An exhibition game between the “High School Girls’ Baseball All-Stars” and “Ichiro Select KOBE CHIBEN” was held at Tokyo Dome on the 13th, with Ichiro’s team winning 7-0. The 52-year-old Ichiro pitched a complete nine innings, striking out 17 batters and hitting a top speed of 136 km/h (about 85 mph), earning his second straight shutout win. Cleanup hitter Hideki Matsui also went 2-for-2 with an RBI and scored the game’s first run. Now in its sixth year, the event drew mixed reactions on 5channel: some praised it as good publicity for women’s baseball, while others were more skeptical, saying “I don’t actually feel like the number of players is growing” and “the skill gap is just too big.”
“Two-Way” Ichiro Notches Second Straight Shutout with 17 Ks Over 9 Innings, Hits 136 km/h — “Cleanup Hitter” Matsui Also Goes 2-for-2 with RBI, Scores First Run
■High School Girls’ Baseball All-Stars 0–7 Ichiro Select KOBE CHIBEN (Tokyo Dome, 13th)
The exhibition match between the “High School Girls’ Baseball All-Stars” and “Ichiro Select KOBE CHIBEN,” now in its sixth year, ended in a 7-0 win for KOBE CHIBEN.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
The fact that women's baseball even gets written up like this means the event is actually doing something meaningful, surprisingly.
What's the point, though?
Do you really think seeing this article makes anyone go "let's play baseball"?
It doesn't, right? lol
They've been running this event for years now — has women's baseball actually gotten more popular from it?
Let's be honest, it's just Ichiro and Matsui getting the attention. Nobody actually cares about women's baseball itself.
But this drains players away from softball, so from the people involved in softball, this can't be something they're thrilled about.
Though it's a bit rough that the U-18 national team can't do a thing against an old geezer and his partner who are still ridiculously sharp for guys way past their playing days lol
Apparently it's about the same in soccer — the women's national team versus middle school boys.
Makes sense that no matter how much of a retired veteran he is, beating an ex-pro is still a tall order.
About a high school team that just barely misses out on Koshien?
Top speed is only 120-130 km/h, so that's roughly U-12 top-level.
In pretty much every women's sport, they can't beat top-level middle schoolers.
Are you seriously saying that? 😟
Re: #53
It's a PR activity — there's no way the impact is zero.
So what kind of impact are we talking about, exactly?
It'll help spread women's baseball.
There are usually girls playing in boys' youth baseball leagues anyway.
Even if Ichiro wasn't the one pitching,
the media would eat it up anyway lol
Well, if you've got that much name value, sure.
Just the names Ichiro and Matsui
are enough to hook people
Ichiro doesn't even need to pitch
A one-sided game where the high schoolers can barely get a hit
is boring to watch and boring to play in
Feels like it's basically just Ichiro getting to feel good about himself
Exact same thought here.
If some no-name guy were pitching instead, interest in the girls' side batting would drop to zero though.
the fact that the girls' team couldn't hit him at all shows their level is just too low.
If you're doing this for entertainment, it's not going to be interesting unless the opponent is like the champion of the National High School Baseball Championship.
The genuinely talented girls play softball. The ones playing baseball are just the ones who love baseball so much they can't help it.
https://www.nikkansports.com/baseball/news/img/202607130001517-w500_7.jpg
2026 Ichiro
https://www.sponichi.co.jp/baseball/news/2026/09/13/jpeg/20260913s10001000161000p_view.jpg
Who'd have thought he'd still be pitching at the same Tokyo Dome 30 years later
They've been doing this for years, but far from spreading,
women's pro baseball actually shut down and has been declining, hasn't it? lol
Exactly — that's the problem,
there's no real goal to aim for.
It'd be great if it became like Koshien, where "you get to play baseball with Ichiro and Matsui" is the reason girls take up baseball.
There's already softball, after all.
True, softball gets attention as an event at things like the Asian Games and the Olympics.
Women's baseball could win the world championship however many times in a row and still get zero attention — the future looks bleak.
In terms of participation numbers, women's baseball is up slightly while softball has plummeted.
He seems like the type to be strict about hierarchy, but I'm not sure how he'd be at actually teaching people.
There's the issue of him not really having a team to go back to in Japanese baseball,
but does that mean nobody in the US is calling him either?
There's basically no manager or coach in baseball who actually teaches anything concrete anyway.
It's just a title.
He's actually been holding an honorary position with the Mariners this whole time though.
If it weren't for Ichiro, this wouldn't be a talking point at all.
But women's baseball only ever gets any buzz when they're playing against Ichiro.
Has there been any actual progress beyond that?
Exactly, and I think it's admirable that he's volunteering to be the crowd-drawing "panda" (slang for a celebrity used purely to attract an audience) for women's baseball, which normally wouldn't get any money or attention on its own. Among the world's major sports, most have thriving women's divisions, but baseball doesn't. There are various paths to making baseball a major sport, and promoting the women's category has to be one of them. The fact that Ichiro — a name recognized in both Japanese and American baseball — is taking on that role is honestly incredible, since done right, it could probably work in the US too.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The matchup between “Ichiro Select KOBE CHIBEN” and the girls’ all-star team is an annual event now in its sixth year, designed to draw attention to women’s hardball baseball — a sport that otherwise gets little exposure — by leaning on the drawing power of famous alumni. Opinions in the thread were divided over whether this kind of event actually translates into growth in the number of players. Since women’s hardball baseball and softball compete for the same pool of female athletes, some comments pointed to the complicated feelings this creates among people involved in softball. On the other hand, the criticism that one-off exposure riding on a celebrity’s fame doesn’t directly lead to a broader base of participants reflects a structural issue common to women’s sports in general. It’s not a simple matter of good or bad — opinions diverged depending on where people saw the real value of the event.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] “Two-Way” Ichiro Throws Second Straight Shutout with 17 Ks Over 9 Innings, Hits 136 km/h! Cleanup Hitter Matsui Also Goes 2-for-2 with RBI, Scores First Run.”
