Japanese baseball considers itself to be a major league, and the quality and level of play is quite high. However, the ballpark facilities and availability of certain items could be improved to make fans feel more like they are at a big league game.

Following are some things I believe every Central and Pacific League stadium should have and which would make the atmosphere more major league-like:

Home run dimensions on the fences. Some ballparks (Kyocera Osaka Dome, for example) post the distances in meters from home plate to the left — and right-field poles and the center-field back screen. However, most (including Tokyo Dome) do not. In 1970, when I first started going to games in Japan, every stadium displayed the numbers on the fences.