In Japan, Baseball Is the Art of War

As far as many Japanese are concerned, baseball isn’t a sport. It’s the art of war.

Games are called battles, teams are troops and hard-hitting batters are cannons. Winning or losing is a life-or-death situation, with virtually no distractions from free agency or salary arbitration.

Just ask Nobuhiro Nonaka, a 21-year-old student who heads the Young Tigers Association, a battalion of trumpet-blowing, drum-pounding Hanshin Tigers fans.

“We Japanese see baseball as a minute-to-minute battle. There’s no tomorrow,” Nonaka said between cheers at the Tigers’ season opener April 6.

“Americans don’t take baseball seriously enough, they’re too placid,” he explained. “They invented it, but we appreciate it more. For us it’s kind of like a religion.”

Nonaka and his fellow die-hards wear bright yellow-and-black sweatshirts or “happi” coats with a roaring tiger on the back. Some die yellow stripes into their hair.

Their clamor is incessant, enough to put even the most energetic Major League fans to shame. Heroes are spoken of with reverence -- former college coach and columnist Suishu Tobita is the “god of baseball” and Lotte Orions manager Masaichi Kaneda the “god of pitching.”

American teacher Horace Wilson is generally credited with organizing Japan’s first baseball game in 1873, less than 20 years after Japan opened its doors to the world after centuries of self-imposed isolation. The first pro team was formed in 1934.

Today, Japan’s 12 clubs are split up into the Pacific and Central leagues and play a 130-game season. The Japan Series championship is in October.

About 21 million fans will go to a professional baseball game this year, according to league statistics. Vendors will sell them sushi and noodle soup instead of Crackerjacks and pretzels.

At home, millions more will watch the almost nightly game broadcasts and late-night “baseball news” on all major networks. A half dozen nationally circulated “sports newspapers” will be must reading for commuters.

“Japan has two national sports -- sumo and baseball,” Baseball Commissioner Ichiro Yoshikuni said in an interview. “The teamwork involved in baseball fits in perfectly with the national temper of the Japanese.”

But the Japanese have also found it necessary to do some fine-tuning.

“Besuboru” is more cautious, more strategic and slower than the American game. Tie games are common, and pitchers rarely try to whiff batters on three straight fastballs.

Fans return balls fouled into the stands.

Adding some spice to the rosters are “tsuketto,” or “helpers.” They are players imported, usually from the United States and at great expense, by teams looking to improve their hitting power or pitching finesse.

Each team is allowed two “helpers” on its starting roster, and many keep another on their farm team.

But a good record in the States doesn’t necessarily mean success in Japan. Flexibility is a must.

“Everyday is an adjustment,” said well-traveled Tom O’Malley, who played for the Giants, White Sox, Orioles, Rangers, Expos, Mets and then a Triple A club last year before joining the Hanshin Tigers.

“You just don’t know what to expect,” O’Malley said. “They have their own style and you just have to let it roll off your back.”

R.J. Reynolds, debuting with the Yokohama Taiyo Whales this year, said the biggest difference is in the pitching.

“Adjusting to the lifestyle is no problem, the team is taking good care of me,” said Reynolds, who is making an estimated $1.3 million. “But on the field, I’m a rookie.”

“There’s more walks, more curves, more change-ups,” he said. “Most of the pitchers are very deceptive.”

Reynolds, who hit .288 for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1990, got a taste of baseball in Japan last fall as part of a touring Major League all-star team.

It wasn’t an auspicious beginning. The U.S. all-stars lost the first four games and ended up losing the series 3-4-1, the first exhibition series loss in 20 years.

Commissioner Yoshikuni said declarations about Japanese baseball finally catching up with the majors were premature. The Americans lost because they weren’t trying, he said.

“Half the reason why they came was to sight-see.”

Yoshikuni added, however, that the success of players like Cecil Fielder of the Detroit Tigers and Bill Gullickson in the Major Leagues after a stint in Japan shows that the Japanese way of doing things isn’t all bad.

“Some people may fuss about how different the games are, but I think that it’s basically the same,” Yoshikuni said. “There are differences in our mental approach and in our strategies. But not in essence.”

Yoshikuni, formerly a senior government official, said the biggest differences are found off the field.

Japanese baseball has never known the threat of a players’ strike. It has no free agents and, until last month, no Japanese player had ever gone into arbitration.

“We don’t think of the relationship between owners and players as a labor issue,” said Yoshikuni, who is 74. “It’s more like the relationship between a parent and child.”

The average annual salary for Japanese players is $109,000, or about one-seventh the average in the majors. A players’ union wasn’t even formed until 1985.

The highest paid is Hiromitsu Ochiai, a paunchy 37-year-old first baseman for the Chunichi Dragons who is Japan’s only three-time triple crown winner.

Ochiai, hoping to boost his pay from $1.38 million $2.07 million, earlier this year became the first Japanese player to seek salary arbitration.

But last month the arbitrators -- Yoshikuni and the heads of the two leagues -- ruled against him, saying the Dragons’ offer of $1.69 million was fair.

“I don’t expect many more arbitration cases,” said Yoshikuni, who, like the league chiefs, is appointed by the team owners. “It’s just not the Japanese way of doing things.”