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The two teams that were facing off where the Yomiuri Giants (home) vs. Tokyo Yakult Swallows (away). The showdown happened in the Tokyo Dome, which is an enormous, fully enclosed baseball stadium that was awe-inspiring in its own right. There were several times throughout the game where it seemed like a fly ball was going to hit the ceiling, but somehow it magically remained intangibly far away.
To be entirely honest baseball is not my favorite sport. I tend to enjoy sports where points go back and forth quickly (aka. tennis), but then again, I had never seen Japanese baseball. After watching last night's game, I may be a convert (at least while in Japan).
So you may ask, why is Japanese baseball so incredibly enthralling? Short answer: the crowd. Take your typical American crowd at any sporting event, take out boo-ing at the away team, and then multiply the crowd's enthusiasm by 10. That is how energetic a Japanese ball game is. Every single player on the home team as their own chant, which everybody in the crowd knows forward and backward. Furthermore, whenever one of the many go-us-we-scored rituals starts up, there is not a single person in the completely-filled stadium that is sitting down. For the Giants, this meant that everybody singing a chant and swinging around an orange towel and fist pumping in proper unison.
When the home team won, the stadium simply erupted. There were businessman hugging each other. There were streamers. There were shiny things. There was a trophy. There was a speech. And it wasn't even a championship game!
Quick Summary: If you could turn the energy in that stadium into electricity, the world's energy crisis would be solved in one season of Japanese baseball.
Oh, and the game itself was actually pretty good to. Both teams scored home runs throughout the game, and there was an absolutely incredible double play during the 5th or 6th inning. Bottom line, while I may still be new in Japan, there is one thing I know for sure. They definitely know how to do baseball right.
