Rakes Muck Best From the Top

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass manages to tie together three prominent scandals and special investigations.
I love baseball, and I loathe Bonds. But baseball isn’t the Oval Office and Democratic excuses for being sexually satisfied by an intern while you’re on the phone with a congressman talking about sending American troops to the Balkans. Baseball isn’t [...]

China Diary, 1988: The Inscrutable West

In 1987–88, the Far Outliers, with their two-year-old daughter in tow, spent a year teaching English at a new community college in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, China. The following is one of a series of articles I wrote in 1988. I sent them to a Honolulu newspaper, but they were not interested. So now I [...]

Quirky Minor League Team Names

In the Montgomery, Alabama, visitor center that used to serve as the city’s Union Station, there’s a cleverly named restaurant called Lek’s Railroad Thai. It was there that I discovered that the city’s minor league (AA) baseball team is called the Biscuits (2006 Southern League Champions). What a nice bit of self-mocking regional pride! Of [...]

Two Essays on Baseball in Japan and the U.S.

Frog in a Well contributor Charles W. Hayford has posted a long and interesting essay on differing perceptions of Japanese baseball entitled Samurai Baseball: Off Base or Safe at Home? An earlier version appeared in Japan Focus under the title Samurai Baseball vs. Baseball in Japan. Here are few inducements to read the whole thing.
Is [...]

Bobkabata kabatabobbus et cetera

Scientists who name newly discovered species often name them after their mentors or colleagues, but some have more than a little bit of fun in the process. Take, for example, these two species of parasitic copepods:
Bobkabata kabatabobbus Hogans & Benz, 1990 (parasitic copepod) Named after parasitologist Bob Kabata [whose real given name is Zbigniew!].
Hoia hoi [...]

Daniel Drezner on the Globalization of Baseball

International relations professor (and Red Sox fan) Daniel Drezner has compiled a range of responses to the signing of Japan’s top pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka, by the Boston Red Sox. One of the excerpts he cites comes from Bryan Walsh at Time.com.
Most Japanese fans … are celebrating Matsuzaka’s signing as further proof that Japan’s best players [...]

Will the Red Sox–Yankee Rivalry Spread to Japan?

Japundit’s baseball columnist, Mike Plugh, offers some interesting speculation on some possible implications of Boston’s $50 million bid to talk with Japan’s top pitching ace, Daisuke Matsuzaka.
Should those plans fall through, what’s to stop the Red Sox from splashing on Ichiro. It would do two things. One, it would add an All-Star outfielder with a [...]

Sumo’s Appeal for the Waka/Taka Brothers and Others

THE NAMES “WAKAHANADA” and “Takahanada” meant little of poetic significance. The “waka” and “taka” parts merely evoked their father and uncle, while “hanada” was their real last name. But among those watching in February 1988, it was understood that the boys would one day earn the right to take on the great names “Wakanohana” and [...]

Takasago-beya as Both the Yankees and the Dodgers

While Azumazeki-Beya had been open for only two years, Takasago-Beya was steeped in sumo history. Of the fifty-odd sumo-beya [sumo stables] currently housing rikishi [professional sumo wrestlers] in various parts of the surrounding neighborhood, Takasago ranked fifth in years of operation, dating back to 1878—by no means the beginning of sumo, but an age when [...]

Mike Plugh’s Darvish Watch

Japundit contributor and kuwashii Japan baseball fan Mike Plugh has created a Darvish Watch blog devoted to the young Iranian Japanese pitching phenom, Yu Darvish. Here’s an excerpt.
The million dollar question is, “Who in the World is Yu Darvish?” This phenom has burst on the scene in Japan and is a marvel to behold on [...]