My Experience at Koshien (The Condensed Version)

Please note that I've written this version as a condensed tale of my Koshien experience. To read the full story which contains more pictures & videos, please visit a separate blog post that I authored available here.

Also, for some of my favorite pictures and videos from this event, please refer to the following links -
My pictures (youtube version)
My picture album (from facebook)
​My youtube playlist 

​

Okay, now time for the story

For a week in August, I experienced what I would soon discover to be the holy grail of high school baseball. 
​

Hanshin Koshien Stadium and its famous Black Dirt

​No, I was not anywhere near Cooperstown nor Williamsport. In fact, I was halfway around the world from those places (almost 6800 miles away to be exact) at a professional stadium with a skin infield covered by chocolately brown dirt and a perfectly manicured, green outfield in front of an old, barely electronic scoreboard.

​The location? Hanshin Koshien Stadium near Osaka, Japan. A stadium in which the professional baseball club Hanshin Tigers normally plays its home games. The occasion? The 100th annual summer Koshien national high school championship tournament, which is Japan’s, and perhaps the world’s, most prestigious baseball event. It is a multi-week, single elimination affair that features 56 high school clubs spanning the Japanese archipelago, playing in front of crowds easily exceeding 50,000 people and all vying for the title of national champion and a lifetime of glory.

---

Having attended Japanese professional baseball games for several years, I became familiar with the tournament and soon set my sights on attending it in August 2018. Nothing could quite prepare me for the spectacle that I was about to become a part of.

The packed, standing room only bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka, the intense national TV coverage (I watched several games from my hotel in Tokyo, which were broadcast live from Koshien Stadium nearly 300 miles away), and the thousands of fans waiting outside the stadium in humid 90 degree heat when I first arrived, signaled to me that something special was occurring within the ivy-covered walls of Koshien Stadium.
​

A coveted ticket to a day's worth of Koshien action

Tickets to Koshien, as I would soon find out, are a hot commodity with fans lining up hours before or, in some cases, the night prior hoping to snag a general admission seat in either the expansive outfield or smaller infield seating areas. There are limited ticket sales that occur before the event, but you had better know someone that speaks Japanese to grab one of these quickly selling items. Since I did not buy a pre-sale ticket, I had the privilege of getting to the stadium between 4 and 5 am most days to join what I would soon call the “Koshien 5K” which is the rush of fans from the train station to the ticket gates, hoping to secure a premier spot in line and, eventually, a ticket to that day’s games. Yes, fans would be literally running from the train station to the stadium in the wee hours of the morning. A local team, such as Osaka Toin (the eventual tournament champion), playing that day? Better get to the stadium early.

---

I attended 3 days and 10 games of the Koshien tournament, spaced across a week in Osaka. Here, I’ll relate some of the highlights of my time at Koshien.

The ambiance - In previous trips to Japan, I had gotten used to the near constant cheering of the stadium while their team bats. At Japanese professional games, horn players will lead vast fan cheering sections in chants, songs and even dances. Nothing prepared me for the full on Koshien pep-bands mixed in with large crowds of supporters that would play many American favorite tunes such as “We will Rock You,” “The Final Countdown,” the Star Wars theme or even “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
​

Paired with the stadium ambiance, the ritualistic nature of Japanese baseball, deeply seeped in respect, is on full display at Koshien. Before each game, the two teams will greet their assembled fans (who sit in special spectator sections down each baseline) with a deep bow. What follows is what can be best described as “the charge” - both teams line up in front of their dugouts, rush each other until they reach home plate, and, along with the umpires, take another grand bow to one another. Then the home team's rush onto the field is punctuated by an air raid siren.

The respect also carried over to the player’s interactions with their coaches, the umpires and even the field. When a coach would call a conference in front of the dugout, all of the players would remove their caps and make direct eye contact with the coach. Players would be seen regularly tipping their cap to the umpire during their first at-bat. These same players also hold a certain reverence for Koshien, viewing it as an almost religious ground. This would become evident through the regular bows the players would make while taking their positions and the restraint they showed in not spitting while on the field.

After the game, a similar event takes place, in which each team again greets each other at home plate with a bow, the winning team listens to its school song over the stadium loudspeakers, and then the teams head back out to re-acknowledge their spectator sections with a final bow. Finally, the losing team participates in one of the most time honored traditions of Koshien - in front of their dugout, the defeated team falls to its knees and begins to gather handfuls of Koshien’s famous black dirt, which they drop into a nearby cleat bag. A personal memento of their Koshien that they'll cherish for the rest of their lives.
​

Losing team gathering the black dirt of Koshien

​The games themselves move at a near breakneck pace, with players hustling on and off the field at all times. Pitchers generally take only a few warm-up pitches in between innings, having already been throwing in front of their dugout before their team makes the 3rd out on offense. In what could be described as a form of art, the team departing the field to switch over to offense would drop the baseball exactly in front of the rubber every single time. Full nine-inning games would generally only take between 2 and 2 and a half hours for a total of either three or four games a day.

Catcher pit crew working overtime

Speaking of the players, the experience of Koshien completely revolves around them. Players coach both first and third base, giving key instructions to their team-mates and making the do or die calls on whether to send runners on to home plate. Players will also handle all of the other details that are normally delegated in America to our adult coaches, such as mound visits and taking care of injured players. As to injuries, all Japanese player coaches that I saw were equipped with a can of cold spray in their back pocket, ready should the need arise.

Players would also fastidiously help each other as evidenced by the catcher “pit crews” that would appear each inning. Two players would help the catcher put on his shin guards, one assigned to each leg, while another would give the catcher a cup of water  along with his helmet and chest protector. In times that would make a NASCAR crew proud (and umpires, for that matter), the catcher would quickly be on his way to home plate, ready to complete his duties. If a player was due up to bat, a team-mate would bring him a cup of water, his bat and take his hat and glove back to the bench.

​Through the spirit of hustle, joy, respect and service that the players displayed, I received a strong sense that they were simply playing the game and not their opponents.

---

While watching this from the grandstand, although I badly speak three words of Japanese (Hello, thank-you and yes), I never longed for company. Each day at Koshien, the Japanese fans next to me took an interest in our shared passion for 'Kokoyakyu' (the Japanese word for high school baseball). Like any American baseball game that you share with friends, we enjoyed the game together - laughing at various plays or moments during the game. Japanese high school baseball is such an experience that it felt like my first time attending a baseball game - I had many questions about the game for my new Japanese friends which they graciously answered.

And although there are partisan fans in the stadium's vast expanse, the majority of the crowd cheered for both teams and simply wanted to see a well played and respectful game between the two sides. Both winning and losing teams were cheered but fans would start to side with the losing team in the later innings, hoping to help draw them back into the match.
​

​The trip to Koshien was truly an eye-opening, almost religious, and baseball life changing experience. It is truly something that makes you want to soak it in as much as possible over the course of multiple hours or days. Between the rituals, the sing-song voices of the vendors, the company of fellow fans, the bands and the pace of play, I was never bored. 

​The ambiance and joyful spirit with which the game is played at this tournament is to be admired and, hopefully, something that I can use to with my own players back here in the “home” of baseball.

​(Please note that I plan to make future trips to Koshien - if you'd like to attend together or have any questions at all, please get in touch with me! Also, if you found this interesting, don't forget to check out the less condensed blog post, photos and videos at the top of this page!)

​#第100回全国高等学校野球選手権記念大会 #野球#甲子園

One of my favorite captures - a team down 9-2 with 2 outs in the last inning hits a 2 run HR. The team would go on to lose, but the team played with joy and fully enjoyed their Koshien experience despite the result. Also notice the cold spray jammed in #9's pocket.

---