Ling和Base

Baseball Japanese

Communicationwins games.

Ling 和(Wa) Base trains international free agents and other baseball professionals in Japanese for everyday life and practical career use, improving player experiences and team outcomes.

Start the conversationSee the method

Team solutions for Japan’s professional clubs.

Talent crosses the ocean. Language doesn’t.

A catcher calls time and jogs to the mound. The infield gathers, and the plan for the biggest pitch of the night takes shape in thirty seconds of Japanese. Your starter catches maybe ten words of it.

The bench signs change in September. The explanation happens fast, in the dugout, between innings — in Japanese.

The clubhouse laughs at something. He laughs a beat late. Every night, a little further from the team.

None of this shows up in a scouting report. All of it shows up in games. Communication is a baseball skill — we train it like one.

«recta adentro»

inside fastball

Priority one — the job

Baseball Japanese

The fastball is the same in any language; the conversation about it isn’t. We train the Japanese your players actually hear, from their arrivial in Japan to their first hero interview.

  • In-game language
  • Injuries & Sports Medicine
  • Team Communication
  • Hero interviews & media

Priority two — the life

Everday Japanese

Games end. Japan doesn’t. The second track covers the Japanese used in everday life. Language skills for the train, the restaurant, the team dinner, the neighborhood help a player build real connections, so that the season stops feeling like a hotel stay.

«la estación»

the station

Built for Performance.

Players aren't here to play, they're here to perform. LingWaBase differs from traditional teaching methods by optimizing for team schedules and player availability.

Flexible by design
We tailor-make each program iteration for you organization's needs, offering remote, hybrid, and in-person options built around your desired time frame and deliverables.
Accessible by delivery
People learn better in their native language. All LingWaBase programs, content, and curriculums are available in English and Spanish to maximize results and player outcomes.
Powerful by approach
A textbook built for professional baseball with 30 real-world scenarios. Short classroom intensives held on gamedays, taught by seasoned educational professionals. Informal conversation practice with native speakers to prepare players for the clubhouse. Everything we do is streamlined for on-field and off-field performance.

MEET THE TEAM

We built LingWaBase because we kept watching the same story: a club invests heavily in a player from Havana or Santo Domingo, and his bat arrives before his voice does.

Between the three of us, we speak the three languages of your clubhouse — Spanish, English, and Japanese. Two of us trained at the Stanford-affiliated Yokohama IUC; one of us has lived the move from Latin America to a Japanese working life firsthand. We study language the way your staff studies swings: as a skill that responds to focus, attention, and action.

We’d like to show you what that looks like for your roster.

— Galen, Sydney & Sho

  • Galen Hughes

    Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer

    Builds the product. Ex-Microsoft engineer. Founder of Lotus Technologies, a bilingual web agency bridging Japan and the world. Georgia Tech, BS Computer Science and MS Japanese. Trained alongside Sydney at Stanford’s Inter-University Center in Japan.

  • Sydney Olney

    Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer

    Runs and develops the curriculum. Grew up in a baseball family, hearing her father’s stories of overseas players and international free agents. A decade of experience teaching Japanese to learners of all ages and cultural backgrounds. Trained at Stanford’s Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies and earned a Master’s degree in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia.

  • Sho Kurita

    Co-Founder, Chief Revenue Officer

    Sits with your club. Japanese-Colombian, born and raised in Colombia; six years of professional sales in Japan.

Bring to your clubhouse.

Tell us about your roster. We’ll come back within two working days with what a season of LingWaBase looks like for your club — in English, Japanese, or Spanish.