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Chapter 1: My First Encounter with Baseball
Growing up, I was not totally devoted to baseball…
The first time I played catch was when I was in the third grade. My dad was a catcher for a club team and I was forced to be his practice partner. My dad was a huge Giants (Yomiuri) fan and whenever they would lose, he would turn off the TV and make us (my brothers and myself) study. Since I didn’t want to do any studying, I would always root for the Giants (ha,ha).
Because of this reason, I really didn’t like baseball. I actually quit my baseball team in elementary school and joined a gymnastics team, and in middle school, I started out by joining a handball team. However, when I was in the 8th grade, my teacher forced me to join their baseball team. I was reluctantly playing the game because I couldn’t do anything else.
I was always a pitcher ever since I started playing baseball. That is probably because my dad was a catcher and I had to pitch in order for him to practice. So, it was not by design that I became a pitcher because I was not like, “I want to become a pitcher when I grow up”, but it was more out of coincidence…
I Hated Losing
Even though I was not devoted to baseball in the beginning, I hated losing. So, if I am going to play this game, I wanted to be very competitive and I did not want to lose against anyone. When I started to pitch, I went out and bought a book on how to throw a curveball. I started to throw the curveball using my own style, which actually had a real good break. If I think back, I guess I was throwing the pitch correctly, coincidently.
In sports, I still believe that losing is not a good thing.
Then, what should you do to NOT lose? A couple of examples as a pitcher would be, “Throw harder than anyone else” or “Have a better control than anyone else”. The next step would be to find a good method (training) to get better. The motivation to find the method of becoming better at what you do, is the most important thing about becoming a good baseball player. If you do not have this will, I don’t think you can become a good player. In a sense, the longer you think about how to improve your game, the quicker you will get better.
In the next chapter, I would like to share what I did when I was growing up…
Chapter 2 : Start by Emulating Someone
Using the “Step-by-step Photos”
For a baseball player, mechanics are very important. Even though I have played this game a very long time, every year, I still try to adjust so that I can get closer to my ideal mechanics (form). It’s like a sculpture carving wood little by little in order to get closer to ?the ideal image. And this requires a lot of hard work.
In this chapter, I would like to share with you all how I learned to gain my mechanics that I use now.
When you look at a baseball magazine or a baseball book, you will always see still photos of when the player is hitting or pitching. When I was a little kid, I would always look at these photos of left-handed pitchers Yutaka Enatsu (ex-Hanshin) and Toshio Niura (ex-Yomiuri), who were my childhood superstars.
First, I would read the description of each photo and try to figure out what was good about that particular form. Next, I would “shadow pitch” (practice pitching in front of a mirror to check) repeatedly, thinking about the important points that I gained from the photos. What I was trying to do was imitate my superstar players. By doing this, I realized that there were certain frames of the photos that I can imitate and frames that I could NOT imitate. That was because every person is different. Finally, I would look over the photos that I could NOT imitate and try to figure out what I was doing wrong, what kind of practice could I do to be able to imitate that frame, or on the other hand, maybe that frame was just not a good fit for me. As I was doing this, I was able to get closer to my ideal form.
Therefore, even though I started out by imitating someone, at the end it ended out to be my own original mechanics.
Imitating your Star Player
It is the same way for batting mechanics. If someone asked me, “How do I hit a ball further?”, then I would tell that person, “Just try and imitate looking at a power hitter”. It could be Hideki Matsui or Ichiro Suzuki. At first, try to come up with a player that you idolize and try to imitate him. Everybody says that Ichiro’s mechanics are too different, but you will realize that he is capable of hitting so well because he has ideal mechanics. The important thing is trying to find a player that you feel, “I want to be like him!” Make him your “coach”, and try to learn about timings from him as well.
For example, when practice swinging a bat, just don’t swing a bat repeatedly, but make each swing by image training, thinking “I want to swing like him”. This way, you will improve a lot faster and it will be a lot more fun.
Chapter 3 : Image Training
Imagining your Opponents
Some people ask, “How many times should I swing a bat each day?” or “How many pitches should I throw?”. Improving your game is not about how many times you swing or throw. Baseball is a game where you have an opponent to face. No matter how many times you swing a bat against a batting machine during practice, you will not be able to get a hit in a game when your timing is not right against the pitcher. Swinging may help improve your mechanics, but to improve in the game, the more important thing is to “imagine” your opponents.
In the last chapter, I mentioned that it is important to imitate and to imagine your star player. But, in this chapter, I would like for you to imagine your opponents. When you are taking practice swings, for example, imagine in your head that a pitch is coming. If you can do that, you will pay more attention in making the right timing. Who you imagine is irrelevant, it could be someone that you face often or it could be someone that you hate to face. As long as you put emphasis in such training, you will become more comfortable with your hitting or with your pitching.
My Image Training
I apologize for my rudeness, but on the day that I pitch, I would always go to the bathroom before heading for the bullpen. While I am sitting on the toilet, I would imagine all nine hitters that I will be facing that day. For example, “The leadoff hitter is a free swinger, so I should throw more breaking balls, the number two hitter is…” and so on. I would imagine each hitter and how I would retire each one of them. I would do this “image training” the day before my start as well, but I would do so by watching videos sometimes to help me get a clearer vision of this “image”. Do you now see how important it is to use “imagination”?
Actually, I believe “imagining” is an important factor even outside of baseball. When I was a little kid, my father was very strict and when I did something bad, he would always hit me. But, because of this, I knew that it was painful to get hit. So, when I got in a fight during my childhood, I would stop hitting that person once he started crying. That is because I was able to “imagine” the pain he was in.
Today, you hear on the news about a cruel bullying or about a young kid snapping violently. I think this is because teachers and parents have become less strict and these kids don’t understand or can not imagine how painful that could be because they have never experienced it themselves.
Chapter 4 : Need to Think on your Own!
Learning without a Coach
Up until middle school, I did all my baseball-related training in my own way. That is because all everyone else taught me was, “If you are a pitcher, just run and run!” I’m sure with some of you readers, you don’t get the coaching that you would really like to get. But, there is nothing to worry about. Why? That is because baseball is a team sport. What I mean by that is, even though you are on the same team, each one of your teammates comes from a different and unique background. You may even have the best coach in the world, but if you could only do what he is telling you to do, you will never improve in the game. The important thing is to be able to “think on your own”.
I think many of the kids nowadays rely too much on being “taught everything, step-by-step”. But, if you are one of them, that is just a “one-way” street and you don’t really learn much. In the previous chapter, I mentioned, “Let’s try imitating your superstar, but if you cannot, you need to think WHY you were not able to imitate him”. The answer to this will not come about that easily. You may even get frustrated just thinking about it. But, that is the good thing because you are thinking on your own. If you seriously think about something, I am sure that you will see some sort of vision. The things that you achieve by thinking on your own, that will surely become a big part of you. I’m sure that this type of thinking will help you down the road when you get in a jam during a game.
Thinking on Your Own
Once I became a veteran on my team, the thing that I always taught the rookies is, “If you were taught one thing, always think of at least five ways to train to achieve that goal”. For example, if a coach taught you to “Don’ t open up your shoulder too quick”, you need to think, then how should I use my elbow? How should I build stamina on my lower half of my body? This is just an example, but is important to always think of many ways to practice what you have just been taught.
If you are capable of thinking on your own, you will see that baseball becomes more fun and more enjoyable. When you are taught something from someone, always consider that as a “clue” or?? “hint”. Based on the “clue” or the “hint”, you will need to think on your own to come up with a good way to improve in your game. For example, “What do I do when I can’t keep the ball down in the strike zone?” If you have thought about this while you are practicing, you will be able to adjust while you are pitching in a real game.
Indeed, I run into troubles during the game. But, when I do, I always think about what I did in the past to get out of those troubles. I would think about the time I ran into a jam when I played for Daiei and Seibu,or even when I pitched in middle school. All the little things that I experienced throughout my life in baseball are very important. I always think of it as looking for an answer from a “chest of drawers”, full of solutions. I am proud that I am able to do this, because I worked really hard on trying to think on my own in finding my answer, since I was a kid.
Chapter 5 : Physique
Wanting to Throw 150km (94mph)
At 176cm (5’9”), I am very small for a pitcher. If I threw as hard as Major League pitcher Randy Johnson, who is 208cm?(6’10”), the hitter will feel his fastball a lot faster than mine. That is because he has longer arms than me and his release point is closer to the hitter.
But because of my physical disadvantage, I have the strong desire to be able to throw 150km. I want to prove to everyone that even though you may have a small body, you will be able to throw hard as long as you get the right training and you have good mechanics. If you think hard, if you make the effort, and if you are creative, I am sure you can achieve your goal.
Of course, this will not come easy. Even though medical science has progressed and we know more about our body than ever before, no doctor has yet to come up with a “training that allows you to throw harder”. I might not be able to find a solution before I retire, but I want to do the best I can to pursue the best training for all the baseball fans that want to improve in their game. I want to be able to come up with a training program that will help prevent shoulder or elbow injuries so that you can continue to play. In order to accomplish this, you need proper training.
I would like to talk about how to strengthen your muscle at a later chapter.
Having a Good Diet
Before I go on, I would like to mention one thing about training. I see a lot of kids doing weight training at an early age. But, rather than forcing the kids to do weight training, I think it is a lot more important to have a good diet. Needless to say, your muscles and bones are built by what you eat. Please allow me to give an advice to all the parents that, “Please?try to get kids to eat everything without likes or dislikes, but ultimately, let them eat as they want”. This way, I believe they will grow up healthy and strong. I just want to say that training is important too, but having a proper diet is as important, especially when they are kids.
Chapter 6 : Talent and Effort
You Can Never Win with just Talent
People talk about if a player has natural talent or does not. For me, I categorize myself in the “no talent” category. That’s because I am not tall and I do not have a long arm. Moreover, I have short fingers, so all I could throw before becoming pro was a fastball and a curveball. But for better or for worse, I was able to succeed with those two pitches.
With a player with “no natural talent” like me, I have been fortunate to have succeeded in the pros. But, even if one did have the talent, I think that it is still very difficult to become a star player with “just” talent. If there is, it is just a handful of players. The other players that have become star players succeeded because he made the extra effort. It is hard to picture what we did as a kid, but all of us players that play in the pros made the extra effort to become what we are. With players like Kiyohara and Matsui, they both have natural talent, but they also practiced day after day to become superstars.
It’s Not Easy
I’ve always believed that the most ideal way to win is to “win easy”. I didn’t want to use the extra energy during a game nor did I want to practice too much. However, when I think back, I realized that I‘ve always made the extra effort.
In high school, I had to run 20km(12.5 miles) everyday. When I was a sophomore or a junior, the upperclassmen would always make us work extra hard. When I finally became a senior and I thought to myself “Now, I am free!”, a very strict coach came to our school and he made the seniors do the hardest practice. Like, making us wash the toilet. Even when I became pro, you still have to do what the veterans tell you to do, so there is no room to slack off. You couldn’t take a day off, even if your body was aching somewhere. They made me throw many, many times, “merely because I was young”. Even now, as a veteran pitcher, the team still makes me work hard.
It was not easy for me to go through this experience, but you realize that the things that they made you do have become part of your success. The more you run and the more you lift weights, it makes you become physically stronger and allows you to throw harder. When you feel the improvement, playing baseball becomes fun and enjoyable. I am sure many of you had to do hard practices, but always remember that hard work always pays off.
Chapter 7 : The Time I Cried
Summer of My Junior Year in High School
After graduating middle school, I enrolled into Nagoya Denki High School (the current, Aiko-dai Meiden), which was prestigious for their baseball activity. If I was going to continue to play baseball in high school, I had a strong desire of “wanting to play on the Koshien Tournament”, even though I also had other dreams like date pretty girls and eat a lot of good food, etc. (Ha,ha)
Anyways, there was one time in high school when I cried because I lost a game. It was my junior year, and I lost an important game (summer qualifying tournament in Aichi prefecture) by walking guys, hitting guys, throwing wild pitches and balking, all the worst things you could think of as a pitcher. I apologized to my teammates and I was very upset with myself for having such an embarrassing outing that I couldn’t help myself from crying. That fall, I decided to concentrate and practice harder on throwing with more control…
Learning to Throw for Control
Around that time, there was a famous softball coach that came to our high school for a lecture. In his lecture, he said, “When you ask someone to throw something at a certain target, you will realize that nobody will throw like a pitcher”. He continued, “That person will normally look at the target, draw a line to where his hands are and then extend that line to his eyes, just like throwing a dart.” The coach explained to us that that is the best way to throw for control. He taught us to be conscious of this when throwing a pitch.
I did exactly what he taught us, but I also did it by designing my own program. The distance from the mound to home plate is 18:44 meters, so what I did first was practice throwing from 10meters. If I was able to throw 10 pitches and hit the target 10 times, then I would move one step back and continue the same practice. I invented this practice because I thought it would be too difficult to do so by suddenly throwing from the mound. I continued this practice day after day until I was able to throw my breaking pitch for strikes from the mound.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, it is not good just to do what you were told to do or what you were taught to do. Always remember, to think of a way that suits you best by utilizing the “hint” from your coach.
Chapter 8 : Be Mentally Strong!
My High School Days
In the summer of my senior year, our team finally made it to the Koshien tournament, which was a dream-come-true for all of us. When I entered the stadium for the pre-game ceremony, I was very nervous, but I was not as nervous during the actual game. Maybe, I was not nervous because I was already too satisfied that I made it all the way to the tournament and felt like I have already accomplished my goal. Still, I was able to throw a no-hitter (against Nagasaki Nishi High School) and we made it all the way up to the quarter-finals. My most fond memory of the tournament was…the dinner was just gorgeous! By continuing to win through the tournament, our summer break was cut short, but for this dinner, I really thought that it was worth it.
However, aside from this experience, I really don’t have any other good memories from my high?school days. That was probably because our baseball practices were very, very strict. I was even made to throw more than 500 pitches in just one day! I was also made to sit with my feet crossed under me (“seiza”)for two hours straight, even though I did nothing wrong!
Every year, we would have our baseball team reunion, called the “Hall of Maze” and all we talked about is how strict our practices were. At the end of the reunion, we always laughed out loud and continued to talk about the same old thing year after year we never get tired of our sour memories.
Importance of Patience
If a high school team today did the strict trainings that we did, I am pretty sure that team will be suspended from the league. That is how inhuman the practices were sometimes in my days. But, to ?be honest, I do miss those practices. I say that because it helped me nurture my patience and perseverance. Of course some of the strictness was meaningless, like “Don’t drink water during practice!”, but it really helped me endure intense trainings and helped me become stronger mentally. For someone who is making the challenge to get to the top, mental toughness is very important.
I can’t help thinking that kids nowadays do not have this mental toughness. When you see kids getting upset so quickly, it means that he or she does not have the patience or the endurance. But, if you are trying to improve in your game, you need the strength to tolerate strict trainings. Even with us professional ball players, we go through tough workouts that we need to endure to improve in our game. I am sure judo-wrestler “Yawara-chan” (gold medalist, Ryoko Tamura) made it to the top because she endured through harsh and intense trainings too. Matsui and Kiyohara also became great hitters because they endured and tolerated strict practices.
Chapter 9 : Importance of Continuance
Unexpected Draft Pick
Even though I made it to the Koshien Tournament, I had no intentions of turning pro after graduating high school. But, people around me were making all sorts of noise because we made it all the way to the quarterfinals. There was even a girl that I have never met before saying that she was my girlfriend, or all?of the sudden I started getting calls from relatives that I have not spoken to in years. (ha,ha)
However, I never thought that I would be catching an eye of a professional team.
So, when I got back from the tournament, I hung up my glove and did not practice. But to my surprise, in November, I was drafted by the Seibu Lions in the sixth round. I did start working out in January, but since I basically did nothing for nearly four months, I had gained 15 kg?(33 pounds)! If somebody asked me if there was ever a time that I regretted in my baseball career, this would definitely would be the time. If I had kept on working out in those four months, I seriously believe I would have reached 200 wins a lot quicker. I am not as good as Matsuzaka, but I am sure that I would have won more games earlier in my career, like he did.
Continuation Will Become an “Asset”
Even though you learn something, if you don’t continue to do it, your body will forget it really quickly. You won’t be able to do the pitching that you normally are capable of doing. Technical reasons aside, please remember that practicing day after day is very, very important.
Another thing that I would always think about is that I wish I had a better training method while growing-up. I guess that’s the biggest reason why I am writing this book, to try to share as much as I can so that you can improve in your game.
I want to share with you another sour experience that I had that I will never forget. Starting with my fifth year in pro, I was able to win double-digit games for three straight seasons (11, 15, 10 wins), but the following year (1989), which was my eighth season as a pro, I was only able to win four games. It was around the time that the Seibu Lions was almost unbeatable and I had become over-confident with myself. That off- season, I went out partying daily with my friends and hardly practiced. And as fate will have it, I could not win any games. Then, I got frustrated that I couldn’t perform, and I would go out more. I was at a point that I didn’t know what to do. People even said that “Kudo’s career is over”.
But, from this low point, I was able to revive my career…
Chapter 10 ; My Support
Never Run Away
In reality, being a professional baseball player is a tough job and if things don’t work out, you can be out of a job really quick. There are many reasons that players fail, but it is really difficult for a player to seriously contemplate why he is struggling. That’s because it is human nature to try to forget about the things that are going wrong and turn the other way. But, if I had continued to just go out and not face the problem that I had in that tough year of 1989, I would’ve been out of baseball by now.
But, around this time, I was very fortunate that I met my future wife. She made me realize that I needed to face the struggles that I was having. She told me never to run away and seriously face the problems that you have, one by one. That is why I am so thankful to my wife, even today, because if not for her, I would’ve been out of baseball.
Whenever you are struggling with baseball, it is important not to run away, because if you do so, you will never find a solution. I understand that it is tough, but you need to seriously search for the answers to your struggles. I am sure you will find them!
Prolonging My Baseball Career
I mentioned about my wife, but for any athlete, it is important to have a “mental support”, somebody to rely on. If you don’t have any “support”, I think it will be difficult to fight any struggles you may have. My biggest “support” is my family. I have five children, but I seriously believe that I was able to play professionally this long because of the presence of my heartwarming family.
When growing up as a child, my family was never wealthy. There was even a time when I went out to catch a poisonous snake, so I can sell it and then buy food. Of course, nobody bought the snake (ha, ha)
Because of this experience in my childhood, I have this strong feeling that I would never want my family to starve. I believe this strong desire to support my family and my mental toughness that I developed while growing up are the two things that are supporting me as a professional athlete.
I still have the strong desire to “continue to pitch as long as I can”. But, I really think that I was able to come this far thanks to the people that analyze my muscular data at the Tsukuba University, to my doctor in Fukuoka that examines my shoulder yearly, to all my great teammates and to everyone that supported me throughout my baseball career. I really want to thank all of you for being there for me!
I hope this booklet has helped you understand a little about how I think and how I went through my life in baseball.
Now, I would like to answer questions that I received from my fans and share my insights about pitching and about baseball overall.
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