Fans of baseball’s Hanshin Tigers are at fever pitch ahead of Saturday’s start to the Japan Series, with the country’s most passionately supported team desperate to win only their second national title.
Celebrations in the Tigers’ home city of Osaka exploded last month when the team won the Central League pennant, with fans thronging the streets and hurling themselves into the local Dotonbori River.
After advancing through the playoffs, they now face the Orix Buffaloes in Japan’s version of the World Series, with the chance to capture the title for the first time since 1985.
For long-suffering fans like Yuko Kawase, who attends about 80 or 90 games a season as well as the team’s training camps, the prospect of another national crown is “scary”.
“It’s been 38 years, so of course there are more nerves than usual,” said Kawase, who attends games wearing a hand-made Tigers kimono.
“But the fans are as one with the players and the biggest feeling is that finally we’re about to get started.”
Tigers fans celebrated long and hard the last time their team won the Japan Series.
Shops and property were damaged and a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders — said to resemble Hanshin’s American slugger Randy Bass — was snatched from a nearby KFC restaurant and thrown into the river.
There were also raucous scenes in 2003 when the Tigers won the Central League pennant, with over 5,000 fans leaping into the river and one person dying.
There were no serious incidents last month when they won the pennant for the first time in 18 years, but downtown Osaka was still packed with fans singing the team’s anthem, “Rokko Oroshi”.
Spectacular recovery
Kawase says supporters who cause damage or jump in the river are “idiots”.
“Real Hanshin fans don’t celebrate like that,” she said.
“We don’t want fair-weather fans to do that because it makes the real fans look bad.”
The Tigers last reached the Japan Series in 2014, where they lost a best-of-seven series four games to one against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.
The team’s fortunes fell afterwards and they endured their worst-ever start to a season last year, losing 18 of their first 21 games.
They have made a spectacular recovery this season, winning the Central League with room to spare under the shrewd guidance of returning manager Akinobu Okada.
Makoto Takeda, who owns a bar in Osaka popular with Tigers fans, believes they will beat the Buffaloes in seven games to win the Japan Series.
“The club has improved bit by bit and the team has become stronger,” he said.
“Results didn’t come straight away, but there has been a gradual series of reforms that have made them stronger.
“Okada is a manager who knows Hanshin like no one else, and he has got results.”
Takeda believes there will be “a huge effect on the economy” if the Tigers win, with the celebrations likely to go on for days.
Kawase fears that the team might have peaked too early by clinching the league pennant and enjoying a city-wide celebration “where the voltage was turned up to 100”.
“We have to crank the engine back up again starting from tomorrow,” she said.
