is a Japanese

Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''. Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...

(NPB)

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

who last played for the

Yomiuri Giants The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They ...

in Japan's

Central League The or is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League in the annual Japan Series. It currently consist ...

. In October, 2015, Fukuda was named as a result of an investigation conducted by the Giants into illegal betting on professional and high school baseball games by its players. On 9 November 2015, the Giants organization terminated Fukuda's contract, along with fellow pitchers

Shoki Kasahara (born January 9, 1991 in Fukuoka) is a Japanese former professional baseball player who played for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball from 2012 to 2015. His younger brother Taiga is also a professional baseball player cur ...

and

Ryuya Matsumoto (born April 29, 1993) is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher who last played for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball. In November 2015 he was one of three Giants players handed a penalty of indefinite disqualification ...

. On 10 November the NPB league commissioner penalized the three players with indefinite disqualification. Under league rules, Fukuda will be able to apply for readmission to the league after 5 years if he satisfies the commissioner that he is remorseful for his actions. The disqualification extends to American

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

and the professional leagues in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. The players avoided permanent disqualification because the investigation found no evidence that they were involved in fixing matches. The Giants were also fined ¥10 million over the incident and the team's representative at the NPB, Atsushi Harasawa, resigned to take responsibility.

References

External links

* 1983 births Japanese expatriate baseball players in the Dominican Republic Living people Nippon Professional Baseball pitchers Baseball people from Osaka Prefecture People from Kishiwada, Osaka Yomiuri Giants players Gigantes del Cibao players {{japan-baseball-pitcher-stub