FUKUSHIMA — I am writing this column on June 17 at the Yomiuri Giants-Orix Buffaloes interleague game at Azuma Stadium in Fukushima Prefecture, north of Tokyo. It is one of seven regular-season games the Giants will have played this year at countryside ballparks, and have you ever wondered why they travel out of the way like this?
Known as "chiho jiai" in Japanese, these games have been part of pro baseball history and culture in this country since the early days, having been played in the 1930s prior to World War II before franchises with specific home cities and stadiums were organized.
At that time, most of the teams were based in the Kanto and Kansai areas in the period when a club could not take a jet flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka or Sapporo in an hour and a half, or whiz by "shinkansen" (bullet train) from Tokyo to Osaka in less than three hours.