Professional baseball is a pioneer of professional sports in Japan and boasts a long history and popularity. While some players earn hundreds of millions of yen in annual salary and are in the spotlight, there are also many “former professional baseball players” who have finished their active lives and will be active in the next stage. “Restart” is a serialization of “THE ANSWER” that focuses on their second career and puts the spotlight on the alumni of the ball world who are struggling in their second life. The 8th is Yuta Naito who played at DeNA for 8 years.
Series “Restart-Restart from Out-of-Strength Notification” 8th, Yuta Naito is active as a sales person at Kashimaya Seisakusho
Professional baseball is a pioneer of professional sports in Japan and boasts a long history and popularity. While some players earn hundreds of millions of yen in annual salary and are in the spotlight, there are also many “former professional baseball players” who have finished their active lives and will be active in the next stage. “Restart” is a serialization of “THE ANSWER” that focuses on their second career and puts the spotlight on the alumni of the ball world who are struggling in their second life. The 8th is Yuta Naito who played at DeNA for 8 years.
In the fall of 2013, the day after receiving the words of expectation from the leaders, he received an out-of-force notification and decided to retire from active duty even though he took a tryout. After restarting from the state of “I couldn’t send e-mails on my computer”, I am currently active as a sales person at Kashimaya Seisakusho, which handles baseball equipment such as batting gloves and toys that children can enjoy. He talked about how he has grown up to now. (Sentence = THE ANSWER editorial department, Hiroya Miyauchi)
◇ ◇ ◇
Naito’s professional baseball life ended in October 2013 in an unexpected way.
“During Yokosuka’s practice, I asked Kiyoshi Nakahata to say,’I’m going to call the 1st army next spring camp.’ But that day, on my way home after the practice, just near Shin-Yokohama Station. I got a call from the team. “
The word over the phone was, “Come to the team office in a suit tomorrow.” She was upset. It was the situation itself that received this request and out-of-force notification at this time.
It was only an hour after Director Nakahata called me. “Is it really fired?” “But this timing when the director told me …”. The next day came in a state of suspicion and sickness. On his way to the baseball team office, he passed by his colleague Teruaki Yoshikawa at the intersection. He was in a suit.
“Mr. Yoshikawa, maybe …”
“I was fired.”
“Really……”
As you can imagine, the office was told that he would not sign a contract next year. The intention to take the tryout to show off his abilities was confirmed in front of the organizers of the 12 teams, and the talk was over in just a few minutes. Director Nakahata and others who evaluated himself learned from the press that they were out of force and asked the team to reconsider, but the decision was not overturned.
Since he was 30 years old, he said, “I had the possibility of being out of force,” but in 2011, he shot a goodbye from Chunichi and Takuya Asao in the opening round, protecting the inner and outer fields and participating in 99 games, the most of his own. are doing. However, in 2012, he underwent surgery on his right middle finger and elbow, and in 2013 he did not participate in one army. He took the tryout, but was not contacted by the NPB team three days later.
