The Road to Glory - Final Four Bound!

I'm so proud to be a teacher at Okisho! Not that I teach any of the guys up at the tournament, but they're still part of my school, and it's awesome to see my school faring so well in the national high school baseball tournament! Since there are enough reports out there in Japanese, I will do an English one here. If you want to read about the game in Japanese, go to this site. You can also watch the game or the highlights there, too!

Okisho was up against Tenri (Nara Prefecture). Tenri had won their previous game 10-1, and have a pitcher with an unorthodox release, so I was a little concerned heading into the game. But with an ace pitcher like Nao Higashihama, what do you have to worry about, right? Well it turns out manager Koya Higa (ace of the '99 All-Japan Championship Team) decided to go with Wataru Uehara (see right) as his starter. THAT concerned me even more, going up against a potent offense like Tenri's. After a couple of shaky innings to start the game, Uehara settled down nicely and struck out quite a few guys before allowing a solo homerun in the 4th inning. That was the end of his start, and Manager Higa brought in Higashihama to finish the game. With a 3-2 lead, it seemed like it would be a fight to the finish. Could Naoyan (nickname) hold off the Tenri attack? Well he did an awesome job of it, going 5 innings and allowing only 4 hits while striking out 4. He made a sweet double play in the 8th inning to get out of a jam, but then proceeded to take a ground ball off the knee (see picture below). He left for a few minutes and the game was put on hold. The Okinawan crowd breathed a sigh of relief when he returned to the mound, caused the next batter to ground out, and then pitched a near-perfect 9th inning. Final score: Okisho 4, Tenri 2.

Next up (tomorrow at 1:30pm): Toyo Dai Himeji. Should be a great matchup! Watch it if you can - it'll be on NHK and probably a local channel, too!