Early Life and High School Career
Nakajima was born in Itami, a city in Hyogo, Japan. He was a pitcher during his days at Itami Municipal Sakuradai Elementary School, playing in a national tournament alongside batterymate Katsuki Yamazaki (who would become a catcher for the rival Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks a decade later). He played for Takarazuka Senior while attending Itami Municipal Tennōjigawa Junior High School, receiving offers to play for high school baseball powerhouses in other prefectures by coaches who came to see him play.
Nakajima opted to apply to the prestigious Hōtoku Gakuen High School within the prefecture but was rejected and ended up enrolling in Itami Kita Senior High School, a local school and a complete unknown in high school baseball. He worked his way into the starting lineup in his first year (the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States), playing right field that summer and becoming the team's leadoff hitter by his second.
Nakajima hit 43 home runs out of the leadoff spot in his high school career and took the mound as the team's ace pitcher in his last two years, but his team never came particularly close to making a national tournament, losing in the fourth round of the Hyogo Tournament in the last summer of Nakajima's high school career. However, despite such relative anonymity, Nakajima was picked by the Seibu Lions in the fifth round of the 2000 NPB amateur draft. He was the 57th overall pick (out of 86 players) in that year's draft.
Read more about this topic: Hiroyuki Nakajima
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, high, school and/or career:
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)
“A moment that gave not only itself, but
Also the means of keeping it, of not turning to dust
Or gestures somewhere up ahead
But of becoming complicated like the torrent
In new dark passages, tears and laughter which
Are a sign of life, of distant life in this case.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“It is high time we realized that the havoc wrought in human life and ideals by a technological revolution and too long ignored has caught up with us.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)