A Ripper Night With All The Bunting And Foul Balls

There was a time in my life when I loved Japanese baseball, but I eventually got turned off and drifted away from the game. This week, though, a great mate persuaded me to go and watch a game at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, and I had the time of my life. It was tremendous fun.

Like most Aussies of my generation, I’m sports mad, so it was almost natural for me to take an interest in baseball, Japan’s most popular game, when I got here in the late 1980s. I loved it and went to watch the occasional game.

My later work would involve me taking a professional interest in the sport, which wasn’t hard to do. I was turned off a little by the Japanese reaction to a guy called Hideo Nomo. He had been a pitcher with a weird action. He had some success here before suddenly retiring and announcing he’d go and play Major League Baseball in the U.S. He was widely derided for the decision; some thinking he had delusions of grandeur to take on the Americans at their own game; others disgusted that he turned his back on Japan and furious at his use of a manager demanding he be paid a hefty sum for his talents.

Based on the difficulties I’d had dealing with Nomo’s character’s awkward throwing style in baseball video games I’d played on the Nintendo Family Computer, I thought he might be a chance to do OK in the big leagues, though not as good as MLB, itself, where you can proclaim yourself a world champion in a sport played in two countries. Nomo did far better than expected, though, becoming a sensation in the U.S. Suddenly, many of the people who’d looked down their noses at Nomo when he “retired” from Japanese baseball to try out in the U.S. were wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers shirt with his name and number on it. Those shirts were ubiquitious in Japan in the summer of 1995, and the hypocrisy of the fickle fandom left a bit of a rotten aftertaste.

Bloody hell, went off on a tangent of a rant there, eh? Sorry about that. Anyway, Nomo changed Japanese baseball forever, making it completely acceptable for the country’s top pro players to head to the major league to take on the world’s best. And I thought that change had gone down to reducing the local game to being a feeder league with little appeal. I was wrong, though. But it took me until this week to find that out.

My mate asked me to go watch the Tokyo Yakult Swallows play the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. I wasn’t that keen on the baseball, but did want to meet my friend, who is one of my dearest cobbers. The game itself was a seesaw affair. The Swallows took the lead early and held onto it until the middle innnings, which was great because every time Yakult scores, its fans pull out their brolleys as a sign for the opposition pitcher to hit the showers and dance. It creates a great, fun-filled atmosphere.

The visitors came back, though, and appeared to have the game won with a 4-2 lead and two out in the bottom of the ninth inning. It wasn’t too late (even though it was past my normal bedtime), but then Yakult’s last batter whacked the night’s first home run into the stands and the game was into extra innings. Apparently, most baseball plays until there’s a winner, but not in Japan, where only three more innings can be added for either team to achieve a result, and then declared a tie if they can’t do so.

It was exciting, despite a lot of faffing around with changing pitchers and throwing to first base and piss-farting around with a powder bag. The whole night had been exciting really, with great company, superb summer weather with evening taking the edge off the scorching heat of the daytime, and the team bringing out the suit-clad dancing girls every couple of innings so they could clap their hands and disappear again for lord alone know what reason.

It was also great watching the crowd and the beer girls with their kegs on backpacks racing up and down the bleacher stairs. Those kids hustled!

Eventually, neither team could pull off a win. I didn’t really care about the result of the game, but the outcome for me was that I’d had a tremendous night, even though it would be about midnight before I got home and I would be due to rise just four hours later. It was a fantastic night and I look forward to going to the baseball again.