\n Tokyo (AFP) \u2013 Japanese baseball is considering punishing players for dangerous swings, reports said Friday, as an umpire remains unconscious three weeks after being accidentally hit on the head by a bat. <\/p>\n
Issued on: 08\/05\/2026 – 08:46<\/p>\n
1 min Reading time\n<\/p>\n
Umpire Takuto Kawakami was behind home plate during a game in Tokyo on April 16 when slugger Jose Osuna swung his bat, which flew out of his hands and struck the left side of Kawakami’s head.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old fell to the ground and was rushed to hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery and was placed in intensive care.<\/p>\n
Reports on Friday said he still had not regained consciousness and was still undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n
The Asahi Shimbun and other media said Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) is considering a rule to warn or eject players from games if they swing their bats in a dangerous manner.<\/p>\n
The proposal is set to be raised at an executive meeting with all 12 NPB clubs on Monday and could be implemented before the end of the current season.<\/p>\n
NPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.<\/p>\n
Venezuelan batter Osuna, who plays for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, apologised after his bat struck Kawakami.<\/p>\n
“I’m very sorry about what happened today when my bat hit the main umpire. I hope he’s well, I’m really sorry,” he wrote in a post on X soon after.<\/p>\n
Two days after the incident, NPB implemented a rule requiring all umpires to wear helmets.<\/p>\n
Kawakami was wearing a face protection mask with a baseball cap underneath.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tokyo (AFP) \u2013 Japanese baseball is considering punishing players for dangerous swings, reports said Friday, as an umpire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8],"class_list":{"0":"post-19055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-japan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}