After four days and nights of this treatment, the parents of Kuroda’s teammate intervened more directly. They took the boys back to their house, gave them water and food, and bathed them. They called Kuroda’s mother and told her the situation.

“She said to send me back,” Kuroda said, laughing. “At that point, I knew I had an enemy in my own house.”

Kuroda said his father, a onetime outfielder for the Nankai Hawks who opened a sporting goods store after retiring, believed that his son had made a commitment when he went to that school to play baseball, and that that meant obeying the coach.

But his mother, if firm, seemed more open to reason — at least insofar as she allowed him to spend the night with his friend and return to the coach and the team the next morning

Can't the Red Sox send Beckett and Lackey for a training year in a Japanese high school? They'd be so much better when we got them back!

Speaking of everyday Japanese high school practices, why is Battle Royale suddenly in theatres?