Category Archives: baseball

Last night, I was watching the only Pro Baseball game in Japan that wasn’t rained out. My old underdog favorite Hiroshima Carp lost to the newly revitalized Yomiuri Giants and their superb, three-hit shutout pitching of Jeremy Powell. I was shocked to see that the super-traditional Carp had a foreign manager, former Carp player Marty Brown. The funniest part of the game for me was watching Brown’s translator while Brown was flashing signs to his outfield after the Giants broke the game open with a series of hits in the 7th inning. Brown’s translator was repeating, sign for sign, what his manager was signing. That surely must be the easiest translation task one could ask for.

It sounds like Brown has a much harder job, judging from a recent report by Jim Allen in the Daily Yomiuri.

Marty Brown is a firm believer in tradition, and traditionally no team has exerted more energy in practice than the Hiroshima Carp. Yet after finishing fifth or worse for four straight seasons, the fish lured their former outfielder back to Hiroshima Citizens Stadium to turn that energy into results….

The club’s spring training camp was like going to a living history museum, an homage to pro baseball’s past. Other clubs go through pre-programmed drills in small groups until noon when individuals go off to work on specific skills, but Hiroshima’s habit was old-school regimentation–working in groups from morning to late afternoon.

“Something had to be changed and I think it took a lot of guts to hire me to do this job, this being Hiroshima and [me] a foreign manager,” Brown said. “I respect that. I think it is good that I played in Hiroshima and I know the city and I still have a lot of friends there….

Brown has instructed all the players to plan their own skill workouts–instead of simply following programs planned out by coaches–and to have a focus and rationale for their work.

“Until now, the Carp have had very tough workouts. Just amazing,” said Arai. “But Marty has said we’ll finish group workouts earlier … [and] with the time remaining, players should … work individually on their weak points.”

This is nothing new in Japan.

The Chunichi Dragons won the CL in 2002 after rookie manager Hiromitsu Ochiai told veteran players to plan their own spring routines. But for the tradition-bound Carp this was a radical departure.

“Up to now, camp had the feeling of, ‘Do this.’ Now it is, ‘Let’s go.’ That’s really a significant difference,” Arai said.

Asked if players could confidently do their own thing after years of conformity, Arai insisted it was no problem.

“Essentially, action must originate with a player. When coaches are telling you ‘do it, do it,’ it is about their expectations,” Arai said. “But every action depends on the ability of the player, himself.

“Marty said, ‘You are professionals and I expect you to take responsibility.’ To take responsibility and think for yourself, and turn that into action, that is part of being a professional ball player.”

Today cricket is stronger than ever, yet baseball has made its own respectable path since switching to summer play in the 1970s. Despite Australia’s small population it is clear that there is room for both sports….

Baseball will never replace cricket in Australia, but the sport has a loyal and respectable following that cannot be ignored. The late Roy Page, South Australian night baseball pioneer, explained why he eventually preferred baseball over cricket: “[In baseball] at least you’d see a game decided. You’d go to cricket and you’d go for five days–which I used to do. You’d go five days, one after the other and at the end of the fifth day, it’s a draw! An inglorious draw!”…

Still, ignorance of the game in Australia is hard to overcome. While zealous early entrepreneurs of baseball in Australia took great pains to explain the rules at every opportunity, the majority of the population never had the chance to learn because they never attended or played in a game. Accordingly, when Australians start to play the game, they usually bring a cricket style with them, such as throwing the ball underarm to other fielders and swinging at pitches near the ground. Many see this as a major hurdle that will continue to plague Australian baseball in the future.

Lismore Baseball Club founder Reg Baxter, though a stalwart cricket player as well, had nothing but praise for the attributes of baseball: “It lasts only two hours, while cricket is over two weeks, so you’re tied down for two weeks, whereas in baseball you can say you’re not available next Saturday and somebody else can take your place. To me there’s something in baseball that’s not in any other sport. I believe baseball is the greatest thinking game there is.” Roy Page even credited baseball for helping bring innovations to cricket: “One-day cricket-who started that up? Ian Chappell. A cricket-baseballer. It was his idea that people wanted to see something on that specific day. They didn’t want to go two and three days…. They wanted to see something settled on the night…. This was Chappell’s idea. And I think that’s going to be more pronounced in the years to come, I really do. One-day cricket. More so than this five-day business. It’s not good enough.” Australian team cricketers consulted Dave Nilsson and the Institute of Sport for batting and throwing tips. Baseball fans listen to cricket on radios at the IBLA [International Baseball League of Australia] games [emphasis added]. Cricketers still play winter baseball to keep in shape for the summer. Many Australian baseballers still field and bat like cricketers. Cricket or baseball? In Australia you can comfortably play and support either or both.

SOURCE: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, by Joe Clark (U. Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 136-137

Like the other states, the Northern Territory had played baseball informally for many years before joining the national competition. Japanese fisherman and, later, American servicemen were first to play the game there. Organized baseball in the Northern Territory started in 1953 through the efforts of Charles Se Kee, a leading citizen of the Darwin Chinese community and president of the Darwin Basketball Association. Northern Territory baseball was limited to far-flung Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine, and Tennant Creek….

Darwin baseball began humbly with a competition among four teams. Equipment was expensive and difficult to obtain. While there were enough teams for a decent competition, lack of adequate facilities was a major problem. One player remembers: “We didn’t have any baseball diamonds. We had the old Darwin Oval, used as an area for public functions. In those days there was no grass on the field, and it was just dirt and rock. We had to paint the lines. We didn’t have lime in those days. It didn’t matter because there was no grass. We played on the oval with a cliff behind us, and any foul balls would probably go off into the sea. The games were held up while we got kids to go down and try to find the ball.” From its beginning baseball in Darwin was played at the wrong time of year, during the wet season from 1 October to the end of March. Darwin Baseball League tried a supplementary dry season competition in 1956, playing at Coonawarra Oval with moderate success. Subsequent supplementary dry season play was attempted in 1964-68 but was dropped in favor of wet season competition, which players supported [probably so they could keep playing cricket during the dry season–J.]. As baseball became more competitive, though, Darwin changed permanently to dry season baseball in 1984.

SOURCE: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, by Joe Clark (U. Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 78-79

1930s:

The Claxton Shield [national baseball competition] was inaugurated without fanfare at the 1934 carnival in Adelaide. Held between 4 and 11 August 1934, the first series was won by South Australia.

Shortly before the second Claxton Shield, a Japanese team visited Sydney as part of the Japanese Training Squadron. New South Wales played their representative Claxton Shield side against this team and won 9-2. As the other leading baseball nation of the world besides the United States, Japan was highly regarded by Australian baseballers. The Australians made numerous efforts to play visiting Japanese sides and recruit Japanese residents into Australian teams. Japan reciprocated this support, with the Japanese consul general sponsoring the Sydney first-grade competition, to be known as the Nippon Cup, the most significant trophy in New South Wales baseball to date.

1950s:

In 1954, nine years after the end of hostilities against Japan, the ABC [Australian Baseball Council] arranged for a Japanese baseball team called the Tokyo Giants to tour Australia. Prime Minister Robert Menzies gave assurances that the tour would proceed without hindrance or incident, but he did not count on the powerful Returned Serviceman’s League (RSL), who had objected to the tour from the outset. Nor did the Japanese team improve their standing with the RSL by arriving in Australia on Remembrance Day, 11 November. The visitors defeated the Queensland team 10-1 before only five hundred spectators. Three easy victories over Sydney teams were followed by the first “test” against Australia on 17 November. This test proved the most exciting game of the tour, with the score tied 8-8 after ten innings. The Giants would score 6 runs in the eleventh inning to win the game.

Traveling to Canberra for games on 19 and 21 November, the Japanese met Prime Minister Menzies, along with his minister for the interior, Kent Hughes, a former prisoner of the Japanese. Both warmly welcomed the visitors. Tokyo’s schedule had included games in Melbourne and Perth, but relentless pressure from the RSL forced the cancellation of the rest of the Australian tour.

SOURCE: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, by Joe Clark (U. Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 53, 64

It’s not surprising that Australia has its own particular Strain of baseball jargon. Here’s a sampling.

• “BALLS OUT!” – called by umpire to tell fielding side to throw practice balls back into the dugout as the inning is about to start.
• BLUE – Umpire, because of blue umpire’s uniform, even used when the umpire is not wearing blue. Victorian Baseball Association umpire, Greg Howard, has the car number plates “HEYBLU”!
• DEAD – Out, as in “How many dead, Blue?” “Two dead”.
• FOUR – colloquial reference to home plate. Only used in context of game situation though, as in “Look at Four! Look at Four!” from the third base coach to a runner running full speed into third, or “Four! Four!! Four!!!” from a catcher calling for a throw with a runner going home.
• HOOKIE – Left handed batter, announced as “Hookie!” or by swallowing the first consonant ” ‘ookeeeee!”. Called by fielding side so outfielders can shift to the right side.
• LOADED BASES – Bases Loaded. (Australian baseballers always place the adjective first here).
• SIDE (Batting or fielding) – possibly a cricket term, referring to “the fielding side” (defence) or “the batting side” (offence).
• SIDE – Called by the umpire to indicate three outs have been made in a half inning and it is time to swap from offence to defence and vice versa.
• “TIME AND GAME!” – Most Australian club games are timed, usually two hours or less. When a timed game is over, the umpire yells “Time and game!”. Mixed reactions are predictable when this is yelled, from jubilation by the winners to painful shrieks of ‘C’mon, Blue!?!” and other prevarications by the losers who may feel unjustly denied their right to try and win.

The Australian Baseball History website contains a fuller list.