{"id":6679,"date":"2010-02-05T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6679"},"modified":"2010-02-04T19:06:18","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T19:06:18","slug":"web-pick-japanese-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6679","title":{"rendered":"Web Pick of the Week: Japanese Baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Web-Pick\"This week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collection of websites worth visiting concentrates on Japanese baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 You would think the wide array of nationalities that can be found in MLB would be enough evidence that baseball isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just a sport played by Americans, but many Brits still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see past the idea of the sport being America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s National Pastime.\u00c2\u00a0 In some ways that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not surprising because football fans are used to there being many different leagues of decent strength in other countries, even just in Europe.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

In baseball, MLB is pretty much considered to be the only show in town, but the Nippon Professional Baseball League is a strong competition in its own right and is the best example of baseball outside the States that we can throw at the cynics.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve therefore decided to learn more about the Nippon Professional Baseball League in Japan this year and that naturally sent my trawling the web to find some useful sites.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We start with the English version of the official Nippon Professional Baseball website<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s functional rather than being especially captivating, providing visitors with standard information such as schedules, standings and stats.\u00c2\u00a0 The site primes you with the basic information that there are two leagues, Central and Pacific, each containing six teams who each play a regular season of 144 games.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason I had got it into my head that the Japanese League ran to a different timetable to that used in MLB, but in fact their season is fairly similar: running from late March to early November.<\/p>\n

YakyuBaka.com<\/a> is updated at a very impressive rate and contains an amazing amount of detailed information.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just cover the NPB, but all parts of Japanese baseball: college teams, high school teams, independent leagues etc.\u00c2\u00a0 If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit too much detail to get to grips with at first, there is a useful \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcVarious Handy Posts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 box on the right-hand side of the page to direct you to main areas of interest, including the delights of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcCheer Songs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 page.<\/p>\n

Japanese Baseball.com<\/a> provides stats and news as well as blogs and a discussion section, which might come in useful if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got any queries about Japanese baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll notice that there is a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLive broadcasts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 link in the main menu and judged by the archive files they may offer some live English commentary of NPB games here.\u00c2\u00a0 Another site that seemingly can direct you to coverage of NPB games is NPB Tracker<\/a>: an informative blog site by Patrick Newman, who has recently started writing at FanGraphs as well (check out his recent Q&As here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

JapanBall.com<\/a> promises \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Daily News, Scores, Standings, Stats, Directories and Baseball Travel and Tour Information\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 I found the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBaseball Japan – Teams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/a> page particularly useful in learning a bit more about the different clubs that make up the NPB.<\/p>\n

Finally, if you want to read about Japanese baseball through the eyes of a fan, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMarinerds, etc\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/a> blog looks like a good place to visit regularly.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s written by Deanna, an American living in Tokyo\/Saitama, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fair to say she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite keen on baseball: she attended 122 games in 2009!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s web picks delve into the world of Japanese baseball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[146],"class_list":["post-6679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-japanese-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6679"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6681,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679\/revisions\/6681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}