Daisuke Araki made such an impression with his performance during the 1980 Summer Koshien tournament that there was an epidemic of parents naming their babies "Daisuke" afterwards. The most famous one of these babies, of course, was Daisuke Matsuzaka, who would go on to have his own Koshien heroics 18 years later before embarking on his 23 year professional career on two continents. I was amused recently to discover that Araki had been the Lions' pitching coach for the last three years that Matsuzaka played for Seibu before leaving for the Red Sox. Here are their cards from the 2004 BBM Lions team set - it was issued back in the days when BBM included the team's coaching staffs in their "comprehensive" team sets:
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| 2004 BBM Lions #02 |
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| 2004 BBM Lions #13 |
1 comment:
That is a very interesting connection, I hadn't realized that "Daisuke" was popularized as a name by Araki.
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