It is often said that Japan takes its lead from the U.S.
It’s too bad that the umpires who are officiating in the Japan Series between the Yomiuri Giants and the Seibu Lions this year have taken to mimicking the poor performance of their Yankee brethren during this year’s World Series.
ESPN has a *very* long article on 21-year old pitching phenom Yu Darvish. It covers his interesting background (his Iranian father met his Japanese mother in the U.S.!), impresssive ability, and celebrity status.
The article discusses whether (or when) Darvish will go to the U.S. to play and then pivots to discuss a lot about Japanese professional baseball including the impact of the exodus of top talent to the U.S. Case in point was the impact Ichiro’s departure had on his team; attendance plummeted and they were eventually merged with another team. Xenophobia, real or perceived, is also mentioned. Some found it suspicious that Darvish’s obvious talent was ignored by many teams.
The article ends by pivoting once again to discuss the future of Japanese baseball via little leaguers playing all over Japan and the contrast with American little leaguers.
It’s really an interesting article, as long as you have the time to read it!
U.S. baseball card maker Topps has announced that it played an April Fools joke on baseball card collectors.
On February 6, Topps released a card for a Japanese high school pitcher named Kazuo “The Uzi” Uzuki, who boasted some pretty amazing stats.
Although listed at only 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds (1.8 meters and 75 kilograms), “The Uzi” was said to be known for his devastating 104 mph (167 kph) fastball and was on his way to becoming the first Japan-based high-schooler to jump straight to professional baseball in America.
The card of the fictitious Uzuki was included in every 72 packs of cards.
Thanks to Mr. Pink.
The NPR sports program (an apparent oxymoron, I know) Only a Game, has a nice story (audio) on Japanese baseball. It covers some of the differences between the U.S. and Japanese fans and game including practice and training, the A’s/Red Sox series, Matsuzaka, and the view of MLB in Japan. There’s also a second story about international baseball and future possibilities.
I know that Edward discussed Japanese baseball in this week’s podcast and it reflected well my experiences at games here. It is definitely different than going to an MLB game in the U.S. I’ll give my blog a shameless plug since I wrote a post on Japanese baseball with photos from some games I attended last year (go Carp!).
This weekend I had my fantasy baseball draft with my friends from back home (I got Hideki Matsui and Kosuke Fukudome). I’m curious: does fantasy baseball exist in Japan? If so, is it popular?
The Washington Post is among the bevy of news outlets running articles on baseball in Japan corresponding with the opening of the MLB season at the Tokyo Dome. This article is long, expansive, and meandering, but interesting nonetheless. It covers such disparate topics as yesterday’s baseball game, a history of Japanese players in the U.S. (starting with Masanori Murakami with the San Francisco Giants in 1964), the “Big 3″ (Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, and Daisuke Matsuzaka), and Japanese advertising in U.S. ballparks! I found the following quote interesting:
A total of 32 Japanese players have played major league baseball — and 15 of them were on team rosters as of mid-March. Five are making their debuts this year.
Whiting said there are now at least 50 players in Japan with the talent to make the jump — and nearly all of them are eager to do so. Under current rules, they cannot go to the States until they have played nine seasons in Japan.
“The really good players in Japanese all want to go the major leagues because of the money, the prestige and all the hassles of playing in Japan,” he said. “In Japan, you have to carry your own bags, travel by train and stay in second-class hotels. You also have to put up sometimes with abusive coaches and excessive practices.”
I didn’t realize that players had to play for 9 seasons before going to the U.S. Personally, I wish Ichiro could have played his entire career in the U.S. I think he could have had a crack at breaking the all time hits record held by Pete Rose. Speaking of Rose, I contend that Ichiro is the best hitter since Charlie Hustle. His swing is pure beauty.
The United States baseball world has invaded Japan to start the 2008 season with the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s. A byproduct of the corresponding wave of sportswriters is this entertaining piece via ESPN.com (the U.S. sports juggernaut). In 7 months here it has become apparent by all of the ads which feature them that Daisuke Matsuzaka (or Dice-K in U.S. parlance), Ichiro, and Matsui are heroes, but I didn’t realize the extent of it until I read that each has a *museum* dedicated to him! The best part of the article? Knowing that if I venture to Nagoya to the Ichiro museum, I can see his high school dental retainer in person!
Have you ever noticed that when two groups occupy a similar space, rivalries emerge? Whether you’re talking about Mac vs PC, Coke vs Pepsi, or the national rugby teams of Australia and New Zealand, each party will try as hard as they can to win against their hated rivals.
The top two private universities in Japan are Waseda and Keio, and like Harvard and Yale, the schools have a rivalry that goes back to their founding a century ago.
Keio University was founded in 1858 by Yukichi Fukuzawa, a visionary who travelled to the U.S. to study education at Brown University; he also promoted public education of all children and launched an influential early newspaper.
Waseda was launched in 1882 by a former samurai named Shigenobu Okuma who had been taught English by a missionary in Nagasaki using the Bible and the Declaration of Independence as his study guides.
Today the rivalry between the two schools is fierce, with Keio students mocking the name of Waseda for containing the characters for “rice field” and laughing at the many used book stores that can be found around the campus, implying that the students are too poor to buy new books, while Waseda-ites dislike the snobbery of Keio’s wealthier students. Everything comes to a head twice a year with the So-Kei (Waseda and Keio) baseball match, which is watched by so many students that classes at both schools have to be cancelled.
The rivalry between Waseda and Keio extends far beyond the current generation of students, since many members of the government are alums of the two schools.
When Japan moved to update the faces appearing on its currency a few years ago, Prime Minister Koizumi (a Keio alum) made darn sure that no one removed Mr. Fukuzawa from the 10,000 note, which was the only bill that didn’t get refreshed.
Remora writes in to point us in the direction of The Official Online Shop of the Boston Red Sox, where they are selling a complation of Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka’s favorite inspirational tracks by both Japanese and American artists, from R&B and Hip Hop to Rock.
Music they claim will “get you pumped up for your next big start!”
Music from the Mound - Track List
Price:$14.99
Once disgraced Japanese pitcher Kizuhito Tadano is poised to return to Japan . . . as a pitcher. He’d been banned in the past for having performed in a gay porn video.
He’s been in the US which, as stated before, seems to be the new way that Japanese embroiled in scandals “go to rehab.” But unlike disgraced popstars who come to the US to “study English,” Tadano was at least able to continue to play baseball, which he did recently with the Cleveland Indians till Japan welcomed him back.
As for whether Tadano will engage in a repeat performance of his scurrilous performance:
“I was young, playing baseball, and going to college and my teammates and I needed money.”
Tadano also emphatically denied being homosexual stating, “I’m not gay. I’d like to clear that fact up right now.”
If you are wondering how the Japanese are viewing the recent Boston Red Sox sweep of the World Series, here is a shot of three major Japanese sports dailies that I picked up at the local train station yesterday.
All three of the papers feature a large photograph if Daisuke (Dice-K) Matsuzaka with the headline Matsuzaka sekai-ichi (Matsuzaka, number 1 in the world!).* The fact that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series is mentioned in small sub-headlines, almost as an afterthought.
Though Matsuzaka performed very well during the World Series, I would hardly say that he won the 162-game season, elimination playoffs, and World Series all on his own.
* In the sake of fairness, I should point out that one of the papers shown above (Sports Nichi) tempers their headline somewhat by saying Matsuzaka sekai-ichi shiawase (Matsuzaka, happiest in the world), noting that Matsuzaka and his wife also are expecting their second child in March 2008. However, the upcoming birth was given a bigger headline than the Red Sox victory.
A baseball batting centre in Kitakyushu has unveiled a pitching machine it calls the Super Monster.
At the Mihagino Batting Center, until November 4, you can try to lay bat on a pitch coming at you at a staggering 200km/h (or 125mph).
[A spokesman for the centre] says the Super Monster Machine is the fastest artificial pitching device in the world, with balls taking just 0.3 seconds to reach the plate after being hurled.
Nearly 80 percent of those who have tried their hand in a 15-pitch session with the machine have failed to get bat to ball.
The report adds that the machine pitches nearly 40km/h faster than record fastest pitch in Japanese pro baseball - Yokohama BayStars’ Mark Klune’s 161 km/h.
EAST WINDUP CHRONICLE (EWC) has a post that is highly critical of Seibu Lions pitcher Jason Johnson, in which they say he is personification of the Ugly Gaijin in Japan - those who think Roppongi is Japan, complain that things here are so different from the U.S., etc.
Some of the commenters to the piece say that EWC was too hard on the young pitcher, while others think the criticism is spot on.
What say you, Japundits?
Boston Red Sox Japanese player Daisuke Matsuzaka (14-12) found out that life ain’t all peanuts and Cracker Jack in the Big Leagues when he was shelled mercilessly by the Balitmore Orioles in a recent game.
The $103 million Matsuzaka lasted only 2-2/3 innings during which he gave up eight runs on six hits and gave up two runs on bases-loaded walks
Rick Guttormson, an American pitcher with the Pacific League Softbank Hawks has become the first player in the history of Japanese baseball ever to have failed a drug test.
According to the league’s commissioner, Rick Guttormson tested positive for a banned substance and has been suspended for 20 days. Guttormson’s team, the Softbank Hawks in Japan’s Pacific League, were fined $63,000.
Japanese baseball officials say a postgame test July 13 revealed Finasteride in Guttormson’s system. Finasteride is in a hair-growing agent the 30-year-old Guttormson has been taking for two years. It’s banned because it can be used as a masking agent.
Perhaps he could claim the test is a bald-face lie. . .
The Chicago Cubs organization finally has won the right to use its trademark logo in Japan.
Last September, the Japan Patent Office ruled that the Cubs could not register the trademark because it was “not familiar in Japan,” and because they feared people would be confused into thinking it was the trademark of UBS AG, a Swiss financial group. This was despite the facts that UBS AG does not have a logo that looks anything like the Chicago Cubs logo and that UBS AG did not file any objection against the baseball team registering their logo in Japan. In other words, the whole problem was nothing but a figment of the imagination of some bureaucrat flexing his muscles.
Confusing?
The matter was finally settled when the Intellectual Property High Court ruled that, “people would normally recognize (the trademark) as that of Cubs.”
The court’s ruling was based on the logic that the Cubs are well known in Japan thanks to Sammy Sosa’s playing with the club, and the fact that the Cubs are in the National League Central Division as are the St. Louis Cardinals for whom So Taguchi plays.
It looks like Nippon Ham Fighters pitcher Yu Darvish has outgrown smoking and pachinko, and has moved on to more grown up pursuits with announcement that Yu and his actress girlfriend Saeko are very much in love and very much expecting.
Though the two just met in May, Saeko is already three months pregnant and the couple is expected to tie the knot by the end of the year, after the end of the baseball season.
Now that Barry Bonds has surpassed Hank Aaron on the all-time home run list, pundits are again talking about who is the true home run king and which records really “count”. Here is a pretty good article that discusses the career and home run hitting achievements of Sadaharu Oh.
“Jaa, nihonjin pitchaa, gaikokujin catchaa…”
SMAP member Masahiro Nakai’s sensitive and thoughtful comment on a play during Friday night’s Boston Redsox game against the New York Yankees, live from Fenway Park. The ‘foreign’ catcher in question was American Jason Varitek.
I saw the most interesting thing the other day, and wondered if anyone knows what this is all about. I was watching a Japanese high school team play a Taiwanese high school team at a baseball tournament the other day, and after the game, the usual “thank you” to the opposing team was down with bows and handshakes and high fives by both teams, as a gesture of sportsmanship. Of course, the pro teams do it in Japan after each game, too.
But here’s the interesting part. After that normal thank you to the opposing team, the Japanese team did one more thing: the boys, age 14 or so, went to the third base line, stood on the line, and then bowed TO THE FIELD and say ThANK YOU to the dirt, to the diamond, to the field of Shinto Dreams! I never saw this before, not in Japan, not on TV, not anywhere, until yesterday.
My question to baseball experts out there: is this a Shinto ritual? And it is performed only by schoolboy teams, or do pro teams do it also?
One expert I queried told me in an email:
“If they were facing the field, they were probably paying their respects to
the diamond…. Kind of like the way judo guys bow before then enter or leave the
dojo. Shinto? Could be…. But more like bushido, which was how baseball was
treated when it first came to Japan…..Even some professional baseball players, when they first come onto to the field for the day from the dugout and when they go into the dugout at the end of the day will face the diamond, doff their caps, and bow respectfully.”
Sometimes it seems as if Japan has an association for just about everything.
The other day when walking around Tokyo, I came across the headquarters for something called the Japan Rubber Baseball Association.
