2009年11月17日火曜日

A unique baseball game

A unique baseball game was held in Sekigahara Can you guess how the rules were extraordinary? You would definitely be surprised at the length of the game. It had 400 innings and took 104 hours to complete the game. It was more than 40 times longer than an ordinary baseball game. Of course, one team did not play a whole game. Nearly a hundred teams participated from everywhere in Japan. The game was sponsored by a Japanese beer company,” Sapporo beer”. Originally baseball games sponsored by the company were held in Nagano, but the location was moved to Sekigahara. Sekighara was chosen for several reasons. One is the fact of the battle of Sekigahara where east and west Japan battled to unify the country. An image of Sekigahara which people have is fighting. Second is the good location. Participants can get to the stadium easily.

Besides the game, there was a baseball lecture for some children who were in a local baseball club. Retired professional baseball players taught them. In Japan professionals cannot teach amateurs by law. Only retired players come to teach us.

You can see how Japanese people like baseball and how much Sekigahara is known widely. Baseball has become a Japanese national sport. People enjoy not only playing it, but also communicating through it.

5 件のコメント:

  1. Those who play the game should have stamina!
    I had never heard that long play time sports like yours.

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  2. What is the reason for prohibiting professional players form giving advice?

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  3. I didn't know about the baseball game.
    Hope the game is becoming popular:))

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  4. Player must be crazy for baseball^^but I actually can't understand why baseball is so popular in Japan..haha

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  5. I'm going to answer the question briefly.
    There was a incident named "Yanagawa Affair" between professional Baseball Organization and Amateur Baseball Organization in 1961.
    A professional team broke one of the baseball rules. The team hired a amateur player illegally and the ABO got really angry at that. Consequently, the incident produced a cleavage between the PBO and the ABO. Since then professional players cannot give advice, even to their children. How disgusting it is!

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