Kiyohara (Boke)

I was sitting home this weekend, and stumbled on a Fuji TV presentation of Pro Yakyu highlights. Every so often a big celebration of Pro Yakyu is televised on Fuji, where a panel of celebrities, idols, and players gather to joke, gab, and review the top highlights of the current season as well as season's past.

Generally the show is rather unremarkable with only a few dazzling highlights, and a whole lot of self-gratifying praise and back slapping. One highlight in particular grabbed me and has had me thinking for several days.

In short, the clip featured Kyojin's Kiyohara batting against a rather frail looking pitcher. Kiyohara has something of a reputation as a yakuza-type. Scowling, volatile, unpredictable. The unfortunate pitcher threw a wild change-up that gently bounced off Kiyohara's left shoulder. He didn't flinch and I would hesitate to say that any of us would have flinched at the Little League caliber offering either. Kiyohara glared back at the poor guy and immediately the benches cleared in anticipation of a violent encounter. Nothing happened at that point, but in his next at bat Kiyohara lined a single into right field and began to head to first shouting "boke!" repeatedly at the pitcher. He must have shouted it about 15 times on his way to first and continued once he was on the bag.

For those of you that don't know, "boke" is a colloquialism that translates roughly to "stupid," a cousin to "baka" if you will.

My thinking immediatley turned to the MLB equivalent. What would have happened if someone like Rafael Palmeiro had done the same thing? Or Albert Belle in his day. I'm not so sure that either of those guys would have gotten away with it without being flipped in the next at bat.

If I was a manager, and I'm not one for macho posturing in baseball, I wouldn't blame my pitcher for making Kiyohara eat dirt. You can't let a guy disrespect you like that and expect to get him out. He needs to be off-balance and question whether or not the ball is going in his ear if he's going to play that game.

The hosts of the program tried their best to cover for Kiyohara by claiming that he was calling himself "boke." Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Anyway, it has me thinking.