When I flipped open the college course catalog in August 2001, I was looking for Vietnamese. I wanted to be able to communicate better and understand more of what was going on around me in my hometown, and, perhaps more importantly, I needed units to fill out my first quarter of college.
To my dismay, no such class existed at my school. I flipped over to East Asian Languages and Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stared out at me from the page. “Japanese play baseball, so they can’t be all that bad,” I thought to myself. I figured it would be cool to know what to say in case I ever met Hideo Nomo or Ichiro Suzuki, then in his first season in Major League Baseball, and I signed up for Japanese 1 intending to learn how to say “home run” and “double play.”
At the time, I wasn’t thinking about talking baseball with Japanese baseball lovers, but that has proven to be one of the most rewarding things about living in Japan and speaking the language. It took a long time to piece together a baseball vocabulary and to transfer all of my stories, opinions, and questions about the game into Japanese, but for awhile now I’ve been able to take a guy out, order some beers, and dip into any facet about the game with no trouble at all.
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When it comes to where they work, teachers in Japan are at the mercy of the boards of education in their prefectures (states, though they are roughly the size of counties in California). They must pass tests to earn qualification to teach in a certain prefecture, and then they work wherever in that prefecture they are placed. In two or three years, they get transferred to a different school in the prefecture, and it is rare for teachers or administrators to spend more than six or seven years in any one school; over a thirty-year career, they will teach at several different schools.
In last April’s annual merry-go-round of teacher swapping, my tech school got a new world history teacher named Mr. Baseball, called such because he ran a successful baseball program at his school way out at the western end of Kochi. Unfortunately, I recognized him right away as the tower ref I screamed at in the teachers’ volleyball tournament in 2007 that led to my retirement.
He remembered me but graciously laughed off the volleyball incident when we shook hands and reintroduced ourselves. It took all of thirty seconds for him to discover that I loved baseball, and I knew that we would have a fun relationship when we spent the next twenty minutes talking baseball until one of the vice principals had to remind us to go teach our first period classes.
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“Gee, I’d really love to see some Major League Baseball.”
Mr. Baseball echoes this wistful refrain almost every time we speak to each other. He has been all over Japan for baseball tournaments but has not once left his home country for baseball. I don’t know if he ever will, as I have found many Japanese people to be content to sigh and trail off as they describe their seemingly impossible dreams.
I did my best to bring an MLB perspective to him without ever telling him that I worked for an MLB team while I was teaching, but he opened up corners of my mind with his baseball stories and musings that were “limited” to his baseball experience in Japan.
The manager of the school baseball team had stayed on, so Mr. Baseball was relegated to Assistant Coach even though he was clearly a better candidate for the manager’s job. Mr. Baseball did what he could to change the baseball program, which included issuing written tests on the baseball rule book after learning that none of the players could acceptably define a baseball strike zone.
He gave me the test, and I failed to score the 70% required to pass because of a few sloppy language mistakes and, yes, lack of knowledge of the rules. Hey, it’s like CPR, you have to review it once in awhile or you’ll forget it. Interference plays, for example, are tough to remember; I know that someone’s out, but I couldn’t tell you offhand whether it’s the batter or the runner in some cases.
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We brought the rule book out on several occasions to answer questions and aid discussions we’d have during our free periods in the teachers’ office.
Mr. Baseball asked me once why a runner tagging up can’t get behind the bag and take a running start before the ball is caught. The concept makes sense; the runner gets some momentum going, times it so that he steps on the bag when the fielder catches the ball, and then continues home or to the next base at full speed.
But the note in Rule 7.10 (a) prohibits a runner from taking a “flying start from a position in back of his base,” and that’s one that I’ve never seen attempted before but somehow remembered word-for-word. I told Mr. Baseball, and he was surprised, but I applauded the thought that he put into it. After all, the Flying Start Rule, all substitution rules, the Infield Fly Rule, and many others exist because some smart players exploited the lack of said rules early in the game’s history.
Mr. Baseball then wondered why, with runners on first and third and two outs, the runner on first doesn’t run through second base on a ground ball. Whether sliding headfirst or running through a base gets a runner there faster is open for debate, but runners slide into second and third base primarily because they have to hang onto the bag to continue to be safe.
That need is erased with two outs and a run on the line. I agree with Mr. Baseball; why not run through second base when the infielders decide to “go the easy way” with two outs and another runner on third? It may get the runner there faster than the ball and will certainly confuse the defense.
Sure, the shortstop or second baseman will tag the runner for the third out, but by that time, hopefully, the batter-runner is across first base and the runner on third has waltzed home with a cheap run. The principle is the same as a runner getting into a rundown between first and second or a batter-runner drawing a throw to second base in order to allow a run to score.
I’ll certainly keep that gem in the back of my mind and hope that I see it attempted some day.
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“Tie goes to the runner!”
This is one of my favorite American baseball phrases. From the playground to the stands at Little League and high school games, this one solves disputes in a way that makes everyone happy. Right? Don’t you just love it?
It doesn’t show up at all in the rule book, and, unfortunately, the stipulations in the book leave it open for debate (if, in fact, there was such a thing as a tie). Check it out:
Rule 6.05 (j) . . . a batter is out when after a third strike or after he hits a fair ball, he or first base is tagged before he touches first base.
So, supposing a tie is physically possible, it sounds like he would be safe because the bag must be tagged before he touches it. Safe until proven out.
But wait!
Rule 7.01 . . . a runner acquires the right to an unoccupied base when he touches it before he is out.
For the timing there, we need a definition of “out,” which Rule 7.08 (e) gives us (emphasis mine):
Any runner is out when he fails to reach the next base before a fielder tags him or the base, after he has been forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner.
The rule goes on to say that the same thing applies when there is no previous runner forcing the runner in question ahead, just that the runner in question must be tagged. So, the runner is responsible for making himself safe; he is out until proven safe.
It seems to me that the ball must beat the batter to first base, but that a runner must beat the ball to any subsequent bases. I can live with that. I simply despise ties and accepted playground wisdom, and therein lies my problem with “tie goes to the runner.”
The expression in Japanese literally translates to “same time is safe.” It grated on my ears the first time I heard it and has every time since. I thought about jumping on the next plane to Los Angeles when I learned that the following was written in the Japanese rule book until 1967:
The umpire may not call a batter-runner out if the fielder touches the batter or the base at the same time or after the batter-runner has touched first base.
Sickening. A rule book providing for “maybe” in a yes/no decision. Then again, I once umpired with a guy who told me that he abided by the “when in doubt, out” principle. Incidentally, I don’t think that guy wore a cup, so I knew he wasn’t to be trusted.
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Mr. Baseball turned me on to this story:
On July 19, 1959, with one out and a runner at first base in a Pacific League game between the Daimai Orions and the Nishitetsu Lions, the hitter dropped down a bunt and the pitcher scooped it up and threw to second to attempt to retire the lead runner. Umpire Nobuaki Nidegawa called the runner safe, prompting Lions manager Osamu Mihara to race out of the dugout and argue the call. Nidegawa explained that the runner and the ball had reached the base at the same time, so the runner was safe.
Mihara was livid and followed Nidegawa into the umpires’ dressing room after the game, demanding that he check the rule book and knowing that Nidegawa would not find the phrase “tie goes to the runner” in its pages.
Nidegawa replied, “I am the rulebook.” Thus, “same time is safe” infiltrated the language of baseball in Japan.
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I am very happy that I know men like Mr. Baseball and have places to go to just sit and talk baseball. I got plenty of that while I was scouting, but there there were taboo subjects, politics, and reputations on the line, so it most definitely felt like work. However, when Mr. Baseball and I get into conversations in the language of baseball I am able to forget when and where we are and simply discuss.
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