Keisuke Baba (馬場 啓介, Baba Keisuke), also known as B-King and Curveball, is a character featured in Yakuza/Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 4. He is the leader of the B-Kings.
Appearance
Baba appears to be fairly tall and muscular with a light goatee facial hair. He has black hair in a buzzcut hair style and he has pale skin. In all his appearances, he has multiple piercings, including a right eyebrow piercing, left nostril piercing, left side labret piercing, and three helix piercings and an earlobe piercing in his left ear. All of his piercing jewelry is thick silver hoops. In Yakuza, he wears a backwards light brown flat brimmed flex fit baseball cap with a khaki colored crown and a striped green front brim. an unzipped black down jacket, a long silver chain necklace with a hexagram pendant, a nepeta green t-shirt. baggy dark gray jeans, and gray sneakers. In Yakuza Kiwami, his outfit is mostly the same, though his shoes appear to be gray canvas sneakers with a white rubber outsole and toe cap. In Yakuza 4, he retains his hat but wears a striped charcoal gray suit, a light gray dress shirt, black dress shoes, and a white, gray and lavender regimental necktie.
Background
Baba is the leader of the B-Kings Gang; a small crew of thugs that extort money from pedestrians on the streets of Kamurocho and do small time dirty work for various Tojo Clan families (most notably the Atobe Family). Baba, along with the rest of his gang, has a great passion for baseball; a sport he practices constantly at the Yoshida Batting Center.
Involvement
Yakuza/Yakuza Kiwami: 2005
B-Kings member Takashi tried to leave the gang to elope with his girlfriend Kyoka Atobe; the daughter of the Atobe Family patriarch for whom the B-Kings frequently did grunt work. Since Kyoka had stolen some of her father's money to facilitate their escape, the Atobe Family had men prowling the streets of Kamurocho to find the couple. They also tasked the B-Kings with aiding in tracking down and capturing their runaway member and the patriarch's daughter.
Baba and a group of his lackeys managed to find Takashi in the Yoshida Batting Center right after he'd gotten into a fight with Kazuma Kiryu. Since Takashi was the illegitimate son of the Florist of Sai, whom Kiryu owed a favor, the yakuza protected Takashi from his former gangmates and fought off Baba and his friends to give Takashi time to escaope.
Later on, Kiryu would run into Baba and his friends again while they were being shaken down by some yakuza from an unspecified family. Feeling bad for having beaten Baba and his crew before, Kiryu helps them fend off the men who'd been harassing them. Though Baba is still somewhat angry with Kiryu for beating him before, he nonetheless thanks him for the help.
Yakuza 4: 2010
Under the alias "Twisted Curve King", Baba invites Kiryu to the Yoshida Batting Center. In the years since his showdown with Kiryu, has left the gang life behind and become a professional baseball player and celebrity.
Despite his success, Baba's defeat at Kiryu's hands 5 years prior still haunts him, so he challenges Kiryu to hit a home run against one of his famous "twisted curve" pitches. Having a little time on his hands, Kiryu agrees and; much to Baba's shock, he manages to home run one of his curveballs.
Impressed by the fact that Kiryu has managed to beat him again in spite of the fact that he had the advantage, a newly invigorated Baba decides to take a break from baseball so that he can perfect his pitching even further; hoping that someday he will finally be able to beat Kiryu.
Fighting Style
Yakuza
Baba has a unique fighting consisting of the generic goon moves with the chinpara headbutt and a spinning lariat.
Yakuza Kiwami
Baba uses Shinada's moveset. He is an aggressive fighter, relying on the Rush Combo, and for some reason, can do Shinada's first finisher after the second Rush Combo hit. In the The B-King's Misfortune substory, he copies Kazama's fighting style.
Gallery
