Sadaharu Oh | jballallen.com

On a cool afternoon and evening in Yokohama, the DeNA BayStars and SoftBank Hawks held worked out at Yokohama Stadium. I’d say these were the final pre-series workouts but those will come tomorrow before Game 1, since to paraphrase Thomas Edison, Japanese baseball is 10 percent inspiration during games, and 90 percent perspiration preparing to play them.

The Hawks, who play about 70 percent of their regular-season games in parks that can be sealed off from the elements, arrived in Yokohama earlier this week and have been working out in the great out of doors.

It was a chance to catch up with Tyler Austin and learn what kept him going when it seemed his career was turning into one injury-related dead end after another, and Carter Stewart Jr.. who talked about how a poor result this season gave him a fresh perspective.

The highlight, however, was a chance to take part in a discussion with Hawks chairman Sadaharu Oh, along with former Giants pitcher Hiromi Makihara, his TBS announcing partner and a couple of veteran journalists.

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For decades, Nippon Professional Baseball has been urging players to pick up the pace in order to counteract the small-ball anal-retentive slow pace that its overlords have come to embrace. So when MLB adopted a pitch timer, Japan became interested.

Despite the promise of faster games, the idea of pitch timers in Japanese baseball would slash a gaping hole in the control-oriented micro-managed baseball Japan espouses. The more NPB looked at what MLB was up to, the stronger its allergic reaction to a pitch timer in Japan became.

But this week, the pitch timer is back in the news from a couple of different angles that tell us a lot about Japanese baseball.

Last year, Japan’s rules committee, which is largely influenced – but not controlled by — Nippon Professional Baseball, declined to adopt a pitch timer, the excuse given was that it was not necessary, because the only thing needed to make games snappily played was adherence to the 30-second rule giving the pitcher and batter that much time between plate appearances.

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writing & research on Japanese baseball

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Tag Archives: Sadaharu Oh

The calm before the storm

Japan’s pitch-clock allergy

writing & research on Japanese baseball