Japan goes Crazy over Baseball
Baseball is extremely popular in Japan; it is practically a national obsession and has taken over from other traditional Japanese sports such as Sumo Wrestling. Baseball was introduced to Japan by an American professor and literally exploded in popularity after that. The Japanese Major League is split into two divisions and each division has its own teams. Over the years baseball has grown in popularity and has become one of the most watched events on television in Japanese households. Some fear that baseball in Japan is under threat because a few talented players have left Japan to go and play in America and this might signal the end of the game in the country. For the time being though the game looks like it will continue to be as popular as it has always been.
Baseball was introduced to the Japanese in 1873 by an American professor who was teaching in a university in Japan. Professor Horace Wilson showed some of his students at what is now Tokyo University how to play baseball. From there the sport spread slowly to other universities and an intercollegiate tournament was put together by a railroad company. The sport continued to be played heavily in universities and colleges in Japan just as American football spread through the university level in the states. The interesting thing about baseball teams in Japan is the fact that the teams are not privately owned as they are in America, instead they are owned by corporations. So instead of having teams being represented by the area they are from, they are represented by the company that owns them.
Japan’s first professional team was formed in 1934 after a very successful tour by a team from the American MLB. Up till this point baseball was still only played in colleges and had not reached the fever pitch levels of popularity it enjoys today. The first team to be formed after the visiting Americans left was the Yomiuri Giants which was financed by the Yomiuri Newspaper Company. Other companies such as the Hanshin Railway Company formed their own teams and the first Japanese League was born. The League had to be put on hold when the Second World War broke out and many Japanese baseball players were drafted into the army.
Since 1958, the Japanese Major League has had two divisions made up of twelve teams, six in each division. The two divisions are called the Central League and the Pacific League. Some of the top teams in the Central League are the Yomiuri Giants, the Yokohama BayStars and Hanshin Tigers. The Pacific League boasts teams such as the Seibu Lions, the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. An interesting fact about the Yomiuri Giants is that the team is extremely popular because it won 9 championships in the 1960s when Japan was slowly becoming an economic superpower. It is considered a symbol of Japan’s financial success and to boo the team is to boo Japan and its economic prosperity.
Some of the biggest players in the Japanese Major League are Tomoaki Kanemoto and Ichiro Suzuki. In 2006, Tomoaki became the highest paid baseball player in Japan securing a $15 million deal with the Hanshin Tigers. In 2008 at the age of 40, he continued to be the highest paid baseball player with a reported salary of ¥550 million with incentives and bonuses. The other very famous player in Japanese baseball is Ichiro Suzuki. Ichiro has since moved to America where he plays baseball at the MLB for the Seattle Mariners. He played 9 years for the Orix Blue Wave team in Japan’s Pacific League. His record in the MLB has been extremely impressive. He has had nine consecutive 200-hit seasons, the longest streak by any player in the MLB. He is a very famous player in both his home country of Japan and in America.
Some experts on Japanese baseball say that the popularity of the game is decreasing in the country. They showed that when Ichiro moved to the States in 2001, his departure led to a decrease in popularity in the team he had left behind in Japan by about 40%. The other side to this coin is that Japanese baseball fans and many people who are not even fans follow exactly what Ichiro is doing in the MLB and he is a player that the entire country can be proud of and he regularly makes the headlines in national papers even though he is playing in Seattle.
Baseball looks all set to continue to be as popular as it is in the Japan. The sport has a rich history and a huge following among the Japanese people. It will stay as popular as it is now, until something more exciting that the youngsters of Japan fall in love with comes along and then spreads to the general public.
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