The stadium used by Nippon-Ham will be renovated and managed and operated by the Kawasaki Baseball Council.
The keyword is “semi-public and semi-private”. The activities of the private organization “Kawasaki Baseball Council” in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, provide hints for solving the problems of youth baseball teams in the metropolitan area and the serious decline in the baseball population. By adding the wisdom of the private sector to the strengths of the government, we are preparing an environment for baseball.
Kawasaki City has convenient access to Tokyo and Yokohama. Nakahara Ward, one of the seven wards, is the most populous administrative district and is lined with condominiums. While the vacant lots are decreasing due to redevelopment, there is a baseball field on the riverbed of the Tama River. It is “Kawasaki City Tamagawa Maruko Bridge Baseball Stadium”. It is a stadium that meets amateur rules with 97 meters on both wings and 122 meters on the midfield, and there are bullpen beside both benches.
This was once the stadium used by the two Nippon-Ham fighters for practice and games. When the land lease contract expired in March 2011 and the ownership of the land was returned from Nippon-Ham to the country, Kawasaki City occupied the land from the country two months later. The Kawasaki Rigid Baseball Council was established with the approval of the city when the baseball stadium was planned to be renovated (the stadium was completed in 2015). The council has signed an agreement with Kawasaki City to manage and operate the stadium, and currently four junior high school baseball teams and one adult club are using the stadium.
The reason why the council was formed was that the members who had been involved in baseball for many years in Kawasaki City had a strong sense of crisis about the current situation in the local area. Ryuhei Nakajima, the secretary general of the council, reveals. “What are the places where you can play baseball from Kawasaki? Children who want to play baseball cross the border between Tokyo and Yokohama. If we don’t do something, we feel that Kawasaki’s baseball is declining. rice field”.
