by Kotaro Nagata
In the WPT 2015, Team Japan waged a fierce battle with the best teams in the world and returned to their home on Monday, 27th.
The Japanese young stars finished third in the qualifying round with one win and three losses and finally wiped out by Curacao in the second round. Unfortunately, the result wasn’t what they imagined before coming to Rotterdam. They couldn’t show usual performance when it comes to the crunch (pinch and point).
For them the sharp contests itself were valuable experiences and would be a starting point for a stellar career at a world-class level.
Except for a few players, this WPT trip was their first overseas experience. Needless to say, they’d never played not only in a foreign country, but also with foreign teams.
In addition to their shorter baseball career than others, both physically and mentally the collegiate performances were scant to the top.
There is no need to take an excessively pessimistic view of this result. In all games there was only a fine line between winning and losing. I hope they would come back to the global stage again as Samurai Japan.
Obviously, Japan did not send its best. Neither did Cuba.
And the Netherlands had more Caribbean players on its team than Curacao did!
The level of competition in both the Dutch and Czech tournaments this year speak to the decline in European baseball.
I have a young (18 year-old) Dutch player who played a tournament in Japan last summer. It was eye-opening — as was the experience of a California college team two years ago.
European players have a cosmically greater need to be immersed in Japanese baseball culture than the game could ever benefit from Japan going to Europe. Next time, for the sake of the game, bring them to you.