and worked hard every day.

When I heard the coach’s words in the coach’s office, I intuitively felt that my past efforts had been recognized – perhaps that is why I was so happy. If I had been able to sense that I would not be able to play baseball after that first sheet knock, I might have been given special treatment. But by the time I entered high school, I was able to play naturally without feeling uncomfortable. I don’t recall being singled out for being one-armed on the team. After a while.

“How are you hitting?”

I was sometimes asked about it, but it was never a big topic of conversation. People would ask baseball players wearing glasses, “Do you wear glasses?” I guess my play was that natural that I was easily accepted by the team.

I will do my best until the last summer of my senior year in high school.

The baseball team is in its third year of existence. Traditions are still being formed. However, practice was still tough. On weekdays, practice started after classes and lasted until around 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. I was happy to be allowed to participate in practice from my first year, but there were many days when I would go home just to sleep.

One thing I remember is a menu called “Pride. It meant, “Let’s get through this dash and make us proud.” We would dash 100 meters, return to where we were within a minute, and run again, and repeat. Dozens of runs. And it would go on and on unless everyone beat the set time. This was at the end of the practice, and it was …… hard.

In terms of the hardest part, once in a game I was told to “keep running” because things weren’t going my way and I had to dash between the poles in the outfield for about two hours. That was beyond unreasonable (laughs). But now that I can say it, I can also say that it is precisely by overcoming these completely unscientific practices that an invisible power that cannot be explained by logic sometimes resides in high school baseball.

There were seven or eight of us when we first joined the club, but we quit one by one, and by the end there were only three of us. Some quit shortly after joining the club, while others quit even though they had been hanging on quite well. The remaining three of us would go to those who quit during recess and try to persuade them in the hallway.

Let’s give it all up and run away……”

I honestly thought about it every day, too. But I didn’t have the courage to quit. I thought baseball was the only thing for me at the time. It might be easier if I ran away from club activities. But after that, if I had nothing left to challenge myself with, I wouldn’t know how to live. Compared to that fear, I thought it would be easier to continue, even if it was hard or painful.

Besides, it was reassuring to have my friends there, even though the number of people in the group had decreased. Yuki Iizuka, who would later become captain, Daiki Kikuchi, and I. The three of us often talked about how we would “make it through our third year of high school until the last summer. The world of a high school student is not a big one yet.

In the midst of it all, waking up early every morning and spending every day immersed in baseball, how could we possibly be rewarded? That is the only thing that gets me through each day, and that is what “Pride” is all about. I still remember a conversation I had with coach Osaka, who had been promoted from coach to manager during the summer of my sophomore year in high school.

‘What do you want to do with your high school baseball career?’

I want to be successful in my last summer for sure!”

Before I want to be good or win, I just want to shine in the summer of my senior year of high school. This became the common goal of the three of us.

(Continue to Part 2)