Baseball: Pitching machine Anraku books Koshien return

MATSUYAMA (Kyodo) -- High school pitcher Tomohiro Anraku, whose extreme pitch counts this spring drew worldwide attention, pitched Saibi High School into the summer national finals with a 5-2 complete game victory on Saturday in the Ehime Prefecture's final.

Anraku, who threw 772 pitches over five games in this year's spring invitational tournament at Hyogo Prefecture's Koshien Stadium, has booked his return to the historic ballpark for the finals of this year's National Summer Championship. In the spring invitational, Saibi didn't use another pitcher until a visibly exhausted Anraku was hammered in the final.

After maxing out at 157 kph in Friday's prefectural semifinals, Anraku reached 150 kph on the radar gun in the final.

"I've been going all out up until now so that I can go back (to Koshien) and pick up something I left behind there."

(read the full story on The Mainichi)