pitcher Kenta Maeda, who joined Rakuten Eagles, held a press conference at Rakuten Eagles Mobile in Sendai on the 16th. number was decided to be 18.

When asked about his image of Sendai at the press conference, he immediately replied, "It's cold." He also revealed, "I'm not very good with the cold." Maeda transferred from Hiroshima to the Dodgers in 2016. In 2020, he was traded to the Minnesota Twins, based in the northern US state of Minnesota. Based on data from the Japan Meteorological Agency, the average temperature in Minnesota (Minneapolis-Saint Paul) is about 8.2°C. He later moved to The Tigers as a free agent, but spent about six years in a cold region, with the average temperature in Detroit, where the Tigers are based, being about 10.4°C. "Even in the Major Leagues, I was traded to Minnesota and it was really cold, so I became a free agent there and wanted to go somewhere warm, but it was cold again in Detroit. Now I'm back in Japanese baseball, in Tohoku, where it's cold again. I guess I have a connection to cold places," he said with a laugh. "I played in cold places in America for six years, so I've built up an immunity to it, and I have my own ways of taking precautions. In that respect, I'm glad I played in cold places in America."

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