Mr. Baseball

I've always had a complicated relationship with the movie Mr. Baseball. They got a lot of thing right about Japanese baseball, but they got some things wrong, too. I've always thought about doing like a fact check or CinemaSins like video on that movie. The thing is, I know people developed interest in Japanese baseball because of that movie. The main thing is that it's incredibly outdated (and was a little outdated when it was released), but here's some things I'd like to comment on.

Correct

"You could piss over that fence."
Nagoya stadium was tiny in the 1990s, something like 300' down the lines and 380' to center.

"Japanese way, shut up and take it."
This is so correct. In Japan, if it avoids conflict, follows the rules, or benefits the group, you keep silent, no matter how wrong it might be.

"The Giants are like the national team."
In the 80s and 90s, Giants games were broadcast nationwide. Yomiuri owned a national TV station which carried all the Giants' home games. The Giants won 9 Japan Series in a row. Only until the 80s did their total dominance over the sport subside.

"He tipped his hat, he didn't mean it!"
Generally true. Headhunting really isn't done much in Japan, mostly because of the stigma against base runners. Recently NPB implemented a rule that's an automatic ejection for a fastball to the head, regardless of intent.

"Big hit, happy body!"
The ridiculous things I've seen in commercials by foreign celebrities. At the moment, I can only remember Jodie Foster saying "Yes Civic! Yes Ferio!" in a Honda commercial. And that was tame. Now the foreigners are usually saying things in Japanese or English but translated.

'When asked his impression of his new manager, Elliot replied "I have much to learn from Uchiyama-San and will gladly strive to shed all my old, disgusting ways of laziness and become my best under his guidance." ' 
This is kind of true, but not as mean. Usually American cliches don't translate well literally to Japan, so many times I'll hear the interpreter use the equivalent in Japan. I remember one player "I'm looking forward to having fun with this team" being interpreted as something like "I will humbly accept the role my team has for me."

"It's like being a black guy back home. Only there's less of us." (about being a gaijin)
This was more true in the 80s and 90s than today, especially in a city. It's like Japanese at the same time admired you but was afraid of you at the same time. People would ask you really insensitive questions or just yell "HARO" (hello) as if barking at a dog, and it gets tiring so often. If you respond with something as insensitive, you're in trouble.

"You can't end a game in a god damn tie!"
When the movie came out, the Central League had just expanded games to 15 innings, and all ties would be replayed like a rain out. Before then it was 12 innings maximum, and in the 80s it was no new innings after 4 hours.

My first game I ever attended ended in a tie after 9 innings because the 9th ended after 10pm. Hankyu Braves' Boomer Wells (the original one) hit a game tying grand slam in the bottom of the 9th against the Nankai Hawks.

However, there's no way any foreigner wouldn't know games would end in a tie, so this was for dramatic purposes in the movie.

Incorrect

Some of the incorrect things I suspect because the culture of baseball was already changing in the 90s, and this script was probably tossed around in the 80s when a lot of Japanese baseball culture was similar to the salaryman work ethic.

Power hitter bunting
In my roughly 300 Japanese baseball games, I have never seen the power hitter bunt, let along the gaijin power hitter. The only exception is if the batter is going through a horrible slump. I once saw Hiroki Kokubo do that in 1999 when he couldn't hit the broad side of a kabuki theater.

"Mr. Besuboru"
They wrote that on the scoreboard in Japan. They'd just write it out in English.

"They don't like foreigners breaking their records."
Though, there is some truth to this action. In the 80s, if team A has a player with the record, they might walk the team on player B to prevent them from getting the record. Lotte did this to Hiromi Matsunaga in 1988 when their player was leading the batting race and the games were meaningless. The famous example is Randy Bass because he was a foreigner, but Oh was a Giant, and he had the single-season and all-time home run records and they weren't going to surrender it to another team, especially a Tiger (the Red Sox of Japan for one), and possibly a foreigner.


There are probably a lot of others, but that's what I could think of for now.