Big Windup!

The series, set in Saitama Prefecture, follows the story of Ren Mihashi. Mihashi was the previous ace pitcher in his middle school's baseball team, but it seems that he only got the position because his grandfather was the owner of the school. His teammates (especially the team's catcher, Hatake) hated him, and they always lost their games. Mihashi is thoroughly convinced that he is a lousy baseball pitcher, and feels guilty because he believes that he is responsible for all the losses.

Mihashi graduates through middle school with extremely low self-esteem. But in truth Mihashi is really a hardworking and skillful pitcher, and the main reason why his team always lost all the games is because of bad cooperation, because his teammates never talked about the game with him, and they did not try to come up with a plan or strategy to fight against their rivals. Mihashi then transfers to Nishiura High School with plans of quitting baseball because he thinks he is not good enough to succeed at it, though he still loves the game deeply. However, he is dragged into Nishiura's baseball team by their coach, Momoe, while watching the team training outside the field.

While growing up in Saitama, Asa Higuchi became familiar with baseball by reading the manga Dokaben. When she was in high school, the story of a local baseball team wound up inspiring her to come up with the idea for her own baseball manga. In the original version, Mihashi never spoke and characters like Momoe, Kanou and Haruna did not exist yet. Following that, she collected data on high school baseball for over 10 years in order to create the manga, and she worked with the school she had attended, Urawanishi High School, in the year prior to the serialization.

Five months prior to the serialization in Monthly Afternoon, Higuchi published a one shot in the magazine titled "The Basic of Basics". The story was centered around the characters of the Musashino Dai Ichi school, who would show up in the series itself.

In 2007, Big Windup! won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga. 24 million copies sold. 09 million copies sold.

By November 2019, the manga had over 15 million copies in circulation. By August 2023, it had over 18 million copies in circulation.