I wasn’t interested in the Asian Games, but the APBC (Asian Professional Baseball Championship) is a different story. The first day of training alone drew 1500 fans to watch the young team.
Japan’s national baseball team, led by head coach Hirokazu Ibata, began its fall camp in Miyazaki, Japan, on Sept. 6 to prepare for the APBC. The team will train at the Kiyobu Sports Complex in downtown Miyazaki.
The APBC will be held in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia and will feature players aged 24 or younger or in their third year of professional baseball. The South Korean national baseball team, led by Ryu Jung-il, also began training at Samsung Lions Park in Daegu on June 6.
According to local Japanese media reports such as the Yomiuri Shimbun, about 1500 fans gathered at the Kiyobu Sports Complex on the first day of the team’s training. That’s a lot of interest.
Japan unites its national baseball team under the brand name Samurai Japan. Marketing and public relations are handled separately. All of the national teams – the adult A team, the youth team, the youth national team, the women’s national team, and the social baseball team – have their own official websites with schedules, news, photos, and more. “Samurai Japan” also provides details on the national teams’ training schedules and how to watch practice games.
The APBC team will be training in Miyazaki until the 13th, with practice games against the Yomiuri Giants on the 10th and the Hiroshima Toyokafu on the 12th. Tickets for the practice games will be sold for a fee.
Baseball is so popular in Japan that it is called the “national sport,” but last month’s Asian Games in Hangzhou was an exception. Interest was extremely low due to the fact that the baseball players were from the society. Media coverage was also minimal.
However, the APBC is a different kind of attention. This is because the players, most of whom are in their early 20s, are the “young guns” of Nippon Professional Baseball, and there is a high probability that they will become the main players of the official adult national team in the future. A whopping five of the players who participated in the inaugural APBC in 2017 were part of the winning team at this year’s WBC. Fans are bound to be intrigued.
It is also important to note that this will be Ibata’s first tournament as full-time head coach of the national team. In his first meeting with the team, Ibata said, “Five of the players who competed in the 2017 tournament played in this year’s WBC. I hope that at least one more player will use this tournament as a foundation to play for their clubs and internationally in the future.” 아톰카지노 도메인