Imagine you were born into a family where baseball isn’t just a sport.
Your grandparents love baseball. Your parents love baseball. Your uncles, aunts, cousins, and all your extended family love baseball.
And not just casually.
Some of your relatives are professional baseball players. Some are coaches for professional teams. Others play for local teams, work in baseball, or are involved with baseball in one way or another.
Baseball is everywhere.
You grow up surrounded by it.
In this country, baseball is also enormously popular. Most people love it. So nobody really finds your family unusual.
From the moment you’re born, everyone simply assumes that you are going to be a baseball person too.
And for a long time, you are.
You watch baseball with your family. You learn about the players. You know the teams. You talk about games.
At some point, you may even think:
“Baseball is everything.”
But there is something slightly different about your family.
Baseball isn’t merely something they enjoy.
Baseball is tradition. Baseball is identity. Baseball is life itself.
Some members of your extended family may not actually love baseball as much as everyone else.
Maybe they aren’t particularly interested in every game.
Maybe they secretly find some games boring.
But they don’t make a big deal about it.
When the whole family gathers to watch baseball, they sit together and watch.
When there is a big baseball event, they go together.
They participate naturally, because this is simply what the family does.
Nobody needs to say:
“We have to do this because we are a baseball family.”
Nobody questions it.
It is just understood.
When someone in your extended family gets married, the first question everyone wants to know about the person they are marrying is:
“Does he or she love baseball?”
It doesn’t matter if the person is Japanese, American, Chinese, or from somewhere else entirely.
Nationality doesn’t matter.
The important thing is:
Do they love baseball?
And if they don’t, perhaps the family hopes that they will eventually learn to love it.
When you have children of your own, everyone naturally expects that you will teach them baseball.
Of course you will.
That’s what families like yours do.
Then you get an opportunity to study abroad.
You go to a country where soccer is the most popular sport.
At first, nothing changes.
You’re still the baseball person your family knows.
But while you’re there, you discover something you had never really experienced before.
Soccer.
At first, it’s just another sport.
You watch a match.
Then another.
You start understanding the rules and tactics.
You discover the atmosphere around the games.
And eventually you think:
“Wow. This is actually really fun.”
You start watching soccer regularly.
You make friends who love soccer.
You go to matches.
You discover that you really enjoy it.
And then, perhaps surprisingly, you realize something:
“I think I actually like soccer more than baseball.”
Not because baseball is bad. Not because you hate baseball.
You can still understand why people love baseball. You can appreciate a great game. You can understand the excitement.
When you were younger, because you still somewhat liked baseball, many of your friends were baseball fans too.
And, in one way or another, many of them also came from families where baseball was a big part of life.
So when you started having these questions about baseball, you thought maybe they would understand.
You didn’t necessarily expect them to agree with you.
You just thought that surely someone else must have had the same questions.
So one day, you tried to talk about it.
You talked about the things you had been wondering about, and why you weren’t sure that baseball should be treated as something so special.
You were hoping someone would say:
“Yeah, I’ve wondered about that too.”
Or even:
“I don’t completely agree, but I understand what you’re saying.”
Instead, the response you got was something more like:
“Are you saying baseball is just another sport?”
And that was when you realized that perhaps your questions weren’t as normal to them as you had imagined.
To you, you were simply asking questions about something everyone around you took for granted.
To them, the fact that you were questioning it was already the problem.
You simply discovered another sport that you personally enjoy more.
And that shouldn’t really be a problem.
After all, who knows what the best sport is?
There are countless sports in the world.
Why should anyone know, objectively, which one is the best?
Maybe there isn’t one.
Maybe different people simply like different things.
And being born into a family that loves one particular sport doesn’t mean you are required to reach exactly the same conclusion.
But in your family, even questioning baseball can feel strange.
You can say:
“I don’t hate baseball.”
But that isn’t really enough.
Because saying:
“Baseball is just another sport.”
already sounds wrong.
And saying:
“I actually think soccer is more fun.”
is going much further.
Because baseball isn’t supposed to be just another sport.
It is something much bigger than that.
At some point, you realize that even when you were growing up, you had questions about baseball.
You weren’t necessarily trying to reject baseball. You just had questions that you couldn’t easily put into words.
And when you finally tried to talk about those questions with people around you, you discovered that the questions themselves could sound almost offensive.
You just couldn’t really say them out loud.
You wondered why baseball had to be so important.
Why was it automatically assumed to be the best?
Why couldn’t you question it?
Why did being born into a baseball family mean that you were supposed to think the same way?
You didn’t necessarily dislike baseball.
You simply had questions.
And perhaps studying abroad gave you the opportunity to finally see that there was another world outside the one you had always known.
You discovered soccer.
And you discovered that you could enjoy something simply as a sport.
Nothing more.
It was fun.
That was enough.
Maybe it was just coincidence that you happened to study in that country.
Maybe it was simply being exposed to a different culture.
But it changed the way you saw things.
You eventually ended up living there.
You built a life there.
You watch soccer.
You enjoy soccer.
And little by little, baseball disappears from your everyday life.
You don’t follow it anymore.
You don’t know which players are doing well.
You don’t know which teams are winning.
You don’t know who is moving to the Major Leagues.
You don’t even know what is happening with the players you used to know.
At some point, you realize that Ichiro has already retired, and you somehow didn’t even know.
That’s how far removed you have become.
But your family doesn’t see it that way.
They know you are living abroad.
But they see your life there through their own perspective.
To them, you are still a baseball person who happens to be living in another country.
They imagine that you are following baseball from abroad.
They assume you know how Shohei Ohtani is doing.
They assume you know which players might make it to the Major Leagues this year.
They might imagine you discussing the latest games with your friends.
Maybe they are already thinking about going to the next WBC together.
And when you eventually come home, they imagine sitting together and watching baseball again, just like you always did.
They assume that you are marrying someone who loves baseball. And, of course they also assume that you teach your children baseball.
Why wouldn’t you?
You’re a baseball person.
That’s who you are.
Or at least, that’s who they think you still are.
And that’s where the problem begins.
Because imagine your family suddenly asks:
“So, what do you think about Shohei Ohtani lately?”
And you have to think:
“I honestly have no idea.”
Then they ask:
“Who do you think is going to win the Japan League this year?”
And you realize:
“I don’t even know.”
They talk about the next WBC.
They talk about players.
They talk about teams.
They talk about baseball news.
And you are sitting there thinking:
“I haven’t followed any of this for years.”
At that point, having a normal conversation becomes surprisingly difficult.
Because your family isn’t asking you about a random hobby.
They are asking about something they believe is still a fundamental part of who you are.
And you don’t know how to tell them:
“I’m not that person anymore.”
Not because you hate baseball.
Not because you think baseball is stupid.
And certainly not because you think people who love baseball are wrong.
You simply discovered that baseball is just a sport.
A sport that some people love.
A sport that some people don’t.
And you happen to enjoy another one more.
But to your family, that isn’t how it works.
To them, baseball is tradition.
It is identity.
It is something that connects generations.
It is something families do together.
It is something you are supposed to pass on to your children.
So eventually, you start avoiding them.
Not because you hate your family.
Not because you want to hurt them.
But because you know that sooner or later, someone will ask you about baseball.
And you don’t know how to explain that you have already moved on.
Your family thinks you went to abroad and became a baseball fan living abroad.
The reality is that you went there and discovered a completely different world.
You discovered soccer.
You discovered that you could enjoy a sport simply because it was fun.
And perhaps, most importantly, you discovered that you don’t have to believe that the thing you were born into is automatically the best thing in the world.
You can understand why other people love it.
You can respect it.
You can even appreciate it.
But you don’t have to think the same way simply because you were born and raised in the same circumstances.
That’s the strange part.
Sometimes, the hardest thing isn’t leaving something you hate.
It’s leaving something you don’t hate at all.
You just no longer believe that it has to be everything.