A Red Sox Fan in Hawaii and Japan

Like a lot of people, I feel a certain pride by proxy when those with something in common with me do well. I'm often interested in the success of members of my family, people from my hometown, my fellow alumni, and even alumni at the school where I'm employed. And as Red Sox fans, Laura and I are often interested in the success of our favorite former Red Sox. Assuming they're not actually playing the Red Sox, we'll cheer for Kevin Millar, now of the Orioles, or Orlando Cabrera, now of the Angels. (Sorry Trot -- we couldn't possibly root for Cleveland unless y'all got rid of that Indian-equivalent-to-blackface mascot.)

By the time we were leaving for Tokyo, Honolulu had begun to feel like a hometown, so I was becoming interested in the success of Hawaiians. In the airport, as we were going to our gate, I noticed a display about Wally Yonamine, a Hawaiian who had played baseball in Japan.

As it turns out, our Homeikan was just down the street from the Tokyo Dome, where the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, Yonamine's former team, plays. The first night we were in Toyko, we went exploring and found a mall right next to the Dome. At the mall, you can't hear a peep from the Dome, so we had no clue that a game was actually in progress until we got back to our room and turned on the TV. All the more amazing because at Japanese baseball games, like at soccer games around the world, there's a lot of chanting. (We had actually heard some of the game on the radio at dinner, but we thought the cooks and patrons at this particular Ramen joint -- all men, and none terribly happy to see us -- were listening to a soccer game. We recognized the commentators' voices from the radio once we saw the game on TV.)

After watching part of two games on TV and having stayed down the street from the Dome, I was just about ready to make the Giants my Japanese team. Then suspicion sunk in: This is Tokyo or, as a good friend calls it, New York, Japan. It's a huge city with a lot of influence and money, and it could probably afford to have a great team at any cost. Any Red Sox fan already knows what I'm driving at: What if the Giants are the Japanese Yankees?

This possibility was only reinforced by the fact that the Giants were the team of Godzilla (Hidekei Matsui, whose face is all over the Tokyo subway) before he went to the Yankees. Despite my sentimental feelings toward Hawaii and Tokyo and my formative experiences of Japanese baseball, I had to guard myself against this possibility. A Red Sox fan -- being defined almost as much by a dislike for the Yankees as by an affection for the Sox -- could never be a fan of a team that smells even a little bit like the Yankees.

A quick visit to Wikipedia has confirmed my suspicion: "They are regarded as "The New York Yankees of Japan" due to their past dominance of the league". Sorry, Giants -- you'll never be my team.

By the way, that proprietary feeling is clearly at work in Japan: Because of Dice-K, the press reports on the Red Sox, at least when Dice-K is playing, almost as though it were a Japanese team. If only that feeling worked in reverse: Then I would support the Seibu Lions, Dice-K's former team, hands down.