The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers

Baseball has been Japan&#39;s most popular sport for over a century.&#160;<I>The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers</I> analyzes Japanese baseball ethnographically by focusing on a single professional team, the Hanshin Tigers.&#160;For over fifty years, the Tigers have been the one of the country&rsquo;s most watched and talked-about professional baseball teams, second only to their powerful rivals, the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants.&#160;Despite a largely losing record, perennial frustration, and infighting among players, the Tigers remain overwhelming sentimental favorites in many parts of the country.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> This book analyzes the Hanshin Tiger phenomenon, and offers an account of why it has long been so compelling and instructive. Author William Kelly argues that the Tigers represent&#160;what he calls a <I>sportsworld</I> &mdash;a collective product of the actions of players, coaching staff, management, media, and millions of passionate fans. The team has come to symbolize a powerful counter-narrative to idealized notions of Japanese workplace relations. The Tigers are savored as a melodramatic representation of real corporate life, rife with rivalries and&#160;office politics familiar to every Japanese worker. And playing in a historic stadium on the edge of Osaka, they carry the hopes and frustrations of Japan&rsquo;s second city against the all-powerful capital.