Tokyo university loses record 86th straight baseball game

Quite an achievement.

nice to see todai sucks at something (or at least one more thing they suck at but this failure can't be ignored or spun into something else). Probably because nepotism and arrogance doesn't win sports games.

Todai team cheer:

That's all right, that's okay, you're gonna work for us one day!

And meanwhile Kyodai sends a pitcher to NPB in the second round of the draft.

Advantage, Kyodai.

TODAI HAS STOOD FIRM ON ADMISSION RULES ????????? But once in then it's years of slackibng and partying and misogyny and (obviously) no sporting activity. then out into society to harass the minions of the Japanese corproate world. top marks all round.

Ivy League univs don't offer athletic scholarships neither; yet some manage to be competitive.

Ivy League univs don't offer athletic scholarships neither; yet some manage to be competitive.

This is like an Ivy League school playing against an SEC school. though. Ivy League schools tend to stay competitive versus much smaller schools with far less gifted athletes. The players at the other Big 6 schools regularly go on to be NPB stars.

This is like an Ivy League school playing against an SEC school. Ivy League schools tend to stay competitive versus much smaller schools with far less gifted athletes.

Ivy League also competes outside their conference. Otherwise, they know they won't qualify into the NCAA tournaments without quality wins.

Ivy League also competes outside their conference

Yes, against other small schools. Harvard football does not play Alabama football, and if they did they would get crushed.

That's basically what we are talking about here - imagine Harvard playing in the SEC every year for football. You can imagine how infrequently they would win games.

Ivy League also competes outside their conference

Yes, against other small schools. Harvard football does not play Alabama football, and if they did they would get crushed.

Which sport are we still talking about? Isn't this baseball?

SEC football teams won't schedule games against Ivy League for various reasons: there's only a limited # of games in a season, and 3/4ths of that against conference opponents, so they have to pick wisely out-of-conference opponents. SEC teams won't gain much "poll voter cred" playing against Ivy League, Ivy League teams would probably want home-and-away 2-yr reciprocal series but don't need the money that SEC would offer just to play 1 game at home, etc.

Meanwhile, in other sports besides football: NCAA basketball knows very well the famous "Princeton motion offense" because Princeton has used it enough times qualifying for March Madness. Cornell and Harvard compete every year to get into the hockey Frozen Four. Northeast schools are always good in lacrosse and rowing. There's almost always an Ivy team qualifying for the NCAA regionals in baseball, soccer, and volleyball. And again, all these without athletic scholarships - just gotta pick your battles with limited resources (can't wage war every sport).

I highly doubt that the Ivies are playing baseball in a league that regularly sends players to the highest levels of the pros. Maybe on occasion, but not with any regularity.

Todai plays against 5 schools that do this all the time. 7 players just drafted from those other 5 schools, 3 in the first round this year. 5 players last year. Are Harvard's opponents sending first rounders to MLB? I don't think so.

Most MLBers actually go thru the multi-layered minor leagues, instead of the college system. NPB doesn't have a reliable minor league system; early rounders are pretty much guaranteed a spot on the team. Draft rounds matter less to MLB - by the time players go thru the farm system, most won't pan out, and nobody remembers where they are drafted (that's why unlike other sports, MLB draft isn't televised - it's not that important - it's how the players do in the farm). And there are Ivy League players in MLB. Ivy League schools usually don't have enough good players to consistently field good teams, but MLB teams don't look for good teams - they look for good individual players, and baseball --more than most other sports-- rely a lot more about individual 1-on-1 matchup pitcher vs. batter (that's why individual sabermetrics stats on baseball matter so much).

Yeah, I know how both NPB and the MLB systems work. You're missing the point, though. There have been Ivy League guys in MLB but none of them were stars. The Big 6 guys are stars.

The most coveted player in the NPB Draft (Arihara) was from a Big 6 school (Waseda). That's the sort of player Todai is facing regularly.

NPB does have a minor league system, it functions very differently from the MLB, though. The result is the same - it's a pure meritocracy. You're not guaranteed a spot on the ichi-gun roster by virtue of being drafted. Go ask Saito Yuki about that one.

Thereis a pretty big difference between most national universities like Todai and private universities like Waseda and Keio with respect to their baseball teams. Star baseball players generally go to private universities which actively recruit them, something national universities aren't able to do. That said, 81 games in a row is still surprising.

Its true that NPB does have a minor league system, but it is incredibly underdeveloped. You just have one 2-gun team for each NPB team and that is it. You aren't guaranteed a spot on the 1 gun team even if you are a top draft choice, but on the other hand most established players do get that sort of treatment towards the end of their careers (Chunichi's catcher Tanishige this seasons with his .180 average being a prime example).

I suppose my biggest beef with the minor league system here is that they don't try to run it as a seperate league with its own fan base, etc like minor league baseball does in the US. The minor league team has exactly the same name and uniform as the parent team and plays in crummier stadiums in the same city. The result is that nobody ever goes to the games, or is even aware they are going on, because if you are a fan of the Hiroshima Carp for example you are obviously going to root for the real Hiroshima Carp and not the number 2 team. If they had any business sense (and almost nobody in NPB does) they would establish those minor league teams in smaller to mid sized cities, give them their own identities and try to create local fan bases. Never going to happen but it would be nice if it did.

The problem with the minor leagues in Japan is the league structure is just completely different from MLB. You can't really do that much to grow minor league ball without substantial changes to the 70 man roster concept, and I don't really see that happening. It would be great to grow the ni-gun teams as a separate identity, though.

Some teams do this, or have tried to do it. The most famous example is Yokohama, whose ni-gun team was the Shonan Searex for some time. But that didn't work out for them. They do (normally) play in Yokosuka and can get several thousand fans to the game.

Fighters also have done this with the Kamagaya Fighters. Obviously that's nowhere near their home stadium! Kamagaya stadium is rather nice and has a special atmosphere, and there are special Kamagaya Fighters uniforms. Lotte also plays a bit of a distance from home in Urawa, though that stadium is a joke. Giants have a decent ni-gun stadium on the West side of Tokyo.

Outside of special events and special games (like Rakuten games in Rifu, Lotte games in rural Chiba) attendance isn't much, though Fighters and BayStars do usually get weekend crowds in the thousands...