Team members primarily advocated for the summer trip as a means of visiting two former teammates who had recently moved to Japan.
Story by Zoe Chen & Leighton Kwok
Print Managing Editor & Staff Writer
Photo by Contributor
This past summer, the South Pasadena Pride baseball club traveled to Japan to visit former teammates and play against Japanese youth baseball teams. Most of the team’s 17 players are currently freshmen at SPHS.
South Pasadena Pride is associated with the South Pasadena Little League, but Pride teams practice and play baseball year round, whereas the Little League season is typically limited to March through May. The particular group of players on the Pride team began their baseball careers in the Little League. After winning the district All-Star tournament for 11 years and under in 2022, the boys, with heightened team chemistry, advocated for their Little League team to become a Pride team and gain the opportunity to play during the baseball offseason. In need of someone to coach their prospective club team, the team set their sights on Joe Mathews.
“They lobbied me because I was one of the All-Star coaches and have been doing baseball a long time … I’ve been a youth baseball coach since I was an eighth grader,” Mathews said. “Now, I’ve never liked club baseball. I basically said no, but [the players] worked on me, and eventually I said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’”
Mathews and the players decided that their team, typically averaging around 20 players, would not hold tryouts. They formed a tight-knit community through baseball.
Between 2023 and 2024, two of the players who had worked hardest to start this particular Pride team moved with their families to Japan. The remaining members of the team, missing their friends, pitched the idea of overseas travel to Mathews. At that point, the team had not even collectively traveled to an overnight tournament in San Diego or Las Vegas, let alone to a country 5,400 miles away.
“We never had much interest [in travel] from parents or kids. We were a team of home bodies,” Mathews said. “Then, we crossed an ocean. I think that’s because we had two players there, and people wanted to see them.”
Over a year’s worth of fundraising yielded $15,000 to cover trip expenses. Players raised money through garage sales, car washes, and bake sales. The team partnered with a Japanese restaurant in Pasadena, and players asked their grandparents and neighbors for donations.
Mathews was the primary planner of the trip, and created an itinerary by reaching out to friends and team members. Along with the help of the two Japan-residing former teammates’ families and past Japanese contacts from Mathews’ job as a journalist, Mathews was able to communicate and plan with the teams abroad.
On July 23, 17 players on the team, Mathews, and one other team coach embarked on their 10-day trip to Japan. With the first two scheduled games happening the morning after they arrived, the team packed up their gear and headed to a local field.
The SP Pride team won both games that day, and celebrated at night by exploring the city before preparing for the next games the following morning. The team made the trip enjoyable by bonding with each other, getting to see the Tokyo Yakult Swallows — Japan’s fanbase equivalent to the Chicago Cubs — at Meiji Jingu Stadium, and spending time exploring Japanese convenience stores.
On the third day in Tokyo, an elite team, the Mizusawa Pirates, walked Mathews’ team through a Japanese-style baseball workout. The Japanese little league team has been to the International World Series multiple times, and used to be home to Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.
“The teams who played are much more disciplined in a certain way,” Mathews said. “They run their own infield. They maintain the fields themselves entirely, not the coaches … [The players] bow and tip their cap to the other team’s coach. I suggested to our players that they do something similar, that they could bow to me. And, you know, they all rolled their eyes.”
Over the course of the 10 days, the Pride team played eight baseball games in both Tokyo and Okinawa. The team was able to travel throughout Japan predominantly via public transit, meeting with their former teammates and creating new friendships with the teams they met along the way.
With the students all entering high school, Mathews stated that the trip was a final hurrah to their four-year journey.
“We might come together and play the occasional game when it serves us, since almost every one of the team is going to high school,” Mathews said.
With CIF seasons jam-packed, the SP Pride team has officially come to a bittersweet end. Mathews is beyond proud of this group’s accomplishments, and as the SPHS baseball team starts to gear up for the season, there is promise in the air for the new freshman players.