Following Japanese Baseball, Part 2: Pro Yakyu Communities
This is part 2 in a multi-part series. Part one on English-language news sources and blogs on Japanese baseball can be found here.
Back in the nascent years of Pro Yakyu otaku-ism, when I was interested in Japanese baseball but lacked the requisite language skills, I had one source of information: JapaneseBaseball.com. I discovered it one day in 1997 or ’98, when I decided to type japanesebaseball.com into Netscape’s location bar and see if there was anything there. To my great benefit, there was, and over the years I learned a lot from reading through the forum postings.
Communities are important; no one has a monopoly on information and ideas. This site is kind of like my own monologue but it’s benefited from the discussion contributions of commenters like passerby, EJH, and Westbaystars, to name a few; and the other writers who have written articles for the site. At it’s peak, JapaneseBaseball.com was a shining example of an online community, with many engaged posters, thoughtfully moderated by Westbaystars.
JapaneseBaseball.com’s forums haven’t gone away, but the aren’t quite as active as they once were. Over the past year or so, a couple of alternatives have emerged:
- The Pro Yakyu Google+ group, curated by Michael Westbay. This group is open to the public, and I am member. This is a great way to stay on top of NPB news and podcasts.
- An NPB Reddit community popped up last JulyÂ
probably in the last month or two(I discovered it via referral traffic). In addition to news postings, there are some community-oriented topics like this one.
It takes real work to maintain an online community, so my appreciation goes out to Westbay-san and the mystery man who moderates NPB Reddit. If you’re looking for more places to keep up with Japanese baseball, I heartily recommend all of the above options.
07/03/2014 at 12:31 am Permalink
There’s quite a bit of active discussion in the comments on Yakyu Baka as well.
09/03/2014 at 7:04 am Permalink
Thank you, as always, for the kind words about JapaneseBaseball.com. Those early days were really special, and the community that came out of there was more than I could have ever imagined.
I think the date you found JapaneseBaseball.com was closer to 2000, though. I had taken a couple of years off after my son was born in 1998, and I moved to the current forum software (the old, Open Source version of Jive) in 2001 after using Slash Code for at least a year.
09/03/2014 at 10:11 am Permalink
It was definitely around 2000 that I became a regular visitor, but I definitely remember going to the old Slashdot-hosted forum earlier on. Information on Japanese baseball and video games was the first thing I looked for when my family got web access in the mid-90’s.
09/03/2014 at 10:17 am Permalink
Yep, the comments on yakyubaka are like it used to be here. It’s great that there are multiple options for the larger community these days.