While much of the talk on American social media is about which Japanese players who competed this past weekend in their exhibitions against the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers will eventually play Major League Baseball, the real key to Japan’s baseball future was on the field at Tokyo Dome early Monday morning.
Monday’s official practice was preceded by a two-hour coaching clinic with former MLB stars Ken Griffey Jr, Harold Reynolds, Jason Kendall and Jeremy Guthrie demonstrating a variety of drills to coaches whose young players compete in Japan’s MLB Cup.
The quartet demonstrated fundamental elements of hitting, throwing, pitching and tagging runners to a group of about 20 coaches. Guthrie, who had great grandparents who emigrated from Japan over a century ago, previously pitched at both Koshien Stadium and Tokyo Dome in the 2014 MLB-Japan All-Star tour.
The overall emphasis was on safety, balance and simplicity so kids would be inspired to practice more by having fun and doing well.
After running through catching fundamentals Kendall was asked about managers calling pitches. Kendall suggested it was best for the coach to let the battery figure things out on their own and then talk to them about pitch selection between innings.
“My best coaches taught us how to play the game and let us play,” Reynolds added.
Guthrie admitted he could teach the coaches little about fundamental mechanics since Japanese youth baseball has long emphasized precise repetition of fundamentals, but did show some drills he performed to develop accuracy.
“I used to throw at cans and bottles,” he said. “I wanted to break things. If you have fun doing it, you’ll practice more and get better.”
Akira Sakamoto a coach from distant Kagoshima attended the event with his 12-year-old son, Kotaro, said it was important to recognize that times have changed from when baseball in Japan was a variation on the martial arts.
“At first, you teach the very basic fundamentals,” Akira said. “But times have changed from when I was young, and now what’s important after that is fun. In the old days, baseball was supposed to be hard. Now it’s supposed to be fun.”
“It’s changing and we have to change the way we coach and teach players. We must not discourage the kids. When coaches get together, we need to talk about how to make practices fun.”
