About Baseball
On Sunday morning, I saw the starting pitcher for the Giants vs. Hanshin in the newspaper and thought, "Now the Giants are going to lose three games in a row," so I watched the live broadcast of the day's game while watching.
My interest (cheering) was in the Yokohama BayStars game.
Yakult is an excellent team.
Manager Takatsu's leadership is also excellent.
Most importantly, he has fixed the batting order and the bullpen, except in sporadic cases.
Still, Yokohama closed a 17.5 game gap at one point, and with the day's results, they are four games behind at the end of the day. So it's no wonder they're ready to root for them.
And even more so since Miura had the worst record when he took over, suffering from the Corona disaster.
One thing bothered me about Sunday's game between the Giants and Hanshin.
The Giants manager decided to have the second batter bunt in the first inning when the first batter had a chance to hit a double.
Does he think he can win by one run with his starting pitcher, Shoemaker?
In any case, what kind of professional baseball game, not even in the playoffs, would bunt in a situation like the one described above?
In Koshien, it is possible, but I see that Giants baseball is just like high school baseball.
I am sure that no manager in the major leagues would call for a double by the first batter and a bunt by the second batter in the first inning.
Well.
Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I watched the final game of a high school baseball tournament from the start of the game.
The reason was that Sendai Ikuei, representing Miyagi Prefecture, was poised to win the championship this year.
After watching the starting left fielder's pitching, I felt the game would be a good one.
Each of the opposing Shimonoseki Kokusai batters looked just like a praying mantis.
I thought, "Be careful with this. Shimonoseki beat the spring champion and runner-up schools in succession, so this is no fluke.
Ikuei's first-inning attack looked like a repeat of the Giants' above, but with a different pitcher.
The momentum and sharpness of the pitches were different.
I was worried they would not be able to win the game if they kept bunting, but the manager was not like the manager of the Giants' team, who showed his authority.
He hit the ball when he had to, and he did not insist on bunting all the time.
I thought, "This will be all right. The rest of the game was easy to watch.
The winner!
Everyone in Miyagi Prefecture and the Tohoku region was excited to see the victory.
I was so happy that I felt awkward writing about it in this column.
So I watched the game until the end of the live broadcast.
However, there was one scene that bothered me.
I was not only a member of the brass band club when I was in junior high school, but I had also led the brass band, conductor in hand, in a march to a town event, so I had seen a large number of selected brass band and chorus members march.
Live performance and chorus with that many members? It must be nice.
But then.
The last moment was when the national anthem began.
Soon after, NHK's cameras first showed the Shimonoseki Kokusai High School players staring at the national flag with a strange expression on their faces, not even humming the Japanese national anthem.
Next, they showed a similar expression on the face of a Sendai Ikuei High School athlete.
I thought to myself, "What in the world is this?
Are they being trained not to sing their country's national anthem? I thought.
No way.
Oh, well.
Because of the Corona disaster, the organizer of the tournament, the Japan High School Baseball Federation, must have regulated the players not to sing the school anthem or the national anthem.
I think they did sing during the school anthem.
I will check with the Japan High School Baseball Federation before writing this.
So, I checked with the Japan High School Baseball Federation today.
They said, "We do not have such a regulation."
Who doesn't love their alma mater?
Even if it is dimly remembered, the school song is still retained, no matter how old you are.
However, the Japanese people have something more important than their school songs.
Is there an athlete in any developed country who does not sing the national anthem during the national anthem at a national event?
I hope I am mistaken, but I am sure that the NHK cameraman, who shot the expressions on the faces of the above two athletes, had no respect for the national anthem of Japan.
I told the Japan High School Baseball Federation that they should protest NHK's deliberate decision to broadcast a large image of the two players, as described above.
To begin with, when I happened to watch Kyoto International High School singing their school anthem after their victory last year, I was shocked that the school anthem was in Korean, and the high school students started singing in Korean.
I mentioned it in this column.
So, I wondered if these teams were related to Chongryon High School.
It made me wonder whether the athletes from Shimonoseki International High School were staring at the flag with a look on their faces, making it difficult for them to hum their country's national anthem.
A quick search revealed that the former Shimonoseki Electronics Technical High School was not involved with Chongryon.
However, the same was true of the Sendai Ikuei athletes, which made me wonder if the Japan Teachers' Union had something to do with it.
And then there was the NHK cameraman on the day of the event.
This article continues.
