Baseball in Japan, U.S. focus of forum today

“Mitts Across the Pacific: Baseball in Japan and the United States” will be the topic of a panel discussion with top executives of the St. Louis Cardinals and Japan’s Orix BlueWave baseball teams at 2 p.m. today in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall.

The forum will feature BlueWave owner Yoshihiko Miyauchi, chief executive of the Orix Corp.; Frederick O. Hanser, vice chairman of the St. Louis Cardinals; and Timothy Hanser, vice president of community outreach, Cardinals Care.

They will discuss the current state of baseball, including its internationalization, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, new stadiums, salary caps, parity between teams and the game’s future in Japan and the United States.

Miyauchi completed postgraduate work in management at the University in 1960. Frederick Hanser earned a law degree from the University in 1966.

The discussion will be led by international sports journalist and television producer Brad Lefton, who earned an undergraduate business degree from the University in 1986. Lefton has produced documentaries about Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki and Cardinals outfielder So Taguchi.

Free and open to the public, the panel discussion is co-sponsored by the Visiting East Asian Professionals Program in Arts & Sciences and the Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies in the School of Law. The event will celebrate U.S.-Japanese relations and is part of the University’s 150th anniversary celebration.

For more information, go online to artsci.wustl.edu/~veap or contact Krystel Mowery at 935-8772 or veap@artsci.wustl.edu.

Leave a Comment

Comments and respectful dialogue are encouraged, but content will be moderated. Please, no personal attacks, obscenity or profanity, selling of commercial products, or endorsements of political candidates or positions. We reserve the right to remove any inappropriate comments. We also cannot address individual medical concerns or provide medical advice in this forum.