The Yomiuri Giants professional baseball team is cooperating with JICA to make international contributions through the promotion of sports. The women’s team visited Nicaragua in Central America from January 6 to 11, 2024, with 12 players and other members to play exchange games with the Nicaraguan women’s baseball team and conduct workshops for children. This was made possible for the further revitalization of women’s baseball in the country and for development through sports. In addition, 2024 marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Giants and the 60th anniversary of JICA’s cooperation with Nicaragua. This visit was realized as the first official event of the 90th anniversary for the Giants and the first overseas expedition for the Giants women’s team.
The Yomiuri Giants women’s team is fully operational from 2023 with 20 of the top-class players in Japan. Japanese women’s baseball is among the best in the world, having won six consecutive Women’s Baseball World Cup championships through the 8th tournament in 2018. The team aims to lead the women’s baseball world and create a new history of women’s baseball.
Meanwhile, baseball is a popular sport in Nicaragua, where it is considered the national sport, and the men’s national team is participating in the main World Baseball Classic (WBC) tournament in the spring of 2023. Among them, Shota Abe, who worked from October 2016 to October 2018 to promote women’s baseball, proposed that baseball could also be a dream for girls in a country where the idea that baseball is a men’s sport is still strong, This idea has been passed on to current dispatch member Takahito Kawai.
In fact, a strong image of Japanese baseball has taken root in Nicaragua. It all started more than 50 years ago, when a Japanese team participated in the World Baseball Championships held in the country in November 1972. The people were amazed at the level of Japanese baseball, and Hideo Furuya, the pitcher for the Japanese team at the time, was so successful that the word “Furuya” has taken root in the Spanish language as meaning “to dance with a deadly abandon. The sensation that Japanese baseball caused at that time has been passed down like a legend. Japanese baseball is held in awe by the people of Nicaragua. The Yomiuri Giants women’s team visited Nicaragua for the first time in over half a century, and received a great deal of attention and an enthusiastic welcome, including television coverage even before the visit.
The women’s team first provided practical instruction to children from the Nicaraguan Kids League and other groups, winning the hearts of the children with their hard-learned Spanish and smiles. The baseball lesson with the elementary school children, who had never played baseball before, was an opportunity for them to learn not only the fun of touching the ball, but also how to be attentive to their opponents by throwing the ball so that it is easy for their opponents to catch it! I want to join the baseball team and learn more! I want to join the baseball team and learn more!
Nene Masago with elementary school students who experienced baseball for the first time Miu Tanaka greets in Spanish surrounded by elementary school students who participated in the baseball class.
In the exchange games against the Nicaraguan women’s national team and the women’s league champion team, the Titans won both games handily, but the hard work of the Nicaraguan side was also cheered loudly. One of the local players commented, “I am amazed at the high level of the Titans’ baseball. I couldn’t even get a hit this time, but if we meet again, I want to make an effort to have a good game. I was happy to play in front of so many spectators. I want to go to Japan next time to play a game. I want to contribute to women’s baseball in the future,” and “I am truly grateful to the team from Japan for coming to Nicaragua.
The team played against the Nicaraguan Women’s League champion team. A crowd of 3,800 spectators crowded into the Masaya Ballpark, which has a capacity of 4,000. After the game, the team circled the Masaya stadium and high-fived the spectators.
Some of the Titans were traveling abroad for the first time, but they enlivened the local community with their smiles and energy. One of the players said, “I have never seen so many people come to the stadium, even in Japan,” and “I love Nicaragua. I love Nicaragua. I want to come back someday and make women’s baseball in Nicaragua even more exciting.
One of the Nicaraguan female players had told Kawai that it was her dream to someday play a game at the Soberania Ballpark (the venue for this tournament). Soberania is mainly used for men’s professional league games, and the girls never thought they would be able to play there, but they were able to play in front of a crowd of 3,800 people. Kawai said, “I am very grateful to the Titans for making her dream come true. It may have been a small step at first, but I think the players were able to learn that one day they can make their big dreams come true from that first step.
In Nicaragua, “women’s advancement” and “efforts to realize a gender-equal society” are considered important issues for the country’s development. In the world ranking (2023) of the Gender Gap Index published annually by the World Economic Forum, Nicaragua is ranked 7th out of 146 countries surveyed (the highest in the Latin America region), which is very high, and the gender gap is relatively small. Both mayors of the capital city of Managua and the city of Masaya, where the exchange games were held, are women, and both of them threw out the first pitch. However, in terms of opportunities for sports activities, girls actually lag behind boys in some aspects. The visit of the Titans women’s team was a valuable opportunity for Nicaragua and JICA, which promote women’s activities and gender equality, to put “gender and development” into practice.
JICA will continue its efforts to realize a “peaceful world where everyone can enjoy sports” through the dispatch of overseas cooperation teams.
© Source JICA
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