Baseball (and Amherst) Between Japan and the U.S.

Baseball has been the national pastime of both the U.S. and Japan since the late 19th century, but the game has developed differently in the two countries. As a cultural anthropologist who studies sport and society, Bill Kelly ’68 reflects on baseball’s place in the two countries. The sport, it turns out, is also one strand of the long relationship between Amherst and Dōshisha University, founded in Kyoto, Japan, by 1870 Amherst grad Joseph Neesima. Join Bill Kelly, Yale University Professor of Japanese Studies, and Trent Maxey, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Civilizations and History at Amherst, as they share perspectives on baseball and Japanese society. Kelly is author of a forthcoming book about Japan’s second-favorite professional team, The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers, and Maxey helped to organize the successful 2014 tour of Japan by the Amherst baseball team. Presented by the Class of 1968.