Europe vs Japan at the Tokyo Dome – A truely historic Matchup #EURvsJPN

by Riccardo Schiroli from Tokyo

The future of baseball is also here in Bunkyo, one of the 23 special wards of the huge metropolis of Tokyo. The Tokyo Dome opened in 1988 and even 27 years ago was no shock to the world of professional baseball: Domes had existed in the United States for decades. Still, even the most visionary of baseball visionaries wouldn’t have dared to preview that some day a Japanese National Team (Samurai Japan) would have hosted a selection of players from Europe (All Euro).

Actually it will happen: Tuesday March 10 and Wednesday March 11 at 6 p.m. local time, which is to say 10 a.m. in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid and Prague, the capital cities of the countries represented in the All Euro squad.

Dutch national team skipper Steve Janssen (who is from Belgium; Brussels is in the same time zone) put the team together with the help of his european rival Marco Mazzieri, the manager of Team Italy. The coaching staff won’t count on every player they would have liked to see on the field (Wladimir Balentien and Andruw Jones from the Netherlands, Tiago Da Silva from Italy didn’t respond to the call), but they still are happy for what they have develped so far.

“We worked hard” said Mazzieri “And the organization here does help”.

Janssen is aware of the task: “Samurai Japan doesn’t have weaknesses”.

Tuesday Janssen will start with Rob Cordemans on the mound and Alessandro Maestri will be his first reliever.

Samurai Japan’s skipper Hiroki Kokubo will respond with young phenom Daichi Ohsera.

These are not games played to win. Or at least: you always play to win, but they mean much more than that.

They mean “A lot” to European baseball, according to Riccardo Fraccari, the Italian President of the World Baseball Softball Confederation.

Europe will indeed have a chance to be on Tokyo. Not quite, but most Europeans will be able to watch the games live, on Eurosport 2. Even those who do not have a cable or satellite subscription may find the will to invest a few euros and subscribe on line to www.eurosportplayer.com, that will stream the games HD to desktops, laptops and tablets, provided they subscribe (for at least one month) before play ball.

Most of the players on the field weren’t even born when the Dome opened and were kids when Korea earned the last olympic gold medal. They all hope they’ll be back here in 2020, to play olympic baseball once again. If it happens, these Global Games will have earned a piece of it.

I wrote that the Dome was no miracle when it opened back in 1988, but I must admit I have never seen such a thing as the Tokyo Dome City: restaurants, arenas, shopping malls grew around the baseball “City” is no exaggeration. Coming to Bunkyo we, as Europeans, may feel we messed up some time continuum and happen to be in the future of sport facilities, here in Tokyo.

Photo by World Baseball Softball Confederation