Koshien: Annual event has provided a century of thrills

Ah, Koshien.

The 100th National High School Baseball Tournament gets underway on Sunday at historic Koshien Stadium near Kobe. Organized by the Japan High School Baseball Federation in association with the prestigious Asahi Shimbun, the tourney is the largest sporting event in Japan, on par with the World Series and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament in the United States, in terms of popularity. Forty-nine teams from around the country will vie for the national championship in a single-elimination competition lasting two weeks. Crowds of up to 50,000 fans per day will attend, while each and every game will be telecast live, nationwide, by NHK to an audience of millions.

Visitors to Japan might wonder why a schoolboy tourney draws so much attention, overshadowing everything including MLB and NPB games and those of any other sport.