Japanese girl throws like a pro, makes team

TOKYO — The knuckleball — the fluttering, hard-to-hit pitch that's rare in the major leagues — is propelling a 16-year-old girl to the pros in Japan.

Eri Yoshida was inspired to learn how to throw the knuckler after seeing a video of Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield. She broke the gender barrier Monday by being drafted for an independent league team as Japan's first female professional baseball player.

The high-schooler was chosen by the Kobe 9 Cruise in the Japanese League, which starts its inaugural season in April.

The Cruise is a far cry from Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants. Making the squad is more like earning a tentative slot on a farm team than warming up in the bullpen for the Red Sox.

Even so, Yoshida has smashed the glass ceiling with her unorthodox, sidearm pitch in baseball-crazy Japan, where women normally are relegated to amateur, company-sponsored teams or to softball.

"I'm really happy I stuck with baseball," Yoshida said after she was chosen with 32 other players in the new league's draft. "I want to pitch against men."

Yoshida is hoping to find enough success to challenge the likes of the long-established Central and Pacific leagues, home to the best and brightest Japanese players and increasingly a fertile ground for talent headed to the majors in the United States.

Yoshida said she wants to emulate Wakefield, who has built a major-league career throwing a knuckleball, which is difficult to learn and even harder to throw with success.

Wakefield and Seattle's R.A. Dickey were the two most prominent pitchers who were primarily knucklers to appear in the major leagues last season.

Yoshida started playing baseball when she was in the second grade, tagging along with her elder brother, now 19, and played first base on a boys team in junior-high school. She also joined her high-school baseball club but quit because the training was too tough. Then she joined a private club.

"She must be doing something right," said Dave DeFrietas, a scout in Japan for the Cleveland Indians. "She got signed. I hope it's because of the way she plays, and I wish her success."

Baseball history in the United States has occasional examples of women taking the field with men. While pitching for the Double A Chattanooga Lookouts in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell Gilbert struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession. In the past couple of decades, at least three women have pitched in independent minor leagues.