Japanese High School Team Advances To The Semifinals On Two-Run, Walk-Off Suicide Squeeze

The Japanese High School Baseball Championship—better known as the Summer Koshien—is where legends are made. A young player could do nothing else notable in the sport of baseball ever again, and still be revered as a Japanese icon should he have a world-class tournament. It’s perhaps the single most important competition in Japanese sports.

That’s the backdrop for this insane walk-off that happened in the quarterfinals of this single-elimination tournament, one in which pitchers regularly throw 650+ pitches over five days, or even 200 pitches in an individual game. With Omi Brotherhood High School clinging onto a 2-1 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth, Kanaashi Nogyo High School loaded the bases with no outs. That’s when this occurred:

You can watch the entire bottom of the ninth—and enjoy the fantastic pageantry of the Summer Koshien—here:

Kanaashi Nogyo eventually made it all the way to the final, on the backs of their workhorse ace Kosei Yoshida, who threw an absolutely ridiculous They were the first team from Akita Prefecture to reach the final since 1915—the first year of the tourney. Kanaashi would lose to Osaka Toin in the championship game, 13-2.