August 6, 2011, drawing meeting.
From hundreds of thousands of Japanese high school baseball youth, 49 schools comprising 882 players gathered at the Osaka Prefectural International Convention Hall, awaiting the start of the drawing ceremony.
Everyone wore their school's official uniform, seated in positions arranged by Takano Ren; as team captain, Lin Guanglai, along with other captains from different schools, was invited onto the stage.
Sitting on the stage, Lin Guanglai glanced around and discovered that many school captains were just like him, mostly the team's ace pitchers—an easily understandable phenomenon.
After all, the special nature of the pitcher position means it must be someone with tremendous skill, fully trusted by all teammates, and can be relied upon to handle the game; protagonists of several baseball manga like Hoshi Hyuuma, Uesugi Tatsuya, and Shigeno Goro are also pitchers, further deepening people's focus and admiration for them.
