Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Tokyo Style!

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Although famous for being an American sport, baseball is actually quite popular in Japan, surpassing even soccer. As such, there are many professional baseball teams in the capital, including the Yomiuri Giants who boast the most impressive arena in the city.



One of the best ways to experience the Japanese love for baseball is to catch a game at the Tokyo Dome. Fans come out in large numbers and go into a frenzy when a player hits a home run, culminating in a festive atmosphere worth being part of. The Giants are the oldest (12-26-34) professional sports team in Japan.

Being a Giants fan since they moved from NY to San Francisco, I must see the Tokyo version of the Giants at the Tokyo Dome. I arranged for tickets, delivered to our hotel front desk for Saturday night's game.

This weekend is the season opening series for baseball here in Japan. And being in a domed stadium ensures the game will be played, and that we will be comfortable, and most likely, well fed.

The Giants have won twenty-two championships, the last in 2012. Their notable exports include Hideki Matsui (Yankees), Koji Uehara (Red Sox), Hisanori Takahashi (Orioles), and Shun Yamaguchi (Blue Jays). The Giants have former MLB player, Rougned Odor, a former San Diego Padres infielder on the current team. Their current star is Kazuma Okamoto, with 41 homeruns and 93 RBIs last season.

BTW, the only baseball highlights from the US center only on Shohei Ohtani. Of course!!!
Mike and I are going to a Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants game on Saturday night. It also happens to be opening weekend for the baseball season. Let me provide some background for baseball in Japan. This is from the 1976 Baseball Research Journal:


Baseball was introduced into Japan in 1873 by an American teacher in Tokyo, Horace Wilson, and the game caught on very quickly through much of the island nation. Most Americans are, in fact, surprised to learn that the history of baseball in the land of Nippon goes back for more than a century.



At first, the Japanese had difficulty in understanding the rules of the game-and in that regard Baron Hiroshi Hiraoka in 1877 traveled to the United States and brought back to Japan a translation of the standard baseball rules. Hiraoka, who worked with Wilson in teaching the game to the Japanese, is considered by many sports historians to have played a more important role than Wilson in setting the game in motion in Japan. Hiraoka, incidentally, was one of the first individuals to be inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame at Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium.



Masaru Ikei, a SABR member who lives in Yokohama, maintains that governmental leaders and many former “Daimyo” (feudal lords) favored supporting baseball and viewed the game as an American version of a martial sport like judo or kendo (a form of sword play). Since it was originally viewed as a martial sport, baseball was at first played every day, regardless of weather conditions.



While the first games in Japan were rather informal sandlot-type affairs, it wasn’t long before baseball became a regular part of athletic programs at major universities, including Keio, Waseda, Rikkyo and Meiji in Tokyo. It wasn’t long either before American college teams started to come over to challenge the Japanese collegians.



In 1878, the University of Wisconsin became the country’s first academic institution to send over a varsity nine to play a series of games against Japanese university teams. Against Keio University, the Badgers won three straight hard-fought games before being swamped 8-0. During the next twenty-odd years many American collegiate teams, including Chicago, Stanford, Harvard, California, Washington, Indiana and Illinois universities traveled across the Pacific to take on Japanese students in baseball.



Thus, the history of baseball in the land of the rising sun becomes inextricably linked with the continued and regular visits of American teams to all parts of the country. Although college teams kept coming steadily for exhibition tours in Nippon, it was the visits of the U. S. professional teams that eventually had the deepest impact.



The Yomiuri Giants, who came to be universally known as the Tokyo Giants, were given a “test” run in the summer of 1935, playing exhibition games against various corporation and college teams. They also made a trip to the United States to improve upon their techniques and played a long series of exhibition contests against various American minor league teams.



At the same time, Shoriki interested other businessmen in the new baseball circuit, which came to be called the Japanese Professional Baseball League. Later, when the Pacific League was formed in 1950, the Japanese Professional League changed its name to the Central League.



Shoriki’s pioneering efforts were almost entirely successful, and seven teams, based in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, were ready for competitive play in the 1936 inaugural season. In 1937, an eighth team was added.



Four of the original seven teams of the Japanese Professional Baseball League, including the Tokyo Giants, of course, have remained active to this day: the others are the Hanshin Tigers of Osaka and the Chunichi Dragons of Nagoya, both in the Central League, and the Hankyu Braves of Osaka who joined the new Pacific League in 1950.

Enough background, my next email will concentrate on our baseball experience in Tokyo.

The game has been the highlight of our trip so far. The best part is the young lady beer vendors, who have a big smile. And they run up and down the aisles with speed and ease. And a beer costs approximately $6USD!



The fans are great, always doing a song, or cheering in unison, with the help of a drum and a trumpet. Even the visiting team has designated sections! The game was seemingly nonstop fun, though the Yomiuri Giants lost. The stadium, the Tokyo Dome is great for viewing, the food is interesting, and fans are so polite. Quite a contrast to American baseball. MLB could take a hint from Japanese baseball. It is nonstop fun, quite entertaining, and everyone is high energy, even the cheerleaders, ground crew, and players.

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