An Amherst delegation is in Japan
By Peter Rooney
[Travel] Many college students visit faraway places. Few bring along the outgoing dean of the faculty.
Twenty-two members of the Amherst baseball team are in Japan this August on a cultural exploration. Their first stop is Doshisha University—Amherst’s sister school in Kyoto— where they’ll play three games of baseball against their Japanese counterparts.
“The idea started as somewhat of a joke,” says Samuel Morse, professor of the history of art and Asian Languages and Civilizations. “Greg’s a big baseball fan. I help run our academic exchange with Doshisha. I remember saying, ‘What better way to improve relations between the two schools than through having our baseball teams play each other?’”
The notion gained steam when Mark DeWaele ’79 worked with Morse and baseball coach Brian Hamm to organize a panel at Amherst on baseball in Japan. It featured Yale Professor William Kelly ’68, an authority on sports in Japanese society, and former Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, who earlier managed the Chiba Lotte Mariners in Japan. DeWaele—a Connecticut dentist who played baseball at Amherst—helped raise $150,000 in travel costs for the trip.
Call, Morse, DeWaele, Hamm and Trent Maxey, professor of Japanese history, are all traveling with the players, as are two assistant coaches.
“At different times the ambassadors from Japan to the United States, Canada and the UN were all Amherst graduates,” Morse says. “That shows Amherst already is quite well known in Japan. I hope that after this trip we’ll be even better known.”
On the itinerary: shrines, baseball, the foreign affairs ministry and a tsunami-ravaged city
KYOTO
Aug. 5 Baseball practice and welcome party at Doshisha
Aug. 6 Game 1, Doshisha University vs. Amherst College; tour of Fushimi Inari Shrine and Sake brewery
Aug. 7 Tour of Hikone Castle and Taga Shrine
Aug. 8 Game 2; Afternoon trip to Nara (Todai-ji temple and Nara Park)
Aug. 9 Day tour of Kyoto
Aug. 10 Game 3
MIYAGI
Aug. 12 Run clinic for middle school baseball players in Tagajo, a city heavily damaged in the 2011 tsunami
TOKYO
Aug. 13-14 Asakusa district, Roppongi Hills, Baseball Hall of Fame, Nakamise shopping arcade and Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Aug. 13 Tokyo Dome for Hanchin Tigers vs. Yomiuri Giants (Japan’s version of a Red Sox-Yankees face-off)
The Amherst-Doshisha Connection
Doshisha University is a private college in Kyoto founded by Joseph Hardy Neesima, Amherst Class of 1870, who was the first Japanese student to graduate from an American college or university.
The Amherst-Doshisha relationship dates to Doshisha’s founding in 1875. Programs include faculty and student exchanges. Doshisha President Koji Murata visited Amherst in June to sign an agreement extending the relationship between the two schools.
August’s Amherst vs. Doshisha baseball games mark the first time the two schools have faced each other in a sport.
Rob Mattson photo