MLB HPより抜粋。
Eighteen years of hard work came together when Masumi Kuwata took the mound for his first Major League appearance.
He was a veteran and a rookie all at once. He was nervous, but it didn't show. He was smaller, and at the same time overpowering. He stood stern-faced on the mound, but wore an ear-to-ear smile in the locker room afterward.
His dream was fulfilled, nearly two decades after he began pursuing it.
"I just said to myself, 'Thank you to the God of baseball,'" Kuwata said. "I was so excited. I said thank you for everybody and everything. In my mind, I said that anything can happen. I'm going to pitch today in Major League Baseball."
When he was 20 years old, Kuwata was living in Japan and was teammates with former Major Leaguer Bill Gullickson, who shared with Kuwata the excitement of American professional baseball. It was Gullickson, Kuwata said, who planted the seed about a career overseas.
Now 38, Kuwata was understandably emotional beforehand and after his outing. He admitted to taking deep breaths before throwing, and said at the time he was out there he wasn't concerned with the results so much as the experience.
"It was the first time I took the mound, so I was just enjoying every moment," Kuwata said. "I just tried to pitch my style."
Perhaps it was because his worries were elsewhere, but the right-hander threw a devastating slider on Sunday, fanning two of the three Reds he faced in the 14-pitch third inning. One of his victims during the Pirates' 10-4 loss was Scott Hatteberg, a notoriously hard player to ring up, who did so less than nine percent of the time last season (41 strikeouts in 456 at-bats).
Kuwata was impressed upon learning this, but for him personally, and the horde of Japanese media that's been tailing him since he was in high school (whose numbers were 50-plus during his debut), it was the significance of the event that really mattered.
"It was a dream come true, you know?" he said. "I just want to do my best. If I don't make the Opening Day roster, I will never give up. I will never give up."
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まさか桑田の記事が出るとは思わなかった。夢がかなったからおしまい。
