Eri Yoshida’s debut with video

Eri Yoshida made her regular season game debut for her Kansai Indenpendent League team Kobe 9 Cruise in their season opener at the Osaka Kyocera Dome on Thursday 27 March 2009.

She came into the game in the 9th with her team leading the Osaka Villicanes by 5-0. She walked her first batter on 4 straight knuckleballers, then mixed her fastball and knuckleball to strike the next batter out on 5 pitches.

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Sidearm knuckler Eri Yoshida likely to pitch on 24 Mar

17 year old high school student, sidearm knuckleballer, and the first female Japanese professional baseball player Eri Yoshida is likely to see her first game action in the pre-season game for her Kobe 9Cruise on the road against the Kishu Rangers at the Kimiidera Stadium in Wakayama scheduled on March 24. Manager of Kobe, Yoshihiro Nakata, had mentioned that he wanted to test Eri in a game in the latter half of March, and this recently scheduled match against Kishu fits the bill.

He’s also declared that Eri will pitch in the season opener on the 27th, this seems kinda gimmicky but it’s the independent Kansai League’s first year, so whatever gets the press eh. The season opener will be against the Osaka Villicanes at the sure to be cavernous for indie ball Kyocera Dome (!) at 18:15.

Submarine knuckleballer… and it’s a she!

This story is full of goodies for the obscure baseball lover.

The newly formed Kansai Independent League, which will begin play in 2009, has just held its draft. This is the 3rd independent league in Japan to start operation this decade, after the pioneering Shikoku-Kyushu Island League and the Baseball Challenge League (Hoku-Shinetsu region).

 

The Kansai league features the first female owner of a pro ball club in Japan as the Kobe 9Cruise (yes, that’s the team name) is owned by Kazuyo Hirota who runs a local mineral water company. The league held an open combined tryout on 4 November, and the draft on 16 November where Kobe selected Eri Yoshida, a 16 year old high school girl who is a submarine knuckleball pitcher (got all that?), with one of its picks after they saw what they liked in the tryout. Yoshida passed the first and second tests of the tryout, then pitched an inning where she struck out the first batter on a knuckler, walked the second batter, then got the next two batters to ground out to second and pop out to short.

She received a compliment from a former Yomiuri player and new Osaka pitching coach that her knuckler and fastball both have the same delivery. Her fastball is in the high 60s, so I assume she relies almost entirely on the knuckler. It’s reported that she’s considering transferring to a Kobe high school, and indie games tend to be played on weekends, so I guess this could somehow all work out, it’ll an interesting story to follow as Yoshida becomes the first professional female baseball player in Japan (in a men’s league, there was a women’s league for 2 brief years following the war).