is a

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

manga series written and illustrated by

Shinji Mizushima was a Japanese manga artist. He is best known for several baseball manga, such as ''Yakyū-kyō no Uta'', ''Dokaben'', and '' Abu-san''. He is a two-time recipient of the Shogakukan Manga Award. His works have been collected into more than 54 ...

. It tells the story of fictional baseball player . It started to be serialized in 1973 in

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics ( manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the H ...

's ''seinen'' manga magazine ''

Big Comic Original is a Japanese ''seinen'' manga magazine published by Shogakukan, aimed at an older adult and mostly male audience. It is a sister magazine to ''Big Comic'', the biggest difference being that it goes on sale twice a month in the weeks ''Big Comic ...

'', and ended on February 5, 2014, after 976 chapters published in the magazine. The first manga volume was released on and the last one, the 107th volume, was released on March 28, 2014. In 1977, it received the

Shogakukan Manga Award The is one of Japan's major manga awards, and is sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga and features candidates from a number of publishers. It is the oldest manga award in Japan, being given since ...

for ''

seinen is an editorial category of Japanese comics marketed toward young adult men. In Japanese, the word ''seinen'' literally means "youth", but the term "''seinen'' manga" is also used to describe the target audience of magazines like '' Weekly Ma ...

''/general manga. In 2004, Mizushima auctioned off the right to appear as a character in ''Abu-san'' for over ¥3 million, as a fundraiser for Mangajapan. As of 2013, the series has sold over 22 million copies. The

Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks The are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture. They compete in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) as a member of the Pacific League. The team was formerly known as the Nankai Hawks and was based in Osaka. ...

currently honours Squad no.90, which belongs to Yasutake Kageura.

References

1973 manga Baseball in anime and manga Seinen manga Shogakukan manga Winners of the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga {{anime-stub