Japanese Baseball

While in Hiroshima, the passenger in the cabin next to ours went to a Japanese baseball game. Hiroshima has a team in Japan’s professional baseball league. The stadium looks like those in the US, except on a more compact footprint due to the scarcity of space here.

Our friend said that the team’s uniforms looked like a knockoff of the Cincinnati Reds. Most of the game seemed like ours, except they had cheerleaders. The fans also all had miniature bats that they waved in the air in unison as they followed the various cheers.

I had seen a piece on 60 Minutes TV show about Japanese baseball. Some American players play here, but typically get frustrated. The umpires here apply the rules differently. Once there was a ball that one umpire thought cleared the fence for a home run, while another umpire though it bounced over the fence for a ground rule double. In the US, this would have been called one way or the other very quickly. In Japan, after conferring among the umpires and with both managers, they compromised on calling a triple. This conclusion was despite there being no rule that allowed for such a decision.

The other umpiring example was how they called the strike zone. If a pitcher is much better than other pitchers, the umpires will reduce the strike zone they call for that pitcher in order to equalize his performance. Ditto for a good hitter where they will call a bigger strike zone, again to equalize performance. Interesting insight into how Japan manages their society. In the US we would never allow this kind of behavior in our sports, only in our politicians.