Eri Yoshida
So Thursday night a bunch of us from the MauiTime ohana decided to take in a Na Koa Ikaika Maui baseball game. It was “MauiTime Night” after all, which allowed us to promote our annual Best of Maui issue. Judging by the few hundred faces we saw in the grandstand at Ichiro “Iron” Maehara Stadium in Wailuku, it was very to see so many people joining us.
We had a blast, as we usually do at ball games, but we couldn’t help but notice player number 4–Eri Yoshida–acting as bat girl for the Ikaika.
That’s right–the famed “Knuckleball Princess,” who has won more games as a female pitcher than anyone else in the history of American professional baseball and already has a spot in Cooperstown, New York. She’s in the baseball Hall of Fame right now, while still playing for the Ikaika, and yet during the game she was acting as the bat girl, fetching bats after her teammates lined one onto the field.
We knew she wasn’t scheduled to pitch that night, but we couldn’t help but look at each other and say, “huh?” So this morning I emailed Chris Osgood of the Osgood Marketing Group, which handles publicity for the team, and asked whether being the bat girl was part of her job.
“It’s not part of her job,” Osgood emailed back. “LOL. She asked to help out. It’s just another example of her humility and ‘team first’ attitude.”
Like we’re going to argue with that.
Photo courtesy Na Koa Ikaika Maui
Tags: Baseball, Cooperstown, Eri Yoshida, hall of fame, Knuckleball Princess, Na Koa Ikaika Maui
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