Vol. 11: Yukichi Maeda and "Enjoy Baseball" / Baseball Club II

2022/07/07

Image: During his first term as manager

Hisashi Koshimoto's 10-year tenure and 7 championships as manager were long-standing records for the Juku Baseball Club. These records were eventually broken by Yukichi Maeda (1930–2016), who served as manager for a total of 18 years over two terms—from 1960 to 1965 and from 1983 to 1993—leading the team to 8 league championships. This remains the record for the longest tenure and most wins to this day. However, Maeda's contribution was not limited to records. Equally important was his "invention" of "Enjoy Baseball."

Born in Kochi City, Kochi Prefecture in 1930, Maeda saw the end of the war while enrolled in the Army Youth School. In 1946, he appeared in the first post-war Koshien tournament as a pitcher for the former Joto Middle School (now Kochi Otemae High School), and reached the semifinals in the following spring's invitational tournament. He entered Keio University in 1949, playing in the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League as a pitcher and outfielder. After graduation, he joined the corporate baseball team Nippon Beer (now Sapporo Breweries), where he gained experience as both a player and manager. Then, in 1960, at the age of 29, he was appointed manager of the Keio University Baseball Club.

The young manager, whom the players called "Onii-chan" (big brother), faced the legendary six-game series against Waseda (autumn league) early in his tenure. Despite having a good chance to win, he experienced the bitterness of missing the championship, but eventually secured his first title as manager in the autumn of 1962. Although he felt frustrated by comments that "the Juku is weak in high-stakes games" or "lacks grit," Maeda dismissed such opinions as mere spiritualism and trusted his own style. He went on to win two more championships before stepping down in 1965. Taisuke Watanabe's perfect game—the first in Tokyo Big6 history—also occurred during this period.

After Maeda stepped down, the baseball club achieved three consecutive titles, but subsequently went through its worst-ever championship drought. It was during this period that Maeda was welcomed back as manager. By then, the nickname used by the players had changed to "Jiisan" (old man).

At the root of Maeda's coaching was the Keio-style baseball taught to him by seniors such as Daisuke Miyake since he joined Keio. Maeda expressed this spirit as "Enjoy Baseball." The intent was not simply to have fun, but to improve by playing with enjoyment while satisfying three conditions: 1) every team member doing their best, 2) being mindful of teammates (teamwork), and 3) thinking for oneself and making voluntary efforts (from "Baseball and I").

Believing that university baseball is "adult baseball," Maeda's catchphrase to players checking for signs was "Don't look at the dugout," demanding that they think for themselves. He believed "the manager is a gardener," and the details should be decided by the players themselves. Furthermore, to instill an aggressive style of play, he pushed for reinforcement and a change in mindset, including a tour of the United States—the origin of Keio-style Enjoy Baseball—for the first time in 55 years since 1928. These efforts paid off in the 1985 autumn season; after a draw in the opening game against Rikkyo, the team won 10 consecutive games to claim an undefeated championship for the first time since 1928.

Maeda was a critic of the traditional Japanese baseball that had been linked to martial arts since the pre-war era. He took a position polar opposite to "Yakyu-do" (the way of baseball), "baseball supremacy," and "spiritual baseball," publicly stating that it was "just baseball." Believing that a person cannot be defined by baseball alone, he sought broad perspectives from his players and emphasized the balance between sports and academics. He viewed attending class not as an obligation but as a student's most fundamental right, respecting the autonomy of the players.

This is also linked to the academic culture and spirit of Keio University. In Maeda's lecture notes titled "The Keio Spirit and the Juku Baseball Club," he listed "the courage and rebellious spirit to see through to the essence of things without pandering to the trends of the times... and to stick to one's beliefs" as a commonality between Fukuzawa Yukichi, Shinzo Koizumi, and Tadao Ishikawa, describing this as the "Keio Spirit."

In addition to his autobiography titled "Baseball and I" (a play on Hisashi Koshimoto's "My Baseball"), Maeda also wrote an unusual book called "My Invention Notebook." Describing himself as an "amateur invention nut," he wrote down various ideas for completely unrelated fields such as life-saving and traffic safety. For Maeda, creative ingenuity was his hobby, and this was linked to his view of baseball that emphasized player autonomy. "Enjoy Baseball" was his greatest "invention," and its significance lies in how he verbalized and refined the history, tradition, and spirit of Keio baseball that had previously been passed down intuitively. For Maeda, "protecting tradition meant adding something new to it."

The "Enjoy Baseball" philosophy, woven together as both the culmination and the starting point of Keio baseball, can be seen as a sporting ideology that Keio University can proudly propose to Japanese society at large.