is a professional baseball player from Ōita City,

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. He is part of the starting rotation for the

Hanshin Tigers The are a Nippon Professional Baseball team playing in the Central League. The team is based in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, next to their main stadium, Hanshin Koshien Stadium. The Tigers are owned by Hanshin Electric Railway Co., ...

baseball team.

Career

In 2006, Ando pitched his first

Shutout In team sports, a shutout (North American English, US) or clean sheet (Commonwealth English, UK) is a game in which the losing team fails to score. While possible in most major sports, they are highly improbable in some sports, such as basketba ...

game against

Yokohama BayStars The are a professional baseball team in the Japanese Central League. Their home field is Yokohama Stadium, located in central Yokohama. The team has been known by several names since becoming a professional team in 1950. It adopted its current ...

. Ando joined the Japanese Olympic baseball team for the

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad (), and officially branded as Athens 2004 (), were an international multi-sport event held from 13 to 29 August 2004 in Athens, Greece. The Games saw 10,625 athletes ...

, and won a bronze medal. Ando went 7-4 in college, battling shoulder problems. He went on to Toyota Motors in the industrial leagues and peaked at 93 mph there, drawing the interest of various scouts. In the

2001 Baseball World Cup The 2001 Baseball World Cup (BWC) was the 34th international Men's amateur baseball tournament. The tournament was sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation, which titled it the Amateur World Series from the 1938 tournament through the ...

, he went 2-0 with a 2.45 ERA, allowing 5 hits and fanning 14 in 11 innings.

References

External links

1977 births Living people Sportspeople from Ōita (city) Baseball people from Ōita Prefecture Hosei University alumni Hanshin Tigers players Baseball players at the 2004 Summer Olympics Olympic baseball players for Japan Olympic bronze medalists for Japan Olympic medalists in baseball Medalists at the 2004 Summer Olympics Japanese baseball coaches Nippon Professional Baseball coaches {{Japan-baseball-pitcher-stub