Shiba Taguchi, Ryukyu Sports News

Tuba City, U.S.A. – June 19, 2020: A group of Shisa club executives, led by Board Chairman and CEO John Sugitani, along with the president of the Navajo Nation and other tribal dignitaries announced today an agreement between the club and the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe regarding the construction of a new baseball complex in Tuba City, in the state of Arizona. The new complex will serve as the club’s spring training headquarters beginning in 2021, the Shisa’s first season in the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance. It will also be the home of Naha’s North American baseball academy, and will additionally feature numerous youth baseball and softball fields for the use of the area leagues and the Tuba City High School Warriors baseball and softball teams.

The first major league baseball spring training center to be built on the Navajo Nation, the Shisa complex will help incorporate Naha into the PEBA’s Sovereign League, Arizona being one of the traditional locations of spring training facilities in North America. “Obviously,” mentioned Sugitani in his remarks, “trans-Pacific flights are not an option for spring training games.”

The Shisa’s twenty-year lease on the land involves several obligations by the club to the nation, including capital contributions for the purposes of local water resource management and conservation, and a requirement that a minimum of 50% of workers involved in the construction and management of the new complex will be members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes.

Later, over a lunch of fry bread tacos, Sugitani mentioned that the decision to build on the nation was the brainchild of team owner Iyou Seigyoki, who felt that the cold spring mornings would be bracing, and that the altitude (Tuba City lies at 5000 feet above sea level) would aid the players in their conditioning. Seigyoki has some ties to the American state of Arizona. Seigyoki Kabushiki Gaisha subsidiary HTM Research, is a Tuscon area defense contractor. Sugitani also mentioned that the Shisa owner has a fondness for the painted desert landscape surrounding Tuba City, which he has visited several times.