Early Life and High School Career
Wada was born in Kōnan, Aichi Prefecture, a member of the age group often referred to as the "Matsuzaka Generation". He began playing baseball as a first grader at Kōnan Municipal Fujisato Elementary School for the Kōnan Danchi Baseball team.
In 1991, Wada and his family moved to Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, Wada's father's hometown. Wada enrolled in Shimane Prefectural Hamada High School in Hamada upon graduating from junior high, leading them to the 79th National High School Baseball Championship in the summer of his second year of high school (the equivalent of eleventh grade in the United States) in 1997. His team faced Akita Commercial High School, led by current Tokyo Yakult Swallows ace Masanori Ishikawa, in the first round, but Wada walked that very Ishikawa with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning and suffered a walk-off loss.
Wada's team secured a berth in the national tournament again the following summer (1998). They defeated Niigata Prefectural Shibata Agricultural High School, whose battery consisted of right-hander Togashi Kazuhiro (who later played for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) and catcher Ken Katoh (currently with the Yomiuri Giants), in their first game. They faced Teikyo High School, the East Tokyo champions, in their next game. Though Wada, who was not only the team's ace but also their cleanup hitter, gave up a home run to current Fighters outfielder Hichori Morimoto, Hamada High won 3-2, making it to the quarter-finals. They narrowly lost in the quarter-finals to Toyota Otani High School (led by current Orix Buffaloes outfielder Katsuaki Furuki) in extra innings.
Though Wada had ruptured his left triceps muscle the previous fall and struggled to even reach 130 km/h (81 mph) with his fastball during the tournament, Teikyo High players remarked after facing Wada that " looked like it was 150 km/h (93 mph)."
Read more about this topic: Tsuyoshi Wada
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, high, school and/or career:
“the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“Our whole life is startingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... it is high time that the women of Republican America should know how much the laws that govern them are like the slave laws of the South ...”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“And this school wasn’t keeping anymore,
Unless for penitents who took their seat
Upon its doorsteps as at mercy’s feet
To make up for a lack of meditation.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)