Baseball to face Japanese team in exhibition

ASU News and Sports from Arizona State's independent news source.

By Nick Kosmider March 1, 2010 at 7:15 pm

The last time the ASU baseball team attempted to host a game against a team from another country, things didn’t work out so well.

Last April, ASU was set to take on Technology Institute of Hermosillo, a team from Sonora, Mexico, but the school canceled the trip about a week before the game was to take place.

The No. 2 Sun Devils (7-0) expect things to work out Tuesday night, though, for a scheduled tilt against Meiji University, a school from Tokyo, Japan.

The team plays in the Tokyo Big Six University League and is widely considered a Japanese collegiate power, according to Baseball-Reference.com, and has nine former players enshrined in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

The game, which does not count toward ASU’s overall season record, will give coach Tim Esmay another chance to evaluate some of the young players on the Sun Devil roster.

As of Monday afternoon, ASU had not announced a starter for the contest, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Packard Stadium.

With the Sun Devils set to play four games against quality competition at the Coca-Cola Classic in Suprise beginning Thursday, Esmay is likely to eat up innings with a heap of pitchers in Tuesday’s exhibition contest.