Eri Yoshida Eri Yoshida Yoshida was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan where, she taught herself how to throw the knuckleball at the age of 14 after watching Major League Baseball pitcher Tim Wakefield on television. She stands tall, and her pitches have been clocked at , while her knuckleball pitch velocity measures around 50 mph. As a high-school sophomore at Kawasaki-kita Senior High School in Kawasaki, she threw the pitch well enough to earn a place on the school's baseball team. Her success caused a sensation in the national media, who dubbed her the "Knuckle Princess". In 2008, she signed a contract
Professional sports leagues in the United States in North America. Founded in 1996 and beginning play in the 1997 season, it is the longest-running American professional women's sport league in history. The league's attendance has fluctuated over the last several seasons. It had an average per-game attendance of 8,039 in 2009 and 7,834 in 2010. Total attendance was 1,598,160 in 2010. In 2007, the league signed a television deal with ESPN that would run from 2009 to 2016. This deal is the first to ever pay rights fees to women's teams. In 2009 it had a total television viewership of 413,000 in combined cable and broadcast television.