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.
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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
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| [a] Individual and Society RF |
可飛ばせ, 鈴木!
Let 'er rip, Suzuki! OR
Fly to base, Suzuki!
Fly to base, Suzuki!
—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Suzuki is a common surname, like "Jones")
(Suzuki is a common surname, like "Jones")
And letting 'er rip inning-after-inning is something we often take for granted in baseball competition.
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| [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.
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| [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].
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