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The story
Ichiro Suzuki, special assistant to the Mariners chairman, reportedly said “Come on, give me a break” when asked about proposals to move Koshien’s tournament to the air-conditioned Kyocera Dome to beat the extreme heat, during a coaching visit to Oita Maizuru High School on November 7-8. He also voiced discomfort with the tiebreaker rule used in extra innings, saying “Having the game suddenly change with runners placed on first and second feels wrong.” On 5ch’s Geinou/Sports News+ board, his comments sparked a broader debate over the pros and cons of heat countermeasures — touching on students being mobilized to cheer in the blazing sun, the brutal conditions at regional qualifying tournaments, and even questions about why Koshien is treated as sacred in the first place.
Ichiro, on calls to move the scorching-hot Koshien to the Kyocera Dome: “Come on, give me a break” — comments made while coaching at Oita Maizuru High. Also on the tiebreaker rule: “Suddenly having runners on first and second… it feels wrong for the game to change like that”
Ichiro Suzuki (53), who starred in Major League Baseball with the Mariners and other teams and now serves as special assistant to the Mariners chairman and instructor, visited Oita Maizuru High School in Oita City on the 7th and 8th to coach the school’s baseball team.
During casual conversation with players at practice on the first day, Ichiro shared his view: “The idea that Koshien is too hot so let’s just use the Kyocera Dome instead — come on, give me a break.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You're starting from the wrong premise entirely.
it's basically ruining traditional baseball lol
It only exists to end games faster.
Though I bet the number of kids willing to play will just keep shrinking before that happens.
Forcing girls to play full 9-inning games shows zero respect for the sport.
Come to think of it, now that Matsui's gone,
who's going to bat cleanup for Kobe Chiben?
The students who get basically dragged out there and forced to cheer in the blazing sun have it just as hellish lol
Ichiro, you need to understand that side of it too!
I wonder if Ichiro realizes his beloved Chiben Wakayama has had mandatory whole-school cheering squads ever since the prefectural qualifiers
(except for third-years with entrance exams coming up)
And it's even worse because the local stations TV Wakayama and Wakayama Broadcasting Radio
have been doing the foolish thing of airing every single prefectural qualifier live since forever
Then again, Chiben Wakayama is probably the single biggest success story in the high school baseball business —
they basically locked that in the moment they built their school right next to Kiimidera Stadium, the only venue for the prefectural tournament
There was even a time in the past when the national high school tournament wasn't held at Koshien at all.
Yeah, you're right that treating Koshien as something special
is basically just conditioning.
What makes it worse is that both the parents' generation and the kids themselves genuinely buy into it.
The players themselves actually have it easier once they're at Koshien environment-wise, so they're probably fine as is — it's everyone around them that's the problem.
Did they already give up on that?
They've already rolled it out at the regional rookie tournaments.
I mean, a logical criticism I'd understand, but if someone just calls it "crap" out of pure emotion, anyone would get mad about that.
Baseball just gets singled out as a punching bag because it's more high-profile.
But soccer's Inter-High doesn't force the whole school to show up and cheer, does it? Meanwhile brass bands basically get conscripted so hard it's like they're told to skip their own competitions for it.
Osaka and Nishinomiya aren't even that far apart though.
If they're fine with that, sure, go ahead and keep insisting on 9 innings and Koshien.
If it's not 9 innings, it's not baseball anymore — it's a different sport entirely.
And then there's scooping up dirt from the field when you lose, or singing the school anthem when you win — it genuinely feels cult-like to me. Are Japanese people just dumb, or have they just gone numb to it? Does nobody find this weird?
Classic move from Ichiro haters —
they'd bash him no matter which side of the argument he took.
Nah, nobody's bashing him.
If anything, the High School Baseball Federation was the one testing the waters
to see which way this would go.
I bet whoever's really pulling the strings behind the scenes is laughing as it spirals into a textbook elite-cult situation.
I mean, when Ichiro coaches a powerhouse school they bash him for it saying "go coach a weak school instead," and when he coaches a weak school they bash him saying "go coach pros instead." That's the level we're at.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
In recent years, discussion of heat countermeasures at Koshien has mostly centered on things like changing the opening-ceremony start time and pitch-count limits, while moving the tournament indoors to a dome has remained an unrealized proposal — which is why Ichiro’s remarks drew attention as pushback against that specific idea. The tiebreaker rule, introduced to high school baseball around 2018 to bring prolonged extra innings to a quicker close, was something Ichiro criticized for feeling abrupt, rather than something he called to abolish outright. The thread split over whether the bigger issue is the burden on the players themselves or the burden on the students and parents mobilized to cheer, with many commenters pointing out that the cheering sections baking in the sun — and the regional qualifiers — are actually tougher than what the players on the field experience. Some also argued that the sense of Koshien being “special” is nothing more than conditioning, with a number of voices questioning the tournament’s whole mythic status. Going by the headlines alone, it’s easy to mistakenly assume Ichiro opposes heat countermeasures altogether — but it’s worth noting his actual complaint was specifically about the dome as a solution.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] Ichiro on calls to move the scorching Koshien to a dome: “Come on, give me a break” — Also on the tiebreaker rule: “It feels wrong for the game to change like that”.”
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