nostalgia in baseball field (3-30-10)

I began working as a radiographer at a hospital in Kita ward, Tokyo, immediately after graduating from my technical college in 1996. To be the same as other fresh apprentices, I was struggling to get new skills. To make the learning process more difficult, I kept something under my hat that would further hurt my conscience at each mistake I made: I was covertly aiming to become a professional comedian. (This aspiration had been formed for multiple reasons.) Making faux pas both verbally and physically from time to time, I must have looked a bane to three or four other surrounding colleagues in the same section. (While being a student, I expected the license and work experiences to enrich my profile and help create stories and secure a position as a comedian.) Yet, although some little more serious mistake had me scared of being immediately fired each time, my such a fear was undue.

My hospital was lenient and its workers were friendly, so I was allowed to commute by bike in plain clothes--one day, my outfit was a combination of a bandanna, a green-reflecting shirt with puffy shoulders (for women) and a pair of shorts--while some others preferred suits even until changing into a white uniform. I wore the uniform at work too of course, but my appearance outside the hospital might have been harmful to its reputation.

With 98 beds and a dialysis ward, my hospital was located in a residential area and most outpatients were aged locals with relatively mild symptoms. For anyone working in the circumstances, accepting patients with a friendly and humane manner was next to prerequisite. There were no surgeons and an I.C.U. I must have been indulged in this less serious environment. Yet I liked interacting with elderly patients through my job position. They were good at smiling. The kind of pleasure in in-person communication was probably specific to a local hospital and I believed that an exchange of smiles was identical to that during a comedy show.

I took advantage of club activities at the hospital. For example, I belonged to the clubs of flower arrangement, volleyball and baseball, the last one was my favorite.

On weekends during the season, baseball fields off the Arakawa river in Toda, Saitama prefecture, were where our team frequented to have games or do practices. We were a ragtag mix of doctors, caseworkers, laboratory technicians, clinical engineering technologists, radiographers, male nurses, clerks and even their family members and acquaintances, in good harmony. Even when work was most hectic in summer, we gathered together at least twice a month.

Mostly on the night of a weekday, on the other hand, some of the members usually including me joined occasional games/practices with the teams of brother hospitals. In this case, our regular playing field sat in the greenery-rich Central Park in Kita ward. The cool air was penetrated by the shafts of artificial light. Meanwhile, our occasional sub-activity apart from baseball was playing tennis at the courts close by the two back-to-back baseball fields. Mostly ladies arranged and participated in the tennis practices; There were nights when we joined them after playing baseball. The entire park was so bright that it appeared like a pocket-sized treasure box in buzzing Tokyo.

One morning, as a matter of routine we were practicing in preparation for a game. Under the leniency of the vast blue sky, baseball grounds were lined along the Arakawa river. Winds free of the restriction of buildings were rustling the sheets of grass on the outfields. I was playing catch with Masako (a female laboratory technician a little older than me). With a lot of influence from Hideo Nomo, I could hardly resist imitating his pitching form: I did the tornado-like wind-up, exposing my back more than necessary. As a result, the thrown ball went over and far away from her. As such, she repeatedly chased the gone ball and was upset. Taro, a clerk in his early/middle 30s, my other friend, put my bad command (of a ball) down to the way of holding a ball. What he said was, “Why do you hold a ball with three fingers?,” although I believed that I had done with two fingers. My relatively short fingers might have made the appearance as he asserted.

I was sometimes assigned as a second baseman. Despite the position, one moment I felt like Hideo Nomo and did his way of throwing as I caught a grounder.

Meanwhile, Masako was a shortstop. In our defensive turn, with a runner who had some short distance off second base, the pitcher turned to it, suggesting the possibility of tossing a ball. In reaction, I also went to cover second base although Masako had preceded me. This situation was absolutely impractical as one person was enough to receive a ball. I just made a wide opening for a hit.

When I was an outfielder, quite often I allowed a nailed ball to travel further or land on the ground. I did myself justice (as the team’s name was exactly “Justice”), but sadly the results only deserved how good I was at fielding.

Wow, what a GOOD player I was! We occasionally went to a soba-noodle restaurant near the hospital after playing baseball, and almost every drinking occasion gave me an earful during a supposed happy time.

Some of all the criticisms were something like: “Why do you hold a ball with three fingers when you throw it?,” “Watch a ball!,” “You are late in reacting, every time!,” “YOU did that!,” “Why do you go to second base when she (Masako) is supposed?,” “You open up your area,” “YOU did that!,” “Don’t mimic Ichiro,” “You are way too loud (by calling out encouraging phrases as seen in Japanese amateur baseball) when on defense!”

As it was a team that mainly consisted of colleagues in the same hospital, conversational contents often went beyond baseball, to those about my behavior and performance at work, although I must have had some beneficial part as well...

(My first boss in the X-ray section had also belonged to the Justice for months until he moved to a separate facility in the medical group (associated with the Japanese Communist Party). He was over 50, though, his attitude towards me was rather folksy.)

Still, my dream of becoming a professional comedian was alive. Attesting to my fervor, having passed each set of entrance exams I went to both a community college under a major comedy company and an acting school which fostered and promoted actors, singers, comedians and so forth, through the second half of my two-year career in the hospital.

I quit the hospital two years after I was employed there as my dream had become prospective: I passed the final exam of the community college and was thus entitled to participate in a school-wide tournament. Winning this participation right was the condition which persuaded me to write a resignation, as I would hardly be able to juggle my full-time job and pursuance of the dream. (Amongst all the reasons for quitting the hospital there might have been a romance with my female colleague in the same section.)

It was quite a testing moment as regards my loyalty to comedy, as I was aware of what I would lose: a regular, steady salary, and possibly friends? In spite of this fear, staying ambivalent between working for people’s health and lives and behaving mischievously was no longer an available option to me, since I had been seeing real suffering patients while all the medical staff around was devotedly treating them.

Afterwards, I was still permitted to take part in baseball games/practices even after I began working at a totally separate hospital and was determined to basically focus on one job about radiography.

Nevertheless, according to a relatively high turnover of employees in my first hospital, new young members were joining the team, giving me a sense of being excluded.

Meanwhile, aside from baseball, jogging was customary, something I had done to get a slim body to characterize myself in performing comedies.

The accomplishment of my first marathon, Watarase Yusuichi Marathon in 2001, was so impressive that I was increasingly earnest in running. And followingly that led me to (the) Arakawa River Marathon next March.

My personal watershed moment was when running replaced baseball, as I was wavering between starting to go to a running gym and doing an English-conversation school. Eventually I settled on the latter and took an initial level-check test in autumn 2004.