The Arm by Jeff Passan

Author:Jeff Passan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Land of the Rising Arm Injury Rate

OUTSIDE THE BARN, THE OLD man smiled. He could hear the soundtrack of his life around the corner in his makeshift baseball facility. The grunts of teenage boys. The metal pipes thwacking golf balls. The whip-crack of baseball meeting glove. Everything unfolded with militaristic precision on this, the 212th consecutive day of practice, with another 148 in a row left before year’s end. The old man didn’t bother craning his neck toward the two dozen kids inside. He didn’t need to see to know exactly what was happening.

“Baseball in Japan is called yakyu,” the old man, Masanori Joko, said. “There is a saying that yakyu can explain life. How much you can be patient in the moment and make good use of those moments in life. Even a little pitch can become a big moment. It’s important to find those bad moments to save the other experiences. The good moment, even though it’s a little good moment, it can connect to a very big moment. You can learn how to connect those little chunks to the better moment. You can say that in life and in baseball.”

I came to Japan to learn about yakyu and life and the most fascinating baseball culture in the world, one that holds the arm sacred. Few embodied the spirit of yakyu like Joko. He was sixty-seven years old, with tan skin, sunken eyes, and a full head of graying hair. Even when angry, Joko smiled. He grew up here, the seaside town of Matsuyama, on the smallest of the Japanese islands, Shikoku, and moved back after his wife died of cancer. If he couldn’t be with her, he would be with his children.

That’s what he called the boys of the Saibi High School baseball team. They made him famous throughout Japan. Every spring and summer, teams around the country travel to Nishinomiya, just outside Kobe, to participate in the national high school baseball tournament at Koshien Stadium, the country’s most sacred sporting grounds. For nearly a century, Koshien has hosted twice-annual championships that marry the interest of the NFL, the urgency of the NCAA basketball tournament, and the parochialism of the World Cup. Baseball is Japan’s greatest athletic passion, and high school baseball is its purest incarnation.

Saibi reached the finals of Spring Koshien in 2013, thanks to a boy named Tomohiro Anraku. The V-shaped brim of his Saibi cap was the only youthful thing about him. At sixteen, he was noticeably bigger than the other kids, his shoulders so wide that his arms had the stubby appearance of a T. rex’s. At Koshien, almost every team chooses its best pitcher and rides him the entire tournament. For Anraku, that meant a nine-day span in which he pitched five games and threw 772 pitches.

This number became famous in Japan and notorious elsewhere. The number 772 symbolized a cultural chasm as wide as the Pacific Ocean. “This is child abuse,” said Don Nomura, a longtime agent to top Japanese players.

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