Besuboru Guy—Sacred Soil

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.

***  *** 

On this day in Round and Square History 
5 September 2012—The Cortex Chronicles: Punting and Strategy (a)
5 September 2011—Displays of Authenticity: Canine Devotion

[a] Individual and Society RF

可飛ばせ, 中山!

Let 'er rip, Nakayama!  OR
Fly to base, Nakayma!

—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Nakayama is a very common surname, like "Daniels")

And sometimes high school players let 'er rip (and fly to base) in the hallowed lines of
Kōshien Stadium, where the finals are played before a national television audience.

And one side has to lose. That is the cruel nature of sport (and nature).

[b] Win-loss RF

And sixty years ago, a despondent young man scooped up a handful of the sacred infield and took it away with him. At least, he said, he could remember the time he spent at baseball's still point of a moving world.

Over the next few decades, a few other losing players did the scoop-n-go-home drill. 

And now almost everyone does.

Sacred Dirt of Kōshien Stadium

Only in a society in which valiant losing is treasured could such a tradition truly take root. It remind me of one of my favorite books about Japan, too. The title? The Nobility of Failure.

Sacred soil and losing the good battle. It is a splendid combination.

[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].

[c] Sacrality RF

[Originally posted on August 28, 2014]