Baseball’s DNA

The novel coronavirus has changed the world. Shutdowns, slowdowns and–in Japan–self-restraint, have allowed wildlife to flourish and cleared our skies of airborne filth. Yet, we are now locked in a cultural debate about how we can return to “normal”, if this is the new normal or what the new normal should be.

Authoritarian regimes across the globe have used this as an opportunity to restrict liberties and that goes for baseball as well. No one should be surprised at this. After all, following rules in baseball—particularly “unwritten ones”–is praised to the skies as “playing the right way.” Suppressing free spirits is as much a part of America’s game as three strikes and you’re out.

There is no doubt that baseball values rule-keeping, but the children’s game we love also seems to be a vehicle powered by those who want to make sure others obey their rules as well.

Japan reverts to old ways

With the pandemic forcing changes left and right, Nippon Professional Baseball opened its season on June 19 behind closed doors. In addition to scrapping its all-star series and cutting five league games from each team’s calendar, the leagues opted out of interleague play. The Pacific League trimmed its postseason playoffs from a three-team, two-stage affair to a two-team final series that is a best-of-five instead of a best-of-seven. The Central League, citing its old-fart rallying cry of “giving priority to league games,” did away with its postseason tourney.

What that means for fans is more of the CL “playing its game the right way”—read “old way”—and fewer meaningful games for fans. Once the Yomiuri Giants clinched the pennant on Friday, Oct. 30, the 24 remaining CL games became meaningless. If teams were allowed to fill up their parks during the pandemic, it would be obvious that the old way is bad for everyone except those who consider preserving the old way a virtue.

That’s why, in 2007, the CL adopted the same PL format it had been ridiculing for three years because most PL teams were playing meaningful games in front of big crowds until the final days of the season, while the CL games were just there to make the weight.

This year’s PL pennant might be decided, but who gets to be in the Japan Series is not. In both leagues, there is a razor-thin margin between third and fifth. That difference is moot in the CL, but cause for excitement for fans of a league that is less concerned with “playing the game the right way.”

So much of the talk around baseball is in this vein, not only a desire to define right and wrong for others but a battle to determine who is eligible to describe the narrative. That’s where PR comes in.

The gate keepers

Decades before he was the Fighters’ general manager, Nippon Ham exec Hiroshi Yoshimura was a former sportswriter working in the Pacific League office. When I started publishing critical analytical books about the ways of Japanese pro baseball in 1994, he reached out to me. When I asked him how to contact team’s PR people, he said: “Japanese baseball PR people are gate keepers rather than facilitators.”

The attitude of PR people in Japanese baseball has softened some since the 1990s, when PR staff occasionally interrupted and threatened English-speaking journalists having pregame conversations with players, saying they were forbidden to talk without permission.

Such behavior is often dependent on the individual in charge of a given team’s PR department. The Pacific League, less uptight from top to bottom, has tended to be cooperative, while Central League clubs have tended to cast a more suspicious eye.

There have, however, been outstanding individual PR guys in Japanese baseball. I don’t want to get him in trouble for singing his praises, but the all-time superstar of NPB PR guys was a former player who used to run the Yomiuri Giants’ PR shop. His attitude of going out of his way to help the media do good stories about the Giants and their players would probably not sit too well with their current boss.

So far as I can tell, the Giants, the Tigers—notoriously the least cooperative and most authoritarian—and Yakult Swallows have all used the pandemic as an excuse to block out media requests to interview their players. The DeNA BayStars, to their credit, have not, and although that organization is perhaps the most authoritarian in Japan, they have procedures and are simply sticking to them rather than using the coronavirus as an excuse to be as pernicious as possible.

As expected, most of the PL teams have been about as welcoming and helpful as they usually are with a special shout-out to the Fighters, who have bent over backward in these difficult days. It seems that if your league is bent on being innovative, as most PL teams have been, there is less room for an authoritarian disposition in your organizational culture.

Baseball’s cultural divide

Something I’ve long struggled with is why intelligent former ballplayers have leaped onto the authoritarian-side–or “traditional-side” if your sensitivities demand a euphemism–of America’s current culture wars. These people are, for the most part, white, although not exclusively so.

The response to the publicity surrounding police brutality and Black Lives Matter has been met with ridicule by many white former players I know. These same people have the highest respect for black former teammates’ honesty, intelligence and humanity. The former players speaking out against protests for social justice are not demonstrably racists, so something is going on that is tough to figure out.

For a long time, I’ve attributed this to people not understanding the scope and impact of white privilege. Until a few years ago, I understood aspects of white privilege without being able to give it a name or explain it well. I figured ballplayers who also grew up in homogeneous mostly white communities might be in the same boat I was.

If one grows up in a homogeneous environment, one sees that those who succeed often have ambition, talent, or money, while those who fail often don’t. If our peer fails, it is easy but unfair to label their failures as individual failings because we know things about them. If one does that, then it’s only a small step toward labeling failures of people we know nothing about as their own individual failures.

This response must be particularly acute for athletes, who are taught early on not to whine about failure but to perform better. Baseball is not fair. One can play better than an opponent and still lose, but the answer is still the same. The only way to ensure winning is to play even better, still.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that ballplayers respond automatically to failure by urging others to do better. If someone is being set upon by law enforcement, the solution may be the same: “Don’t whine about the system but do even better to avoid being in situations where law enforcement will beat your brains in.”

But I now think that while a failure to recognize white privilege might be one influence, a bigger one might simply be baseball itself, a sport that nurtures and promotes authoritarianism. It’s a sport that encourages those people who are wired to think that way.

It could be genetic

In a 2014 New York Times opinion piece, Thomas B. Edsall surveyed research of a genetic component in one’s disposition toward authoritarianism. He cites the work of Steven Ludeke, Wendy Johnson, and Thomas J. Bouchard Jr. They concluded that “authoritarianism, religiousness and conservatism,” which they call the “traditional moral values triad,” are “substantially influenced by genetic factors.”

Baseball is played by a code, although a code that differs from culture to culture, with each culture referring to its code as the unwritten rules that prescribe the “right way” to play. In Japan, players can land on home plate with a handspring after hitting a home run and no one worries about a fastball behind their ear, but they will be ostracized if they suggest that current doctrine is nonsense.

Promotion in pro baseball is a long arduous process of enculturation, limiting the number of cultural outliers who make it to the elite levels. At every step, on-field success is rewarded with promotion but deviance from the unwritten rules is punished.

It’s easy to see how, given two players of equal promise and quality, the one who better represents baseball conservative values will likely be promoted ahead of a free spirit.

It’s not that baseball is inherently authoritarian, but it is a culture that more easily rewards those who are inclined to follow the rules and insist others do as well and preserve a kind of idealistic status quo.

NPB 2020 Oct. 31

Saturday’s games

Other news

Futaki, Marines get over hump

Kota Futaki (8-3) had one hiccup in his seven-inning stint, Stefen Romero’s ice-breaking three-run fourth-inning home run, but allowed nothing else as the Lotte Marines snapped a four-game losing streak to beat the Rakuten Eagles 6-3 at Chiba’s Zozo Marine Stadium on Saturday.

The win gave the second-place Marines a two-game lead in the fight for the Pacific League’s final playoff spot over the Seibu Lions, who were busted up 11-2 by the SoftBank Hawks. The Eagles, in fourth, are another half-game further back.

Futaki allowed only one base runner before the fourth and retired the last 10 batters he faced after hanging a 2-2 pitch that Romero blasted into the left-field stands for his 24th home run.

Eagles starter Ryota Ishibashi (1-6) allowed four runs over 5-1/3 innings. D.J. Johnson got Rakuten out of the five run inning, retiring all five batters he faced, while J.T. Chargois also stamped his initials on the proceedings in a scoreless ninth.

HIrokazu Sawamura, the loser on Friday, worked a scoreless eighth for the Marines, while Naoya Masuda recorded 30 saves for the first time in seven years.

Hawks tattoo Lions

Shuta Ishikawa (10-3) allowed a run over six innings, and Kenji Akashi doubled twice, tripled, singled scored three runs and drove in four in the SoftBank Hawks’ 11-2 win over the Seibu Lions at MetLife Dome.

Seibu’s Ernesto Mejia enlivened the game in the seventh inning by scoring after hitting his first triple in six years.

Kawano ends win drought

Nippon Ham Fighters rookie Ryosei Kawano (3-4) allowed a run over six innings in a 6-1 win over the Orix Buffaloes and southpaw Andrew Albers (4-8) at Sapporo Dome. Kawano, who hadn’t won since August, gave up three singles. The lefty struck out three without issuing a walk.

Okamoto powers Sugano to victory

Kazuma Okamoto hit his Central League-leading 29th home run, a three-run shot that bumped his league-best RBI total to 89 as ace Tomoyuki Sugano (14-2) allowed a run over five innings despite giving up five hits, walking two and hitting two in the 6-4 win at Tokyo Dome.

Rubby De La Rosa worked the ninth for his 17th save.

Giants-Swallows highlights

Yokawa bombs Yokohama

Naomasa Yokawa gave the Hanshin Tigers the early lead with a first-inning grand slam and added a solo shot in a 13-5 win over the DeNA BayStars at Yokohama Stadium, although his home runs might not have been as memorable as two of the three hit by the BayStars.

Jose Lopez’s fourth-inning solo shot off Takumi Akiyama (10-3) was his 11th of the season and was his 1,000th hit in Japan. He is the 14th imported player to reach the milestone and only the third player to reach that figure in both NPB and MLB. The other two are Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui.

Lopez is the 14th import to reach 1,000 hits in Japan and the fourth Venezuelan after Alex Ramirez, Bobby Marcano and Alex Cabrera.

Tyler Austin reached 20 homers in the 61st game of his debut season, while Yamato Maeda took former teammate, retiring Tigers reliever Kyuji Fujikawa out in the ninth for two runs.

Jefry Marte and Jerry Sands also helped power the Hanshin onslaught. Marte went 2-for-2 with two runs and three walks, while Sands went 3-for-5 with two doubles, two runs and two RBIs.

NameGHlast year
Alex Ramirez1,7442,0172013
Tuffy Rhodes1,6741,7922009
LeRon Lee1,3151,5791987
Leon Lee1,2561,4361987
Bobby Marcano2,5991,4181985
Boomer Wells1,1481,4131992
Alex Cabrera1,2391,3682012
Wally Yonamine1,2191,3371962
Jose Fernandez1,2531,2862013
Robert Rose2,0371,2752000
John Sipin1,8891,1241980
Chico Barbon2,5981,1231965
Matt Murton8321,0202015
Jose Lopez9891,0002020*
Wladimir Balentien1,0819912020*
Japan’s 1,000-hit foreign imports through Oct. 31, 2020 and the next guy

Note: This table has been updated. It originally omitted Wally Yonamine, Chico Barbon and Matt Murton.

エラーコード:1001101
ご利用の環境では映像を視聴できません。
映像視聴における推奨環境はこちらをご確認ください。

Aizawa, Carp get ‘lucky’

Tsubasa Aizawa’s three-run eighth-inning double brought the Hiroshima Carp from behind against a lefty whose last name means luck in Japanese, Hiroto Fuku (5-5) in a 9-3 win over the Chunichi Dragons at Nagoya Dome.

Active roster moves 10/31/2020

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 11/10

Central League

Activated

DragonsP59Takumi Yamamoto

Dectivated

BayStarsP48Masaya Kyoyama
DragonsP25Yu Sato
DragonsIF55Nobumasa Fukuda
SwallowsP91Hiroaki Saiuchi

Pacific League

Activated

LionsIF0Daichi Mizuguchi
FightersP17Hiroshi Urano
FightersP31Toru Murata
FightersP63Ryuji Kitaura

Dectivated

LionsIF3Hotaka Yamakawa
FightersP25Naoki Miyanishi
FightersP27Nick Martinez
BuffaloesP19Taisuke Yamaoka

Starting pitchers for Nov. 1, 2020

Pacific League

Fighters vs Buffaloes: Sapporo Dome 1 pm, 12 midnight EDT

Kohei Arihara (7-9, 3.52) vs Hitomi Honda (-)

Lions vs Hawks: MetLife Dome 1 pm, 12 midnight EDT

Wataru Matsumoto (5-6, 4.58) vs Shunsuke Kasaya (4-3, 2.60)

Marines vs Eagles: Zozo Marine Stadium 1 pm, 12 midnight EDT

Daiki Iwashita (6-7, 4.20) vs Ryota Takinaka (2-1, 2.97)

Central League

Giants vs Swallows: Tokyo Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Seishu Hatake (3-4, 3.52) vs Albert Suarez (4-3, 2.62)

BayStars vs Tigers: Yokohama Stadium 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Kosuke Sakaguchi (0-2, 11.57) vs Haruto Takahashi (5-4, 2.28)

Dragons vs Carp: Nagoya Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Yuya Yanagi (5-6, 3.88) vs Masato Morishita (9-3, 2.04)

writing & research on Japanese baseball

css.php