Japan's Olympic baseball team anything but harmonious

“It’s not the strong who win the game, but to be a winner, you have to be strong,” said Senichi Hoshino, manager of Japan’s national baseball team for the Beijing Olympics. Logically, this means the loser is weak. So where does that leave Japan’s baseball team which failed to win a medal at the Olympics? In the aftermath of the Games, Shukan Post finds that things were anything but harmonious within the team.

“Pitcher Yu Darvish was given the cold shoulder throughout the Olympics because he arranged for his wife Saeko and parents to stay with him in the athletes’ village. He was at odds with coaches after one of them secretly reported it to Hoshino,” says a sports reporter. “He wasn’t allowed to start in the semifinal as a disciplinary measure. In the bronze medal match, he was forced to ‘make up’ the losing game.”

The problem was not only Darvish but also the absence of a “mood maker” within the team. One insider says, “At the World Baseball Championship (WBC), the team had a ‘yakiniku’ dinner. The team management limited the food budget to 100,000 yen, but Ichiro paid an extra 300,000 yen out of his own pocket. That created a bond among the players which was reflected in their winning performance. But in Beijing, nobody was interested in doing anything like that.”

While Japanese baseball fans had high expectations for Hoshino as an experienced baseball manager, the players didn’t have any trust in him or team officials. Rumors swirled that if Hoshino got the gold medal, he would be offered the job of Yomiuri Giants’ manager, or he would become a highly paid speaker if Japan won gold. “Some of the players were sick of such rumors,” said the sports journalist. (Translated by Taro Fujimoto)

Latest 15 of 21 Total Comments Show All

realteacher at 12:30 PM JST - 5th September

buddha4brains, um.... did I mention anything about America should have won?

Ummmm.... No, you didn't.

Oh good thanks.

Failed to motivate???? What? Did they need 300,000 yen yakiniku? Give me a break, it's the Olympics, how much more motivation do you need?

Post-mortem on why they lost??? Sounds like typical whining and excuse making to me: Darvish did this and Hoshino did that, and... and... and you blew it J-baseball, get over it, move on.

Oh yeah, and buddha4brains I'm not an Amerophile. Just tired of hearing all the excuses. Japan should relish their victorious athletes not dwell on what might have been.
cow76 at 12:32 PM JST - 5th September

Japanese baseball sucks and will continue to suck as long as the best players keep abandoning it to make real money in the US.
some14some at 01:32 PM JST - 5th September

Whatever may be 'genuine' excuses, the fact is Japan is in the list of nations that didn't win medal in baseball i.e China, Chinese Taipei, Candada....Now, i wish them good luck at WBC in March 2009 under same leader Hoshino !
mikihouse at 05:04 PM JST - 5th September

team baseball was never a team, the same way the soccer team did. There was never a moment that I saw the baseball team moved like a team, its like ok my turn. Anyway, learning from the past is good. About the yakiniku...its actually somebody acting to make them feel as a team, its called bonding and nobody took that step to make the team coherent. Still kohai sempai just like soccer
mushroomcloud at 01:46 AM JST - 6th September

Can we use the title of this article as the justification to explain why japan as a nation performed so poorly overall at the Beijing Olympics?
buddha4brains at 02:34 AM JST - 6th September

realteacher: Yeah it is the Olympics and they should be motivated to win, but they weren't. Same happened to the Canada and US Olympic hockey teams in Nagano - they did not jell and work together so they trashed the venue on their way out. It happens. Same for past US men's basketball teams.

If lack of motivation was the problem, then the Japanese bb team needs to address that problem. They were not blaming anyone else but themselves. You call that whining, I call it a needed post-mortem.
helloklitty at 06:02 AM JST - 6th September

Why even talk about these meaningless single-elimination tournaments (Olympics/World Baseball Classic)? We'll find out who the best baseball-playing country is when the International Baseball League gets started (in about 5-7 years).
borscht at 12:13 AM JST - 7th September

He wasn’t allowed to start in the semifinal as a disciplinary measure.

Darvish wasn't allowed to play because his wife came with him? So Hoshino would rather prove how powerful he is In Japan than win an Olympic medal to prove how powerful Japan is? I have a child who thinks like that; he's four.
GW at 01:00 AM JST - 7th September

WOW, these 4 paragraphs are a micrcosm of Jpn, think of what goes on in companies, schools, families relations, & of course yaku at the olympics, these 4 paragraphs capture what Jpn is in so many ways, kind of neat!
DerekTrotter at 05:15 AM JST - 7th September

Baseball, load of rubbish, i call it silly boys rounders.

It dont matter what happened at the Olympics does it,cos baseball aint gonna be in the Olympics anymore.

Bloody boring anyway, only a few countrys play it. If the Japanese team was arguing, then of course they done bad.You need teamwork to win, not arguing with your mates.
YangYong at 10:40 AM JST - 7th September

Let's hope this game just fades, vanishes and never crosses our paths again. Rounders for adults. Rubbish.
pathat at 11:02 AM JST - 7th September

This is such a lame article.

Waaaahhhh! Let`s make excuses for the 4th place finish.

The Japanese team lost all 5 games played against the other semi-finalists. This fact equals a lack of overall talent on Hoshino Japan. I saw a team comprising several top-notch pitchers, but also a lot of mediocre, minor-league caliber position players. It simply was not a superior team talent-wise to the 3 medalists. The endless whining and crying and finger-pointing cannot make up for this reality.

Maybe the team had some problem with Yu Darvish bringing his wife and parents over to Beijing. But the bigger issue with him was the fact that he had already pitched too much this year, was not in good form prior to and through the Olympics, and Nippon Ham-the team that PAYS him-has a huge financial stake in his performance the rest of this season til October, what happens down the road in NPB, and eventually in MLB.

Could there be another reason why Yu Darvish just does not quite fit in?

"Rumors swirled that if Hoshino got the gold medal, he would be offered the job of Yomiuri Giants’manager...."

We went through this crap a few years ago. Hoshino has a senior position with the Hanshin Tigers that pays him quite a bit of money for not doing much from what I have heard. He also gets paid to mumble about various players during TV broadcasts. Additionally, he has said that he does not want to go back to the 365-day-a-year job of being an NPB manager. I doubt very seriously if the players gave such rumors about Hoshino`s future job prospects much thought during the Olympics.
kavikahi at 07:44 AM JST - 8th September

to win you must score more runs than the other team, in baseball.
Blue_Tiger at 06:37 AM JST - 9th September

I don't know if anyoen saw, but when Yu Darvish did play? He was horrid!!!! His ERA was WAAAY up there, and it seemed like he couldn't get anyone out!

Still the excuses as to why the J-Team lost are pathetic. Basically, in every game they lost, they got out-played. It happens....
BurakuminDes at 04:01 PM JST - 21st September

Japanese Beseball is now just a feeder comp for US Major (and Minor) leagues. Looks to be seriously on the slide, and the performance in Beijing is just a reflection of that.