Eri Yoshida

Eri Yoshida (吉田 えり, Yoshida Eri, born January 17, 1992, in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan) is a Japanese professional baseball player. She plays as a sidearm knuckleball pitcher for the Ishikawa Million Stars of the independent Baseball Challenge League. In 2008, at the age of 16, she became the first female drafted by a Japanese men's professional baseball team.

Baseball career

Yoshida was fourteen years old when she taught herself how to throw the knuckleball after watching Major League Baseball pitcher Tim Wakefield on television. She stands 1.55 metres (5 ft 1 in) tall, and her pitches have been clocked at 101 kilometres per hour (63 mph), while her knuckleball measures around 50 mph. As a high-school sophomore at Kawasaki-kita Senior High School in Kawasaki, she threw the pitch well enough to earn a place on the school's baseball team. Her success caused a sensation in the national media, who dubbed her the Knuckle Princess. In 2008, she signed a contract to play for the Kobe 9 Cruise of Kansai Independent Baseball League.

Ishikawa Million Stars

The Ishikawa Million Stars (石川ミリオンスターズ, Ishikawa Mirion Sutāzu) are a semi-professional baseball team in the Baseball Challenge League of Japan. The team was established in 2007. Their home is Ishikawa Prefecture. 57-year-old former Major League Baseball star Julio Franco is the team's player-manager. The team is also notable for having female knuckleball pitcher Eri Yoshida on their roster.

Franchise history

The team has won four Baseball Challenge League championships, in 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2013.

Ishikawa Infielder Kensuke Uchimura led the BC League in steals in 2007, which led to him being drafted by Nippon Professional Baseball's Rakuten Golden Eagles, In 2008 he became the first player to reach NPB after playing in the BC League.

Former Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) player Kazuaki Minami pitched for the Million Stars in 2008, leading to a tryout with the Chiba Lotte Marines. (Minami did not end up playing for the Marines.)

In 2009, former NPB pitcher Shinji Mori joined the Million Stars as a pitcher-coach. Retiring from playing, he took over as full-time manager in 2010, staying through the 2014 season. He returned to active duty as a player in 2013, and was the Million Stars' player-manager in 2013–2014.