(Update) Matsui Promotes Japan-U.S. Baseball Exhibition in N.Y.

   New York, April 21 (Jiji Press)--Former Japanese baseball star Hideki Matsui, who played in the U.S. major leagues and Japanese professional baseball, on Sunday promoted an upcoming Japan-U.S. exhibition at the U.S. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
   "Seeing Japanese major league players nowadays is pretty normal," Matsui said through an interpreter at a press conference at Yankee Stadium in New York, voicing hopes that Japanese and U.S. baseball will flourish further.
   Matsui started his professional career at the Yomiuri Giants, a team in the Central League of the Nippon Professional Baseball Organization, or NPB, after playing for the baseball club at Seiryo Senior High School in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan. He then moved to the United States and played for the New York Yankees and other Major League Baseball teams.
   The press conference was attended by Roy White, who also played for the Yankees and the Giants. He touched on his memories of playing for the Giants with Sadaharu Oh, a baseball legend who hit 868 home runs during his professional career, and said, "The thing I really enjoyed most was the Japanese culture, having the chance...to experience the culture, the people (and) the traditions."
   Starting in July 2025, the exhibition, "Yakyu/Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game between Japan and the United States," at the museum in Cooperstown in the state of New York will showcase items including ones related to Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and Masanori Murakami, the pitcher who became the first Japanese to play for a major league team in 1964.

(2024/04/22-16:34)

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