Curled up in a deep leather chair and dressed in a sweat-top and training pants emblazoned with Snoopy the cartoon dog, Eri Yoshida is an unlikely sporting pioneer. Yet this baby-faced 16-year-old with the shy smile and tomboy haircut has just broken through a once shatterproof glass ceiling: Japan's unofficial ban on female baseball players.
Next year, the Yokohama schoolgirl will begin training with the all-male team Kobe 9 Cruise on a salary of 200,000 yen (HK$17,365) a month, making her the first woman to play professional baseball in Japan - reportedly the first in Asia. The one-year contract has already made her a star on her way to a potential career as a big league pitcher. For now, however, she is just savouring the moment and ignoring sniping from the sidelines.
'I couldn't believe it when I heard I was selected,' she says. 'I mean, there are girls who are much better than me. I'd like people to see them too.'
Her friends have more faith. 'Some of them said afterwards, 'I knew you'd be picked'. They were rooting for me, saying, 'Show us what you can do'. I was touched.'
Outside her small circle, however, the Kobe contract has been denounced as a joke, a publicity stunt and a well-meaning but doomed gesture to gender politics. Japan's sometimes fanatical baseball bloggers heap scorn on her skills, when they're not sniggering about the locker-room arrangements. 'Where's she going to change, with the men?' says one. 'She's not a serious player, just a performing panda to attract customers,' writes another. 'Baseball is not a playground for high school girls.'
Baseball commentator for The Japan Times, Wayne Graczyk, remains unconvinced about the choice. 'My sense is that her selection is a publicity stunt, but on the other hand it's almost as unusual for a team to pick someone so young, so it could be that she's talented,' he says.
