This Is Keio Sports | Hiroyuki Ishida, Dean, Graduate School of Health Management
2023.12.12
Last diary entry Following up on my last diary entry, I'd like to talk about the Juku baseball club again. In the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League 2023 Autumn Season, the university baseball club won a brilliant victory in the third game against Waseda on October 30, securing their 40th championship title overall and their first in four seasons (the Big6 league is held twice a year, in spring and autumn, hence this expression). With the various restrictions due to the spread of COVID-19 effectively lifted, the championship-deciding game coincided with the permission for cheering as it used to be. There is no doubt that the energy from the cheering sections during the three days of the Keio-Waseda series pushed the players on the field. Looking at the baseball club's recent record, they have been fighting surprisingly well (pardon me!), winning the championship once every few years. There is a good reason for me to say "surprisingly." In 1969, the year I entered the Yochisha Elementary School, my father took me to Jingu Stadium to watch the Keio-Waseda series for the first time. My father, who had attended the Army Officer's Academy before entering the Juku School of Medicine, would often teach me songs like "Doki no Sakura," "Aikoku Koshinkyoku," and (for some reason) the "Yokaren no Uta" while we bathed together, but along with these wartime songs, "Wakaki-chi" was drilled into me. Therefore, I remember singing "Wakaki-chi" without any sense of awkwardness alongside the older students from the Keio University Cheerleading Team in the stands at my first Keio-Waseda game. At that time, the Juku baseball club had excellent hitters like Katsumi Matsushita and Daisuke Yamashita, and with the great performance of pitcher Tomoyasu Ogino, they won three consecutive championships from 1971 to 1972. However, this marked the beginning of an ice age. For the next 12 years, spanning 24 seasons, they did not win a single championship and even finished in last place twice. Although there were outstanding players in terms of individual performance, the team failed to produce results, and a situation where they couldn't win, no matter how much we cheered, continued. And most of my classmates with whom I cheered at Jingu graduated in March 1985 without ever seeing the Juku baseball club win a championship.
Ironically, however, the tide turned dramatically in 1985. Players from Toin Gakuen, such as Nakazawa, Shimura, Ishii, and Endo, played brilliantly, and the baseball club awakened from its 12-year silence to achieve a perfect, undefeated championship. It was the first undefeated championship in 57 years, since 1928. The single white line on the blue-red-blue designed stockings was added to commemorate the perfect championship of 1928, and following the 1985 victory, another white line was added. Incidentally, 1985 was a year of historic events in the sports world as a whole. In professional baseball, the Hanshin Tigers, with Okada, Kakefu, and Bass, won their first league championship in 21 years, and many fans jumped into the Dotonbori River. And in rugby, the Juku Rugby Football Club defeated the corporate representative Toyota Motor Corporation in the All-Japan Rugby Football Championship to become the champions of Japan. My classmate Hisataka Ikuta (now CEO of Mikuni Corporation), who was a scrum-half at the time, should have graduated that year, but due to his academic struggles, he somehow played in this game and, as a result, tasted the sweet victory of a national championship. According to Ikuta, "Being at the university for five years was a team strategy," but regardless of the reason, it seems there are good things that come from staying in university for a long time. In fact, thanks to my six years as a student in the School of Medicine, I was able to experience and share in the historic moments that occurred within Keio.
Let's return to the topic of the Big6 Baseball League. This championship was not something that was expected. As Manager Horii mentioned before the league season began, it seems there were many struggles in building the team after the previous fourth-year students, including three who went on to play professional baseball, had graduated. However, the team fought tenaciously as if walking on thin ice, accumulating winning points, and finally faced the Keio-Waseda series with the championship on the line. The first game was a walk-off loss after a close contest. From my experience during the "ice age," I am used to such situations, and the negative thought, "Oh, not this time either..." crossed my mind. But this team was different. In the second game, two first-year students, Takeuchi with his excellent pitching and Ueda with his great defense, came alive. In the end, Tanimura, who had given up the walk-off hit the day before, brilliantly closed out the ninth inning, and Keio came back to life. Amid this rising tide of momentum, what concerned me was the slump of Captain Hirose. He is a long-ball hitter who was also drafted by SoftBank, but he struggled to find his form in the autumn season, with only one home run to his name so far. At the plate, he was pitched to in tough spots and seemed unable to get his true swing. When I voiced my concern, the members of the Keio University Cheerleading Team, especially the fourth-year students in his class, immediately said in unison, "It's okay. Hirose will definitely come through." Just as they predicted, in the third game, Hirose had a magnificent awakening. Early in the game, he smashed a hit that was clearly a home run the moment it left the bat, sending it into the left-field stands packed with Keio students and Keio University alumni. Seeing not only Hirose himself, but also the players on the bench, the members of the Keio University Cheerleading Team, and the Keio students in the stands celebrating as if it were their own victory for the struggling Hirose, I was convinced that this game belonged to Keio.
I have seen a similar scene in the past. In the 1989 Japan Series between the Giants and the Kintetsu Buffaloes, the Giants lost the first three games and were quickly pushed to the brink. The main reason for their struggle was the slump of their star slugger, Tatsunori Hara. He couldn't even get a base hit, let alone a home run. In the fifth game, after the Giants had managed to win one back, Hara came to the plate with the bases loaded in the humiliating situation of the previous batter being intentionally walked. With two strikes against him, Hara's face looked grim on the screen. However, on the sixth pitch from Kintetsu's pitcher Yoshii, he took a full swing, and the ball soared high into the air, disappearing into the left-field stands filled with Giants fans. Hara rounded the bases, thrusting both hands into the air again and again. As the team doctor for the Giants, I have had a long association with Mr. Hara, but I have never seen him show so much emotion, before or since. All the players rushed out of the dugout to congratulate Mr. Hara, just like in student baseball. (Among this crowd were two Juku alumni: Manager Motoshi Fujita (the late) and Kazuaki Ueda). Gaining momentum from this, the Giants went on to win four straight games after their three initial losses, conquering the Japan Series.
Similarly for Keio University, the team, now in a full-on offensive mood thanks to Hirose's home run, steadily scored more runs to take control, made numerous fine plays on defense, and defeated Waseda to win the Big6 League championship. After the game, at the victory ceremony held in the stands, President Ito went up on the stage, put his arms around the baseball club members, and sang "Oka no Ue" loudly along with the Keio students and Keio University alumni, and Vice-President Yamauchi, who is in charge of the Athletic Association, personally performed the "Jukusei Chūmoku!" cheer. It was truly a "This is Keio Sports" moment. Including the Keio Senior High School baseball team's appearances at Koshien, I believe this sense of elation and excitement in the stands is born because of the traditional fight songs and college songs that unite everyone's hearts, the Keio University Cheerleading Team that carries on this tradition, and above all, because it is a space where each and every person who comes to cheer can share the pride of being a member of Keio. I hear that a parade and a victory celebration are also scheduled for next week. Unfortunately, it seems that this time it will take a different form than before the pandemic, but I eagerly hope for the day when many Keio students can once again experience the kind of excitement seen in the many photos posted at the Yamashoku cafeteria on the Mita campus. Yes, while it would be a bit problematic if Ikuta's strategy of staying in university for a long time were intentional, it may be that it can unexpectedly lead to the creation of irreplaceable memories.