Hi-Chew and Baseball

The surprising connection between the Japanese sweet treat and the ballpark

This past August, an angry Willson Contreras upended a bucket of candy onto the field following a strike call. For the non-candy connoisseur, the bucket probably looked like your standard ballpark gum, along the classic lines of Hubba Bubba, Dubble Bubble, or Big League Chew. Those who are more familiar with sweet treats would recognize that upturned bucket to filled with the Japanese candy Hi-Chew.

For those who haven’t had the delight of trying Hi-Chew, the candy is a like a less-sweet, more waxy, but still extremely satisfying Starburst. The treat was invented by Taichiro Morinaga, who moved to the United States in his early 20s and fell in love with the candy business. Morinaga wanted to create a candy for Japanese consumers that you could chew like gum but avoid spitting out, because taking gum out of your mouth would be considered rude. He invented a candy called Chewlets in 1931 that was later rebranded and reintroduced to the market in 1975 as Hi-Chew. But how did this Japanese snack find its way into a Major League Baseball dugout like the Cardinals’?

According to the official Hi-Chew website, Hi-Chew first found its way into an MLB stadium in 2012 through Japanese player Junichi Tazawa, who, as a rookie, was in charge of buying gum for the Red Sox bullpen. When he brought his gum in, he also brought over some of the candy for the other pitchers. The players got addicted, and it wasn’t long before Hi-Chew became a sponsor of the team, and later the sponsor of other MLB teams as well.

Hi-Chew can now be found in many dugouts and bullpens, and the company has had formal partnerships with the Red Sox, Twins, Dodgers, Padres, Angels, Cubs, Cardinals, Tigers, Orioles, and Rays, with some stadiums even handing out the candy to fans.

While Hi-Chew isn’t the oldest baseball tradition in the book, it’s been around MLB for more than a decade now. The yellow bucket’s presence in the dugout, bullpen, and even sometimes spilled on the field serves as a reminder of not only the history of influence Japan and Japanese players have had on MLB, but also the relationship between the US and Japan, even in candy making.