Remembering Yasuaki Imanari of Nippon Ham, Who was a Scout Until his Death

Yasuaki Imanari, a scout in the Scouting Department of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters Team Management Division, has been diagnosed with fulminant Streptococcus pyogenes infection. March 2 He passed away on June 67. He passed away at the age of 67. Sportswriter Masahiko Abe, a close friend who has been his workplace for more than a year, remembers him here.

The “view” behind the net is a little different, too.

Koshien Stadium for the Senbatsu high school baseball tournament.

On the sixth day of the tournament, after the first game was over, the scouts from the professional baseball teams who had been packed behind the net began to leave their seats almost simultaneously and prepare to go home.

Scouts are busy from this time on. This is because official amateur baseball games are about to start in each of the regions they are in charge of.

In Kyushu and Shikoku, the spring prefectural high school baseball tournaments have already begun, running concurrently with the Senbatsu Tournament, and league games for universities in the Kansai and Kanto regions are just around the corner.

We cannot only follow the Senbatsu tournament. After leaving Koshien, I went to see the players I wanted to see in my respective districts.

The scouts who parted after saying good-bye to each other, “Good job,” “Take care,” etc., were not the “usual faces” in the group this spring.

If it were true, they would stand up, looking around with that glare, and when their eyes meet, they would raise their hands in a slightly annoyed manner, and either never come back, or just slink away.

How long are you going to stay…?”

Even if I answered, he would just say, “Hmmm…” and leave me alone.

Nakanishi, Hirata, Wada, Sekikawa …… And Darvish.

A man who worked only as a “scout” in the world of professional baseball for Hanshin and Nippon Ham for more than 40 years has passed away.

Yasuaki Imanari was a scout for Nippon Ham.

They were the same age, having played high school baseball in Tokyo. That was the only thing they had in common, but after 30 years of seeing each other behind the nets, they had developed such a “relationship” that they would look for each other if they could not find each other.

I became a scout right after graduating from Komazawa University and have been for 40 years. I’ve been a scout for 40 years right out of Komazawa University, and you’ve been working just as hard to become a scout, but you still can’t do it. You are not the same person.

He would say hateful things like that, and yet, at the end of the day, he would always say…

I’ll be waiting for you.

He threw me a blunt encouragement.

He was in charge of Kiyooki Nakanishi, who became Hanshin’s guardian god, Katsuo Hirata, Yutaka Wada, Koichi Sekikawa, and many other famous players who later became professional baseball leaders as managers and coaches of the Hanshin team.

Meanwhile, Tsutomu Tamura and Hideaki Sato pitched hard as Hanshin’s left-handed relievers, and Masaru Takeda, Nippon Ham’s miracle left fielder.

In the eyes of scouts, who have experienced the greatness and severity of professional baseball as players, these players may seem a bit ineffectual…There are players who give such an impression, but instead, their baseball sense shines through. We recommend a number of such players and select them in the draft. As a scout in charge of these players, I have guided them to the professional ranks.

As I recall, the “first one” was Susumu Mikoshiba, a sidearm pitcher from Matsumoto Technical High School in Nagano, Japan.

He was a skinny, unknown high school pitcher who was 180 centimeters tall but weighed less than 70 kilograms. It must have taken a lot of courage for a young scout in his fifth year of scouting to recommend a sidearm pitcher, who at that time could only weigh a little over 130 kilograms, as the fourth overall pick in the draft.

He was springy, and above all, he had good form. A player’s form is his shape…”

He said nothing else when I asked him about it, but he must have had a keen sense to catch the part of a gem that has not yet shown its potential.

The time of Sidax pitcher Masaru Takeda (current Nihon Ham coach) was amazing.

He usually sat in the middle row behind the net staring at the ground, but unusually he sat in the front row, his back bent, his eyes lowered, and his gaze fixed on Takeda’s pitches.

Look at this…all of this pitcher’s balls are below the belt, yeah. No, they’re even lower…. And I can’t see the release at all. It’s 130 kilos at best, but that’s the way I like it, yeah.”

Whenever he got serious, he had a habit of adding “un” to the end of his words.

Terrible illness, sudden death

He joined Nippon Ham as the fourth overall pick in the 2005 college and adult draft, and in the 11 years of his professional baseball career, which began at age 28, he won 82 games and became a starting pitcher who is remembered by fans as a left-handed pitcher who plays off hitters with his ever-changing pitches.

He had been to camp in February and seemed to have been suffering from a high fever since his return.

fulminant hemolytic streptococcal infection.

The name of the disease, which was never heard of before, was a frightening one, and he probably passed away on March 2, before even he knew what it was.

He became a scout at the age of 23 and went through a lot of hardship, but he was still a scout for 44 years and died as a scout, just as he wished.

He would have wanted to do more, but from my point of view, he was such a lucky guy that even though he studied so hard for the same number of years, he still could not become a scout.

Look at this newspaper, which reported his death, even though there were four open games the day before, the whole page was devoted to “Imanari, dead.

If you keep taking the ball as if you are young, you will die sooner or later.

The person who worried me, in his typical rough and ready manner, died before I did.

For example, in 1988, who in the world was he? (Excuse me!) He was a utility player for the Hanshin team for a while, and ended up working as a pro for 13 years. …… I would have liked to hear more and more about what is it that I have heard every time I have heard such a story.

Thank you very much.

(Honorifics omitted)