A judge in a child custody case asks a boy which parent he wants to live with. His mother beats him, he tells the judge. Unfortunately, so does the boy's father. In a quandary, the judge asks the boy who he wants to live with.
"The Cleveland Indians," the boy replies. "They don't beat anyone."
Figuratively speaking, getting beat is part of the game. But in Japan a boy's education into the real world of baseball is based largely on arbitrary beatings.
"It's very much like the military tradition in Japan," said Kenichi Yazawa, who was a Waseda University captain and later star first baseman for the Chunichi Dragons, in a recent discussion at Tokyo Dome.
"Freshmen taking batting practice are allowed to shout but not swing," Yazawa said.
Huh?
"Sure they swing, but if they drive the ball farther than the upperclassmen, they will get a beating. You'd get punched up pretty good."
In a recently published book of interviews, Ichiro Suzuki describes how, at Aiko Meiden High School, he was made to perform "seiza," kneeling for prolonged periods while maintaining a prescribed posture. As uncomfortable as this practice, commonly associated with zen meditation, is under ordinary circumstances, Ichiro and his classmates were required to perform the exercise while perched on the rim of steel garbage cans.
When done at a temple, people unable to maintain their posture get a kindly whack from the stick of the attending priest. Japanese high school and college players can expect either the stick or a punch from an upperclassman.
Yazawa says this can go on for about an hour and on the most uncomfortable surface available, usually concrete.
"You come in as a first-year hot-shot and you want to show everyone that you belong, that you're ready to contribute. You try your hardest, but you soon learn your place.
"Hit the ball too hard and the upperclassmen will be waiting for you, saying, 'Who do you think you are?'"
Underclassmen are not allowed to say anything but "yes" or "no" and the upperclassmen always make a game out of it, trying to trick the new kids into answering otherwise, so they could beat the daylights out of them, all in good fun of course.
Yazawa, as a baseball prodigy, got more than his share of prodigious beatings.
"I'd talk back, and first they'd hit and kick you and then make you kneel on the cement. You'd want to cry it hurt so bad. But you didn't dare. If you did it would mean even more punches."
So how did he feel when he became an upperclassman and was able to dish out some punishment for a change?
"That was pretty cool," he said. "I wanted my chance to hit people.
"But when I became team captain as a senior, I made a rule: Underclassmen were not to be punished unless I was present. If I was there, I would allow it, but you couldn't just beat up underclassman whenever you wanted to.
"It wasn't much. I couldn't stop the punishment altogether. If I tried to do that I would have lost respect as captain. So I did what I could.
"Now when I look back, I'm really ashamed."
And what does physical abuse add to the educational experience other than teaching kids how to get beat up?
"Not a thing."
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But, according to Yazawa, Waseda allowed freshmen and sophomores a little more leeway than other schools. "In most schools, they put one freshman, one sophomore and one senior in the same room," said Yazawa. "Whatever the senior wants, the underclassmen have to do. Wash their clothes, go to the store and get them a Coke, whatever."
Slaves in other words.
"Almost slaves. But at Waseda, everybody has his own room, even the freshman. And everyone does their own laundry. So I was pretty lucky.
Waseda had ties to the University of Chicago and that influence led
the school give each serf, ehr underclassman his own room.
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Of course brutality is also the name of the game at high school power houses. This summer, Osaka's PL Gakuen High School, where numerous pro stars earned their spurs, along with their cuts and bruises, was kicked out of the Summer National High School Tournament after a series of incidents related to the school's baseball club were revealed.
According to a story last month in the Nikkan Sports, one PL Gakuen upperclassman jabbed a second-year student in the head a year ago with the grip end of a baseball bat, opening up a cut that required four stitches.
Another player took batting practice on the head of one of his schoolmates.
Considering the way things work in some schools, the perpetrator of the latter beating was probably cut from the starting squad, not for brutality but for poor bat control--his victim needed just seven stitches.
These incidents, however, were made public after the mother of a former player at the school filed a complaint that one team member had tried to extort ¥1.9 million from her son.
The establishment apparently thought, "What's a little bloodshed in the name of team spirit and education?, but extortion, well that's just plain wrong."
So the High School Baseball Federation recommended PL Gakuen take time away from national tournaments to get its act together.
So now the word is out: You can beat up underclassman, but whatever
you do, don't ask them to pay for the privilege.
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The notion that common suffering within a group promotes cohesion and elan is popular in training military forces. The common application of physical abuse in Japanese baseball stems from the way the game was first received in Japan.
The closest thing the country had to sports were the disciplines of the martial arts, where winning in combat, rather than outplaying an opponent, was the objective. Baseball was interpreted in Japan as a martial art for teams.
Because the baseball establishment is run by former players, who now look upon their childhood miseries with a pathological nostalgia, there is little interest in reforming the system. For these old guys, corporal punishment is an integral part of the spiritual and moral training that makes sports such a valuable experience.
Isn't it enough that baseball sparks competition and promotes physical fitness? Accepting brutality in sports as a form of moral and spiritual advancement is a cruel joke that, unfortunately, is keeping young players in stitches.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .