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is a Japanese professional baseball shortstop. Nakajima played in the 2008 Beijing Olympics as well as the 2009 World Baseball Classic for the Japanese national team and is regarded as one of the most talented young stars in Japanese professional baseball today.〔() "In Depth: Japan's Up-And-Coming Baseball Stars" – Forbes.〕 After the 2011 season, his Japanese team, the Seibu Lions, posted Nakajima to Major League Baseball, but Nakajima failed to reach an agreement with the New York Yankees. On December 17, 2012 he signed a two-year contract with the Oakland A's, champions of the Western Division of the American League. After spending two years in the United States, Nakajima announced in December 2014 that he had reached an agreement with the Orix Buffaloes and would be returning to Japan. ==Early life and high school career== Nakajima was born in Itami, a city in Hyogo, Japan. He was a pitcher during his days at Itami Municipal Sakuradai Elementary School, playing in a national tournament alongside batterymate Katsuki Yamazaki (who would become a catcher for the rival Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks a decade later).〔() "Batting Naka-Nakamoto" – Japan Baseball Daily.〕 He played for Takarazuka Senior while attending Itami Municipal Tennōjigawa Junior High School, receiving offers to play for high school baseball powerhouses in other prefectures by coaches who came to see him play. Nakajima opted to apply to the prestigious Hōtoku Gakuen High School within the prefecture but was rejected and ended up enrolling in Itami Kita Senior High School, a local school and a complete unknown in high school baseball. He worked his way into the starting lineup in his first year (the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States), playing right field that summer and becoming the team's leadoff hitter by his second. Nakajima hit 43 home runs out of the leadoff spot in his high school career and took the mound as the team's ace pitcher in his last two years, but his team never came particularly close to making a national tournament, losing in the fourth round of the Hyogo Tournament in the last summer of Nakajima's high school career. However, despite such relative anonymity, Nakajima was picked by the Seibu Lions in the fifth round of the 2000 NPB amateur draft. He was the 57th overall pick (out of 86 players) in that year's draft. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hiroyuki Nakajima」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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