So I’m also on twitter but not active. A creeper really, so I’m responding to a post I saw here instead. I need to get the thoughts out.
not a Ochiai defense post. Dude gets on my god damn nerves. Leave my sun shine alone. He’s never done anything wrong in his life 😭😭😭
Blake (love them. Fantastic content. Will plug their ao3 here), a fellow blind Sawamura and Kataoka lover, supporter, sycophant, made the following complaint about Ochiai:
So fair, honestly me too every time I reread that chapter. I get really protective. However seeing it got me thinking about Ochiai as a character and coach.
The context for Blake’s statement is as follows:
Now, what always gets under my gears is that if Sawamura was anyone else, Ochiai would, objectively speaking, likely be very correct. In fact, even in the case of Sawamura, Ochiai was not exactly wrong either. Granted, Sawamura had definitely earned more trust by this point, but Seidō is a big baseball school. Their school’s entire system is built around student athletes as a tool for social mobility, and this fact is not ignored. Their entire fall season of Act I is dedicated to exploring the impact of this on the students. It’s also why Ochiai is willing to push Furuya too far. He understands Furuya is but a cog in the engine of sports entertainment.
Ochiai and Kataoka have fundamentally different coaching philosophies, they’re meant to foil each other. Both believe in the power of the ace and the power of the team. However, what determines the relationship between those two concepts for each coach is very much a reflection of their reasons for being there.
Kataoka feels he owes the institution of high school baseball, the school itself, and the team for the positive impact they had on his self worth and sense of responsibility and social awareness. He went straight to Seidō for that reason and it leads to many emotional coaching decisions and costing the team the spring tournament.
Ochiai is a career coach. He has been involved in the political world of high school sports. Has developed a dogmata around what he can control. He understands that ultimately this is a sport, it’s physical. He can help the body get better. And that will always bring results. The mind and heart are unreliable. There are often life changing decisions on the coaching side that are decided based on if the students preform or not. He came from outside to be the coach.
Kataoka has known Sawamura from the moment Sawamura start at Seidō, and was ultimately only invested in because of that time. This allowed Kataoka to truly begin to see himself in Sawamura. He always would have given Sawamura a chance because he trusts Rei, and she has yet to fail Kataoka.
However I don’t believe Sawamura would have been given so much leeway if Ochiai was an assistant coach from the beginning. Objectively, Sawamura should never had made first string as a first year with Furuya, who is considerably taller, right there. Short on pitchers or not, he was incredibly inconsistent, socially unaware (my sun), only reliable in an absolute pinch - which is absolutely what validated his presence at the end of summer - but that strength was really only discovered to be consistent through allowing him to fail rather spectacularly sometimes. My point is, Sawamura did not deserve first string at the start of the summer, he knew it too, and the only reason he made it was because Kataoka is biased towards Sawamura. Putting Sawamura on the first string was a massive gamble that anyone else *cough* Ochiai *cough* would have absolutely never even considered it.
Had Ochiai been there from the beginning, Sawamura would have been put on a longer training manual. Building his knowledge of sport and athletics first instead of using him for his tenaciousness to inevitably make him gain experience. By Act II, Ochiai has started to understand that for all of Furuya’s pitching might, he’s incredibly mentally vulnerable and deeply socially insecure. This directly impacts how Ochiai thinks about Sawamura, and he is considerably less aggressive when communicating his opinions. He provides concrete, linear explanations for his thought. This cannot be said for Rei all of the time and even worse Ōta who never is (hey someone has got to be advocating for Kawakumi).
However even that scenario changes if, say Furuya went it Hokkaido. Sawamura would absolutely had been and deserved to be in first string. Sawamura has physical advantages that would automatically make him the most attractive pitcher recruited. Even Ochiai would have to admit that fact in the absence of a pitcher that would be easier to develop.
My point is, Ochiai’s purpose as a character is to balance the emotional decisions Kataoka often makes. Ochiai brings a strategic mind to the coaching staff that was very much needed in the absence of Sakaki.
That aside, I will never forgive him for trying to cause weird tensions with misawa. Let Miyuki pine in peace
