#FFXIV #TheRising
Is Baseball Coming Home?
Japan returns to the Little League World Series, on a mission to reclaim its place as the gold standard of youth baseball, from which the spring begins and the summer ends. To this end, it has sent a special team of young boys, with the blessing of maidens and thunderous hooves, to do its bidding. That team...is the Takarazuka Little League All-Stars, of Takarazuka, a town in Hyogo Prefecture of the Kansai, a suburb of Kobe, the prefecture capital.
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There are two places in the city that fuel the resolve and determination of these young warriors of the outfield. The first is the Grand Theather and Bow Hall, the combined cathedral of the performing arts that houses the maidens of the Revue, a guidepost of theater and dance for women across Japan since 1913, a dream over a century in the making. Doubtless the well wishes of its performers shall invigorate their ever-unfaltering resolve.
The other is the Hanshin Racecourse, a proving ground for the best fillies, mares and colts around the world. Its signature event is the Kinen, Japan's Kentucky Derby of June, where the nation picks who will run for glory, or not at all. This year's winner is one of Sunday Silence's fold, a colt by the name of Titleholder.
Could Titleholder's convincing victory in the Kinen be a sign that the Little League World Series championship returns home to the Land of the Rising Sun? Takarazuka will doubtless have a tough act to follow in following the great Japanese teams that preceded their ascendancy, the biggest of all being Tokyo-Kitasuna, a team they could have faced in the final-if it weren't for the intervention of the less fancied Hirishima Aki Little League of Hiroshima, the home of the Carp.
But the regional tournament for Japan echoes the spring and summer Koshien high school baseball tournaments, all of which, unsurprisingly, take place at the namesake stadium in Osaka, located not too far from Takarazuka. A competitive rigor-filled gauntlet full of highs and lows, heartache and triumph. And in the end, the team of the Revue, the Kinen, and Osamu Tezuka were blessed by the Beat of the Rising Sun to ascend to Williamsport. All the pieces may be in place for an epic drama that not even the Revue itself could ever dream of.
Baseball may indeed be coming home.
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