Murakami's high school coach says it was his toss batting, not his power, that gave him away as a first-year
Munetaka Murakami reached Koshien once, as a first-year in 2015. Coach Hiroyasu Sakai and a rival pitcher described the hitter he was before the 56 home runs.
Key points
- Kyushu Gakuin coach Hiroyasu Sakai told Number Web that the first thing he noticed about the first-year Murakami was his contact skill, not his power.
- Murakami hit 52 home runs in high school and played catcher, but reached Koshien only in the summer of 2015.
- A pitcher from rival Shuhokan told Number that the plan against him was simply outside pitches.
Munetaka Murakami entered Kyushu Gakuin in Kumamoto in spring 2015, the same spring Kotaro Kiyomiya entered Waseda Jitsugyo. Kiyomiya was the story in Japan from the start. Coach Hiroyasu Sakai's memory of Murakami, given to writer Masahiko Abe in Number Web in January 2020, is quieter. "I thought, this kid will go pro," he said of his first look at him.
What Sakai cites is unusual for a future home run king. He told Abe that Murakami was thin on arrival and that his ball-striking stood out more than his strength. He had not seen a first-year so good at toss batting, the short drill of hitting underhand feeds, and said Murakami made every swing in it a deliberate one. The power came later with practice, Sakai said. He added that Murakami was not a home run hitter from the beginning. These are one coach's recollections, in one interview.
The records are firmer. Murakami batted cleanup as a first-year, reached Koshien that summer, and finished with 52 home runs in high school, a figure web Sportiva and Nikkan Gendai both give. He was a catcher, which Yakult would change. In 2022 Number Web's Katsuharu Uchida counted five tournaments he could have reached Koshien in. He made one. Shuhokan, then Kumamoto's other power, blocked the path in the rest.
Uchida's source was Kento Kawabata, a Shuhokan left-hander who faced him in high school. Kawabata said his plan was mostly thorough work on the outside corner, and that he could live with singles. The account is from one pitcher, in one article, and we found no other version. It is still a useful picture of what high school opponents thought they could do, a few years before he led Japan in home runs.
Original Japanese headlines
村上宗隆を一目で「この子はプロ」。高校時代の監督が語る練習法と号泣。
Number Web, Jan. 13, 2020
村上宗隆が6打数4三振…高校時代の“天敵”が語る弱点
Number Web, Aug. 23, 2022
恩師が語る村上宗隆のターニングポイント。「甲子園に出て変わった」
web Sportiva, Nov. 5, 2019
ヤクルト村上宗隆は日ハム清宮の“外れ1位”だった！ なぜ2人に圧倒的な差がついた
Nikkan Gendai, Sept. 21, 2021
Players in this storyMunetaka Murakami
Our read
The story Japanese fans usually hear is that Murakami was the overlooked rival of Kiyomiya. These accounts give something more specific: a hitter whose coach first saw timing and contact, and a rival who thought the outside corner would hold him. Neither was yet describing a slugger.