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Last weekend, Hirotada Ototake, the author of bestselling autobiography “No One’s Perfect,” pitched the first ball for the season-opening ceremony at the match between the Saitama Seibu Lions and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. The video was posted on YouTube, and moved a lot of people’s hearts.

The game was held at Miyagi Baseball Stadium, which is in Sendai, a seriously damaged city during the 3.11 earthquake and tsunami.

He came into the mound without a wheel chair, and shouted without microphone, “I am going to throw it with my whole heart for the people in Tohoku (Northeast region) !” And then he pitched by using all his strength.

On his twitter account, he said that he practiced a lot before the ceremony till his left arm abraded.

His hearty pitching must have heartened up not only the victims but also many Japanese people.

[Hirotada Ototake’s Brief Personal History]

Ototake was born in 1976 without arms and legs.

In 1998, his memoir book “No One’s Perfect” was published. In the book he ensured the Helen Keller’s word, “a handicap is inconvenient, is not misfortune, though.”

He always has forward-looking attitude toward life and doesn’t give up anything just because he doesn’t have limbs. During junior high school, he belonged to a basketball team, and then he joined an American football team as a strategy thinker at his high school.

After graduated from Waseda University, Ototake became a successful sports journalist. Since 2005, he worked as a part-time teacher at primary schools, and in 2007, he acquired teacher’s license and took a job as a primary school teacher.

He has been married 10 years and has two children.

Source: Wikipedia -Hirotada Ototake (Japanese)

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