Box Scores

This comes up often (mostly to my mailbox), most recently here.

The short of it is, if you can read Japanese, I'd recommend Yahoo Sports' Baseball. There are no such sites in English that I know of.

One very energetic fan a couple of years ago, to follow her favorite player, taught herself how to read Japanese. I can relate as I taught myself how to read quite a bit before any formal Japanese training as well. So if you've got the desire to learn, it's very possible.

In the long run, box scores is something I want to do with this site. I'm studying the RetroSheet data format so as to be compatible with an existing standard. But the information available to me isn't nearly that detailed, and there are a lot of other things still on my TODO list with higher priority.

If anyone's got access to such data for Japanese baseball that's freely available (with permission from the copyright holder), I'd be more than happy to raise this in the queue and write a page that displays said data. I'm still waiting for a wealthy contributor to donate a press-pack NPB-BIS account.

If Nippon Professional Baseball wants to be on level with the MLB, they first need one site on the web with all stats and news for people that don't live in Japan.

He, he, he. NPB has no desire to become internationalized like MLB. They aren't interested in foreign markets, except for sources of new players.

As is discusses in several other threads, the business of baseball is so completely different in Japan that you can't have the same expectations.

It was to try to fill that void that got me started writing about Japanese baseball in 1995. It was "to scratch an itch" as in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."

SABR-metrics haven't taken off in Japan because the few in control of the data will not release it. They aren't interested in releasing it. My database (which you can see by going through the pages on the various players) is a start to make data available. But one person writing, editing, and entering data into a web site isn't going to be able to compete with the establishment. It's hard enough just to enter scores on a daily basis. (Especially this week since it's the start of the fiscal year and I've had many other obligations to attend to.)

I still remember their big surprise when they found a great many votes for the All-Star game coming from over-seas when they opened voting to the Internet. How did so many foreigners find their web site? Because I pointed them there! Yet, it seems that they still don't even know of my existence.

I kind of wonder if the lack of information they give out in English has to do with my filling that void a little too well. After all, how many of you have written to the Commissioner's office asking for more information to be posted on their site in English? Or Spanish? As it says at the top of the Ask the Commish forum, I'm not the real Commissioner. I have absolutely no ties to any officials whatsoever. If you think the information they are putting out is lacking, they're the ones you need to tell. All I can do is agree with you. (Contact information for the Commissioner's Office was given here.)

You're right. I agree with you. But I don't believe that NPB wants to internationalize, and I don't think that they know that they already do have an international market (as is evident from the popularity of this site).