The final of the WBC (World Baseball Classic) tournament took place in March 2023. It is an international baseball competition. The Japanese team won a dramatic victory. Many Japanese were bursting with joy.<\/p>\r\n
I, too, was pleased of course. But this was mingled with a degree of anxiety. Murakami, of the Yakult Swallows, woke up; Imanaga, who plays for the DeNA BayStars, showed how good a pitcher he can be; and the Giant\u2019s Okamoto hit a home run right on cue. The result was a growing sense of trepidation.<\/p>\r\n
For many years I have supported the Hanshin baseball team. So, it is a problem if Murakami, who plays in the same league, gets his act together. I want Hanshin\u2019s rivals to remain as dull as they were, frankly.<\/p>\r\n
I have no intention of belittling the success of Japan in taking on the world. But I also have an intensely \u201clocal\u201d love of the Hanshin team, which I feel extremely keenly. And this more local love serves as a bulwark against patriotism.<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":1513,"template":"","message_category":[23],"class_list":["post-1512","messages","type-messages","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","message_category-serialization-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/messages\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/messages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/messages"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"message_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/message_category?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}