Kokoyakyu - High School Baseball

This is a solid documentary about Japan’s Koshien baseball tournament that was just made available for free online viewing at Hulu.com.

A description from when it originally aired on PBS in 2006:

Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball opens up the world of Koshien by following the fortunes of two teams as they compete in regional games and then head for the 2003 tournament (the 86th annual games). Tennoji High School is a public school whose team is coached by a dedicated and self-effacing teacher, Masa-sensei, who becomes deeply involved in the lives and welfare of his students and their families. Tennoji, with its limited public-school resources and location in the most competitive region, always faces an uphill climb to Koshien. Chiben High School, by contrast, is an elite private school whose team is coached by the legendary Takashima, who has taken the team to Koshien more than 20 times and has won the national championship three times. So successful has Chiben been that some of the nation’s best high school baseball players go to great lengths to attend the school — and increase their chances of competing at Koshien.

Both coaches are obsessed with baseball and the values it teaches — and demands — of the students. Yet their different temperaments seem to mirror the contrast between the teams. The humbler Masa-sensei spares no feeling or attention to personal detail as he guides his students through a sports competition and trial-by-fire that will mark them for the rest of their lives. The depth of his emotional investment in his players becomes clearest at the tournament’s end. The great Takashima brings a more Olympian sensibility to the proceedings; as soon as the tournament ends, he’s already thinking of next year and the prospects for a Chiben championship. Kokoyakyu also brings us into the lives of the players, from the stars and captains to the second-stringers whose struggles to make a contribution become, perhaps, the purest expression of Japanese values in baseball.

Give it a look.