As I continue to shout these Gurazeni posts into the echo chamber, the show remains a straight-up delight for me as a baseball fan.  There is a place for a show like this in the Japanese market – the manga is quite popular, and sports anime (the non-Comiket kind) simply aren’t ghettoized here the way they are in the West.  None of that really speaks to the intrinsic quality of the show itself, which impresses me more and more with each new arc.  The production is obviously cheap as hell, but everything else from the direction and writing on down is elite.

For a baseball fan, there’s nothing quite like a pennant race.  It’s a day-in day-out ball of stress eating away at your gut, a roller-coaster of euphoric highs and despairing lows.  The nature of baseball makes this more agonizing and compelling than in any other sport – multi-game series against your rivals, the long season (162 games in MLB, 154 in NPB).  And when you have three teams involved as is the case with the Spiders (Swallows), Mops (Giants) and Tempters (Tigers), the whiplash from the thrill ride is even more extreme.  Every twist has the potential for agony or ecstasy.

For Bonda, this obviously has the potential to be a career-changing event.  As he says everything he does, good or bad, is multiplied many times over in significance.  And that’s especially true since he’s coming off an injury that robbed him of more than half the season.  But he’s taking the time to be concerned about Itsuki, too.  I think this reflects (in addition to the fact that Bonda is a very decent guy generally) his nature as a keen observer of people.  That’s not something you can just turn off, and in Natsunosuke it’s an imperative, a part of him.  His need – and ability – to analyze any situation is both a strength and a weakness.

What Natsunosuke does here – confront Itsuki about his attitude – is to me the very definition of being a good teammate and a good friend.  It’s not about telling people what they want to hear and bucking their spirits when they’re down (though there’s a place for that, too) – it’s about telling them what they need to hear.  As long as Itsuki things along the lines of “I just want to stay in the majors until Hiroshi is born” and “I’m doing this for them”, he’ll never get anywhere.  Roppa’s safety not – the in-law job – is a curse for him.  I noted that I thought Bonda might be resentful of Itsuki a bit, as he’s someone with real talent but not the imperative to make the most of it – and I think this week’s events showed that there was some truth to that.

This episode also highlighted a couple of interesting differences between Japanese pro ball and MLB.  First off, in NPB if the game is tied after 12 innings it’s a tie – that’s it.  Of course, that dramatically changes the way a manager approaches late-game situations.  As well, Itsuki swinging at a 3-0 pitch (a ball) with the bases loaded in the 12th inning of a tie game would never happen in MLB.  It reflects a total lack of situational awareness by Itsuki, obviously, but in MLB every manager in the game would have given their hitter the take sign (and very few would even need to be told).  In fact, many managers would have their hitter taking 3-1 there too (depending on the hitter).

That boner costs Bonda a win, but he continues to pitch well – and it’s clear he’s re-claimed a place in the manager’s circle of trust.  As for Itsuki, he does finally get lucky and score a hit – though it’s a meaningless one, with the Spiders down 10-0.  It’s Bonda’s come to to Jesus talk that really seems to flip the switch for Itsuki, and just in time too as he’s about to be sent down.  Now the question will be if Itsuki can continue to perform even when things get really stressful in his personal life, as they’re clearly about to.  And there, Bonda really can’t help him – it’s up to the man himself to step up.