Baseball in Japan and United States is topic of public forum, April 16

“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 Bluewaves baseball teams at 2 p.m. April 16 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall, Washington University in St. Louis.

The forum will feature Bluewaves 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 the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the internationalization of baseball, new stadiums, salary caps, parity between teams and the future of baseball 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 Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies in the School of Law. The event celebrates United States-Japan relations and is part of the University’s 150th anniversary celebration.

For more information, visit http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~veap; or contact Krystel Mowery at (314) 935-8772; veap@artsci.wustl.edu.