Synopsis
Haruhiko Sakamichi (Kiichi Nakai) receives a visit from Mie Tozawa (Haru). She tells him she is the daughter of a former teammate of Sakamichi’s on his high-school baseball team, a team that was in the running to qualify for the national high-school baseball championships at Osaka’s Koshien Stadium. She takes out 27 years’ worth of New Year’s cards that her long-estranged father wrote and never sent, and which she only discovered following his death in the tsunami disaster of 2011. Sakamichi’s address is on some of the cards, which is why she has come.
Mie is working as a volunteer for the ‘Master’s Koshien’, a program in which former high-school baseball players compete in regional competitions, the winners then proceeding to a tournament at Koshien Stadium. An incident during Sakamachi’s senior year of high school ended his dreams of a championship, leaving bitter memories he does not want to revisit, so he says he does not want to take part, but offers to help her contact other members of his team. One of them, the former pitcher Takahashi (Toshiro Yanagiba), reacts very strongly to the invitation, insisting that it was because of the events of that long-ago summer that he did not become a professional player, something that would have changed his entire life. In time, though, both change their minds and set about convincing others on the team to join them as they once again attempt to qualify to play at Koshien.
The incident that resulted in their team withdrawing from competition 28 years ago involved Mie’s father and Yuko (Emi Wakui), the team’s manager. As Mie slowly learns various versions of the truth about what happened, Sakamachi contacts Yuko, who returns after 28 years to explain. None of the astonished players, it turns out, knew what had really happened.