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Japanese baseball star takes on world record with a paper plane

Elliot Hale Dec 19, 2024
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The “Bazooka” of the Hanshin Tigers swaps baseballs for paper aircrafts in a record-challenge attempt.

How should a professional baseball player be evaluated? Their transfer fee? Pitching speed? Number of home runs? Ability to increase sales of randoseru for dogs? I say, no! It’s high time that these players show us what they’re truly made of by launching paper planes to the stratosphere with nothing but the power of their own arms.

The team behind the customer support tool Tayori evidently shares my opinion, as on December 16, they challenged the Guinness World Record for the “farthest flight by a paper aircraft.”

▼ Tayori’s logo is a paper airplane—no wonder they’ve got planes on the brain!

The person they invited to undertake this feat was Hanshin Tigers’ strong-armed catcher Ryutaro Umeno. Umeno, with his powerful throwing capabilities, is a well-known threat to other teams, being dubbed “Umeno Bazooka.” In 2019, he even set the Japanese record for the number of assists in a single season as a catcher.

Umeno gladly accepted the opportunity as it’s not every day you get to challenge a Guinness World Record. The current record was set in the United States in 2022, at a staggering 88.31 meters (289.73 feet). If, like me, you have difficulty visualizing that distance, it’s equivalent to just short of 116 baseball bats laid end-to-end, or almost 1,749 AA batteries. With the Umeno Bazooka locked and loaded, the record was well within grasp.

The challenge was held at Noevir Stadium Kobe, the home ground of J-League’s Vissel Kobe, and around 300 spectators were in the stands to watch the attempt.

Supporting Umeno in his attempt was the Japanese record holder for paper airplane flight distance, Nobuaki Fujiwara. While Fujiwara’s standard planes can be folded in as little as three minutes, he spent more than half a day crafting some of the planes specifically for this challenge.

With this golden combination of record-holding paper plane craftsman and the legendary Bazooka, the new world record was practically theirs for the taking. The first target: Fujiwara’s own record of 61.82 meters (202.82 feet or roughly 695 playing cards).

The crowd warmed up the event with 100 people trying their hand at the record, bringing handmade paper planes to the starting line. Even with 100 participants, the farthest distance reached was a mere 20 meters (65.6 feet)—but not everyone is a bazooka, so I guess that’s to be expected.

Then came Umeno, warmed up and ready to throw. Here he goes!

With a jaw-dropping speed, the plane soared to around the 50-meter mark (about 164 feet) effortlessly. It goes to show that, regardless of what he throws, Umeno deserves his fame—he’s on a completely different level to the amateurs from earlier.

On his third throw…

He smashed the former Japanese record and achieved an incredible 64.652 meters (212.11 feet). That’s almost 370 Syrian hamsters lined up head-to-tail!

Continuing to launch plane after plane, for a total of 44 attempts, Umeno just couldn’t top his earlier throw and reach the world record. He remarked that, unlike baseball, he couldn’t use a snap of the wrist, so his skill felt lacking. Fujiwara, however, commented that it was most likely an issue with his paper airplanes. Even though the two individuals of the golden team were full of self-reflection, the audience was still impressed. Let’s not forget that Umeno near-instantly broke the Japanese record. That’s an incredible feat, especially for someone completely unaccustomed to throwing paper airplanes.

Perhaps Umeno would have had better luck with the award-winning design developed by a Tokyo Institute of Technology student a few years ago.

▼ It probably would have allowed the use of his wrist snap.

紙を丸めて投げただけで賞状がもらえた。 pic.twitter.com/YCjMXCHg8N

— てるるん🐌🪂🐡 (@terurunchan) June 1, 2021

Umeno is now the Japanese record holder and finished off the day by remarking that, given another chance, he’d love to attempt it again.

While a great show, as the throwing technique is remarkably different to that of baseball, I may need to re-evaluate my standards for judging baseball players. Maybe how well they can intimidate their team members with a wrench?

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