He's not a pitcher, he's a ... wait, yes, in fact, he is a pitcher. Excuse me.

Yesterday, before the school-year-ending ceremony, students and staff gathered in the gym to practice the pre-planned set of cheers to be dispatched during Yamasho's opening game tomorrow at the spring national high school baseball tournament, known generally as "Koshien."

Koshien, which has a summer version as well, is a major deal, with national media attention and live television broadcast.

In what was perhaps a bit of accidental foreshadowing, I attended a day of the Koshien tournament in 2003 when I was just visiting Japan. That summer, as it happened, Yamasho was in the tournament, though at the time I was unaware of any alleged "Mie Prefecture."

So in the summer of 2003, and again in the summer of 2007 just after I arrived in Ise, I was able to experience the organized craze that is high school baseball in Japan.

What struck me most originally was the organized and civil nature of the cheering sections. For an American, cheering on your team is about making noise, shouting insults, or in high school student sections, coming up with clever cheers or personal attacks.

In Japan, by contrast, the cheering routine is rehearsed and polite. When our team comes up to bat tomorrow, our student section will rise and offer a cheer song, backed up by the school band, a group of "cheer girls" in the usual cheerleader uniforms and a unit of "cheer guys." The guys seem to be the leaders while the girls focus on dancing and pom-pom control. I should also point out that these guys and gals have rehearsed dance moves to go along with the cheers, which they do without any apparent embarrassment (I have not found a Japanese person who cannot dance, if pressed; it seems to be a highly respectable thing to be able to do).

When the other team is up to bat, despite better logic, we sit quietly, showing respect to the other team. Meanwhile, that team's cheering section, located across the big league ballpark, stands at attention.

There is no unfounded but widely accepted belief that the opposing team's pitcher may be, in fact, a belly itcher. In addition, no one, at any time, asserts that the umpire should submit to a previously unscheduled eye examination. (Or perhaps in deference to maintaining the harmony of social relations, such suspicions go unsaid.) To the American baseball fan, these facts are difficult to understand.

So here I am, the day before the big game, and I am not, despite instincts, coming up with a clever ESPN acronym to try to get on TV. Instead, I'll have to hop that the camera men take a liking to our cheer girls or our neon green trucker hats with the school name across the top. Or, in an attempt at internationalization, I could probably get on TV by introducing to Japan the U.S. sports tradition of streaking through the outfield.