A game for the ages?

A game for the ages?

aYukiko Ueno stands on a small hill in the stadium with ball in hand. And when he has the ball, you still have to watch. On good days, even at 39, she throws him faster than any other woman in Japan, perhaps faster than anyone else in the world. It was once measured at a speed of 128 kilometers per hour. Now she jumps from one foot to the other. She’s about to throw. And try to do what they did 13 years ago.

It’s a Tuesday evening in Yokohama, a city south of Tokyo. Cricket outside the stadium, inside softball players from Japan and the United States scream in the trees. The Japanese are leading 1-0 by a few minutes in the final of the Olympic tournament. In the press box, the otherwise always quiet TV commentator suddenly speaks a little louder into his microphone. You can feel what you can rarely feel in the halls and stadiums at the moment: the excitement.

In the early days of the Olympic Games, the people of Japan experienced some extraordinary sporting moments. But have you ever been as excited as this time? There are more local journalists in the press box than anywhere else. You might have guessed that tonight you will be able to watch a game for the ages. And it really is in the literal sense. Because the future of the game you are watching may lie in the environment you live in. But not in the Olympics.

If you take the Olympic shuttle bus from Tokyo to Yokohama on this final day and look out the window, you will see children and young people throwing, hitting and catching a ball in parks and meadows. A general concern for the next generation in Japan, but it does not apply to baseball or softball, the most popular sport in the country. A professor from the United States reportedly cheered. In the late 19th century, Horace Wilson taught English at the University of Tokyo – and then baseball in his spare time. To this day, only men play it around the world. Softball is the name of the women’s version. Key Difference: The ball is slightly larger and is thrown from the bottom rather than the top. And yet Yukiko Ueno throws him at a speed of 128 kilometers per hour.

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Needless to say in Japan. A Fukuoka pitcher throws the ball in the summer of 2008 when the Japanese beat the Americans in the final of the Beijing Olympics. Since then, everyone in Japan knows who Yukiko Ueno is. On the biggest platform of the game – baseball in softball there is no extraordinary league like the North American MLB – you didn’t see them until after. Even before the Summer Games, International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials decided to remove softball again from the program, although it was only included in Atlanta in 1996. He had seen three tournaments – and three times the same result: gold for the United States. The Americans couldn’t keep winning because they never lost.

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