On the 12th, Softbank Hawks manager Hiroki Kokubo appeared on the TV Asahi talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (Monday to Friday, 1:00 PM) for the first time in 11 years. He spoke of his gratitude to his mother, Toshiko, who passed away in 2017.

Although he led The Hawks to the top of Japan last season, he recalls that when he was six years old, "I was scared of baseball and wanted to quit." He once told his mother, who raised him alone, "I let you start playing baseball on your own, and now you're going to send me back to your father." Looking back, he said, "I still remember what I said, even as an adult," but revealed that he hated going to baseball so much that he said, "I know that saying this would definitely hurt my mother, but that's how much I didn't want to go to the ground."

Still, Toshiko told him, "Once a man says he's going to do something, he should see it through to the end," so he went to ground that day. He later hit a total of 413 Home Run and even served as manager of the Japanese baseball team, but he once again expressed his gratitude to his mother, saying, "If it weren't for that day, I wouldn't have continued baseball."