07/19/26 12:02:00
Printable Page
07/19 12:01 CDT Japanese slugger Rintaro Sasaki to sign with Marlins, forgo
professional career in home country
Japanese slugger Rintaro Sasaki to sign with Marlins, forgo professional career
in home country
HANAMAKI, Japan (AP) --- Japanese slugger Rintaro Sasaki will sign with the
Miami Marlins and forgo a professional career in his home country.
The Marlins selected Sasaki out of Stanford in the eighth round of Major League
Baseball's amateur draft last week, but the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks also
selected him in the first round of the Nippon Professional Baseball draft.
The difficult decision had Sasaki fighting back tears during a news conference
in his hometown on Sunday.
"More than anyone else, I believe I understand my own limitations and how much
I still need to improve," Sasaki said. "Even if this path ultimately turns out
to be the wrong choice, I do not want to live with regret. Rather than defining
my life by whether I succeed or fail, I want to define it by whether I had the
courage to take on a challenge. With that belief in mind, I ultimately decided
to pursue this path."
Sasaki played under Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani's father, Toru, and is
Japan's all-time high school home run leader with 140. He made waves out of
high school, opting out of the Nippon league's draft to play at Stanford.
The 21-year-old first baseman played two seasons at Stanford, hitting .262 with
16 homers and 47 RBIs as a sophomore last year.
"I went back and forth on this decision until the very end," Sasaki said. "Ever
since I chose to attend Stanford, I have always had a strong desire to
challenge myself in the United States. In the end, that desire won out. I felt
that I wanted to see how far I could go by challenging myself in America, and
that feeling became stronger than anything else."
___
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
|
