One of the many popular Japanese comics that celebrate the Koshien Tournament

Boston.com reports that a new documentary about Baseball in Japan will be shown on PBS(USA’s public television) this week:

Kenneth Eng’s fascination with Japanese baseball began long before last March. But when Japan defeated Cuba to win the World Baseball Classic in the spring, Eng really wasn’t surprised. Over the past 3 1/2 years of researching the sport for the documentary he and Alex Shear produced, Eng had come to learn about the seriousness of baseball in Japan, especially in high school.
`Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball,’ is the first English language film to explore the phenomenon and baseball has become a national rite of passage for the country’s youth. Teams from 4,000 high schools compete for one of 49 spots in the national championship in Koshien Stadium in Osaka — a stadium that was built in 1924 and seats 60,000 fans.

The hour-long film, part of PBS’s “P.O.V.” series, will air Monday on WGBX at 10 p.m.

It sounds like it will be quite an interesting documentary. Let’s hope that it becomes available for those of us outside of America sometime soon.