Throwing a baseball isn't rocket science. Unless, apparently, that ball is the official baseball of the World Baseball Classic and is being thrown by a member of Samurai Japan.
For all the preparation the Japanese baseball apparatus has put into March's 2017 World Baseball Classic — that would be years of prep work for a tournament manager Hiroki Kokubo called a "national concern" — a seemingly innocuous tightly wound mesh of rubber and yarn covered in rawhide could be the proverbial fly in the ointment.
The issue for Japan is the same one that has followed the team since the first WBC: the ball. The balls used for the tournament are slicker than those used in NPB, meaning Japanese players have to change the way they handle it.
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