Professional Baseball Career
Before entering professional wrestling he had been a professional baseball pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants, and was signed at the age of 17. Baba, who was issued jersey number 59, was a member of the organization for at least five years. It appears however, he spent most of his time in the minor leagues. He appeared in only three games with the Giants, and recorded a record of 0-1.
It was around this time when national wrestling hero and owner of the Japanese Wrestling Association Mitsuhiro Momota - better known as RikidÅzan - began to feel the time was right for him to start grooming a successor in order to keep business strong.
Read more about this topic: Shohei Baba
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