in the selection process. Teams take part in the summer tournament after winning their prefectural-level tournament. College BaseballUniversities throughout Japan take part in local university leagues. As in high school ball, these leagues are split into spring and summer tournaments. Unlike high school ball, however, the focus is on the local tournaments with the national college championship earning scant attention from the media. The two most prestigious, but not necessarily the best, leagues are located in Tokyo. The Tokyo Roku Daigaku (Tokyo Six Universities) league gets the most ink and has the longest tradition, but far more top-notch players are now coming out of the Toto (Tokyo Metropolitan) League. The Toto league (and most other Japanese college leagues as well) has a division system. After the league season ends, the last-place team from the upper division has to play a series against the lower division winner. The winner of the series plays in the upper division in the following tournament. The loser is relegated to the lower divisionThe 1997 Guide is now available at English Language bookstores throughout Japan.If you would like information on how to order Jim Allen's 1998 Guide to Japanese Baseball go to: http://www2.gol.com/users/jallen/Guide.html Here is the introduction to my 1995 guide... Bob Horner said on his return to the major leagues that Japanese baseball was not real baseball. It was almost as if the world had conspired to play a cruel practical joke on him. Horner had come a long way to get here (a third of the way around the world). He had spurned luke-warm major league contract offers and thus forfeited his status as a major leaguer. He had been paid a lot of money to show what he could do. After all that, he found the baseball world in Japan to be completely differentnot what he had expected at all. The rules are essentially the same, so how could it not be baseball? I think the answer lies in the fact tha...
