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is a first baseman for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. The Carp's current cleanup hitter, Kurihara has blossomed into one of the most feared power threats in the Central League. He played in the 2009 World Baseball Classic as an emergency replacement for Shuichi Murata, who suffered an injury in the second round of the tournament. ==Early life and high school career== Kurihara was born in Tendō, a small city in northern Yamagata Prefecture. He began playing baseball as a third grader, quickly working his way into his Little League team's cleanup spot and becoming their ace pitcher as well. He remained a pitcher throughout junior high but was also noted for winning the high jump, 100-meter dash ''and'' shot put in the citywide track and field event. Kurihara went on to Nihon University Yamagata Senior High School, a private affiliate school of Nihon University. Though the school's then-baseball coach Yoshiya Shibuya had scouted him since Kurihara's junior high days and planned to continue using him as a pitcher, Shibuya was astonished by the bat speed as well as bat control with which Kurihara effortlessly drove ball after ball over the fence in batting practice. Kurihara was converted to the infield and made the team's No. 5 hitter in the summer of his first year (the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States) and had become the cleanup hitter by the fall. Kurihara hit over .700 with two home runs in the Tohoku Regional Tournament held in the spring of 1998, his junior year, and led his team to a berth in the 80th National High School Baseball Championship that summer, but they lost to Seiryo High School, the Ishikawa champions, 10-1 in the first round (Kurihara went 1-for-4 with the team's lone RBI). Though that appearance ended up being his first and only on the national stage, Kurihara was a highly coveted position player with plus-power and speed by his senior year (1999) and was being scouted by 11 different NPB teams. He hit 39 home runs for his high school career and lifted a maximum of on the bench press, squatted a maximum of and ran the 50- and 100-meter sprints in 6.0 and 11.7 seconds, respectively. Despite rumors that the Yakult Swallows were looking to take him in the upper rounds, Kurihara was picked in the third round of the 1999 NPB amateur draft by the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, becoming the only active player from Yamagata Prefecture in all of Japanese professional baseball (he remained so until the end of the 2002 season). 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「Kenta Kurihara」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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