Differences between Japanese and North American baseball

August 26th, 2011By Category: Uncategorized

Fans of Major League Baseball will find more similarities than differences in the Japanese game. With nearly identical rules covering everything from the basics (four balls, three strikes, three outs) to the obscure (balks and ground rule hits), the variations are more noticeable off the field than on.

Tie games

If neither team is leading at the end of 12 innings, the game is recorded as a tie. Following the March 11th earthquake, this rule was modified so tie games can be called as soon as the end of the ninth inning, in an effort to save electricity.

Foreign players

Each team is allowed only four foreign players on their active roster.

Playoffs

In 2007,  Nippon Professional Baseball instituted a playoff system known as the Climax Series to determine which teams get to play in the Japan Series championship. The first stage matches the second- and third-place teams in each league in a best-of-3 series, with the winner earning the right to play a best-of-6 set against the league leader.

Sportsmanship

Although the Japanese play ball with the same fervor as Westerners do, their emotions rarely spill over into spectacles such as bench-clearing balls. When a pitcher beans a batter, for example, a tip of the cap by way of apology is de rigueur. That said, emotion does occasionally get the best of both players and coaches.

“Sportsmanship”

At the same time, the Japanese are not above a bit of gamesmanship. In 1985, 2001 and 2002, foreign sluggers threatened to break the illustrious Sadaharu Oh’s single-season home run record. All three players were pitched around during their remaining at bats to keep Oh-san’s record intact.

Obsession with youth

In North America, the Little League or college World Series may merit a highlight on SportsCenter. In Japan, the twice-a-year high school tournaments (known familiarly as “Koshien”) cause the entire country to sit up and take notice. The summer championship in particular has been a breeding ground of future stars, including Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Terminology

Although Japan borrows many baseball-related words and phrases from English, some terms get mixed up in translation. Touch up, for example, means to tag up, while timely is a noun that means “an RBI hit” — whether the hit was timely or not.

Author of this article

Steve Trautlein

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Comments

  • canada, 7 years says:

    what about how they always seem to play “small ball” here, always bunt with a man on in every situation. They also don’t seem to slide at the 2nd baseman or have many hard collisions at the plate. the games here seem lower scoring in general. In koshien, they don’t tend to go to the bullpen even when the ace is getting shelled. There are a few other differences such as crowd atmoshphere etc, how the relief pitcher rides to the infield in a car, etc. I prefer the American game by far, and i’m not even a fan of baseball.

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