“When I was in middle school, I used to cut my hair short with clippers.”

Social MediaI saw a video uploaded to the batting cage titled “I don’t want a girlfriend like that.” She hits one strikeout after another at the batting cage. Her control is really good.

Sasagawa (hereinafter the same) Actually, my control isn’t that good at all. I’m more of a pitcher who relies on speed, and I still think I need to improve my control.

Sasagawa shows off some brilliant pitching in a post entitled “I don’t want a girlfriend like that” (Photo from Sasagawa’s Instagram)

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–The media has called it “the fastest120She is said to be “the beautiful left arm of 1 kilogram.”

I never measured my pitching speed properly, but when I was in high school, a male baseball player at bat told me, “That’s 130 km/h.” I can’t say it was 130 km/h, but I was definitely hitting 120 km/h, so I said “120 km/h.” I was hitting 100 km/h when I was in elementary school.

–Amazing. How did you first encounter baseball?

My family is a baseball family. My father was a youth baseball coach, and my mother also played softball. My two older brothers also played baseball, so it seemed like baseball was the only path I had.

When I was in the second grade of elementary school, my father told me that he would quit coaching his little league team if I didn’t join, so I joined the team out of a sense of responsibility and started playing baseball, but I later found out that it was a lie (laughs). That Christmas, I asked Santa for a GameCube and “Animal Crossing,” but I remember waking up in the morning to find a Mizuno glove and crying.

–Speaking of your family,BAD HOPofTiji JojoYou and I are relatives, aren’t you?

We are cousins. But we have never played baseball together. We are on completely different paths. I wonder if we can play baseball together.

Her cousin is Tiji Jojo, a member of the hip-hop group BADHOP.
My cousin is a member of the hip-hop group BADHOP.Tiji Jojo

–When you entered junior high school, you joined the Yokohama Baseball Club Samurai, a club team. At the time, there was only one female player on the team.

There were a lot of things that happened at first. Even when we played catch, he would cheer us on and we would eat our meals alone. But as time went on, we started to get along well.

When it came to tournaments, all the boys had short haircuts, and I also cut my hair short with clippers. I was often mistaken for a boy, and when I went into the girls’ bathroom on the grounds, the manager would stop me, saying, “The boys’ bathroom isn’t that way” (laughs).