Samurai Japan to play friendly match against European team?

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According to the Japanese newspaper 5Newspaper the Japanese All Star team that took on an MLB All Star team in November, the Samurai Japan, is planning to play a friendly game vs a European All Star Team in March.

Kumazaki Katsuhiko, the commissioner of the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) said this according to the newspaper. The CEB (European Confederation of Baseball) will make the selection of players which will mainly be formed by Dutch,Italian and Spanish players.

This game should be the start of a tence cooperation between the CEB and NPB. How this cooperation will be developed wasn’t stated.

The planning is that the games will be played on March 10 + 11 at the Tokyo Dome. The game will be played during Japanese Spring Training, which is rather odd since all NPB teams are practicing on Okinawa at that time.

An official announcement will be made at the end of January by NPB.

A big thanks goes out to Kohei Matsuzaki, who made me aware of this news and to Naotoshi Kanda, who translated the Japanese text for me.