When 772 pitches isn't enough

July 22, 2013 7:03 AM

Tomohiro Anraki might be the next big Japanese pitcher, if he manages to survive high school baseball in Japan.

As explained in the article, Koshien isn't just a high school baseball playoff, it's a massive event, and very large percentage of Japanese TVs are tuned into the games. Legends are born on the backs of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds.

posted by Ghidorah (20 comments total)

He has thick legs and a surprisingly American ass, and when his feet dig into the dirt, he ripples like a sprinter.

The article linked is an interesting story about Japanese baseball and more than one fascinating prospective player.

But that's a real WTF sentence up there.
posted by chavenet at 7:20 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

A surprisingly American ass
posted by Navelgazer at 7:27 AM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

Great post. Man, I love baseball writing.

I taught at a school (and lived in a town) with a team that regularly makes it to Koshien - Tsuruga Kehi. My father-in-law (like everyone else) used to watch Koshien fanatically, he even watched while he lay dying in the hospital 14 years ago this summer.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:14 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm not surprised that the article cites Robert Whiting, as he's written a trio of books on the subject of "the Samurai Way of Baseball" and the history and culture of the sport in Japan. As he writes in this commentary piece about his last book on the topic:

Baseball was introduced early in the Meiji era by American professors and became popular when the First Higher School of Tokyo, an elite prep school for students aged 18–22, defeated a team of Americans from the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club in a series of games in 1896, which received wide press coverage and turned the players into nationwide heroes. Ichiko, as the school team was known, was managed by a 26-year-old named Kanae Chuman, a former player, who believed that his team should ignore the American way of playing and devise a system that suited Japanese. This involved a year-round, often bloodstained training regimen, and two to three months of practice before a team played its first game. It centered around the martial arts idea that training, as demonstrated by famed judo teacher Jigoro Kano years earlier, should be an ordeal the player must endure to strengthen him mentally as well as physically... In the early part of the 20th century, Waseda’s Suishu Tobita, the most influential college baseball manager in the history of Japan, copied the Ichiko system, which he called “bushido baseball,” and which he declared was “the only true form of the game.” He invoked concepts of loyalty, courage and honor and exhorted his players to “practice until you die,” or at least until they had “collapsed on the ground and froth was coming out of their mouths.”

To be fair, while Whiting is a great source, he's not without his critics (as the linked piece notes). Particularly when it comes to establishing that there is some kind of pure Japanese style of baseball that fundamentally reflects the "national character" of Japan, he's had a long running back-and-forth with William Kelley who writes:

A third consideration that opens up a broader social history of Japanese history is that insistence on a samurai way of baseball may have been the dominant playing ideology of the early to mid-twentieth century, but it was not unopposed by other philosophies. Not all schools, universities and coaches were persuaded of its virtues, and there was a much wider field of playing philosophies, strategies and training styles.

I get the sense that those two are really arguing over how to broadly interpret the history of Japanese baseball, rather than the specifics. Both acknowledge that there is the sort of harsh, demanding style seen in the linked article, but diverge over it's source and ubiquity.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:28 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

He threw virtually every pitch for Saibi at Koshien, including a 13-inning complete game in which he threw 232 pitches. But in the awful final, he fell apart, terrifyingly and completely, eventually losing 17-1, pulled only after he'd thrown his 772nd pitch over five games in nine days.

Simply astounding. For the less baseball-savvy, typically a starting pitcher in the MLB will pitch only once every five days (resting the other days), throwing around one hundred pitches, and they seldom pitch a complete nine inning game any more.
posted by exogenous at 8:37 AM on July 22, 2013

Baseball really is practised as a martial art in Japan, right down to the tonsure (shaved head) baseball players sport. I can't speak for how creativity is valued in Japanese baseball, but players, from Little League on up have to adopt a harsh training style, almost like "shugyo", the training and deprivation monks and mendicants must go through. Training seven days a week, all day on weekends, until 9pm on weeknights.

To say there is not a Japanese approach to the game would be just plain wrong.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:39 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

But that's a real WTF sentence up there.

I snickered also, but the ass is seriously something baseball scouts notice.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:40 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

How long of a career can a pitcher who plays pro ball in Japan expect to have?
posted by popechunk at 8:49 AM on July 22, 2013

But that's a real WTF sentence up there.

I snickered also, but the ass is seriously something baseball scouts notice.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:40 AM on July 22 [1 favorite +] [!]

Hah! Thanks for that. Plus it's eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 9:13 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

(My new sockpuppet is going to be "en forme de pomme.")
posted by en forme de poire at 9:46 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

That pitching coach lives up to his name.

"Bad mechanics," he says. "Too much thinking." - Mr Yoda
posted by springload at 9:57 AM on July 22, 2013

2012 NY Times article on Hiroki Kuroda's high school experience

Summer practices in the heat and humidity of Osaka lasted from 6 a.m. until after 9 p.m. Kuroda was hit with bats and forced to kneel barelegged on hot pavement for hours.
posted by any major dude at 10:11 AM on July 22, 2013

Lest it seem like I am only here for the butts, I thought the article was really fascinating and I don't even usually read sports writing (though if there's more that approaches this quality I may have to start). also butts
posted by en forme de poire at 10:13 AM on July 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

if there's more that approaches this quality I may have to start

Roger Angell
posted by KokuRyu at 10:58 AM on July 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Summer practices in the heat and humidity of Osaka lasted from 6 a.m. until after 9 p.m. Kuroda was hit with bats and forced to kneel barelegged on hot pavement for hours.


Not to mention having to fight a different group of bullies from rival high schools every issue.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:32 PM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

For me, I'm kind of torn. Going to a Japanese baseball game is an amazing experience. American games just don't come close. For example, Deadspin has been running a series on people at MLB games bringing books or even doing homework, which is almost unthinkable here. If your team is at bat, you stand and cheer, and sing for each batter, and usually, there are three or four songs for each player.

My father-in-law was stunned when we took him to a White Sox game.* Not because of how awful it was, but by the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to throw your peanut shells on the ground. At the end of the game, most fans clean up after themselves.

On the other hand, baseball in Japan is dominated by extreme right wing beliefs. Coaches instill them in their teams, players grow into coaches on their own, and spread the concept of Nihonjinron, which is essentially a nationalistic theory of Japanese exceptionalism. All of that, plus the solidly brutal training players endure, it can be difficult to ignore it.

But then, it would be unfair to ignore that there are some positives. At my school, the baseball club is the only club whose test scores don't drop radically during the year because they also study as a team. Some the kids do benefit from the structure the team gives them. Then again, my wife's family lives near Narita Kokusai High School, who regularly make it pretty far in the prefectural championship,mand have gone on to Koshien. Every year on January 1st, the team is on the field, cleaning and preparing the grounds at six am for their first practice of the year while most people spend the day with family.

yes, White Sox. The Cubs were out of town, and the Brewers were too. We seriously debated checking on Detroit and Cleveland, too. Gah. Give me fresh draft beer brought to your seat by a pleasant, friendly server over a surly middle aged guy selling rapidly warming cans of miller lite any day.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:04 PM on July 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'd love to see a baseball game in Japan some day. At an old job of mine we had a lot of clients and visitors from Japan and took them to Orioles and Nats games. One of them confided in me that he actually preferred (and played) American football, which to my amazement marked him there as some sort of nerd.
posted by exogenous at 6:17 PM on July 22, 2013

The thing is, I hadn't even made the connection between the article and time of year. At the doctors office just now, the TV was set to the Chiba prefectural playoffs. Right now Senshu Matsudo is beating Ichiritsu Kashiwa 4-1. Mrs. Ghidorah just mailed to say that, at the city sports complex near our house, her hometown powerhouse will be playing at 1:30. We've got the day off, and although the heat is brutal, we're there with bells on.

What I said earlier about the crowd at Japanese ball games goes double for high school. In addition to the high school band playing fight songs and such (at this level, there simply aren't bad high school bands, they are all awesome), and your standard cheerleaders, there's something even better. The JV guys, they've got their own space in the stands, and they always have fantastic routines, running up and down the stairs, along the rows, cheering their teammates on. It's just awesome to watch.

That, and at the pro stadium where some of the high school playoff games are held, they still sell beer. Heaven, I tell you.

Edited to add: Senshu 4, Kashiwa 2, top of the seventh.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:25 PM on July 22, 2013

I can remember being back in Japan for a visit, and having the 15-inning game mentioned in the article on in the car while it was going on. We got to our destination, put the car in park (so that the car navigation system would switch back from map-mode to TV-mode, but still enjoy the air conditioning) and didn't - no, couldn't - get out of the car until the game ended. I think the author did a decent job of describing not only the emotion, but the gravity of that game. That's when sport is at its best: when some stars arise and put their teams on their back, and say "I'm not going to give this up". And when two go head to head like that, it's an event worth remembering.
posted by Metro Gnome at 6:44 PM on July 22, 2013

yes, White Sox. The Cubs were out of town, and the Brewers were too

So you decided to watch the team that has won the most World Series out of those three- excellent choice!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:39 AM on July 23, 2013