Soccer Versus Baseball: A Father, Son, and the 2002 World Cup

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is now nearing its climax, with only eight teams left in the knock-out stage (as of this publication). Sadly, Japan's national team exited early on, falling in a close match to Brazil. Yet, the team showed promise and these remain exciting times for Japanese soccer. Er, I mean football.

All harkening me back to the wild days of 2002, when Japan and South Korea hosted the first Asian World Cup and my commuter line was often packed with exuberant team supporters from around the globe.

Plus, the TV coverage was nutso.

Below is the column I wrote then, based on an actual conversation with my son, a teenager at the time.

Some notes:

First, please remember this is from 2002, long before Internet streaming and other media avenues. In those days, TV was the only way to go.

Japan's national broadcaster – NHK – is well-known for its excellent nature footage, often shown on Sunday evenings. They cover every critter under the sun and, for the purpose of this column, I had them focus on cows.

Japan's fixation on baseball and especially the Tokyo Giants is beyond belief. A few tidbits from my many years here:

• Until not too long ago, every single Giants game was televised nationally. And on network TV too, not cable, as the Giants are owned by a major media outlet. Games between teams other than the Giants would air but a few times per season.

• In my beginner English classes in the 1970s, the question of "What is your favorite baseball team?" was always answered with "The Tokyo Giants" – by every student in every class.

• With fan voting for the Japanese All-Star game, the Giants frequently dominated selections at every position.

This Giants mania eventually dampened the games popularity. Other teams seemed to exist only to give the Giants someone to play.

The good news is that over the last 20 years or so all this has changed. There are many reasons but balanced media coverage has worked wonders. Now every Japanese team is booming, with all stadiums packed. The Giants death grip on the sport has ended.

But at the time of this column... not yet.

The Kintetsu Buffalos WERE a baseball team in the Osaka area, but they disbanded in 2004 and merged with another Osaka team – now known as the Orix Buffaloes.

I realize I am sort of frozen in time and nowadays soccer in the US is not the non-entity it was in my youth. But that has not changed how I feel about it.

My title is "Soccer Versus Baseball: A Father, Son, and the 2002 World Cup." As for the Japan Times title...

My editor was from England and he let me have it. See below.

Chewing the Cud with Cheap Shots at Soccer

May 12, 2002

Here's a confession for you – a self-insight I discovered just the other night:

I would rather watch animal shows than soccer.

"But Dad, don't you see?" My younger son's voice squeaks. His eyes spring from his head.

"It's time for the World Cup! THE WORLD CUP!"

He then trembles as if he has voiced something holy – the kind of reverence he usually reserves only for all-you-can-eat restaurants.

"Yeah… but just look at these cows. See how they chew their cud. So thoroughly. So… willfully. Why… I could watch this all night."

"Dad, puleeeaase!"

So I flip the channel and we, like the rest of Japan, join the mania for Asia's first World Cup.

That is, my son joins the mania. As for me, I continue to dwell on what I would rather watch, which includes bashful bovines and that other boring "B" word – baseball.

Okay, maybe I'm behind the times. I grew up in North America in the days when soccer was considered one of the lesser sports – sort of like darts.

Television showed about one soccer game per year, edited down to the highlights. Which meant – if the game was exciting – a clip of about 20 seconds. I could never see the attraction.

An older buddy tried to explain: "Soccer is a game for people who have interest in ice hockey, but aren't fond of action or fights."

I share this line with an Aussie friend, who responds by saying, "How amusing. Too bad a few billion people disagree."

So? I still know what I like, and it has nothing to do with watching a ball booted back and forth across a wide field for a couple of hours in a contest that ends up tied, 0-0.

"That's because you're too ignorant to see the game's subtleties."

I am also too ignorant, I tell him, to see the subtleties of plywood. That doesn't mean I want to stare at it for hours and hours.

"Why not?" he smirks. "It beats baseball."

Ouch. Yet even I admit local baseball has problems. The one-time king of Japan’s domestic sports has seen its popularity shrivel like a plum in the sun.

To explain why, my son offers the following in-depth critique:

"Baseball stinks."

Constipation will do that, and baseball here has been plugged too long with a focus on just one team, the Tokyo Giants. Add a touch of poor quality to a growing pinch of talent flowing overseas and the result is the current state of Japanese baseball – a rather rotten pie that keeps getting smaller.

But the really big concern – for baseball fans – is that the nation's best young athletes are becoming more and more fascinated with that other game, the one for which the entire world is now coming to Japan and South Korea.

For if there ever was a sport to match this overcrowded, overcostly nation, soccer is it. All a boy or girl needs is a soccer ball and an open space, and the game is on.

Contrast this with baseball, a game which requires the same open space, a ball, a bat and one glove per player – not to mention Giants' caps – and it's not difficult to predict that soccer's Japanese sun has only begun its rise.

This does not mean I like it.

"C'mon," I tell my son. "You've been watching for 15 minutes, and there hasn't even been a shot on goal. Meanwhile, those cows might be rioting."

"Go away," he tells me.

For he sees this, and every match these days, as a pressure-packed warm-up to the ultimate climax – a Japanese World Cup championship.

Now wouldn't that be something.

Japan would go berserk with joy. It would be like Godzilla was on the loose, only instead of stomping people, he was handing out money. TV would show nothing but soccer replays for the rest of the millennium. The Diet might even pass a motion to have a smiley face printed on the center of the Japanese flag.

And baseball here would suffer yet another body blow.

Not that this is going to happen. For if enthusiasm was all that was required for a World Cup title, Japan would probably first fall to its South Korean neighbors, who seem even more jacked for the games than the Japanese. The rest of the world may have a bit to say about who wins as well.

Yet, no matter how you cut it, the big loser looks to be baseball.

I was raised on baseball, the way some people are raised on whole wheat, and so I feel melancholy at the turn of events, even if the Giants do choke the local airwaves.

"Baseball, volleyball, hairball – who cares?"

The speaker is my wife, whose knowledge of the sporting world is roughly comparable to the vastness of our universe – which is, by and large, empty.

"From my view, each sport has too much popularity already. They could all use less attention. No matter who wins or loses, the Earth is still going to spin. And as long as it does, I would prefer to dwell on real life, not sports."

I nod at this wisdom and decide to apply it at once.

"See!" I tell my son. "Mom wants to watch cows, too!"

Or, I then suggest, how about some buffaloes? The Kintetsu version?

That, I sigh, is the animal for me.

© Thomas Noah Wood

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