Nippon-Ham manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo (54) expressed his excitement for a matchup against manager Hideki Matsui. On the 30th, fall camp began at the team's home stadium, Es Con Field. Manager Shinjo participated from the first day for the first time in three years, watching over the players' movements while offering them words of encouragement.

On the 23rd, it was announced that Matsui would take over as the manager of The Giants. When asked about this, Manager Shinjo spoke with excitement, expressing his hopes for the revitalization of the baseball world, saying, 'It's going to be exciting! Just the fact that professional baseball is becoming a topic of conversation makes me incredibly happy.'

Although they are in different leagues, he is looking forward to the game, saying regarding Manager Matsui, 'I'm excited to face him.' Regarding his tactics, he speculated, 'Surprisingly, since he was a home run hitter, I imagine there will be a lot of bunts. That's how it usually goes, right?'

During the first two years of his tenure, the team sank to last place. 'The only fun part is the exhibition games. It gets to the point where you lose the courage to make moves because of public opinion. You start thinking about how loud the public outcry would be if you substituted a batter at a certain moment,' he remarked. Having seen numerous criticisms regarding his management, he looked back on those days with a laugh, saying, 'I received an incredible amount of direct messages. I almost got tendonitis from blocking so many people.'

Among them, he continued to stick to his own style of baseball and recently finished in second place for three consecutive years. He emphasized the importance of staying firm, saying, 'If you do something different and it fails, you'll get torn to pieces. But if it succeeds, it turns into something interesting. It's a matter of whether you have that courage or not.'