Koji Uehara's remarkable baseball journey, from Japan to the Red Sox to the Cubs
You don't need a translator to understand Koji Uehara's humility.
Just look at his clubhouse locker. A symbol of it hangs there before every game: His No. 19 jersey.
At 19, Uehara found himself out of baseball and out of school, working as a security guard and studying. From there, his goal of becoming a high school physical education teacher, much less a major-league pitcher, might've seemed distant.
Nevertheless, here Uehara is, in his 19th season of professional baseball, one season away from reaching his latest goal of matching his 10-year Japanese career with the same stateside.
His jersey number does not represent this season. It's to represent the one long ago when he didn't play, when he was 19.
"Unbelievable," Uehara says in
