Spectators show banners reading “Carry on, Japan!” in the stands Thursday during a game at the national high school baseball invitational tournament at Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, western Japan, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

TOKYO — If Japan has a field of dreams, it’s a well-groomed patch of grass and dirt called Koshien.

Twice a year, high school baseball teams compete at the field outside Kobe in nationally televised tournaments that rivet the country. Last week, at the start of the spring tournament, a teen stood on a podium in front of home plate and made a speech watched by millions, with a dignity and conviction some Japanese find lacking in their leaders as the nation confronts its earthquake and tsunami calamity.

“We were born 16 years ago, in the year of the great Kobe earthquake,” said Shinsuke Noyama, a team captain chosen to represent players at the opening ceremony, his face grim and chest proud. “Today, in the great east Japan earthquake, many precious lives have been lost, and our souls are filled with sorrow.”

Baseball, long popular in Japan, rallied the country after World War II, providing welcome distraction while serving as a symbol of the cooperation, hard work and self-sacrifice needed to rebuild the devastated land. It could be expected to play a similar role in the latest calamity, but an ugly squabble over whether to postpone opening day has smeared the image of the professional game.

Not only that, Japan’s tradition-steeped national sport, sumo, is in disgrace over a match-fixing scandal, its spring tournament canceled in an unprecedented act of contrition.

Now, the nation is turning elsewhere for a glimmer of hope: fresh-faced adolescents who play their hearts out on the baseball field with a seriousness and integrity sometimes missing from their pro heroes.

Hours after Noyama spoke, his team crashed out in the first round. But his speech, made against a backdrop of teams lined up like squadrons on the diamond, was played over and over on national TV, even into the morning of the next day.

“It was much more beautiful than some mediocre politician’s speech, this 16-year-old youngster performing so magnificently, with that booming voice,” said Akira Kawaii, a children’s story writer walking toward Tokyo’s Shimbashi train station. “Pro ball is all about money, high school baseball is about passion.”