午夜剧场

The first championship in the club's 94-year history. The Tokyo Gas Baseball Club achieved its long-held dream of becoming number one in Japan at the 92nd Intercity Baseball Tournament held at the Tokyo Dome last December. As I entered my fourth year as manager, I had experienced more failures than successes. However, I held onto the single-minded determination to turn those failures into the seeds of success and climb to the top of Japan.

Industrial league baseball is said to be the pinnacle of amateur baseball. Adults engage in heated battles for the national title in two major tournaments: the Intercity Baseball Tournament and the Social Baseball Diamond Cup. Tokyo Gas had never won either tournament. I wanted to change that history. However, although we participated in the Intercity Tournament in 2018 when I was appointed manager, we were eliminated in the qualifiers in 2019 and 2020. During this period of being unable to break through the wall, I visited seniors from the Juku Baseball Club who had experience winning the Intercity Tournament to learn about the policies, mindsets, and fighting styles of winning teams. While everyone was unique and had different tactical preferences, what they had in common was a deep love for their company, baseball, and the players, and a serious commitment to finding ways to give players confidence.

Starting last year, which I approached with unwavering determination, I received cooperation from Dr. Tsutomu Fuse, a doctor of sports psychology and a senior from the Juku Baseball Club. In the end, I, as the manager, may have been the one most influenced. In particular, the concept of "role personality." This involves maintaining one's original personality while performing the personality of an assigned role. The turning point was a major defeat in the Diamond Cup qualifiers last June. I made up my mind and told the players, "Any player who isn't serious about becoming number one in Japan, I'll send you back to the company." No one left. I shifted from being a "manager of emotion" to playing the role of a "ruthless manager" in order to win. By clarifying each player's role and making strict demands to fulfill them, the players began to face their weaknesses and tackle practices they were not good at. In the September Intercity qualifiers, we secured the right to represent Tokyo as the number one seed for the first time in three years and rushed straight to the top.

With Tokyo Gas's victory, managers from the Juku have won the Intercity Tournament eight times in the past 15 years, a winning rate of over 50%. This started with Manager Yorihiko Indu (Toshiba) in 2007, followed by Manager Hideaki Okubo (ENEOS), Manager Tetsuya Horii (JR East, current manager of the Athletic Association Baseball Club), Manager Hirokazu Hashiguchi (Osaka Gas), and myself. In my own small way, I hope to contribute to the future of the baseball world in the spirit of "learning while teaching, teaching while learning."