Female knuckleballer lands with US minor league team

Eri Yoshida is like many girls her age. She has an affinity for torn blue jeans, loves music and giggles uncontrollably, sometimes for no reason at all. The 18-year-old Japanese teen also throws a pretty mean knuckleball. Yoshida was introduced on Friday as a member of the Chico Outlaws, a minor league team that plays in the independent Golden Baseball League, based in California. The press conference came less than two weeks after Yoshida graduated from high school and only a few hours after she landed in San Francisco on a flight from Tokyo. Yoshida already owns the distinction of being the first female to be drafted by a pro team in Japan, selected in the seventh round of the 2009 draft by the Kobe 9 Cruise.

* AP