Acculturation in YMCA Baseball

I should start out by confessing that the very first thing that struck me about YMCA Baseball was that it kind of reminded me of the premise A League of their Own. Admittedly, I have not seen the latter film, but the idea of people trying to start a baseball league during what seems to be roughly the World War II era and the struggles and pitfalls they have to go through, seems similar. It is worth mentioning that the cultural translation the Koreans experience is twofold as given to them by the Japanese who have, in turn, taken it from the Western Christian missionaries they encountered. Perhaps more to the point, the similarities between these two films illustrate the process of acculturation and how what seems normal in one context seems completely foreign in another. This can be seen at the beginning when the Korean men are holding the baseball and studying, examining it for its possible uses, as well, as when one of the men mistakes the baseball bat for a paddle. I think this concept is cleverly articulated after the death of that man, when the priest reads out what is supposed to be a eulogy to the chanting monks, but is actually, I think, the stolen love letter of one of the team players to the female coaching assistant, yet the monks mourn to it accordingly. I think the point is that things can be used in an entirely different context from the one they were meant for convincingly if one does not know their original intent; that purposes vary from culture to culture.

I find the way cultural translation is articulated in the film kind of ironic. In the United States, baseball (especially in this era) was played by men. Indeed, the Korean team members scoff at the idea of a woman being involved too, however, because the Korean woman studied in America, she is the main facilitator of the team effort due to her dual linguistic abilities. She also asserts ‘that doesn’t mean I don’t know plenty about baseball.’ Ultimately, I enjoyed this film and feel that it kind of showed on a microcosmic and very human level the macrocosmic and societal pitfalls that occur in the path of acculturation.