Baseball was the only sport in high school where practices were more fun than games. You'd stand around the outfield with your buddies, cracking each other up while about once every 7 weeks a fly ball might come your way. Football practice was pure misery, so games were a relief. And basketball you'd just run and run and run, so the games seemed easier. But baseball - on game days, you'd almost be disappointed. "We gotta play a game today? Damn." - XMASTIMEYankees starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda had a somewhat different experience while growing up playing baseball in Japan:
As a boy, he sneaked away from an abusive high school coach to gulp water from a polluted river. He saw some of his teammates, desperate with thirst, drink from a puddle, and he heard of others who would do so from a toilet...orn in 1975, Kuroda is one of the last of a cohort of Japanese players who grew up in a culture in which staggeringly long work days and severe punishment were normal, and in which older players could haze younger ones with impunity.
Summer practices in the heat and humidity of Osaka lasted from 6 a.m. until after 9 p.m. Kuroda was hit with bats and forced to kneel barelegged on hot pavement for hours.
You know, when Hideki Kuroda finds himself batting in the game-winning run in the 1990 Northern Neck District championship game, then I'll be impressed. Until then, can he please just quit with the crying bullshit already? After Pearl Harbor he's lucky we're even letting him in the country, much less Yankee gotdam Stadium!!!!
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