According to my Gmail history, I came across the first volume of Adachi Mitsuru's Cross Game (クロスゲーム) back in December 2018. I've had a soft spot for sports manga published in English by Viz ever since coming across Higuchi Daisuke's soccer manga Whistle! back when I was in high school (which inspired my short-lived running LiveJournal back in 2005). Whether it's Cross Game, Whistle!, or Inoue Takehiko's Slam Dunk (my current read), sports manga have always found a way to inspire me. Breaking down walls, physical and emotional, emerging from the depths of defeat through hard-won (and once seemingly impossible) teamwork, and achieving one's dream—I can't help but see sports manga as a true embodiment of what it means to be human. After establishing itself as my go-to Sunday afternoon manga for a few months, I finally finished the series a few weekends ago and it's been marinating in my mind ever since.
First, some background: Cross Game is a sports manga that primarily revolves around two families who run businesses in a Tokyo neighborhood. Kou Kitamura, whose family runs Kitamura Sporting Goods, grows up right next door to the Tsukishima Batting Center where the widowed Seiji Tsukishima raises his four daughters (from oldest to youngest): Ichiyo, Wakaba, Aoba, and Momiji.
Kou and Wakaba have been practically inseparable since the day they were born (totally understandable when you consider that they were born on the same day, June 10th, and in the same hospital!) so their families treat them like a couple even though they're just in 5th grade. The Tsukishimas also run Clover, a cafe attached to the batting center, where Seiji's daughters are represented as the leaves of a four-leaf clover (a symbol that carries relevance throughout the entire series). Naturally, Kou spends much of his youth practicing at the batting cages while hanging out with Aoba and Wakaba. Almost prophetically, one day Wakaba has a dream where she watches Kou pitch at the Spring Koshien, the Summer Olympics of Japanese high school baseball—this is where Cross Game begins.
Cross Game throws a lot of curve balls at the reader but nothing ever feels out of place. It's extremely realistic. Understated's a good way of describing it.
While reading through the manga, I couldn't help but reminisce on summer afternoons spent in Shimizugaoka's English office. In fact, I think the Summer Koshien was on the television in the background when I first met Kobayashi-sensei, the school's English department head. The sea breeze wafting in through the window, the summer heat, the crack of baseball bats coming from both the TV and the team practicing outside—I never cared much for baseball while growing up, but certain memories like these have stuck with me over the years.
While reading through the manga, I couldn't help but reminisce on summer afternoons spent in Shimizugaoka's English office. In fact, I think the Summer Koshien was on the television in the background when I first met Kobayashi-sensei, the school's English department head. The sea breeze wafting in through the window, the summer heat, the crack of baseball bats coming from both the TV and the team practicing outside—I never cared much for baseball while growing up, but certain memories like these have stuck with me over the years.
My great grandmother lived in central Wisconsin when I was a kid and we'd a take a big road trip to visit during our summer vacation. My grandfather and I sat in the side bedroom one night, windows open and cigarette smoke wafting in from the living room, watching what I'd imagine was a Cubs or White Sox game. In all honesty, I don't really know who was playing but I remember associating it with Chicago since it was playing on WGN—either way, it was mesmerizing and it encapsulated a certain feeling of summer and childhood that I still find hard to articulate. Being away from home but still feeling like you belong—there's a certain serenity to that night that I still find myself chasing. What is it about the open window? It's like a door connecting the inside world with the infinity of everything beyond.
One of the things I really appreciate about Cross Game is how it establishes its sense of place. There are so many panels devoted to storefronts, street corners, baseball stadiums, and scenery in general—these panels overlaid with bits of dialogue mark some of my favorite moments of the series. Consider the page above where Adachi juxtaposes the vastness of Tokyo's cityscape with the intimacy and closeness you feel for the main characters. It's almost as though the main characters are the only ones who exist in moments like these. For the reader, it reflects the way that we're drawn through a metropolitan population of over 13 million into a neighborhood where you witness a real sense of community—people who are bound by shared histories, dreams, and spaces (and sometimes tragedy). Train stations, batting centers, and city streets act as backdrops for life-changing and often taken-for-granted memories of adolescence much like a college campus—in my eyes, Adachi's Tokyo represents something communal but uniquely individual. On second thought, pages like the ones above might be a literal nod to the old saying, if these walls could talk...
All in all, I think moments like these emphasize that people are the real focus of Adachi's storytelling while also suggesting that hometowns, high schools, and other haunts are deeply intertwined in the development of those people—they're all extensions of the people who inhabit them. If we can find this much depth, entertainment, and empathy in this small neighborhood of Tokyo, what other stories are just waiting to be uncovered?
As I finished the final volume of Cross Game with tears streaming down my face, I realized that one of the manga's, and Adachi's, biggest strengths comes in the form of the narrative's emotional maturity. Adachi actually makes occasional appearances throughout the series—always done in a self-deprecating and tongue-in-check kind of way—but the narrative voice itself manages to come through in such a nuanced and poignant manner. He really understands the sense of possibility that comes with being young. You don't know what's going to happen in the future, but you know something will. It's complicated and life can be messy. Goals aren't always achieved and life isn't always fair, but is there anything more important than giving it a shot?
From the reader's standpoint, you know that the characters aren't always necessarily saying what they really mean, but Adachi writes in a way where you can see a little bit of everyone's perspective. As a narrator, he gives each of his characters the benefit of the doubt—which makes you empathize with each and every one (even the villains). I think this works so well because the whole story is ultimately grounded in the relationships between the main characters and their relationship with the glorious game of baseball.
At its core, I think Cross Game is a manga about believing in something. Baseball just happens to be the perfect vehicle for expressing the heart of that idea. Cross Game's biggest lesson, in my mind, is the true, undeniable power of human relationships and how they can push us to accomplish things we never thought we were capable of. Over the course of the story, you see characters driven by pride, greed, and other ultimately self-serving motivations, but Adachi argues that these engines can only take a person so far. He makes a pretty good case for believing that having a good reason for doing something can really pay off. That's pretty inspirational in my book.
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