{"id":660502,"date":"2026-04-03T08:21:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660502\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T08:21:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:21:26","slug":"unifying-power-of-japanese-baseball-brings-together-people-from-all-walks-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660502\/","title":{"rendered":"Unifying power of Japanese baseball brings together people from all walks of life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Japanese baseball, it doesn\u2019t matter where you come from or what you look like.<\/p>\n<p>Known as yaky\u016b, the game is more than a sport. From neighborhood Little Leagues to packed professional stadiums, routines, drills and shared passion create a language all players understand.<\/p>\n<p>Everett Hopkin grew up in America but learned the ropes of Japanese youth baseball. Taku Meyer, a German native, moved to Japan to compete in the high school leagues. Sanfo Lassina came from West Africa and now plays in an independent league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Japanese baseball, it doesn\u2019t matter where you come from or what you look like. Known as yaky\u016b,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,84258,84257,2353,2352],"class_list":{"0":"post-660502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-hanamaki-higashi-high-school","10":"tag-kochi-fighting-dogs","11":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","12":"tag-npb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116339813485605289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}