[Congratulations! Keio Senior High School Baseball Team Koshien Champions] [On the Koshien Victory] Where Did "Enjoy Baseball" Come From?

2023/10/11

The phrase "Enjoy Baseball" is truly profound.

Since its introduction to Japan in 1872, "Yakyu" (baseball), which emphasizes a spirituality of "putting one's soul into every pitch" and the "Way of Baseball," became something distinct from "Baseball." In student baseball, the common sense was to demand endurance over rationality and obedience over initiative, with players used as tools at the manager's command. The sensation of players themselves enjoying the thrill of strategic maneuvering found in authentic American baseball was viewed as an immoral attitude of mutual deception. "Yakyu" was a "match" fought with real swords, and one was not supposed to show their white teeth (smile). Shaved heads were a sign of the determination to devote everything to "Yakyu" in order to build one's character.

Against that common sense, they coolly used the English word "Baseball" and said to "Enjoy" it. Because, after all, it is something you "Play" as a "Game." This intense spirit of rebellion is often overlooked.

The person who started using this phrase was Yukichi Maeda. Maeda, who served as the manager of the university baseball team for two terms totaling 18 years and won eight league championships, first used this phrase in 1983 when he realized the first U.S. tour in 55 years to rebuild the slumping baseball team (Tetsuya Horii, the current university baseball team manager, was a participating player on this tour). He then repeatedly spoke of its significance within the university baseball team to establish it.

Maeda also publicly expressed a strong sense of unease regarding the current state of high school baseball. He supported Makoto Ueda's appointment as an English teacher and baseball manager at Keio Senior High School, telling him, "You must spread Enjoy Baseball." The current manager, Takahiko Forest, was a member of Ueda's first graduating class.

Maeda was a broad-minded leader who studied the latest baseball from original texts himself, lectured members on local culture during foreign tours, and even organized an unscheduled tour of Las Vegas, saying they should feel the country that gave birth to baseball firsthand.

The notebooks left by Maeda are on permanent display at the Keio History Museum.

"Shaved heads are by no means high-school-like," "Bowing to the field is an empty formality," "The arrogance of high school baseball," "Baseball is not education," "The manager is a gardener," "Practice on your own," "Don't look at the bench," "Baseball is a sport where you hit and compete for runs," "Hit, hit, hit," "It's just baseball, isn't it?"... From the words lined up, Maeda's intense anger gushes out. I speculate that what drove Maeda was his experience at the Army Junior Military Academy, where he spent time under shaved heads and irrational discipline and obedience. To Maeda, who knew the true joy of being liberated from that and being able to chase a white ball, the post-war baseball boys might have looked like "himself back then."

The significance of Enjoy Baseball is recorded in the notebook as follows:

1. Each person does their best, 2. Consideration for teammates, 3. Creating something original, 4. Winning brightly and proudly.

On the absolute premise of balancing sports with academics, players think for themselves and devise their own practice. Team play is born beyond the strictness of not compromising on the training one deems necessary. Only then can each individual truly "Enjoy." Based on this idea, any suffering is sublimated into "Enjoyment," and it is actually a paper-thin difference from spiritual baseball. The big difference, perhaps, is what kind of human being is produced.

If one only seeks victory, it is a tremendous detour, and yet there is actually no baseball more "educational" than this. I take my hat off to Maeda's courage in saying "It's just baseball" coolly without showing any of that hardship.

Another thing to consider here is the era before Maeda. The Keio baseball team has certainly had a consistent color from the beginning. Except during the war, they never had shaved heads, and hierarchical relationships have been relaxed since long ago. They have never wavered in their stance of emphasizing academics. During the era of manager Hisashi Koshimoto of the pre-war university baseball team, who skillfully devised ways to manage games and accumulate victories with existing players, the public gave them the name "Keio, the Clever Players." By the baseball culture of the time, it was halfway a derogatory term. Koshimoto, who was also the manager when the Keio Futsubu School won the national championship 107 years ago, won using a relay of pitchers, which was rare at the time.

In 1910, the Keio baseball team requested Manager McGraw, known as a fierce leader in the Major Leagues, to invite two players from America. Over the course of a month, they received systematic special training in McGraw's scientific and latest baseball tactics, which they compiled into a notebook called the "Keio Baseball Secrets" and passed down to subsequent generations. Daisuke Miyake, who participated in the special training, became the first manager of the university baseball team and published a baseball manual titled "True Base Ball" (1930). In it, he declares that we do not play baseball for mental discipline, but simply because we "want to do it." Keio has a history of exploring Baseball with sparkling eyes.

One cannot help but say that the source of this color is the spirit that Keio University originally possesses. That is, the spirit of Yukichi Fukuzawa. What is baseball of independence and self-respect, befitting the school of Fukuzawa, who fought against feudal ideology and made the acquisition of a perspective to judge things based on empirical evidence and rationality the purpose of learning? The Keio baseball team has built its history in an atmosphere of pursuing this naturally and brightly, and Maeda is part of that lineage. However, Maeda succeeded in giving the name "Enjoy Baseball" to that tradition, which had been merely intuitive, and making people conscious of it as a tradition.

The following words are also in Maeda's notebook.

"To protect tradition is to add something new to tradition!"

Enjoy Baseball must continue to evolve from now on.