Baseball Rite of Spring: Okinawa Wins!

Twice a year, high school baseball rules TV. There are national tournaments in spring and summer. Theoretically, every high school with a good baseball team gets a chance to play. After a complicated series of play offs, the very best teams in the nation compete at Koshien Stadium.

It is the dream of every boy who has ever handled a baseball to play at Koshien Stadium. The lucky ones who make it traditionally scoop up a little bit of the dirt from the diamond to keep as an eternal souvenir. A uniform stained with the soil of Koshien is almost a sacred object.

Last Saturday, Okinawa's Shogaku high school made Koshien history. It was the first time in ten years that a high school pitcher threw a complete-game shutout.

Shogaku won 9-0. The 1998 shutout was pitched by Daisuke Matsuzaka, now of the Boston Red Sox. The pitcher this time was Nao Higashihama, and his coach was Koya Higa--the ace who pitched at Koshien in 1999, the last time Okinawa Shogaku won the national tournament.

I love it that boys have a place like Koshien in which to be heroes. I love it that the kids are the focal point and that the adults stay quietly, supportively, in the background.