Eri Yoshida
| Eri Yoshida | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tochigi Golden Braves – No. 49 | |||
| Pitcher | |||
|
Born: January 17, 1992 Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan |
|||
|
|||
| Teams | |||
|
|||
Eri Yoshida (吉田 えり Yoshida Eri?, born January 17, 1992) is a Japanese professional baseball player. She plays as a sidearm knuckleball pitcher for the Tochigi Golden Braves of the independent Baseball Challenge League. In 2008, at the age of 16, she became the first female drafted by a Japanese men's professional baseball team.
Yoshida was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan where, she taught herself how to throw the knuckleball at the age of 14 after watching Major League Baseball pitcher Tim Wakefield on television. She stands 1.55 metres (5 ft 1 in) tall, and her pitches have been clocked at 101 kilometres per hour (63 mph), while her knuckleball pitch velocity measures around 50 mph. As a high-school sophomore at Kawasaki-kita Senior High School in Kawasaki, she threw the pitch well enough to earn a place on the school's baseball team. Her success caused a sensation in the national media, who dubbed her the Knuckle Princess. In 2008, she signed a contract to play for the Kobe 9 Cruise of Kansai Independent Baseball League.
Yoshida made her professional baseball debut at the Osaka Dome in the opening game of the Kansai Independent Baseball League on March 26, 2009 in front of 11,592 fans. She faced two batters, walking the first and striking out the second in a 5-0 win over the Osaka Gold Villicanes. She appeared in 11 games for the Kobe 9 Cruise and moved on after the season to focus on advancing up the pro ranks. She appeared in a one-inning battle against the top hitters of the Hiroshima Carp on November 24, 2009.
...
Wikipedia