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Opinion

Where'S the Fat Lady?

By SCOTT T. HARDS


最後まで観たいのに

最後まで観たいのに 日本でテレビの野球中継を観ていると 試合の途中でコマーシャルが入って 途中経過が観られなかったり いよいよ試合の決着がつくという時に 時間オーバーで中継が終わってしまうことがある。 野球が時間内に終わらない競技であることは 十分承知しているつもりだが…。

It's autumn, and that means baseball championships! Both the United States and Japan are currently caught up in "series fever," with the top teams trying to claim the crown after a long summer of baseball.

Baseball is an interesting sport. One of its many unique points is the use of innings instead of a clock to govern the length of a game. Because of this, it is theoretically possible for any team, no matter how badly it is losing, to come from behind and win a game in the ninth, or last, inning.

Related to this, there's a saying in English that's frequently used regarding baseball: "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." The phrase originally refers to opera. Many operas feature a female soloist at the end, and many women opera singers tend to be a bit on the heavy side.

So "the fat lady singing" is one way to judge whether an opera is over, sometimes a difficult task if the performers are not singing in your native tongue. In modern usage, this expression means, "You never know what is going to happen until things actu ally end."

However, as a baseball fan living in Japan, I have a major complaint. Very often, the television stations here never show the fat lady singing! In other words, they frequently end their baseball broadcasts before the game is over!

Can you imagine a broadcast of a movie where they don't show the final climax? Of course not! But through some convoluted logic, many of Japan's major television networks will chop off a broadcast of a baseball game that's still in progress.

I was watching a Giants game last month with a tie score in the ninth inning and runners in scoring position. The next pitch could literally decide the entire game. But still: "We're sorry, but we've run out of broadcast time. Watch our 11 p.m. news broadcast to learn who won the game." In the next instant, I was throwing things at the screen and yelling.

That's about the most inconsiderate thing any television station could do to its viewers and something you never see happen in the United States. TV stations no doubt would offer as their excuse the indeterminate amount of time a baseball game takes. They cannot know exactly when it's going to end.

But somehow, U.S. stations manage to cope with this same difficulty without cutting off their broadcasts. And in this day of computer-controlled broadcast equipment, it is not a major undertaking for a station to quickly reprogram its machines to start later shows at different times, in order to adjust to the flow of the game.

The same goes for commercial breaks. Very often, the game restarts before the commercial ends, and you miss part of the action. As in the United States, broadcasters here should coordinate with stadium officials and umpires to delay the restart of play until the commercials are over.

Thousands of times more people watch games on TV than at the stadium. TV stations earn billions of yen from baseball broadcasts. Is it too much to ask for them to adjust a bit more to our needs? I want to see the fat lady sing!


Shukan ST: Oct. 29, 1999

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