It was treated as a major scandal and reported in all of Japan’s major newspapers, on the TV, and in the weekly magazines.

A lanky teenaged Nippon Ham Fighters rookie named Yu Darvish, who is half-Japanese and half-Iranian was caught red-handed. He even confessed to the wrongdoing. Darvish was sent home from spring training camp and confined to the team dormitory (no report on whether it was without dinner). TV reports showed lengthy clips of Nippon Ham Fighters coaches and other officials bowing deeply to the camera as they offered profuse apologies for allowing one of their players to betray the trust of their fans.

What heinous crime was Darvish guilty of?

Using steroids?

Doing drugs?

Groping the wrong woman?

Getting his girlfriend pregnant?

Doing a Charles Barkley on an unruly fan?

Nope. None of the above. Young Darvish was guilty of the crime of. . . Smoking.

Not only that, but he was smoking while playing pachinko! Not once, but several times!!!

It’s not as if Japanese pro-ballers are all Spartan samurai who eschew the demon weed in its vaporous form. In fact, there is so much smoking among Japanese professional baseball players that many of the dugouts have “No Smoking” signs hanging on the walls.

Who knows why such a big deal is being made over a few cigarettes being smoked by a teenage boy?

General Douglas MacArthur supposedly once said that post-war Japan was like a nation of 12-year-olds. Though Japan has come a long way since then, it sometimes seems as if Japanese pro-yakyuu (professional baseball) is still stuck in the prepubescent days of old.