Japanese baseball fans make me love them and hate them. Our relationship has changed a few times since I started watching Japanese baseball, and I’ve realized that the reasons I hate them aren’t always their fault.
When I saw my first couple of Japanese baseball games, I was blown away by the organization and strength of the crowds in the outfield. It much resembled American college football, with fans separated into sections according to team loyalty and musical instruments to lead the singing and chanting.
(This person does a much better job describing it than I do)
I then observed that the cheering had little to do with what was going on out on the field and that fans seemed to devote the same amount of energy to stars and role players alike. While that’s cool in some respects, it bothered me because I was trying to concentrate on the game, and these people would cheer their heads off regardless of the situation.
By 2005, I had lost almost all of the baseball fan left in me; I loved to watch the game and didn’t care who won or lost. At the same time, I didn’t see the point in believing that a .190 career hitter will drive in a guy from first base with two outs, yet the Japanese fans do and implore him to do so. They yell and cheer as much in that situation as they do when their best hitter is up with the bases loaded and nobody out.
If it wasn’t so damn loud I wouldn’t have minded so much, but I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit in that first year. It was somewhat similar to sitting in front of the know-it-all who just has to pipe up with silly misperceptions about the game and about his importance as a fan.
I probably sound pretty crabby and frumpy, and I suppose that I am. It’s just so much easier to take in a game in the relative peace and quiet of an American ballpark. It’s baseball, not soccer or football.
Since I’ve begun scouting, I’ve been able to let go and just let the fans have their fun. I have a job to do and have learned to tune out the mindless noise, and almost all of it takes place in the outfield seats, anyway.
MLB parks have seats set aside for scouts from other teams, and if a Japanese scout shows up to look for future Nippon Pro “helpers,” they are accommodated with a seat, even at crowded bandboxes like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.
In Japan, MLB scouts are generally tolerated at best but scorned at worst. The Nippon Ham Fighters and the Seibu Lions treat us very well and give us seats right behind home plate, and a few other clubs can’t give us seats because of the rabid fan base but do their best with passes to the park and early access.
The Chunichi Dragons and Yomiuri Giants treat us horribly. The Giants charge scouts for tickets when they feel like it and give us seats 70 rows back of the plate and off to one side. The Dragons sat my boss behind the left field foul pole once and their international guy makes me feel like I’m putting him out every time I ask for arrangements.
Compared to how well Americans treat Japanese, the situation in Japan is not good. It starts with “horse” and rhymes with “base hit.”
Literally in the middle of all of this are the fans. At parks where we have passes, we have to guess with our seats and often get bumped by fans that arrive late. Since we don’t have seat numbers, we have no choice but to pack up and move. Do this three or four times when you’re trying to zone in on a player and it gets very frustrating.
Of course, fans buy food and spill beer and cheer for their teams. The difference in Japan is that they’re doing it right next to scouts in smaller quarters; it is not a good working environment for us. Sometimes, I find myself getting short with the fans. They invade my working space and cause distractions that shouldn’t be there.
The Hanshin Tigers sometimes give us unassigned seats, which means that we have to get to the park early and plop our stuff down on a bench or a seat to reserve it. Depending on the location of the game or the opponent, we may have to arrive as early as four hours prior to the first pitch.
I did so at Hanshin’s first spring game at the end of February, arriving at the ballpark in Aki City (in Kochi!) at 9:30 a.m. for a 1:00 game. I elbowed my way into a single bench seat behind the plate and waited for the game to begin.
An older fellow on my left lit up a cigarette, and I bristled at the smoke and the audacity of doing that in a huge, tightly-packed group of people. Who went and made it 1960 when I wasn’t looking? Japan isn’t quite as up on anti-smoking as, say, California, but it’s certainly to the point that most people realize the inconvenience and rudeness of smoking in a public place with children and non-smokers present.
As I prepared a diatribe to unleash on the dude to my left, I looked around for a No Smoking sign to back me up and, to my disgust, found none. As I panned the crowd, I saw many smokers and counted quite a few close enough to me to make my anti-smoking hill a bad one to die on.
They were pouncing on the lack of signage and enjoying an age-old pleasure, and I realized at that moment that it was not they who were in my work space, it was I who was in their fun space. And not just at Aki City Ballpark, but everywhere in Japan.
The system has made it so, and the fans and I are just pawns in that system.
Should the Japanese teams make special seats for scouts? Absolutely. Americans extend the same courtesy to them. I would hate to take that courtesy away for the sake of the few teams that treat us very well and for the others who do the best they can.
However, I am more than a little fed up with my job being harder than it has to be for no good reason. I had to move five times a few weekends ago and laid into two guys who were having a good laugh at my expense. I usually let comments by fans slip by, but I allowed those two clowns to get under my skin and probably didn’t make them any smarter in the process.
Look, I’m not Jackie Robinson by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s difficult not to feel wrongly discriminated against when you see all of the Japanese scouts comfortably seated in the best seats for scouting with their cameras and radar guns propped up in empty seats, and when you know that your club is being hospitable to Japanese scouts in the United States while your makeshift workstation is constantly changing.
Either way, it’s not the fans’ fault and I need to do a better job remembering that. As I get to know the Japanese professionals more deeply, I won’t need to sit in the best seats and can probably spend time roaming around the park and getting more views from the side.
In the meantime, I’ll have to continue to sit amongst the masses that include chain smokers, drunks, leather-lungs, the manager’s mother, starry-eyed children, village idiots, gangsters, pop stars, groupies, and good old baseball fans.
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