by Matt DeLucia

Last month, the American national baseball team learned a thing or two on the baseball diamond. The Japanese national team beat us at our own game and won the World Baseball Classic title, thanks in large part to the play of Japanese baseball hero Ichiro Suzuki. There were few Japanese baseball fans happier with the outcome than Masaharu Morimoto, whose aspirations to be a professional baseball catcher early in his life ended with an arm injury. Fortunately, this forced him to go with his backup career choice: as a sushi chef in Hiroshima. After booking a round-trip ticket around the United States that ended up being a one-way ticket to New York, he played a bit in amateur leagues throughout the city before success finally arrived, and took that away from him as well.

“Sometimes I go to the batting cage with my mentor who is 18 years old, and I try to hit the ball. My mind says to hit it, but my body is 51, so you know - I can’t!”

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