ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Players from the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics held a baseball clinic here on March 27 to support children living in the areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Players from the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics held a baseball clinic here on March 27 to support children living in the areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
The eight players and coaches got a firsthand look at the destruction in one of the areas hardest hit on March 11, 2011.
Afterward, the players, including Mariners' pitcher and former Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles ace Hisashi Iwakuma, played catch and held a clinic with about 100 local children.
“I will do my best (in MLB) so that I can give encouragement to the Japanese people,” said Iwakuma, the 2008 winner of the Eiji Sawamura Award, Japan's version of the Cy Young Award.
Major League Baseball donated $500,000 (41.5 million yen) to help with the reconstruction efforts in Ishinomaki.
One of the children who participated in the clinic was 11-year-old Nanami Sato, captain of the baseball team at Kazuma Elementary School. Sato's grandmother and two other relatives died in the March 11 disaster. She said she did not touch a baseball for two months afterward, but now, practicing helps take her mind off the events of March 11.
“The major league players look happy as they are always smiling," Sato said. "I want to be like them and always smile."
The Mariners and A's will open the 2012 MLB season at Tokyo Dome with games scheduled for March 28 and 29.