This is going back a bit, but just after the summer high school baseball championships where Hokkaido’s Komazawa University Tomakomai High School has enjoyed consecutive victories, the teacher overseeing the school’s baseball team was discovered to have been acting violently toward a student. The school was nevertheless allowed to hold on to its title, benevolence extended on the grounds that the incident involved an instructor rather than a student. This stands in stark contrast to the harsh punishment meted out to Kochi Prefecture’s prestigious Meitoku Gijuku High School.

When an extra innings saw Meitoku Gijunku beat out Kochi High to take the Kochi Prefectural Championships, which also serve as a qualifying round for the national championships held at Koshien Stadium, the school seemed to have achieved every baseball-playing child’s dream of taking the field at Koshien. However, when a staff member was discovered to have acted violently towards a student, the school was removed from the championships three days before the opening ceremony. The team left their hotel in nearby Nishinomiya City for home, biting their lips in anguish. The emotional injury must have been incredible.

The incident apparently occurred before the Kochi championships. Manager Shiro Mabuchi said that he had withheld the information from the principal because he wanted the team to have their chance at Koshien. However, a tip-off brought the incident to the attention of the Japan High School Baseball Federation (JHSBF) just before the tournament. The school asked to be withdrawn from Koshien, and the Federation accepted with surprising alacrity, putting in the Kochi High School team instead. In the case of both Tomakomai High and Meitoku Gijuku High, the stress was placed not on the actual incidents as much as the schools’ failure to report them. In that sense, they committed much the same transgression, but the punishment they received was as different as heaven and hell.

Cast your mind back to the national championships 14 years ago. In the summer of 1991, Meitoku Gijuku High was up against Ishikawa Prefecture’s Seiryo High at Koshien. Seiryo’s No. 4 batter was Hideki Matsui, now a Major League star in the New York Yankees. Even when there weren't any runners on base, the Meitoku Gijuku pitcher walked Matsui in five straight plate appearances. The pitcher was acting on Shiro Mabuchi’s instructions. Meitoku Gijuku won, and 18-year-old Matsui went home mortified.

Then-JHSBF Chairman Naotaka Makino stirred up a furore when he blasted Mabuchi for this instruction. He argued that the team should have played the fair and square game expected from high school students, and that Mabuchi’s direction went against the spirit of high school baseball. However, some people defended Mabuchi on the grounds that an intentional walk could still have greatly damaged the team's chances if the next batter had sent a hit, and in that sense, it was an excellent strategy with a definite element of risk. The JHSBF was forced to tone down its criticism. Meitoku Gijuku went on to achieve an unprecedented eight consecutive appearances at Koshien, but despite this extraordinary performance, the school, and particularly Shiro Mabuchi, seems to have remained in the JHSBF’s black books.

The media’s uncritical embracing of victors is also problematic. Prestigious high schools like Meitoku Gijuku are so obsessed with winning the Koshien championships that they scout the top junior high school talent from not only their own region but around the country. Many of the Meitoku Gijuku players have been brought in from Kansai and other areas. With the birth rate falling, some of these private high schools are trying to keep up and expand student numbers through their baseball reputations. Many talented high school baseball players from places like Osaka find themselves living in dormitories on splendid campuses, often beyond what universities offer, built in remote areas for the additional purpose of boosting local towns. Meitoku Gijuku is a typical example. If the coach doesn’t even come to the dormitory, unpleasant things are bound to occur.

While this talent-grabbing goes back more than 30 years into baseball history, it has also been lambasted on the grounds that people support high school baseball to cheer local players, not teams made up of players from everywhere else. One of the players from Aomori Yamada High who took part in this year’s championships went to junior high in Kobe until the third term of his third year, but was given a graduation certificate from an Aomori junior high so that he could masquerade as a local. There are almost no players from Aomori Prefecture among the regulars in Aomori Yamada High’s baseball team. Nagasaki Prefecture’s Seiho High, on the other hand, played in the championships for the first time this year, knocking over a succession of private high schools to thunderous applause. All of its regulars are local. Because of the team’s performance, more students are applying to the school from outside the prefecture, but the coach is sticking with his policy of fielding a team of local players. Of course, with circumstances such as parents being shifted around by their companies, it is difficult to be too strict about non-local participation.

When will people again be able to cheer local heroes at Koshien?