I fell in love with baseball seven years ago. With Japanese baseball that is. The game, the colours, the fans, the synchronised cheering; I fell in love with it all. When you spend a summer in a typical Japanese family in Osaka, odds are there will be baseball on tv every night during dinner. We cheer for the 'Hanshin Tigers', Osaka's number one baseball team, except for the fact that we don't usually win much. The best thing about the Tigers is the fans. The Tigers are famous for their fanatic devotees, about which many an anthropological study has been conducted (see WW Kelly). I did not know this at the time, but a couple of years after spending my first summer in Japan I wound up studying my team in University in Leiden. Some years after that I went back to Japan and saw my team play 'live' in Osaka against their arch enemies; the Tokyo Yumiori Giants. Life takes the strangest turns sometimes.
This year I found myself in another of such experiences. I went to see a baseball game two days ago, together with my two host-sisters and my host-mom. The experience is worth sharing with you. Baseball is not a male oriented sport here, so we were bringing our girl-power to the new Kyocera Dome in Osaka. Unfortunately our Tigers were fighting the Giants in Tokyo so we went to see 'the other Osaka' team (which obviously takes precedence over any Tokyo team), the Buffaloes. They were playing the Lions. I wondered why you would call your team 'Buffaloes' in a competition where Tigers and Lions are around too...the odds were against us this evening.
The Japanese take their baseball very seriously, like they take most things in life. Japanese baseball is meticulously planned at six in the evening, so ensure that the supporters can come in straight after work and the game ends in time for the last train (Japanese baseball games have a time limit).The dome was beautiful, the blue plastic toy chairs with too little leg space for a foreigner were slightly uncomfortable, the suspense was omnipresent.
Cheerleaders and mascottes with massive cartoon heads were intoducing the players. When the commentator mumbles something non-japanese sounding you'll know the next player will be a Gaijin (lit. outside-person, used to describe all foreigners). Most professional teams in Japan have at least one gaijin player, coming from American or Australian competitions, and they are usually worshiped as tall oddities amongst fans. In comparison: the Tigers' Japanese star batter is 1.69m in height. A 1.98m, 105kg tobaco-chewing American pitcher might look a tad scary to them. These gaijin players often have a translator accompanying them during practice and games, to make sure they understand what's going on. They always look slightly baffled when being interviewed for Japanese tv-shows (worthy of blogs of their own), donned with a general 'what am I doing here?' expression on their face.
We were led to our seats by a girl in a red t-shirt that said 'Security'. These security people are positioned all around the dome during the game. She has a whisle around her neck which she will sound when a foul ball is hit in her direction, in order to warn the spectators to mind their heads. The stadium commentator will say something like: 'Foul ball coming your way, please be careful, Go-chui kudasai!' The word 'security' takes on an entirely different meaning here.
The bellies of the cheerleaders reflected all available light, since tanning is a fashion no-no in Japan. The dome was slowly filling up with salary-men in cheap suits carrying laptop bags coming straight from work for a Kirin-drenched night out with their colleagues. At foul balls you will see them crawling on the floor to find it, most with their sleeves rolled up, some with their jackets still on because they are either too junior or too senior to take them off this early in the evening. Little kids wearing their own baseball outfits carry little plastic bats to clap along with the songs. Make no mistake, grown men and women will be just as enthousiastic in incessantly clapping their bats and waving their scarves at precisely the right moments: that is, when everyone else is doing it too.
The big screen on the other end of the dome showed flashy advertisements between innings and slow motion replays of players donned with sparkling words like 'Good Play!', 'Struck Out', and 'Timely!'. The seating area next to the screen on the other end of the field is reserved for the die-hard fans, the Japanese hooligans, so to speak. This fan-base is very well organised and again, taken very seriously. There are different ranks one can belong to, including those of Small Flag Waver, Drum Player, Trumpet Player, Crowd Conductor and Big Flag Waver. I imagine the Big Flag Wavers are the coolest, because there were only two of those at this game. The hooligan side of the stadium decides which song is sung when and for how long. The rest of the crowd joins in. Every player has their own song (some even have two) which will be performed by the small brass band, accompanied by all the excited fans present. Some songs have dances, too. While walking up to the plate players get everyone to wave their scarves counter-clockwise above their heads or clap their bats in a certain rythm. Battle cries will come from all sides at exactly the same time. Sometimes I wonder if everyone has an earpiece I don't know about...
The game is exciting and the home-runs are fantastic. I am enjoying every second and every sausage-on-a-stick of it. While my host mom was listening to the Tigers lose against the Giants on the radio next to me, the Buffaloes beat the Lions; 9-4. Anything goes in the Japanese jungle.
