Gregg Rosenthal

TOKYO -

Sweet Caroline is just as cheesy and addictive 6,700 miles from Boston. I’ve heard the embarrassing Red Sox anthem here in Tokyo four times in two days.

Twice it came during the traditional eighth inning break, making the Tokyo Dome feel like Fenway Park, if Fenway was filled with thousands of Japanese people staring curiously at the small clusters of Red Sox fans swaying to the music.

The other two brushes with Neil Diamond came Saturday during a delightfully surreal "Red Sox Nation" party at a bar called Hub in the Dome’s shadow. (More on that later.) 

Diamond’s song was like comfort food in a country where much appears familiar, but the details are all different.  The baseball played between the Sox and their Japanese League counterparts was just baseball.  It was the off-field activities that set the weekend apart.

Japan's version of the Red Sox?
The spotless, ruthlessly efficient Tokyo Metro subway was full of Sox fans Saturday on the way to the game ... It felt we were riding the T. Or at least the 4 train, with enough Red Sox fans in foreign territory to make us heard. 

I have no idea where those Red Sox fans went at the stadium, although I suspect they were swallowed in a sea on Hanshin Tiger yellow. Red Sox Nation travels well, but we have our limits. Tigers fans are known as the craziest and devoted in all of Japan and showed it.

My favorite in-stadium moment came before the first pitch was thrown. And it wasn’t Manny bowing, and then exchanging a wildly awkward hug with a Japanese player as they traded baseball hats, although that was close.

On the way to our seats, the Tigers faithful began chanting, rocking, playing trumpets, banging drums, waving flags, until the song spread across the stadium. This was 20 minutes before the lineups were announced.

We love our baseball in America, especially Boston.  And we love to support our team, however obnoxiously, wherever we travel.  But it would be hard to approximate the fervor and unity of the Tigers fanbase.  They were three hours from their Osaka home, in their rivals’ stadium, readying to play an exhibition game.  They couldn’t have possibly been more fired up to watch some baseball.  I could blame it on the jet lag or my overall sappiness, but I know why I got chills just then.  After a long offseason, I was grateful to have baseball back.

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If the Yomiuri Giants are the corporate, populist Yankees, the Tigers are the Red Sox.  Their fans live and die with the team and are notoriously omnipresent.  They even occasionally heckle their opponent, which is rare here.   When the Tigers win the Central League, their fans jump in the Doutonbori River, which isn’t known for being particularly clean.  Most of the country considers them obnoxious.  Sound familiar?

While the crowd was absolutely crazy when the Tigers batted, the Tokyo Dome was like a library when the Red Sox were up.  Lonely cries of “YOUUUUUUK” on Saturday sounded like some strange mating call.  Singular Sox fans would scream it out from the far reaches of the stadium, only to hear it echoed back a few seconds later. 

One memorable exception of fan support came early in the Tigers-Red Sox game, when David Ortiz stepped to the plate.  We heard a small cry from the next section over, “Big Papi!!” “Big Papi!!”