The Origins of Enjoy Baseball

2022/05/20

The Fukuzawa Yukichi Memorial Keio History Museum will hold the Spring Special Exhibition "Keio Baseball and Modern Japan: From 'Hercules' to 'Enjoy Baseball'" (June 6 – August 13).

The author understands it as follows: Keio baseball does not simply seek to win; it requires each individual to think, innovate, and make an effort. Balancing academics is included in that, and teamwork is born from that self-confidence. It is actually easier to choose a youth spent striving for a "Way of Baseball" that feels like ascetic training where baseball is everything, playing exactly as told under the military-style control of a demon manager. Without showing a hint of such suffering, one seeks victory more combatively than anyone else in a game. That is the only way to experience the true joy of baseball. Keio baseball is the wrapping of a fierce rebellious spirit in the soft words "Enjoy Baseball."

It was likely Ueda Makoto, the manager of the Keio High School Baseball Club, who made the phrase "Enjoy Baseball" known nationwide. However, it was Maeda Yukichi, who served as the university baseball club manager for a total of 18 years, who first began to champion it. The photo at the beginning (bottom) is from a notebook left by Maeda, where he defines the meaning of Enjoy Baseball as "the joy of innovation and creation," alongside provocative notes such as "It's impossible to build character through baseball alone" and "It's just baseball."

No literature clearly recording the phrase "Enjoy Baseball" has been found prior to Maeda. However, Maeda wrote that this phrase was passed down from senior members of the baseball club. The journey to trace its origins is not straightforward. Here is one more piece of the puzzle. The photo above was taken in Meiji 43, when the Keio Baseball Club requested the fierce Major League manager McGraw to invite two Major Leaguers, Schaefer (back row, center right) and Thomson (back row, center left), to Kobe. This month-long intensive training camp is considered the first time Japanese people learned baseball tactics theoretically and systematically, and this photo is also displayed in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Keio University has a traditional, refreshing temperament that prizes individual proactive effort and values empirical evidence and rationality, while disliking extreme hierarchical relationships, "guts," or a leaning toward spiritualism. This was the temperament of Fukuzawa Yukichi himself. It is also the temperament of America, where baseball was born. Baseball is that kind of sport, and that kind of game.

History goes back even further. The rest can be found at the exhibition venue.

(Tokura Takeyuki, Deputy Director of the Fukuzawa Yukichi Memorial Keio History Museum)