In the world of professional baseball, this has been the year of the rising sun. Japan has started to shift into the position of major leaguer in terms of world status. A position that previously might have been questionable.
The winning came early as Team Japan clenched their second World Baseball Championship title, showing the world they weren’t just a one hit wonder(pun fully intended). Championships aside, records also started falling when Ichiro broke the record for 200 hits over nine consecutive years. A record that stood for more than one hundred years.
Then came the spring and summer Koshien tournaments that introduced the world to the stunning arm of Yusei Kikuchi. The young Iwate Prefecture native with the 154km/h fastball took his team, Hanamaki Higashi High School, to within one game of the spring title and two games of the summer Koshien title. He was courted around by the likes of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox before deciding to start his pro career in Japan and being drafted by the Seibu Lions in the Nippon Professional Baseball League. He was requested by 6 pro team. Half of the teams in Japan.
Kikuchi wasn’t the only person causing a stir in the northern Tohoku region. The Rakuten golden Eagles, based out of Sendai, made their way into second place in their league and got themselves into the second round of the Climax series. With ace pitchers Hisashi Iwakuma and Masahiro Tanaka on the mound, and lead by the experienced Katsuya Nomura(a man famous for turning faltering teams into champions), they also had strong batting and solid fielding to carry them through the season.
Of course last, but certainly not least came the dream run of the New York Yankees, lead by their series MVP, Hideki Matsui and his amazing 6 RBIs during the final game, and three home runs over the series. Matsui helped the Yankees win the world series and became the first Japanese born player to earn the MVP.
I’m sure there are smaller stories from this year that I am missing, but I wanted to emphasize the biggest of all of these amazing feats. Japan is now a major force in the highest levels of baseball, and anyone who took Japan less then seriously before in terms of talent had better open their eyes. Their wave of winning and exciting play has stirred up a lot of passion in baseball fans all over Japan and the world. I played ball for eight years when I was younger and now, thank to Japanese baseball, I am starting to rekindle my love of the sport. Kudos to you Japan on giving us all another reason to love baseball.
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