I love sports. Black, white, Asian or whatever, all of us can be fans and all of us can root for our team. Sports goes beyond language and beyond culture. Only through sport could I understand how a Ghanian, a Frenchman, and an Brazilian all feel. Victory, defeat, frustration at those pesky officials, sport is universal.

This week’s P.O.V. showed how sport can also allow you to explore culture and uniqueness. Kokoyakyu shows the intense world of high school baseball in Japan, where over 4200 teams vie for 49 spots at Koshien. Through baseball, we see the traditions of an entire culture as we follow two teams, a public high school and a vaunted private academy as they try to get to Koshien.

P.O.V. usually only airs shortened versions of documentaries and this is one that I’m looking forward to watching all of. I wish American baseball games were like this. It resembles a raucous high school football game more than anything else.

You can watch the trailer at the link to the movie above. PBS has a ton of great resources and extras at the P.O.V. site for Kokoyakyu, and, as always, Wikipedia is a great place to start.