From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Besuboru Guy—All Tied Up

Click here for the "Celebrity Commentary" Resource Center—(all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Celebrity Commentary" (coming soon)
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.
***  *** 
One year ago on Round and Square (10 June 2012)—The Accidental Ethnographer: Melbourne Revival (d)
Two years ago on Round and Square (10 June 2011)—Living and Learning: Nothing Doing

[a] Individual and Society RF
可飛ばせ, 鈴木!
Let 'er rip, Suzuki!  OR
Fly to base, Suzuki!
—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Suzuki is a common surname, like "Jones")

And letting 'er rip inning-after-inning is something we often take for granted in baseball competition.
[b] Tie-breaker RF

Perhaps the biggest difference between baseball in the American major leagues and in Japan is what happens when the score is tied after nine innings. Well, that isn't the big difference...yet. You see, in both countries the players come out onto the field for the tenth inning. If it is tied after that, they play the eleventh...and then the twelfth.

And here is where it changes. In Japan, if it is tied after twelve innings, everyone goes home.
[c] Tied up RF

Tie game.

And what of the playoffs? What happens then?

They go fifteen innings, but then call it a day.

No one gets tied up in knots about it. There is just the little extra space in the won-lost-(tied) record familiar to everyone who watches hockey, football (soccer), and American football.

But never in basketball...or baseball* (or spelling bees...usually).

Except in Japan.

*There is one sort-of exception in Major League Baseball history.

[If you don't read Japanese, but want to have some sense of the Japanese kana and kanji in these posts, just copy the phrases and paste them into translation software such as Babylon or Google Translate].
[d] Tie it up! RF
[Originally posted on August 10, 2014]

No comments:

Post a Comment