Koushien Tournament - Summer 2008

I wrote about the spring Koushien high school baseball tournament back in April here. There are two Koushien tournaments during the year. The spring tournament is an invitational and is a bit smaller than the summer tournament that every team in the country competes to be in. Koushien is huge in Japan, comparable to the NCAA basketball tournament in the U.S, except here the teams have an even stronger, more local fan base.

In this year's Okinawa qualifier, the team that won the spring Koushien lost in the final to Urasoe Shogyo. As expected, Urasoe is also a strong team. Koushien has been going on all week and happens to be only an hour away from where I'm at in Osaka. Urasoe won their first three games and made it to the final four, to be played Sunday. So another friend and I decided really late Saturday night (or Sunday morning?) that we'd go Sunday.

We followed the crowds on the subway and managed to buy tickets at the gate before it sold out. We grabbed two great seats and noted some differences from American professional baseball games. The tickets cost only about $12 and the food was only at a slight premium to prices outside the stadium. Also, the crowd plays a huge role in the game, playing instruments and singing chants at enormous volume while their team bats. And the game progresses quickly, lasting just over two hours.

The game was unfortunately a heartbreak for Okinawa. They were trying to preserve their star pitcher for today's final by starting the number two pitcher. But he had a rocky second inning and the star (in as a reliever) couldn't recover before the other team scored nine runs. It was a really fun experience, though, and something I cannot see in Okinawa.