Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the reproduction of high school baseball “narratives” and its media effects focusing on media representations of the change in approach for competition and practice. Previous studies about high school baseball “narratives” focused on analyzing the “narratives” as a fixed structure based on ritual theory. However, only few studies have focused on the fluctuation, including the fluctuation and change, of the “narratives” itself. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the reproduction of the “narratives”, while considering the change in approach for competition and practice in recent years. In the national high school baseball tournament in Japan called “Koshien”, tactical change from only one pitcher completing whole games to successive pitching has occurred in recent years. Following this tactical change, we analyzed messages and significations from media representations of complete games and games with successive pitching by a media text analysis of the sport documentary entitled “Fierce Battle Koshien”（entitled “Netto Koshien” in Japanese）.
The analysis showed that the media representation of complete games focused on the signification of “the spirit conveyed by the pitcher overcoming difficulties”, whereas that of games with successive pitching concentrated on the signification of “friendship conveyed by two pitchers working together”. It seems that both semantics “spirit” and “friendship” are elements of traditional high school baseball “youth narratives”. The present result therefore suggests that media representations in practice change within the possible interpretative framework of “youth narratives”. Further, the study suggests that through that media representation the framework of high school baseball “narratives” itself has been reproduced with the internal fluctuation of “how ‘youthfulness’ or ‘youth’ should be”.
© 2020 Physical Education Sociology Community, Japan Society of Physical Education, Health and Sports Sciences
