Time Machine: East Meets West in the Japanese Game of Besuboru (Smithsonian Magazine - 1986)
TOKYO — No leisure activity occupies the Japanese as much as besuboru - that’s baseball in American. Last year, 16 million fans flocked to see the 12 teams of Japan’s Central and Pacific professional leagues, while millions more tuned in to the nightly prime-time nationwide telecasts and read the results in the country’s seven sports dailies. A recent survey found that one of every two of the nation’s 120 million citizens is a besuboru fan, including the Prime Minister and the Emperor.
The leading attraction is the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, the oldest and winningest team in the land, who draw standing-room only crowds throughout the 130-game season lasting from April to October. When the Giants play their traditional rivals from Osaka, the Hanshin Tigers, the ticket lines form 24 hours in advance. At Koshien Stadium, the Tigers’ 60,000-seat home park, a barbed-wire fence keeps the spectators off the field. Riot police patrol the bleachers.
Last season, when the Tigers won their first pennant in 21 years, a wave of Tiger-mania swept the land; it prompted a flood of souvenirs like Tiger beer, Tiger soap and Tiger underwear, which, combined with admission fees, service revenue and other related costs, generated nearly half a billion dollars worth of income in the Osaka area alone. At year’s end a poll of Japanese newspaper readers picked the outbreak of Tiger fever as one of the top ten domestic news stories of 1985.
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