It's a Small World After All

Completely unrelated to the Yankees today. My high school just completed it's "sports day" on wednesday. In Japan, schools are organized by homeroom. Teachers rotate to homerooms from period to period while students stay put. The homeroom is a very very important collective in the lives of the Japanese. It is a very intimate circle of peers that, while often quite divergent in character, is a family of sorts. The homeroom teacher is a kind of surrogate parent and really devotes more than their fair share of their own life to the class. "Sports Day" is a kind of fun way for the students to enjoy a day free of study to bond with their homerooms. Various races and events are held to foster this connection, and everyone has a blast.

I have a particularly close relationship with the English Course students in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades (there are 3 grades in Japanese HS) and I spent the day bouncing between the homerooms to cheer and lend my support. In the 2nd year group there is a young man who runs track. He's damn fast. I see him practicing in the winter in the hallways of the school after hours. He sets up a few hurdles down the long corridor and flies. It's amazing. He doesn't look the part of the star track athlete. He, in fact, "retired" from the team for some reason recently. Perhaps he's going to study abroad next year. I always thought this guy was kind of a brooder, who avoided talking to me. He looks perpetually frustrated and has a natural scowl that he wears, whether he intends to or not. I've tried to reach out to him a few times in class, or in the hall, and get a polite brush off.

On this day, under the sun, we stood next to the track and watched the classes play around with an entertaining relay of sorts. I noticed on the back of his homeroom t-shirt that he'd chosen the name "Biggio" for himself. The students often take crazy names of one kind or another as an expression of their controlled individuality, and it's not unusual to see random English words as personal monickers. I had to wonder, "Why Biggio?" I asked the student's friends what the deal was with "Biggio" and they told me that it was his favorite player. I struggled to understand how a kid growing up in semi-rural Japan would latch onto a Houston Astros player from a young age.

It was enough of a mystery that I approached him and asked him directly. It was the first time I'd ever seen his face light up. He was excited to talk about it. In the end, I'm not sure I'm much closer to figuring out how he found Craig Biggio. It's just one of those things, but it opened a door for us to talk about baseball, and I got to see the kid smile and relax a bit. He talked about his favorite team with me as well. The Cleveland Indians. Yeah. The Tribe. Again, huh?

The Indians briefly had Japanese pitcher Kazuhito Tadano on their roster, but he was released and now plays for the A's. In the future, I'm going to have to dig deeper to find out why the Indians are his favorite team, but in the meantime we had a nice talk about Travis Hafner and the disappointing 2006 team. We laughed about Aaron Boone and the fact that one moment defined his career. The most interesting point to come out of our talk was the excitement he felt at the prospect of having Akinori Iwamura of the Yakult Swallows on the club next year. Yakult announced 2 days ago that they would post him, and the Indians are interested. He would fit in nicely at 3rd, pushing the useless Boone into no man's land. Iwamura will be a similarly effective third baseman, as Iguchi is a second baseman. Better than average, but not a big star. I have my fingers crossed for my student that the Tribe pulls it off, because it would make his face light up more often and that has to be a good thing.

I love it when baseball brings people together. It helps keep me from being cynical in the face of all the "Trade A-Rod" rumors, and so on. Catch you later....