Creating a sense of unity across the company beyond the goal for the team

Active players with their manager and coach on the baseball team

From left to right:
Coach Hiro Monma (Administration Department, Saitama Plant)
Captain Yuta Fukazawa, (Administration Department, Saitama Plant)
Manager Hitohisa Yamada, (Administration Department, Saitama Plant)
Player Kentaro Omi (Manufacturing Planning Department, Production Enhancement Center)
Player Kento Ogaku (Quality Assurance Department)

Manager Yamada (“Yamada”)Our company is an automotive interior products manufacturer. We mostly make and sell car seats. Like the company, the baseball team operates under the Vision Statement of “A company dedicated to realizing people’s potential; A company sincerely appreciated by all.” I think the baseball team has two main roles in the company.

The first is creating a sense of unity across the company. In today’s world of diverse lifestyles, it’s become hard for everyone to share in any one thing. I’m hoping we can share with all our employees the team’s goal or dream to compete in the main games of the Intercity Baseball Tournament and the JABA National Championship. I hope the hard work put in by the players will serve as inspiration and a driving force that encourage employees to take on challenges. If we can unite our thoughts and strengths, I believe we can become a stronger company capable of overcoming any difficulty.

The second is contributing to the local community. To achieve sustainable growth, a company has to do more than just improve its sales and profit performance. It’s essential for a company to engage, from the ESG and SDG perspectives, with local communities and other stakeholders. In this context, the baseball team plays a major role in contributing to the local community in areas beyond the company’s core business. The baseball team is engaged in various community contribution activities of its own such as hosting baseball classes for local elementary school children in Konosu City (Saitama Prefecture), where the team is based, and displaying the name of both the region and the company on our jerseys when we compete in the preliminary games of the Intercity Baseball Tournament. The number of local residents who visit the stadium has grown. Some of them will wish us luck before the games. By directly interacting with local people in this way, we can help raise the profile of the company name and help improve our corporate image. Our players are engaged in such activities with an awareness of this aspect.

Captain Fukazawa(“Fukazawa”)In my view, the roles of the baseball team and important missions for us are to awaken and build on a sense of unity across the company through our performance and to spread awareness of the company name in the public eye through our participation in the main games of the two major nonprofessional baseball tournaments—the Intercity Baseball Tournament and the JABA National Championship.

This marks our fourth year since the team was formally set up. Each season, we practice every day to secure our ticket to national tournaments. We’ve yet to make it to the national stage. Even so, my work colleagues say things like, “You had a good day at the plate the other day” recently. The baseball team seems to come up more often in conversations in my department. I hope to spread the team’s popularity not just within our home base, the Saitama Plant (Gyoda City, Saitama Prefecture), but at our head office (Asaka City, Saitama Prefecture) and all other sites in Tochigi, Shizuoka, and Mie. To that end, we are striving to participate in the national tournaments, and I think creating opportunities for people at each site to come out and watch the games will help foster a sense of unity across the company.

Player Ogaku (“Ogaku”)

During the season, I typically work in my department in the morning and practice in the afternoon. For the month leading up to a tournament, I practice all day. I work all day during the off-season. Reflecting on my activities through the year, I’ve been able to strike a balance between work and baseball for the most part. This is my third year since I joined the company. I’m really grateful to the people in my department for planning the work they assign to me so I can grow little by little, even in my limited time at work. Every day there’s more I can do. I get to devote myself to baseball while deriving satisfaction from work. My department works on the production lines, so it’s hard for my colleagues to visit the stadium on workdays. But it’s nice to hear that they follow the updates during the tournaments.

Player Omi Thanks to everyone’s support, I’ve also been able to find a balance between work and baseball. People in my department come out to cheer me on whenever there’s a game, and they’ve even made banners with my name on it. When I return to work after a tournament, I give my thanks for their support in front of the group. When I get encouraging words from my colleagues on such occasions, I feel the need to work harder—and, at the same time, to be committed to improving as a baseball player even more seriously. In balancing baseball and work, I feel supported not just by the understanding of the different work system I’m on, but by the personal relationships with the people I work with.

FukazawaThere’s no difference between now and when I was a student player in working to develop my abilities as an athlete. But it was more like a hobby when I was a student and my focus was on being part of a team and getting through hard practice with teamwork. When you’re on a corporate team, baseball is a work responsibility. The results matter more. It’s no longer just about the process. I practice every day aware of the need to fulfill the responsibilities shouldered by our baseball team to the extent that we play baseball as a job. I repeat the cycle of looking back on each day, reflecting on why I couldn’t do the things I couldn’t do, and making adjustments. I know it’s hard for all 26 players to deliver the expected results in a game, but as their captain I try to communicate with the players and come up with ways to get more players achieving results they’re happy with.

OgakuThe tournaments during my student days were league matches, not knockouts. Of course, you still have to win in league matches, but in knockouts, if you lose, you’re out. So, a single pitch matters much more. When you’re a student, you’re there for four years, no matter what. If you do your best and you’re satisfied with your efforts, that’s good enough. But in a corporate team, each season is crucial, and you’re always under pressure to deliver results, both as an individual and as a team. I treat the daily practice and every game seriously in order to become a player who helps the team win.

Coach MonmaI joined the team as a player when I joined the company but had to step down as a player about a year after due to being hit by a pitch during a game. After that, I was given the opportunity to stay on the team as a coach. I think the biggest change for me is the difference in roles between being involved with baseball as a player in my student days and being involved as a coach. I don’t have much experience as a coach yet, so it’s been a repetitive process of studying and doing what needs to be done to help the team win, then looking back and making adjustments. I’m always thinking how to get the best out of our players. It helps that I’m not much older than the players, and I try to function as a liaison between the manager and the players so the entire team moves in the same direction.