Jeff Pasin, it is amazing to talk with you.

You have a story out today about Rocky Sasaki, a pitcher from Japan who's starting for

his team in the World Baseball Classic semi-finals today.

But before we get into Rocky Sasaki's life, his career, you were telling us before that

there's a few Japanese words and ideas that are important to understand if we want to understand

Sasaki.

So what do we need to know before we get into this story?

Well, let's start with this Sam.

Rocky Sasaki is a 21-year-old pitcher for the Chiba-Lote Marines.

And he's someone who came to national prominence in Japan based on his performance at Koshien,

which is like if you took March Madness and combined it with Super Bowl.

I mean, that's how big a deal this national high school baseball tournament is in Japan.

And when Rocky Sasaki was 17 years old, he threw a pitch 101.3 miles per hour.

It was the fastest pitch that had ever been thrown by a high schooler in Japan, beating

the previous record held by somebody named Shouhei Otoni, who you probably have heard

of.

He's suddenly thrust into the limelight and quite often at Koshien, if you are one of those

pitchers who is eating up pitches and innings and striking guys out, they will start calling

you Kibutsu.

And Kibutsu is a Japanese word that means monster.

Now we know there's a great Japanese history of monsters in movies, whether it's King

Kong or Godzilla, but if you're called a monster on the baseball field sand, that means

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