Pitcher hides his glove with his jersey, breakdown

This relief pitcher for Japan in the World Baseball Classic did something that I've never seen players do before. He took his jersey and put it over his glove repeatedly. Look, grabs it very intentionally, puts it over his glove. This breakdown's brought to you by SeatGeek. Use code JOHNBOY for $20 off your tickets. And just over and over and over and over. That's what he does to hide his glove. And I thought, is this just because his jersey's baggy? Maybe they gave him too baggy of a jersey. But no, it's very intentional. His entire windup is very intentional. Look, he's gonna go up, up, cranes for a bit, hangs out, and then drops the pitch. If you wanna see a bunch of them, now this is when there's no runners on base. The jersey is over the glove. He's looking at the catcher. He bounces a little bit, gets the sign, looks straight ahead. The left leg comes up to a nice tippy toe, showing off the legs a little bit. The ball and glove both go above his head, but they separate. They separate from each other. And he kinda finds the end there. Like, his hands are fully extended to the point where he kinda snaps his elbows. Then the left leg comes down, the right leg goes up. The knee comes all the way up till he finds the high end of that, just like he did his arms. And now he's just gonna hang out in the crane for a little bit, where he balances it. Okay, so now he's balanced like a weight pendulum. Then he takes the ball, smacks it against the glove. Maybe that tightens his grip, or it's just rhythm. And then he drives forward and releases the pitch. Kinda crazy. Just a lot going on. And this is all after he hides his glove in his jersey, which is the thing that is the weirdest thing, or the most unusual. So I went back, and yeah, it's not just because his jersey's baggy. He intentionally asked for baggy jerseys to do this. This is him with the Swallows. It's a regular team, and he's doing it there too. So then I went to the Japanese forums. Like, have people been asking questions? I was like, what's jersey in Japanese? And then I Googled that, and then I Googled his name in Japanese, and then I was using Translate. Yeah, a lot of people have been asking about this. And in my research, found out this isn't just Takahashi who does this, but some of his other teammates on the Swallows also do this. So their pitching coach must have told them, hey, here's what we're gonna do. And this guy had a solid lead. He said there's a cat inside, and that was voted as the best answer. And I was like, come on, guys, I'm looking for actual answers on all these Japanese forums. Like, what is it? And Agawa, I guess, was the first pitcher to do it, and he actually threw a no-hitter when he changed to this set position, and then maybe more people followed suit. And in 2023, professional baseball commentator Yutaka Kaji, that one always trips me up, asked him, why are you pulling your uniform up, and do you feel like you're hiding habits? And the translation says, he said, it's become routine now, but there's no doubt I'm hiding something, if that's a correct translation. And yeah, I mean, that's the most obvious reason why you're doing it. He even announced it himself. This tweet says that he said, this season, I will be making the gesture of putting the uniform on the glove when entering the set. You can see the difference compared to last year. I'm looking forward to pitching, and then I've been consistently hitting the mound since the end of the season. So he's been practicing since the end of the season, I'm guessing. So here, that's on the right, is how he used to have his glove in the set position, and on the left is where he's pulling his uniform over it. And what you gotta look at is the thumb, the opening of the glove, because if he's digging in there with his hand to change the grip, the opening might flare up or not flare up, right in the thumb area over here. Now you can't see that area, because his jersey's over it. So it makes sense. I just never really seen a pitcher do this before, so I wanted to look into it, and brush up on my Japanese, and I found the answers I was looking for. Now here's all three of his pitches in this game against Australia. Fastball, curveball, slider, pretty nice. To have that much going on in your windup, and be pretty consistent, and then make three different pitches, not bad. In this game, he pitched pretty well. There's fastball there, little higher fastball, high fastball, higher fastball. This one's kinda in the zone. Gets smoked, but caught for an out. Then there's the curve. Nice little loopy curve, induces the ground ball, kick, save, and a beauty, gonna throw it out. Japan is winning seven, nothing. There's a fastball, ground out. If you wanna see Team Japan, you can use code JOHNBOY and get $20 off from SeatGeek, because if they're in the semis and the finals, go check them out, and you can see this in person. Wears a baggy jersey, on purpose, to hide his glove. And I just never seen that before, and I wanna thank my dude Jarv from Oz, who is watching this. Sorry about Team Australia losing this game, Jarv, but he pointed out to me, hey, have you ever seen that before? And I was like, I have not seen that before. And then I dove in, and now everyone's seen it. And if you like these videos and you wanna see more, you can subscribe to the channel, because that helps us out, and makes me wanna keep doing them. I appreciate it, thank you very much.