Managing the Human Heart

Is zealotry one of life's inevitabilities? I got to thinking about this last night when Putin's invasion of the Ukraine apparently happened while I was watching a 2019 movie called Koshien, a documentary about the biannual high school baseball tournament in Japan. It's a decent documentary.

I never really got professional sports. Sometimes I could watch a football or baseball game and get caught up in the drama of the contest, or be impressed by a physical achievement. But the idea of shedding tears, of putting in the kind of dedication required to play on a professional level, holds no glamour or appeal for me. I saw a video by Jordan Peterson a few months ago where he talked about how people sublimate their natural competitive instincts into professional sports and I guess I can see the utility.

Watching the Japanese students weeping because they're cut from a team or enduring harsh rebukes from their coach just for being slightly underweight, I remembered watching Japan's Longest Day, the movie about Japan at the end of World War II I watched a few months ago. It's that same zeal with which many in the Japanese military couldn't face the concept of surrender that these kids show when dealing with a tournament loss. And, again, I can see the value. But the parameters set by the rules of baseball just aren't enough to fire my imagination, I guess.

I work at junior high schools in Japan where I can already see the kind of dedication and fervour visible in the high school students in this documentary. They get into their full uniforms every day and I watch them jogging around the field in perfect formation in the afternoon. I compare that to my dim memories of Little League, when the kids practiced in jeans. Sometimes I used to sit in the outfield and pick flowers. Yeah, I was never cut out for it.

A lot of the kids ask me about Shohei Ohtani, the player for the Los Angeles Angels who's breaking records. Considering the lifelong, religious dedication these kids put into the sport, it's only a wonder they don't produce 20 Ohtanis a year. But that is a point, isn't it? Ohtani's high school coach is interviewed in the film and he deflects taking any responsibility for making Ohtani what he is to-day, saying Ohtani already had his unique spirit when he met him. Maybe the guy's being modest but one also has to wonder why the U.S. usually produces better players with a less grueling system. The kids at the schools where I work still regularly tell me their dream is to play in or at least personally witness games in the U.S.

Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams is available on The Criterion Channel.