Sadaharu Oh, a special advisor for the formation of Japan's team for next year's World Baseball Classic, admitted Monday that Beijing Olympic skipper Senichi Hoshino has emerged as a candidate for the manager's job.
"He is accustomed to playing international games and knows how to work things out from his experience, and we talked about it from that viewpoint," Oh said, referring to last week's meeting of a committee created to arrange the WBC team.
Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki has sounded negative about picking Japan's WBC manager from among people who, like Hoshino, are not currently in a managerial position.
"It seems to me that ruling out active managers means they don't intend to form the strongest possible team, although they say they are going to make it happen," Suzuki said in Seattle over the weekend.