From the Daily Sports Online column / デイリースポーツオンラインの連載コラムから
This offseason, just like so many in the past, has left baseball fans pining for the return of their favorite pastime. At the same time, two of Japan’s most hallowed playing grounds were converted into a different surface for one game that would determine a different sort of champ.
On December 17, Hanshin Koshien Stadium was not the host of a baseball game, but the college football championship – the 78th Annual Koshien Bowl. Nishinomiya’s own Kwansei Gakuin University Fighters sought to defend their title against Tokyo’s Hosei University Orange. It was not much of a contest, as the Fighters trounced the visitors by a 61-21 final. Nevertheless, this helped me shift my focus from the diamond to the gridiron for a spell.
Then on January 3, Tokyo Dome housed 20,202 rowdy fans who cheered intensely for either the Fujitsu Frontiers or the Panasonic Impulse in the 77th Rice Bowl. Once a pro-am final that featured the Koshien Bowl winners challenging the top industrial league team, the Rice Bowl is now the championship game of X-League, Japan’s professional American football league. In the three seasons since this change, the finalists – and the results – have always been the same.
The trend continued this year, as the Frontiers won a thriller, 16-10. Normally, it’s the winners who get all the publicity and accolades. It was a painful loss for the Impulse, who ride a four-game losing streak against the Frontiers. Linebacker Les Maruo has been part of two of the three Rice Bowl defeats, and has also played on two straight runner-up teams in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a linebacker and special teams member of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Wait a minute. There’s a pipeline between Japanese and Canadian professional football? Well, sort of. The CFL introduced the idea of a Global Draft system back in 2019 in an attempt to recruit football talent that stretched beyond the North American continent. With the 4th overall pick of the inaugural draft (which took place in 2021), the Bombers selected Maruo. His is a story that will have you cheering for him to pick up a championship soon and very soon.
Leslie (Les) Maruo was born in 1996 in Mie Prefecture to a Japanese mother and a Scottish father. When Les was just three, tragedy struck the family, as his father was killed in a traffic accident. A few years later, having spent six years in Japan with minimal exposure to English, Les and his family moved to the United States, where he was thrust into the American school system without being able to speak the language.
Les says he feels like he must have picked English up quickly thanks to the constant input he had received from his father in the first three years of his life. Anyhow, he adjusted well to school, and played both baseball and football. He was a fan of the Yomiuri Giants and outfielder Yoshinobu Takahashi while growing up. Starting as an infielder, he remembers practices in Japan that reduced him to tears, as he was skilled at blocking ground balls in fielding practice but struggled to pick them up cleanly. He moved to catcher, and eventually the outfield, as his body grew in size and his agility went down, especially relative to other players his age.
Though his first love was baseball, he saw his older brother struggling to make it in university. “There were no full scholarships for baseball, so I took advice from someone to try out football instead.” He got a full ride to Hutchinson Junior College, where he excelled and was scouted by University of Texas at San Antonio. Upon graduation, though, he still did not have visions of becoming a professional.
One thing led to another, though, and he found himself playing in the X-League in Japan for the Asahi Soft Drink Challengers when he was drafted by the Bombers. He joined the team in 2021, which ended in a Grey Cup championship, but was not his favorite as a pro. “To be honest with you, it was not easy at all. Covid meant a delay in the season, plus not being able to go out anywhere. We had to wear masks all the time, and I had to get used to a new city, a new league, new rules, and on top of that, the season dragged on into December. Winnipeg is COLD in December, and playing football in those conditions took some adjustments.”
Since then, he has been to the finals (and lost) two straight seasons in Winnipeg, plus two straight in Osaka with the Impulse. Maruo is now a free agent and can sign anywhere. “I’m not sure where I will play this year, but for now, I’m just going to take some time off, rest, and weigh my options.”
We wish him nothing but the best of luck, wherever he lands. Hopefully, his 2024 ends with a Grey Cup title with the Bombers, plus a Rice Bowl victory with the Impulse!