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
Famous quotes containing the words professional, baseball and/or career:
“So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“The salary cap ... will be accepted about the time the 13 original states restore the monarchy.”
—Tom Reich, U.S. baseball agent. New York Times, p. 16B (August 11, 1994)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)