Ahead of the summer Koshien final, baseball veteran Hirooka criticized the state of high school baseball, saying “the level has dropped” and “are we never going to see another Kiyohara or Matsui again?” He pointed to home runs on pace for an all-time low, power-harassment allegations, and excessive parental interference as factors that are ruining coaches.
On 5ch, users pushed back hard against the generational argument itself, with comments like “it’s just that the shrinking birthrate has shrunk the talent pool,” “pitch speeds are clearly higher than in the past,” and “the bat regulations changed.” The discussion branched out to cover buzzcut hairstyles, coaching methods, and changes in equipment.
“High school baseball has gone downhill. Are we never getting another Kiyohara or Matsui?” Baseball’s elder statesman criticizes the “Summer Koshien”…
Home runs at risk of an all-time low of just 7, errors sitting at 117… “Power-harassment allegations and excessive parental involvement are ruining coaches”
The final of the 108th National High School Baseball Championship takes place today, the 22nd, at Koshien Stadium, pitting Chiben Wakayama against Kendai Takasaki.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
Equipment just changed for safety reasons.
Make the bats fly again and monster hitters will show up easily enough.
Forcing a shaved head on guys right when they're starting to care how they look is rough.
Well, most guys aren't exactly popular with girls anyway, so unless you're good enough to make a living off baseball for life, maybe staying buzzed and grinding at your studies is actually the smart move lol
True. Scrap the buzzcut rule and the talent pool definitely grows.
LMAO
Is this the Satoru Komazawa who used to do commentary on Radio Nippon? Must be pretty old by now.
Probably a bit after Hirooka's time there — Mitsuta's peak came a little later, when it was apparently a prep school sending 30+ students a year to Tokyo University. Sounds like it's fallen off since then though.
Egawa also played in the last days of wooden bats. If metal bats had already taken over, he wouldn't have put up numbers like that. Whether or not you can consistently hit the sweet spot makes a huge difference in hitting.
That's exactly why, when Japanese infielders go to MLB, they all get told their fundamentals aren't there.
Surely coaches who insist you catch fly balls two-handed are extinct by now, right? Modern gloves are designed assuming you'll catch one-handed.
Probably not, since Korakuen Stadium — famous for its 85m foul lines — doesn't exist anymore. Though he'd obviously still put up solid numbers.
Exactly this. A lot of guys in the parent generation were forced into baseball by their own parents, went through the power-harassment hazing, and now hate baseball — or at least hate guys who get cocky about playing it.
Programs that fail to modernize and can't shake off that old Showa-era culture end up with bullying scandals like the one at Koryo.
That's not even the issue — numbers are dropping right from the entry point at the elementary school level, where there's no forced buzzcut rule at all. Nobody starts baseball from scratch in high school except maybe as a last-resort reinforcement player.
High school isn't the only level with the buzzcut rule, you know.
Tricky issue. You could say the level of the entire sport has been raised across the board.
Guys from before the radar-gun era can claim they were secretly hitting 160 or even 170 km/h all they want, but once measurement started, you can't fudge the numbers anymore.
He's older than Trump, so I mean, that's kind of to be expected.
Of course speeds look faster — back then they measured end velocity, now they measure release velocity.
Doing dumb stuff like that is exactly why 90% of pitchers got their arms wrecked in elementary, middle, and high school.
Every kid in the local schools who got called "amazing" basically broke down and couldn't pitch past high school. The one pitcher who didn't break went pro, sure.
But the players of the old days were just the 10% who survived after the other 90% got weeded out and wrecked — plenty of that 90% probably would've developed into great players too, if they hadn't been broken first.
Next they'll start complaining about low batting averages — and this in the age of sabermetrics, no less.
What even is "instinct" supposed to mean here? Like having a unique, individual form or playing style?
Outfield is where the talent gets neglected — it's brutal. A little wind and they can't catch a fly ball, and the relay throws get sloppy too.
Even in today's final I was stunned to see a routine foul fly get dropped. Can't believe a team like Kendai Takasaki, which made both the spring and summer finals, is making that kind of basic error. Guess all the talent's getting funneled into pitching.
Probably because faster batted balls were causing more comebacker injuries to pitchers, plus Japan wasn't winning international games after Koshien with the old bats.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread ““High school baseball has gone downhill. Are we never getting another Kiyohara or Matsui?” — Baseball veteran criticizes the sport: “Power-harassment allegations and excessive parental involvement are ruining coaches”.”
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