Moshidora - Episode 4

With a new training regime implemented, things are looking up for Moshidora's central baseball team... yet they still aren't consistently getting good results, and their latest match suggests they're still some way off the kind of quality required to win the nationals.  So, what next for this Drucker-inspired side?

The next suggestion to catch Minami's eye is that of "innovation"; to (quite literally in the sense of baseball) to something game-changing in the hope of getting a step up on the competition.  While the end-game of this is obviously rather grandiose, we do see innovation coming in a more subtle form in this episode courtesy of Nikai.  Despite not being the best player on the team in practical terms (indeed, he can't even break into the first team) he clearly has an eye for the technical aspects of the game together with a fair bit of business acumen himself - thus, after some self-searching he decides to hang up his boots as a player and join the team's management.  I can't help but feel that the team has entirely too many management-level individuals now, but oh well...

As a result of this change, the team finds ways to interact with other relevant clubs within their school in the hope of gaining an all-important edge by the specialist training that other clubs can provide - thus, they assist the home economics club in the hope of improving their diet (although we only see them eating cake, worryingly) and hold sessions with the track and judo clubs to improve their speed, strength and so on.  All of these moves are pretty innovative in their own right, and certainly good ideas, but Minami and company aren't done yet, as they have even bigger fishes of on-field innovation to fry...

I know you're probably going to get bored of hearing me say this every day (talk about intensive 'blogging!), but I'm continuing to enjoy Moshidora as a quietly entertaining and mildly thought-provoking affair.  It might not be the most intensive management training you can imagine, but it does throw some important concepts out there without either over-complicating matters or being too preachy, so as a digestible slice of something to ponder every day it continues to work wonders.