Summer Kōshien
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1915 |
| No. of teams | 49 |
| Country |
 Japan
|
| Most recent champion(s) |
Sakushin Gakuin |
| Most titles | Chukyodai Chukyo (7 titles) |
| TV partner(s) | NHK, ABC |
| Official website | asahi.com |
The National High School Baseball Championship (全国高等学校野球選手権大会 zenkoku kōtō gakkō yakyū senshuken taikai) of Japan, commonly known as "Summer Kōshien" (夏の甲子園 natsu no kōshien), is an annual nationwide high school baseball tournament. It is the largest scale amateur sport event in Japan, even as soccer continues to gain more attention.
The tournament, organized by the Japan High School Baseball Federation and Asahi Shimbun, takes place during the summer school vacation period, culminating in a two-week final tournament stage with 49 teams in August at Hanshin Koshien Stadium (阪神甲子園球場 hanshin kōshien kyūjō) in the Koshien district of Nishinomiya City, Hyōgo, Japan.
The 49 schools taking part in the final tourney represent regional champions of each of the prefectures of Japan (with two from Hokkaidō and Tokyo). From mid-June until July, regional tournaments are held to decide who is sent to Koshien.
The rules are the same as in the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament. It is a single elimination tournament with nine inning games. Games are declared official after seven complete innings in the case of suspension (due to weather, et cetera), except for the championship game which must be played to completion. For the regional tournaments, games are ended if one team leads by at least ten runs after five innings or seven runs after seven innings, except in the championship games. Designated hitters are not used. Four umpires are used, except for night games in which two outfield line umpires are added.
The first round pairings and byes are decided by lottery. 34 teams meet in the first round, and 15 teams with byes join at the second round (32 teams play in the second round). Therefore, it takes either five or six wins for a team to win the championship. Until 2002, the four quarter finals were played in one day, but this was changed to two a day over two days to give the players time off. If rainouts continue for more than three days, four games are played in one day. This occurred in 2003, so the first time the quarter finals were played over two days was actually 2004. To accommodate the extra day, the long tradition of starting the tournament on August 8 was changed to start a day or two early.
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Wikipedia