r/sports • u/KenshiroTheKid • 15h ago
Baseball Okinawa Shogaku High School has won the 107th Summer Koshien! (Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament) This is their first ever win and the second time a school from Okinawa Prefecture has ever won the Summer Koshien!
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u/CRoseCrizzle 14h ago
Even though I already know how popular baseball is in Japan, I'm always stunned to see it. It feels like there's more passion for the sport there than even in the US.
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u/quiksilver123 13h ago
tYou're right! personally, I have never seen the general public amass in public spaces like malls and such ot watch any kind of baseball game in the US let a high school one. Closest thing I can remember was being in Boston during the 2004 Red Sox playoffs against the Yankees and later the Cards in the WS. Even though everybody was glued to the TV somewhere, it still didn't reach the levels like in this video.
This is more like what I've seen being abroad and witnessing a country's national team play in the World Cup or major tournament. I was in Bogota last year for Colombia's Copa America Final and it was more like the video.
Great to see this kind of passion for high school sports!
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u/quiksilver123 8h ago
Wow...generalize much? I've been to many countries during soccer tourneys and love the sport. Hence, why I go to said countries. Feel free to go through my history and you'll see a good amount of them are soccer related.
Now that we got that put of the way, please tell me which country you're from so that I can also similarly make a completely ignorant and stupid assumption about you.
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u/TheBigCore 9h ago
Baseball stopped being the US's most popular sport starting in the 1960s and will never, ever reach the popularity it currently has in Japan. It just won't.
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u/MrOSUguy 14h ago
Sports are the most important thing that don’t matter at all. God damn I love sports. I love seeing people all come together and compete cheer and have fun. The beautiful side of sports is worth enduring the ugly.
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u/MillorTime 13h ago edited 12h ago
Sports can teach you a lot of skills outside of what's needed for the sport. Thats what the "bread and circuses" neckbeards refuse to understand. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
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u/TheBigCore 9h ago edited 9h ago
Thats what the "bread and circuses" neckbeards refuse to understand.
Neckbeards think they're morally and intellectually superior to everyone else and thus, isolate themselves from the rest of society. They use their brains while the "common man", in their opinion, is stupid, rough, and coarse.
Then of course, their lack of social skills and manners on top of their slovenly appearances basically exclude them from society permanently. They even have the chutzpah to complain about being "forever alone".
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u/PM_ME_STEAM_KEY_PLZ 10h ago
Participation in sports is a great resource for a healthy mind and body. Not required, but a great tool to develop them.
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u/Numeno230n 7h ago
I have often in the past been a "sports are a waste" guy, and I mostly stick to that when it comes to commercialized, corporatized teams as a product for billionaires to peddle. But on the other hand, humans have been playing games since humans evolved. In fact, animals in nature play quite frequently. It is almost a biological product of complex or large brained animals. So you can never really stop playing sports I think.
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u/fuckyourstuff 2h ago
If you have access I recommend watching ESPN's Ocho programming. I don't really care much for football, baseball, or basketball but I think it's fun seeing the weird alternative games people have come up with and it has made me appreciate other sports too.
As I write this there's a Microsoft Excel competition. Earlier there was kickball and fling golf. There's so much beyond the big 4 to enjoy.
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u/SmarterThanMyBoss 10h ago
107th?!?!
Anyone have any info on the history of baseball and how it made it to Japan so long ago?
I mean, baseball wasn't popularized in the US until after the civil war. Less than 50 years later they were already having a national high school tournament in Japan.
There has to be an awesome story there!
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u/burgerthrow1 9h ago
Anyone have any info on the history of baseball and how it made it to Japan so long ago?
Civil War vet moved to Japan and introduced it at one of the universities in Tokyo in the early 1870s. There's actually a really cool monument for it near Jimbocho Station.
Semi-related: there's a zoo in Sendai that has a statue of Babe Ruth (the zoo was formerly a baseball stadium and the statue is located where one of his homeruns landed)
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u/dbrodbeck 9h ago
(I just went and read some things)
It was brought by the Yanks to Japan after the opening of the country.. Apparently first in 1859.
So the tournament started in 1915. That's a good chunk of time since the introduction. I mean think about it, basketball, for example is invente din umm like 1891 or something, and about that same amount of time later in the US there are pro leagues, it's big in high schools and universities etc.
Remember Japan industrialized, and Westernized, very quickly after the Meiji restoration.
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u/Milked_Cows 13h ago
Anyone know how to watch Koshien in the states? It’s been so hard finding info on it here
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u/KenshiroTheKid 13h ago edited 13h ago
I've been following it for a few years now, they normally stream the whole tournament on sportsbull or yahoo, Here is the sportsbull link I've used this year. Fair warning you'll need to use the google auto translate for both because its not in english
Here's the full stream for the championship match if you want to watch the VOD on yahoo
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u/myfrigginagates 8h ago
For me, Japanese HS baseball always looks like it should be filmed in black and white.
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u/Dazzling-Shallot-309 7h ago
It’s my favorite thing to watch here in the summer. Think march madness with focus only on the games. No commercials, no long side story narratives. Just baseball. The level of play is very high and the enthusiasm people have is infectious. There were some great games this year and I was happy to see Okinawa pull of the win. Their pitching and defense was solid all tournament long!
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u/MothmansLegalCouncel 6h ago
Love this for them. I had the honor and privilege of living in Okinawa from 2010-2012
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u/soysaucepapi 9h ago
The most prestigious baseball tournament in Japan but also one of the most brutal. Its not uncommon for pitchers to throw high pitch counts and come back a few days later to do it again.
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u/PrinterFred 13h ago
Why slide into first?
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u/2020Hills 8h ago
He didn’t want to be out. It’s faster to reach for it headlong than to run through it. MLB players are afraid of injury
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u/KenshiroTheKid 15h ago
The Summer Koshien is one of the most popular amateur sporting events in the world. Around 3,700 High Schools all across Japan enter a single elimination tournament to determine the best team in the country. The tournament grips the japanese public's attention with in-person attendance regularly surpassing 500,000, and millions watching at home (Think something similar to March Madness but High School baseball). The tournament is so important that one of the most popular professional Baseball teams in Japan, the Hanshin Tigers, get kicked out of their home stadium while the best teams representing each prefecture compete at the Koshien stadium.
One of the most iconic Koshien traditions is the players collecting dirt from the playing surface after the match and take it home. This is because Koshien is considered a sacred place. They also give the some of the dirt to people who have helped them in their life as a symbol to thank them.
Here is a clip of fans all over Okinawa celebrating Okinawa Shogaku's victory