Japanese Baseball

Japanese Baseball

Japanese Baseball has existed in Japan since 1873. It first appeared amid the social, cultural and technological spasms Japan endured on the heels of the Meiji restoration. The game began as a club sport; Japan's first team was the Shinbashi Athletic Club Athletics (composed mostly of people associated with Japan's first railroad which ran from Shinbashi, in Tokyo, to Yokohama). For a relatively good treatment of Japan's early baseball history see Robert Whiting's "You've Gotta Have Wa,"

The sport became popular with schoolboys and eventually won recognition from the government. Amateur baseball was the only game in Japan until the Shibaura Club was organized in the early 1920s. The Shibaura Club was founded in Shibaura, Tokyo and eventually ended up playing in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture under the sponsership of the Hankyu railroad. Eventually the club foundered in Takarazuka as well.

In 1934, the Yomiuri Shinbum organized another professional team, Dai Nippon. After a 1935 North American tour, Dai Nippon was renamed the Giants. Soon other teams were formed. In 1936, Japan took the big step. In April, Japan's first profesional "season" began at Koshien Kyujo near Osaka. Six teams, not including the Giants, took part in three Spring tournaments played in Koshien, Narumi Kyujo (in Nagoya) and Takarazuka near Osaka. The Tigers won the spring league with five wins and four losses.

This was not to be an anomaly. From 1936 to 1939, the Tigers were the best team in Japanese pro baseball. It was not until 1939 that their chief rivals, the Giants, began to dominate. In 1939, the schedule was changed from a split season (spring and fall) to a single 96 game season. The next season (1940), the schedule was expan...

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...bits and customs. Baseball, like life, doesn't stand still. It is always changing. Recognizing its changes are one of the pleasures of being a fan. The game changes and some part of it is completely new. Sometimes the game runs in cycles and we will see something which may look new, but which in fact is very old.

A rebuttal

One reader has suggested that Horner's ire with Japanese baseball was justified in that he was continually being called out on pitches well out of the strike zone. The same reader suggested that there was an effort on the part of the Giants at one point during the season to keep Horner from braeking some record held by then manager Sadaharu Oh. This is not an unusual play in Japan. Former Tiger slugger Randy Bass was never thrown even a reasonable facsimile of a strike in his persuit of the Japanese single-season home run record, held by Oh.