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Olympia: Baseball comeback at Olympia: A home game for Japan

At the Tokyo Games, baseball is back to the Olympics after a long absence. US sport is hugely popular in Japan, but is interpreted like nowhere else.

“Players on the field have to act like gentlemen.” This is one of the first things that American journalist Robert Whiting thinks of Japanese baseball. Those Sport, which has been more popular than any other in the East Asian country over the last few decades, you play here in a completely different way than in the country of origin USA. The rules of the game are the same in both countries. “But that’s where the similarities stop,” Whiting writes in his book “Baseball Samurai Style.”

After 13 years of abstinence, the static game with large gloves as well as hard clubs and balls is part of the Olympic program again. In Japan there is hardly a competition that the audience looks forward to as much as this one. Also because the US professional league MLB does not assign the best players, the otherwise overpowering USA are considered beatable, so Japan is a hot candidate for gold. But winning the tournament would mean a lot more to the host country than a gold medal. It’s also about a kind of culture war in sport in general.

In sports such as sumo, judo, and karate, Japanese athletes bow before and after the fight

Anyone who has ever watched Japanese athletes or teams, regardless of the sport, will always notice their fair game. In the Japanese sports of sumo, judo and karate, athletes bow before and after the fight. In tennis, Japanese players almost never complain about referee decisions. In the National Football Museum in central Tokyo, an entire section is devoted to the fair play awards won by Japanese national teams of both sexes. “We pride ourselves on playing fair,” says the museum.

This is especially important in baseball. After all, Japan competes here above all with the USA, which made the sport popular in the East Asian country about a century ago. When Japan was destroyed by two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and various air strikes on other major cities during World War II, the victorious USA imposed a new constitution that banned the country from having a military. To this day, the United States is Japan’s big brother in terms of defense policy. Quite a few in the country see this as humiliation.

The Japanese professional league is considered the second strongest in the world

This is one of the reasons why unarmed combat, sport, is often used to squint across the Pacific. The game, which is run as a national sport in both countries, reveals the differences between the two countries again and again. In the Japanese professional league, for example, which is considered to be the second strongest in the world, a code of honor dictates that players should behave properly. And what is at most a phrase in the USA is taken at face value: “If there is a foul,” says Robert Whiting, “then you lift your hat and ask for forgiveness.” After all, Japanese players have to be a role model for society as a whole – which is hardly expected of the US players to the same extent.

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Several sports journalists and sociologists have puzzled over the past few decades why baseball became so popular in Japan that entire newspapers specialized in it and the country’s largest media company, Yomiuri, invested in the record champions, the Yomiuri Giants. And a reason is given again and again: No other sport emphasizes in the same way an interplay between individualism and collectivism, i.e. the performance of the individual and the performance as a team.

In baseball there is a duel in every game situation. The pitcher wants to throw the ball in such a way that the hitter cannot hit it and ultimately has to be eliminated. But if the hitter hits a hit, he can move from base to base or even manage a home run. These one-on-one situations are always carried out in the service of the collective. “You sacrifice yourself for the team,” says Jun Ikushima, sports journalist at TBS, one of Japan’s leading TV and radio stations.

Sacrifice five the troop is generally well received in Japan

Sacrifice for the troops is generally well received in Japan. In companies, it is at least superficially essential to make decisions collectively. The airs of loners are not welcome anywhere in the country. In baseball, for example, aging stars from the USA who wanted to shine in Japan’s professional league for a few more years have hit each other’s heads. Those who no longer want to train as hard or warm up in a collective with the other players will soon be demoted to reservists. Such a failure by foreign stars is then not analyzed in the media without satisfaction. Conversely, anyone who achieves something from Japan in the USA is missed, with a lot of pride, as a prodigal son. In early July, Shohei Ohtani, who has been under contract with the Los Angeles Angels since 2018, made baseball history when he was selected as both hitter and pitcher in the All-Star Game. In addition to Ohtani, the Japanese Yu Darvish and Yusei Kikuchi were also in the squad of the very best. The media excitement about this was so great that it was distracted for a few days by various controversies about the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

However, these three top Japanese players are not part of the Olympics – they are also not part of the US MLB league. This makes baseball a little less spectacular in the context of “Tokyo 2020”. But should Japan continue to move through the tournament as comfortably as before and actually win the gold medal next Saturday, you can at least claim that everything was fair.

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