We sadly announce the death of Prophet of the Way on Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:11:27
+0900 after being stricken by fj.life.in-japan Disease. The will states:

>The 2-Belo wrote:
>
>>> Do you mean "baseball" or "Japanese baseball flavored product" a.k.a. 
>>> "yakyu." 
>> 
>> I detect a smidge of derision in that particular description. Is Japanese
>> baseball not baseball?
>
>R. Whiting has written an interesting book on the differences titled 
>'You Gotta have Wa'.  Review from the New York Times:
>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5D91731F936A25754C0A96F948260

This was written in 1989. I seriously doubt much of it would be relevant now,
although it sheds a lot of light on the history of the game here.

>'J-Ball' is an interesting article on high-school tournaments by Scott Lothes:
>http://lothes.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
>(May 21 2007, middle of page)

Ah, Japan's version of the Final Four. My office even has a pool :)

>Jim Allen's Japanese Baseball Page:
>http://www2.gol.com/users/jallen/jimball.html

My favorite part of this article is this passage:

"Former Tiger slugger Randy Bass was never thrown even a reasonable facsimile of
a strike in his pursuit of the Japanese single-season home run record, held by
Oh."

This is to be expected. Hank Aaron received death threats for his trouble.

But my opinion still stands. Japanese baseball might be different from that
which is played in America, but I'm still going to call it baseball. Neither is
superior or inferior to the other. If it were so, then Japan wouldn't have won
the WBC :)



-- 
The 2-Belo [the2beloATmsdDOTbiglobeDOTneDOTjp]
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