Besuboru Guy—Strike!

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One year ago on Round and Square (19 June 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (b)
Two years ago on Round and Square (19 June 2011)—Hurtin' Country: Meetin' Hank

[a] Individual and Society RF

可飛ばせ, 山本!

Let 'er rip, Yamamoto!  OR
Fly to base, Yamamoto!

—Common Japanese baseball chant
(Yamamoto is a common surname, like "Jenkins")

[b] Looking for a strike RF

And if Yamamoto wants to let 'er rip (and fly to base), he needs a good pitch down the middle of the plate. The pitcher needs to throw strikes, and the hitter should learn to hit those pitches. That's beseboro.

But this post is about the strike of 2004. Yes, Japanese baseball shut down in September 2004. And you know what? The fans sided with the players. The issues weren't salary or work conditions so much as how league play would be shaped (including the interleague play that we saw yesterday). The owners caved, everyone made up, and baseball got back on-track.

2004 Strike CNN

 

2004 Strike Slate

2004 Strike Voice of America

But still, there was a strike in Japan. That still makes me shake my Besuboro Guy head.

[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] One kind RF

[Originally posted on August 19, 2014]