SPORTS June 5, 2023 THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 13 Japanese knuckleball pitcher Eri Yoshida plays on her own Field of Dreams By Stephen Wade The Associated Press O YAMA, Japan — Eri Yoshida sat in the dugout of an all-dirt baseball field in rural Japan, surrounded by rice paddies, narrow roads, and traditional Japanese houses. The scene recalled instantly the 1989 film Field of Dreams — Asian style — and Yoshida certainly has her own. The 31-year-old Japanese woman is a knuckleball pitcher with a sidearm delivery that she hopes might carry her to the big leagues in the United States or Japan. “I know it’s a really difficult challenge, but I have a dream in my heart that I really want to stand on a mound in the majors with a knuckleball,” Yoshida told The Associated Press, speaking in Japanese and showing off her knuckleball grip. “So I’ve decided to challenge myself.” Even Yoshida acknowledges that it’s a far-fetched fantasy. But it’s also very real and reminds of another film, the 1992 classic A League of Their Own that celebrates a women’s baseball league in the United States during World War II. She just travelled to play for two months in the Empire League, an independent baseball league in upstate New York. She’s accustomed to chasing oversized objectives. Yoshida has pitched in Japan, the United States, and Canada — against men and women — and for the last several years has been a player-coach with a women’s team called Agekke — the sponsor’s name — in Tochigi prefecture in north central Japan. “I feel that my personality is really like a knuckleball,” Yoshida said. The famously mercurial pitch has been her lifeline to keep playing baseball, a great equalizer for a small woman — she’s only 5’1” — but a very difficult one to control. As a high school student, Yoshida was the first female professional baseball player in Japan, and dubbed the “Knuckle Princess” in newspaper headlines. She’s never played softball, though some female baseball players have started that way. She added to her renown after this, Filipino-American chefs come into their own with multiple James Beard award nods Continued from page 10 intrinsic to the meals too. For instance, Verzosa might swap out tamarind for wild lingonberries. He does his own take on Filipino banana ketchup with sweeter tubers or root vegetables. With only 12 seats in the restaurant, Verzosa chats with every patron. “When we have Filipinos coming from the Philippines and we have Filipinos that are here from the U.S. — whether they be first, second, all the way to fifth generation — there’s a really beautiful way to connect with them differently,” Verzosa said. “I think the most important thing to realize is that there is absolutely — like anything — no one way to be Filipino.” Neither Verzosa nor Bugtong seriously considered a culinary career until after college. Verzosa grew up on a diet of PBS and Food Network cooking shows, as well as the cooking of his father, aunts, and uncles. “I would come home from school, be eating my dad’s food, and watching these shows,” said Verzosa, who was originally headed to medical school. “At some point, he was like, ‘Hey, listen, Aaron, if you love eating as much as you do, you need to learn how to love to cook.’” Bugtong dropped plans to become a teacher and enrolled in a Bay Area culinary school in 2014. As a child, he hadn’t demonstrated any passion for making things from scratch. “I did stuff with Betty Crocker and thought I was badass, like substituting milk instead of water,” Bugtong said, chuckling. “When I was a kid, I used to put egg wash on Chips Ahoy! and bake them. They came out very gooey inside and crispy on the outside.” Filipinos have heard on and off for the last decade that their food is having a moment, about to be the next big thing in U.S. cuisine. Its staples include steamed rice, meat, fish, and notes of sweet, salty, and sour. Dishes like adobo (a meat braised in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic), lumpia (spring rolls), and pancit (fried noodles) are already part of the zeitgeist. Yet Filipino restaurants make up only 1% of U.S. restaurants serving Asian food, according to recent Pew Research Center analysis. There’s no one explanation why other Asian cuisines like Chinese grabbed a bigger foothold in the restaurant industry. One reason is the “funnelling” of early Filipino immigrants into particular occu- pations, according to Martin Manalansan IV, an American Studies professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. In the 1920s and ’30s, he said, they came to the U.S. for agricultural work. After 1965, they worked mostly in more technical fields like nursing and engineering. Many young Filipino Americans were discouraged from becoming chefs “because that was seen as very lowly, especially if your parents are nurses, doctors, engineers, whatever,” Manalansan said. In addition, Filipino food was often dismissed as a fusion of Chinese, Spanish, and a dash of American. That perception annoys Manalansan because it doesn’t recognize the creativity of Filipino culture. “The late ’90s foodie revolution was really ... about being adventurous and being called a ‘foodie,’ being into more ‘exotic,’ interesting cuisine,” Manalansan said. “The Filipino cuisine was seen as kind of homey, kind of blasé.” Whether this year’s James Beard love is a coincidence or not, Verzosa says it feels like there are more rising, accomplished Filipino chefs than ever. “Over the last five, 10 years or so now, they’re finally coming through and developing their own voice, and wanting to showcase their own families, their own communities, their own regions,” Verzosa said. “Having the craft and ability to make delicious food — obviously that needs to happen to tell those stories.” Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. again playing with the men as an 18-year-old on an independent team in Chico, California, managed by former major league shortstop Garry Templeton. “He was like my father,” Yoshida said. In her early teen years she realized that the boys were growing taller and stronger. How to compete? Then she saw former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield throw a knuckleball that helped him to 200 career wins. “I was not tall enough or powerful enough to throw a 160-kph (100 mph) straight ball, but it seemed like maybe I could throw a 105-kph (65 mph) knuckle- ball,” she explained. “And after watching Wakefield pitching for the first time, I wanted to be like him by pitching knuckleballs.” She still wears his No. 49 and has talked with him about the unpredictable pitch. The aim of the knuckleball — it’s actually thrown off the fingertip and fingernails — is to put as little spin as possible on the ball, allowing the wind currents to move it. The best ever was Phil MAJOR ASPIRATIONS. Eri Yoshida of Agekke, a Japanese women’s baseball team, smiles during an interview in Oyama, Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. The 31-year-old Japanese woman is a knuckleball pitcher with a sidearm delivery that she hopes might carry her to the big leagues. (AP Photo/ Shuji Kajiyama) Niekro, who earned 318 victories — the most ever by a knuckleballer — and a spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Like the knuckleball, Yoshida has been inconsistent. And she has to face the fact that knuckleball pitchers are almost extinct, too prone to wild pitches and passed balls and seen as risky in an era driven by analytics. She was 0-4 in her 2010 stint in California, but Templeton recognized that any 18-year-old would have had trouble against older competition. The record book shows her at 5-10 in three seasons in various independent leagues in North America. Yoshida returned to Japan in 2013 and has been slowed periodically with injuries to her elbow and collarbone. Only now does she feel physically ready to continue the odyssey. In one of baseball’s great ironies — certainly contrary to logic — a uniform worn by Yoshida and her bat were given to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But it was for her hitting prowess playing for the Chico Outlaws, and not for her pitching. In her first at bat — pitchers had to bat in the league — and with the bases loaded, Yoshida singled to right field for her first hit and her first RBI. “That was as a hitter not a pitcher, but they were all firsts so I donated my uniform and bat,” she said. “But it’s only because of the knuckleball that I have been able to play baseball up until now,” she added. Maybe her ball and glove will next be in Cooperstown. Associated Press video journalist Koji Ueda contributed to this report. Become an online reader! Visit and click on the “Online Paper (PDF)” link to download our last two issues.