Tuesday, April 19, 1921: Professional baseball player SAKAMOTO Shigeru is born in Oji, Kita Ward, Tokyo. Since elementary school, he has been playing amateur baseball for adults. With a swift run of 100 m 12 s flat, he was the Kanto elementary school student champion in the sprint. He hit 6 homers in 12 games between elementary schools in Tokyo and the newspaper said, “THE PRINCE’S GENIUS BOY”. After advancing to Nihon University Third Junior High School under the old system and current Nihon University Third High School, Sakamoto led the team as the fudo-no-yonban batter and participated in Koshien 4 times, reaching the last 8 in the 26 tournament.
He joined the Tokyo Giants in 1941 and took over Eiji Sawamura’s uniform number 14. This number 14 will be retired due to Sawamura’s death. In 1950, he became Kintetsu Corporation. In November of the same year, he hit the first walk-off grand slam in the history of the Pacific League. After retirement, he was a Pacific League referee for 16 years.
Sakamoto is good at three dan in Igo, and Ichiro Hatoyama, former chairman of the Yomiuri Giants, said he looked forward to playing against Sakamoto twice a year. He died at the age of 1989, 67.
At first glance, a baseball player and go may seem like a strange combination, but when Ichiro was asked his hobby once, he said, “Bonsai, goldfish and Go”. If you look up the relationship between baseball and Igo, there will be a lot of interesting history. Why don’t someone study it?
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