The Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star Game is an annual

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

series of

All-Star Game An all-star game is an exhibition game that showcases the best players (the "stars") of a sports league. The exhibition is between two teams organized solely for the event, usually representing the league's teams based on region or division, bu ...

s (in most years, two games are played, but three such games can and have been played as well) between players from the

Central League The or , also known as the for sponsorship reasons, is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League i ...

and the

Pacific League The , or , or the , due to sponsorship reasons, is one of the two professional baseball leagues constituting Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the a ...

, currently selected by a combination of fans, players, coaches, and managers. The All-Star Game usually occurs in early to mid-July and marks the symbolic halfway point in the

Nippon Professional Baseball is a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning simply ''Professional Baseball''; outside of Japan, NPB is often referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league ...

(NPB) season (though not the mathematical halfway point; in most seasons, that takes place one week earlier).

History

The first NPB All-Star game was played in 1951. For many years, mimicking the ''

gaijin is a Japanese word for foreigners and non-Japanese citizens in Japan, specifically being applied to foreigners of non-Japanese ethnicity and those from the Japanese diaspora who are not Japanese citizens. The word is composed of two kanji: a ...

waku'' rule of the NPB, each All-Star team was limited to two foreign players.

Whiting, Robert Robert Whiting (born October 24, 1942) is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several books on contemporary Japanese culture—which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Je ...

. ''You Gotta Have Wa'' (Vintage Departures, 1989), p. 275.

Game results

Hanshin Tigers player voting controversy

The fan votes of the starters of the 2023 All Star Series revealed 9 of the 10 highest voted starters were Hanshin Tigers players. It was the third time in NPB players from the same team led the voting in all positions. The controversy was garnered as some of the positions, such as catcher, which in question was Ryutaro Umeno, were voted in for the sole purpose of being voted in by fans, as he did not produce numbers good enough to warrant an all star game appearance, compared to that of a player like

Takumi Ohshiro is a Japanese professional baseball catcher and infielder for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball. Career On November 16, 2018, he was selected for the Yomiuri Giants roster at the 2018 MLB Japan All-Star Series exhibiti ...

. Others, like Teruaki Sato at third base, were good, but there had been players who were much more deserving to start, like

Toshiro Miyazaki is a Japanese people, Japanese professional baseball infielder for the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Career Miyazaki was selected to the . References External links NPB.com
1988 births Living people J ...

and Kazuma Okamoto.

References

{{Japanese Professional Baseball 1951 establishments in Japan Baseball all-star games Nippon Professional Baseball competitions Recurring sporting events established in 1951

History

Game results

Hanshin Tigers player voting controversy

See also

References