Go, go Lucky! Go!

(large img)I wasn't a fan of American baseball after the first big strike but when I first arrived in Japan I was in awe of the sacred aspect of Japanese baseball. Supporting a ball team here is literally like invoking the gods to bring good harvests and keeping bad weather away. Baseball is not the capitalist industry it is in the US though you can't deny it is a huge money generating engine here in Japan.

However, baseball is a fan driven sport and there is no fan in Japan like the Hanshin Tigers fan. All of Japan makes fun of the Tigers fans. This is a country that will observe a moment of silence when a legendary ball player plays his last at bat. In Koshien Stadium, the riot police were overwelmed when a foreigner ran his last around the bases. It was not so long ago that the district required the stadium ticket offices hold stands at opposite sides of the general ticket sales. There were always riots. There used to be game delays because of fights in the bleachers during the fifteen year period when the Tigers were the last rated team in the Central League. Oh, and for those who don't know, Tigers Stadium is the only stadium to have the highest occupancy of any stadium in any league. Ever. Since 1935.

So I was invited to a monumental occaison, a Tigers match against the top ranking Giants. The Giants have been the most popular team in the Japan for, like, forever. And here I was with the lowest ranking team in the league with the highest ranking team in terns of popularity. To make a long story short, watching a Tigers game is like watching a car wreck. When the Tigers win, its always a physical feat; when the Giants make a play, its about organization and sportsmanship.

This year, the Tigers are ranked #1. They just are because they have won the most games. All of of them by accident, it appears. All of the wins are close calls or made on errors or lucky linedrives with a man on third.

Around the 7th inning at Koshien Stadium, an interesting event occurs. Everyone blows up a balloon that looks just like a condom. When it is fully expanded, it looks like a penis. I am not making this up. In fact, at an appointed time the balloons are released and look uncannily like sperm. You don't believe me. Exhibit A:

While the fans wear their funny (or sometimes sexy) costumes, get loud in a way that would make the Italians proud during a football match, and drink until dawn on a work day when the team loses, the Hanshin Tigers are a very atypical type of Japanese you don't see on TV. They show that there is a passion here in this country which breaks from the reserved and phoney exterior the mainstream demands. You get to see real people cheer real champions who make next to nothing compared to their Western counterparts. This is a sport when it was at its greatest and its fans at its most personal...in a land where the status quo, wa, is the ideal.

I sure hope the Tigers win this year because if they don't, the entire region is going to sink into depression until Spring next year.