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The story
Chiben Wakayama and Kendai Takasaki faced off in the Koshien final — and as it turns out, both schools have been visited and coached by Ichiro. He sent a message saying, “Two schools I’ve worked with ended up meeting in the final. One of my dreams has come true, and I’m deeply moved.”
The thread saw a mix of cool skepticism (“isn’t it just a coincidence he happened to be connected to these two schools?”) and a tally showing that, of the 11 schools Ichiro has coached, Chiben Wakayama is the only one to ever reach Koshien. The discussion spun off into debate over whether he’s “strategically picking powerhouse schools” or whether “it’s just the media reporting on it after the fact.”
◇108th National High School Baseball Championship Final — Chiben Wakayama 4–3 Kendai Takasaki (August 22, 2026, Koshien)
Ichiro (52), who serves as Special Assistant to the Chairman and Instructor for the Mariners, sent a message on the 22nd to both schools
that fought a hard-fought battle in the 108th National High School Baseball Championship final at Koshien: Chiben Wakayama (Wakayama) and Kendai Takasaki (Gunma).
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Gave up curry ages ago, buddy.
Still trying to get attention?
I think he's strategically picking schools because it gets reported as "Ichiro coached them." Asano from Takamatsu Shogyo (now with the Giants) was a first-round draft pick after all.
You're one to talk — you went out of your way to quote post #1.
He's been visiting all sorts of schools ever since he got his amateur coaching license. It's only for a day, so it really depends on how much of Ichiro's mindset the kids can soak up in that time.
Asahikawa Higashi High School (never been to Koshien)
Come to think of it, I had a connection too — just never made it public either. (joking)
Most of what's "public" isn't coming from Ichiro himself to begin with — it's the media reporting it. It's not like the press tags along to every single school he coaches.
s://hochi.news/articles/20250124-OHT1T51009.html?page=1
Isn't it because becoming a manager would mean he can't coach high schoolers anymore?
He's brutally strict when it comes to his own alma mater.
Chiben Wakayama ⭕
Kokugakuin Kugayama ❌
Chiba Meitoku ❌
Takamatsu Shogyo ❌
Tokyo Metropolitan Shinjuku ❌
Fuji ❌
Asahikawa Higashi ❌
Miyako ❌
Okanmuri ❌
Gifu ❌
Aikodai Meiden ❌
Can't even read post #1, can you.
Girls' high school baseball basically doesn't draw any crowds, so there's no revenue to speak of. They probably bring in an audience by having the girls play against Ichiro, then use that income to cover operating costs. The girls' baseball federation isn't even part of the national high school sports federation either.
He went there recently and gave them advice out of love, though.
Shota Imanaga reunites with Ichiro for the first time in two years, receives 15 minutes of "golden wisdom": "Every bit of it was the best advice." Carrying his gratitude to his senior, he takes the mound on the 24th.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/5f883e91e68504ef8f1d12ab2a05150a4f815915
This is actually a pretty great system. You get to chat with Ichiro whenever you happen to catch a Mariners game — he's basically always at the Mariners' stadium anyway.
He said he picks based on reading through the letters he receives. He's coached weak schools too, you know.
Background and Key Points
Koshien, formally the National High School Baseball Championship, is Japan’s marquee amateur sports event, held every August at Hanshin Koshien Stadium. Getting there is brutal: roughly 3,500-4,000 schools enter regional qualifiers, and only 49 teams (one per prefecture, two each for Hokkaido and Tokyo) make the final bracket. Ichiro Suzuki, now 52 and a special assistant/instructor for the Seattle Mariners, obtained an amateur baseball coaching license after retiring and has since made one-off visits to various high schools, Chiben Wakayama (Wakayama) among them, alongside his own alma mater Aikodai Meiden. That both 2026 finalists, Chiben Wakayama and Kendai Takasaki (Gunma), turned out to have hosted him fed his message calling it “one of my dreams.”
The thread’s actual disagreement was not about the game itself but about causation: some posters treated the double connection as evidence Ichiro gravitates toward already-strong programs so the “Ichiro coached them” narrative writes itself after the fact, while others pointed to the tally of his eleven visited schools, only Chiben Wakayama had ever reached Koshien before, as proof there’s no pattern at all, just one hit among many misses.
What the thread never quite reconciles for an outside reader is the nature of these “visits”: they are single-day clinics tied to a post-career license, not ongoing coaching relationships, and one poster noted Ichiro says he selects schools from letters he receives rather than scouting rosters. Given how vanishingly small the odds are of any one school reaching Koshien at all, a school he visited getting there isn’t strong evidence of favoritism, but it isn’t strong evidence of pure coincidence either.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports Express+) thread “[High School Baseball] Ichiro Sends Message to Chiben Wakayama and Kendai Takasaki: “Two Schools I’ve Worked With Meet in the Final… One of My Dreams Has Come True”.”
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