A small note before you read: The sports, games, people, and countries mentioned in this story are examples chosen to make an idea easier to understand. They are not intended to judge or diminish any sport, game, individual, or culture, or the people who care about them. Everyone finds meaning in different places, and this story is not about whether one choice is better than another, but about what happens when a choice becomes an expectation.
The baseball family
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.”
Your family isn’t the only one in this country whose love of baseball runs this deep.
You might not come across families like yours every day, but you wouldn’t have to look very far to find another.
For families like yours, baseball is more than something to watch together or talk about over dinner.
It is part of how you see the world, how you connect with one another, and how you imagine the future.
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 even if they don’t love baseball yet, the family has no doubt they’ll eventually learn to love it.
Of course they will. Why wouldn’t they?
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, and somewhere along the way, you discover something else.
Chess.
At first, it’s nothing special.
It’s just a game.
You learn how to play.
You play a few games.
You lose. You win. You get better.
And eventually, you realize that you really enjoy it.
Not because you think chess is better than baseball.
Not because you hate baseball.
You simply enjoy chess.
You like thinking about it.
You like playing it.
You like the feeling of figuring something out.
It’s fun.
That’s enough.
And this doesn’t seem like it should be a problem.
After all, there are countless things people can enjoy.
Baseball, football, basketball, swimming, running, hiking, chess, computer games or whatever else.
If someone wants to play baseball to have fun, keep their body fit, become stronger, or simply spend time with friends, that’s perfectly fine.
Someone else might play football for the same reason.
Someone else might go jogging.
You might do a little of all of them from time to time.
They are things you can enjoy.
They can make you healthier.
They can challenge you.
They can make you stronger.
And chess can simply be a game you enjoy playing.
Some people might call chess a sport.
Others might insist that it is a game.
You don’t particularly care.
Call it whatever you want.
You’re enjoying chess as chess.
It doesn’t need to be anything more.
But when you were younger, you still somewhat liked baseball.
So 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 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 weren’t saying baseball was bad.
You weren’t saying people shouldn’t love it.
You weren’t even saying that you hated it.
You were simply asking:
Why does baseball have to be more than baseball?
And somehow, that was already a difficult question.
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.
Maybe something can be important to you without needing to be important to everyone else.
Maybe something can be meaningful without being sacred.
And being born into a family that loves one particular thing 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.
It isn’t supposed to be just another sport.
It is something much bigger than that.
And perhaps that is what you had been struggling with all along.
Even when you were growing up, you had questions about baseball.
You weren’t necessarily trying to reject it.
You just had questions that you couldn’t easily put into words.
Why did baseball have 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 those questions were the beginning of something.
At some point, you discover chess.
And something about it feels different.
You don’t need to believe chess is the greatest game ever invented.
You don’t need to build your identity around it.
You don’t need your family to love it.
You don’t need to teach your children that chess is the right way to live.
You don’t even need to decide whether it is a game or a sport.
You just enjoy it.
You can play chess today and go jogging tomorrow.
You can watch baseball once in a while.
You can play basketball with friends.
You can enjoy whatever you happen to enjoy.
There is no need to turn any of these things into something more than they are.
Chess is just chess.
And somehow, that simple idea makes you look at baseball differently.
Maybe the problem was never baseball itself.
Maybe the problem was the idea that baseball had to be everything.
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 still see you as a baseball person.
They know you are living abroad.
But they see your life there through their own perspective.
To them, you are still the person who grew up loving baseball.
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 will 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 don’t see it the same way anymore.
To you, baseball can be fun.
It can be exercise.
It can be competition.
It can be something to watch with friends.
It can be something you grew up knowing well.
But ultimately, it’s just baseball.
And that’s enough.
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 abroad and became a baseball fan living abroad.
The reality is that you went there and discovered something else.
You discovered chess.
You discovered that you could enjoy something simply because it was fun.
You didn’t need to decide whether it was a sport or a game.
You didn’t need to make it part of your identity.
You didn’t need to believe it was the best thing in the world.
You could simply enjoy it.
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.
Maybe there was always something beyond the baseball you were born into.