The Baseball Diaries

Which is worse, I wonder - playing baseball under the hot sun when it's 80-90 degrees out, or playing in the pouring rain? Today was Yoshi's team's second tournament game. It started raining in the second or third inning, but apparently once you get started you can't quit. There were a couple of rain delays, but the ground was getting muddier and muddier, and I suppose those players were getting soppier and soppier. When the score was tied in the fifth inning, the officials finally gave it up. The Japanese term for this is "No Game." Those four hours in the rain were for naught. They have to play the whole thing again, from the first inning, tomorrow.

On a side note, I had something to do with the slogan printed on the official Kita High School towels. The parents or players or whoever had decided to jettison the previous slogan I came up with - "Reach for the Dream" (ripped off from the Olympic theme song a few years back)and replace it with "Let Our Dream Come True."

"No way," I said. "Too passive. This is a baseball team!" I revised it to "Let's Make Our Dream Come True." Still sappy and cliched, I know, but they went with it.

In case you don't know what "the dream" is, I'll tell you. Every high school baseball player in Japan dreams of getting to the Koshien stadium in Osaka for the national tournament. Nothing else really matters.