Rooting Interest
Rooting Interest
Brian Rugen
While covering the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets, Hall of Fame baseball writer Roger Angel was torn between the two teams. He grew up a Red Sox fan because his mother was a Red Sox fan. At the same time, he was also a Mets fan since he was born in New York. His essay “Not So, Boston” in The New Yorker after the series details these conflicted loyalties.
Leading up to the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC), people often asked me who I would cheer for if the U.S. and Japan made it to the final game. On the one hand, I am from Colorado. But let me tell you—to whatever extent expats boast that they have cut ties to their home country, sport is one tie that’s hard to undo. On the other hand, I have lived in Japan for close to 20 years, and for the last eight I have spent almost every weekend, every year immersed in Japanese youth baseball with my son Alec’s team. When answering the question, I would often joke with people—taking one side or the other at different times in different contexts—but deep in my heart I never really knew.
The morning of the 2023 WBC final was on March 21 in Tokyo. Alec had just finished third grade the previous week, and my daughter and wife were both out. We had the house to ourselves. Alec didn’t have a smartphone yet, but if he did, I imagine he would have texted his friend Yo, whose father is former Tokyo Giants pitcher and 2008 Rookie of the Year award winner, Tetsuya Yamaguchi. They would have exchanged a few animated Line stamps in support of Samurai Japan and the most well-known Tokyo Giants member of that team: Kazuma Okamoto. Because of his friendship with Yo, and the overall popularity of the Giants in general, I lost my son years ago to Giants’ fandom.
I had a different Samurai Japan player on my mind that morning: Munetaka Murakami. Murakami was the home run star of the Giants’ cross-town rival Tokyo Yakult Swallows—my adopted Tokyo team. Why Yakult and not the Giants? The Swallows home stadium—Meiji Jingu—is not too far away, a pleasant bicycle ride on a nice day. At Jingu, I can watch baseball games outside, and I can still use cash to pay the beer girls. It’s old, run-down, but has character. It’s one of the remaining stadiums where Babe Ruth played. The Swallows are the Mets in New York. The White Sox in Chicago. The Clippers in L.A., West Ham in London. Rocky against Apollo. I’ve always had a thing for the underdog.
Murakami had been in an awful slump throughout the WBC, until the semi-final game against Mexico, when his sayonara extra base hit sent them to the finals. You could see the relief on his face while being mobbed by his teammates on the field. The slump had been on everyone’s mind throughout the tournament, including Seiya Suzuki, who was out of the WBC with an injury. On an Instagram video that went viral, Suzuki playfully mocked Murakami’s body language and lack of confidence before telling him to keep his head up. The encouragement seemed to work. The nation had regained its confidence in Murakami.
With the others out of the house, we ate a quiet breakfast of oatmeal and miso soup before settling into our zabutons on the living room floor in front of the television. My son and I don’t share the same first, dominant language, so we don’t share that effortless conversation that’s marked by idioms, slang, sarcasm, and subtle nuances. I guess it was also around this time when he really started to get a feel for the limits of his English and the limits of my Japanese. Instead of having to deal with the inevitable clarification questions from me, he would simply stop sharing things altogether.
“Anything interesting happen today?” I would ask him when he came home from school.
“No.”
Later, my wife would come home, ask the same question in Japanese, and find out that he overtook three kids in his leg of a relay race, aced a science test, and landed a leading part in an upcoming musical.
The scoring started early with a second inning home run by Trea Turner, off Shota Imanaga. In the bottom of the inning, though, Murakami tied the game on the first pitch with his own homerun to right center. My son leaped up from his zabuton with screams that startled our quiet Tokyo neighborhood. The slump was definitely over.
If this were a bittersweet moment for Alec—being forced to cheer for a player from a rival Tokyo team—it didn’t last long. The next batter was Okamoto, who promptly singled to right. Then four batters later, Lars Nootbar drove in Okamoto from third on a groundout.
Japan 2-1.
Two innings later, Okamoto led off the bottom of the fourth. On the second pitch, Okamoto homered to left center. Alec teased me with the fact that it was off a Rockies pitcher. I countered with the fact that Murakami’s homerun was 432 feet while Okamoto’s was 407.
Japan 3-1. We refilled our green tea and orange juice.
The remaining innings were filled with alternating moments of quiet tension and explosive bursts of cheering up until that Hollywood ending in the bottom on the ninth that everyone remembers. Ohtani struck out Angel teammate Mike Trout on a sweeper. Alec threw up his arms. Punched a sofa. Then frisbeed his zabuton at the TV, mimicking sumo fans at the Kokugikan National Arena when a mighty Yokozuna loses.
Japan 3-2.
I was on my feet too, cheering and high-fiving Alec. Although days later, upon reflection, what I realized was that by the end of the game, I wasn’t rooting for either the U.S. or Japan, per se. I was rooting for my son. And, as an extension, I think I was rooting for us.
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The 2026 WBC starts in March. A few months ago, Alec and I won a pair of tickets in an early WBC lottery to the Japan vs. Czech game in the Tokyo group stage. Spring is also cherry blossom season in Japan—signifying renewal/hope/new beginnings. This seems fitting, because in March, Alec finishes his last year of elementary school and will start his new life in middle school. He recently graduated from his youth baseball team, and is now adjusting to a new middle school club baseball team across town.
Murakami is with the White Sox. Okamoto is a Blue Jay.
At the same time, the cherry blossoms are also a reminder of the fleeting beauty of life, since they only last for about a week. The 1986 World Series lasted for seven games. In that essay in The New Yorker, Angel reflected on the drama of the seven-game series in what could be compared to how the Japanese feel about the cherry blossoms. “What matters now, perhaps, is for each of us to make an effort to hold on to these games, for almost certainly we won’t see their like again soon…”Angel wrote.
For all our lives together in Japan, Alec and I have held on to baseball as our common language. From youth baseball practices to prefectural tournaments. From spring training trips to Arizona to regular season trips to MLB stadiums. From Nippon Professional Baseball league games in Tokyo to high school Koshien tournament games in Osaka.
From a 2023 WBC game on a living room floor to a 2026 WBC game at the Tokyo Dome.
Go ahead and ask Angel who he was ultimately rooting for at the end of the 1986 World Series, and he’ll tell you the Mets. Ask me who I will be rooting for at the game in March, and, well, you already know the answer.
Brian Rugen is a professor of English at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. He has been living and working in the Asia-Pacific region for over 25 years. In his spare time, he enjoys bicycle touring, hiking, traveling, and craft beer.
Caitlin McPhee is a Blue Jays fan and illustrator from Calgary, Alberta. Thank you Jordan Kormos for your continuous support. See more markers at @onewarmline on Instagram.
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