Marinerds, Dragonbutts, and Hokkaidorks

Until Saturday, Waseda University's baseball team was undefeated for the Spring 2008 season. Seriously. In their opening weekend they walloped Todai for a combined 39-0 in two games. Things calmed down after that -- their second weekend they beat Hosei in two one-run games, 3-2 and 1-0, and after that they went back to pounding Rikkio by a combiend 15-1 in two games.

Meiji University, however, also has had a strong season; before facing Waseda, they were 5-1 with two ties. Ace pitcher Iwata has put up some pretty strong games to take over where Kume and Yoshikawa left off. These are basically the top two teams in the Tokyo Big 6 league this season, so I figured it'd be fun to see them face off.

To make things even MORE interesting, Meiji actually handed Waseda their first loss of the season on Saturday, with a dramatic come-from-behind win in the 9th inning, scoring three runs off of Waseda's Kenta Matsushita in the bottom of the 9th to turn a 3-1 loss into a 4-3 win.

I went to the Sunday afternoon game on May 18th. I was too lazy to wake up in time for the 11am game, so I arrived at the stadium around 1:30pm. The Waseda-Meiji game was the second game of the day; the start time for the second game is basically "1:30pm or 20 minutes after the first game ends". So I walk into Jingu and go look for a place to buy food and literally end up walking past the entire Meiji baseball team, who are making their way to the dugouts. A few players look at me curiously; I'm fairly sure American women are rare at these games.

I arrived at the end of the Keio-Hosei game, which Keio won 4-0. The Keio pitcher for the 9th inning was a tall sidearm/submariner named Yuuki Murayama, a third-year student from Akita, who quickly dispatched of the Hosei team to end the game. Everyone bowed to their opponents and to the umpires, and cleared the field so the Waseda and Meiji players could start practice. Even the most famous college player in the country, sophomore ace pitcher Yuki "Handkerchief Prince" Saito, was out there for practice. What was he doing, you ask? He was holding a box of baseballs and handing them to manager Tatsuya Yoshinami, who was hitting grounders to third and short. I guess he's a star pitcher and a star ball boy!

They announced the starting batteries -- pitcher Yuki Egarashi and catcher Taichi Nakano for Meiji, and pitcher Kota Suda and catcher Takeshi Hosoyamada for Waseda. Learn those names, because I'd be shocked if neither of Suda and Hosoyamada get drafted this year. The other Waseda guys to remember are second baseman Hiroki Uemoto and outfielder Keijiro Matsumoto.

The game got underway with the Meiji players making a quick 1-2-3 inning. I wrote down balls and strikes, and of 12 pitches in that inning, 4 were balls, 6 were called strikes, one was a ground out, and one was a pop out. I get the distinct feeling Waseda batters are either really patient, or expect to get a lot of balls, because they don't swing at ANYTHING!

Uemoto grounded out to start off Waseda's attack, but then the aforementioned Hosoyamada hit a long fly ball out to left that bounced off the back wall for a double. The aforementioned Matsumoto took 8 pitches -- 5 fouls -- before ultimately grounding out to second, moving Hosoyamada to third. Sophomore Hironobu Hara singled to left field, scoring Hosoyamada, and setting off the Waseda ouendan even louder than before. 1-0. Udaka lined out after that to end the inning.

I have to stop a moment to say that I still think the Waseda oendan are the most impressive out of the Tokyo Big 6 league. All of the schools have pretty good groups, but the Waseda ones seem to be the most complex and have the liveliest cheering, at least from the times I've been at Jingu. (I will note that the University of Tokyo has the best quality musicians, though, which is probably to compliment having the absolute worst baseball players in the college circuit.) Plus, the fact is, the last time I saw Waseda was at Soukeisen in October, and I *still* remembered a large number of their cheer songs from that time, including "Konpeki no Sora" (The Deep Blue Sky), which will now be going through my head for weeks (it's the one that goes 早稲田, 早稲田, 覇者 覇者 早稲田 -- I'm pretty sure it and the Tyrone Woods "T!" are the most annoying possible ouenka I can sing around my friend Pau.)

(Totally unrelated, but speaking of Pau and of college ball, he showed me this fantastic Hiroshima-yaki place the other day, run by a Carp fanatic who loves college ball. It was full of photos and signatures from college teams around here. We sat under a picture of the Komazawa team from a few years back, and signature boards from Ryota Arai and Yuuki Kume, and we watched the Carp beat the Giants on TV. Before leaving, he told me to go look at some player photos up on the opposite wall, and they had one of this really familiar-looking Meiji pitcher on the mound. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Kenshin! Awesome!)

Meiji threatened Suda a little bit in the top of the 2nd; after Daisuke Sasaki struck out, Takayuki Chida singled on a line drive to left. Sophomore shortstop Fumiya Araki (my brain goes, "Why is an Araki batting left-handed, wearing #6, and playing shortstop? Shouldn't he be an Ibata at least?") almost grounded into a double play to short at that point, but beat out the throw at first base. Araki stole second in the midst of catcher Nakano's at-bat, and Nakano walked on four straight pitchers. Pitcher Egarashi, batting 8th in the order, struck out to end the inning and the threat.

The game stayed at 1-0 for a long, long time. Meiji didn't threaten again until the top of the 6th, when outfielder Tatsuya Ikeda almost hit a two-out home run; the ball bounced on the top of the centerfield wall and fell back onto the field, and he ended up with a triple instead. Sasaki walked after a full count, and at that point they took out Suda and replaced him with sophomore fireballer Tatsuya Oishi. (Maybe it should be "Ooishi" or "Ouishi" because it's actually the long O, 大石, but... I think those look weird, and Ohishi is right out due to the possibility of being pronounced oh-hi-shi.) I remembered him from Soukeisen because at that time the little kid behind us kept saying things like "Oishi wa oishikunai!" But what I didn't remember was how FAST this kid could throw. His first pitch to Chida was a called strike at 148km/h -- about 92 mph -- and the second pitch was grounded weakly to short for the third out, keeping the game at 1-0.

To his credit, Egarashi held the Waseda batters down well after that first inning; aside from walking Takanori Izumi in the 5th, he didn't allow another base runner for the entirety of the 6 innings he pitched. Although the bottom of the 6th inning was a bit crazy -- Uemoto led off by grounding to third, where third baseman Chida had to jump up to snag the ball (really a pretty great grab), and then landed, planted, and made a throw to first which was also a little high and first baseman Sasaki also had to jump to get it, and so Uemoto was safe and the play was called an error. Hosoyamada attempted to sac bunt Uemoto over, but instead his bunt attempt went up in the air and was caught by catcher Nakano. Matsumoto hit a long fly ball to centerfield for an out. With two outs, Hara was at the plate. After another toss to first to try to hold Uemoto, Hara swung at the first pitch, and then the second pitch was a pitchout, and Nakano NAILED Uemoto at second on the throw.

In the top of the 7th, Meiji shortstop Araki (heh) led off with a double to left -- another high fly ball that landed in the gap between the leftfielder and centerfielder. Nakano promptly bunted him over to third. So, one out and a runner at third, and what does Oishi do? Well, let's put it this way -- I saw him throw maybe one or two pitches under 144km/h, including a pretty nasty change-up at 125km/h that had pinch-hitter Komachi looking pretty silly. The rest were all in the upper 140's, and he topped out at 152 (95mph), and just overpowered Komachi and another pinch-hitter, Fusabayashi, striking them both out swinging. He got a little too much movement on his pitches, maybe, throwing 6 balls and 8 strikes that inning, but wow, what power. And he's just a sophomore!

Anyway, the NEXT exciting thing to happen was... they had pinch-hit for Egarashi in the 7th, so Meiji had to bring in a new pitcher for the bottom of the 7th, and guess who it was? Yusuke freaking Nomura! WOW!

(Backstory -- Summer Koshien 2007 was won by Saga Kita HS, but Koryo HS -- a REALLY strong baseball school from Hiroshima -- pretty much stomped their way to the finals, mostly on the arm of Yusuke Nomura, a really strong kid with a lot of poise and a damn good slider. And if he hadn't pretty much just tired out after the normal 3 or 4 days straight of pitching 200 pitches a day in the dead heat of summer for the tournament, I'm fairly sure Koryo would have won overall -- but then in the 8th inning of that final game between Koryo and Saga Kita, he broke down and a 4-0 lead turned into a 5-4 loss on a homerun by Soejima, and the rest is history. Anyway, I had wondered what happened to him -- neither of the Saga ace pitchers, nor Nomura, or any of the heroes of that final Koshien game, got drafted in the fall 2007 draft. And so now I know -- he's pitching for Meiji! Awesome!)

ANYWAY, so Nomura comes out and suddenly the Waseda players actually start swinging at pitches, which is pretty impressive. Hara strikes out swinging on a 2-2 pitch. Udaka walks, but Kojima hits a weak pop-up to second, and then Matsunaga also strikes out swinging on a 2-2 pitch. Good stuff. But then Nomura ran into some problems in the bottom of the 8th. Izumi led off by walking, and then Saito Yuki, who was in the game by then (I'll come back to that in a second) bunted Izumi over. Uemoto singled to left, moving Izumi to third. Uemoto stole second during Hosoyamada's at-bat, and Hosoyamada pulled off a squeeze bunt, scoring Izumi and moving Uemoto to third. 2-0. Matsumoto hit a solid single to right, scoring Uemoto. 3-0. Nomura came out of the game and Kenta Kondoh came in.

Matsumoto stole second on the first pitch to a pinch-hitting Shiraishi, and made it all the way to third on an errant throw by Nakano. Shiraishi ultimately walked. But then to make up for it, pitcher Kondoh picked Shiraishi off first to end the inning.

Now, I might have mentioned that Saito Yuki was in the game -- which was kind of a surprise to me. I figured I wasn't going to get to see him pitch at all this year, given that he usually starts the games on Saturday; in theory Waseda can win without him on Sunday, and then they don't play Monday. (But if they did, he'd be the starter.) But, well, that tasty fireballer Oishi ran into some trouble in the top of the 8th, as a messy fielding decision between the third baseman and shortstop allowed Komichi a single, and he was bunted over to second. So with one out, Waseda switched pitchers again... and just like last time, the people around me all started saying "Maybe it'll be Saito! Maybe it'll be Saito!" Except this time, it actually WAS Saito. Oooooooooooh.

Saito comes out throwing that 148 km/h slider of his, and gets out of the inning without any runs scoring (pop out, walk, groundout to first).

The top of the 9th happens, and Araki leads off with a single to right. And then Nakano follows it up with another single to right! And everyone's wondering what's happened to his Highness, and why he's suddenly become vulnerable. I guess he was wondering the same thing, as he proceeded to strike out a pinch-hitting Ryota Yasuda after that. Okay, fine, one out, runners at first and second. Yuuya Fukudani pinch-hits, and on the second pitch to him, Nakano is a LITTLE too far off first and Hosoyamada fires the ball to first base and picks him off! Yikes! Araki steals third on the next pitch, but it's just too late. Fukudani swings at the fourth pitch -- and I thought he fouled it, and maybe he did, but either way, he starts running, and Hosoyamada gets the ball and throws it to first, and it's a strikeout and the game is over, Waseda winning 3-0.

The players all run to the line between the mound and home plate and line up. The two teams and the umpires bow to each other once again, and the players leave the field. The cheering groups sing their school songs in turn and also salute each other. This is why I think watching college ball is really a fantastic way to observe the rituals of Japanese baseball, while still getting to see a pretty high-quality game in a high-quality stadium.

It's also pretty neat to wonder which of these Meiji guys is the next Kenshin, or the next Takashi Ogasawara, or the next Kume, or Kizuka, or Ichiba... or which Waseda guy is the next Aoki, or Toritani, or Hiroyasu Tanaka, or Tsuyoshi Wada... just very exciting stuff.

(Postscript: I may have mentioned being dumbfounded at having Handkerchief Prince pitching two days in a row, and sure enough, he was the starter in Monday's tiebreaker game, and Waseda lost to Meiji 2-0, with a better-rested Iwata pitching 7 shutout innings and Egarashi coming back to nail down the game and the series. I think it was pretty smart of Meiji to save Iwata for Monday -- and I'm still glad I got to see Yusuke Nomura, so it's really a big win all around.)

Labels: College Ball, Meiji, Waseda

Alright, so the update on Morino is that he is expected to be out until July. The injury seems to be called a left calf muscle strain, and he was taken back to a hospital in Nagoya to recover, and they're expecting him to be out of action for a while to heal, and then he'll have to do some rehab and then work out on the farm team for a bit before returning to action on the top team.

It's sad also because this injury comes on the heels of an article saying how he was spending his off-day running (on May 12) and working out because he was worried something is wrong, he was having a slight slump lately.

(Naturally, another question is whether he'll still get to play in the Olympics... but I don't know if anyone even wants to think that far ahead now.)

Oddly, I'm not actually sure I'll see the Dragons while Morino is out. Due to interleague and Fighters games taking first priority and a concert and only being able to attend games on Sunday/Monday, the next time I'd be able to see them without having to make an extra effort (like taking a day off, or going to Nagoya) won't be until 6/29, by which point maybe he'll be almost back up, with any luck.

Anyway, I do some crazy things when I feel like I need to bring good luck to a baseball player but there's nothing I can do in particular. (See last fall when I made a Fighters omamori.) Morino happens to be the poster boy for May on the Dragons calendar I have on my wall at work, and I was thinking about the story of folding 1000 origami cranes to bring wishes and health to someone...

So I went out and got some origami paper and spent most of my free time between teaching classes today folding origami cranes and putting them around the calendar.


I suppose I am approximately 986 cranes short, though.

I only had time to fold 14 cranes, though. But I figure that... well... he got injured on May 14th, and it's the May calendar page.

Wait a minute. Kenshin Kawakami was the April calendar poster boy and then he got BLASTED in April, that day that the Giants hit back-to-back-to-back home runs off him, and was out of the rotation for like a month. And Morino is May and now he got injured. OH MY GOD THE CALENDAR IS CURSED

Ibata is June... 気を付けて井端選手！

Labels: Dragons, Friday Foto, Masahiko Morino

Tonight at Jingu stadium, Masa Yamamoto got his 195th career win as the Dragons beat the Swallows 4-1, making him 2-0 on the year so far. It seems we're in for another year of Good Masa, which is fantastic news.

But due to other things, I couldn't care less about that right now.

In the 3rd inning of the game, possibly due to wet ground, Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino, who is pretty much my favorite baseball player in Japan, fell down while fielding a hit to centerfield, and injured his left leg, and WAS CARRIED OFF THE FIELD ON A STRETCHER.

You have to understand, I got home pretty late and barely caught the sports news at all. I knew he'd been taken out of the game, but I didn't know why, so suddenly turning on the TV and seeing Morino on a stretcher had me in a mild state of shock for a minute or two.

(Edit: Found a game highlights clip on Youtube, being as it was Masa's 195th career win. Morino's injury is about 1:30 in. Good news is he didn't actually collide with anything... bad news is, it's actually kind of unclear how he injured himself exactly! Argh!)

There's a picture of him on the stretcher down towards the bottom of this article on Sanspo.

If I understand Ochiai's comment properly -- 「１４４試合同じ先発でいきたかったが、悩むことはない。（代わりの）メンバーはいる」, which I think means "Well, I wanted to have the same starting lineup for 144 games, but don't worry -- we have substitute players..." I think that isn't quite true. Yeah, I'm hugely biased, but I don't think Morino is that easily replaceable. First off, he IS actually the best hitter on the team, at least for the season so far, in terms of OPS and most other standards (and is one of the best hitters in the Central League period, actually) and was even called Chunichi's "key man" in the Interleague official program put out by Shube. And all this while he's STILL being shuffled between centerfield and third base all the time -- AND he hasn't made a single error at either position yet.

Anyway, while searching to see if someone posted tonight's sports news with a clip of the injury, instead, I found some other Morino-related clips that cheered me up a little, so I'm going to share those instead:

1995 Spring Koshien clips of Morino, then in his second year at Tokaidai Sagami high school. AWWWW! It's kind of funny that these clips are of Sagami beating the crap out of Gifu (being as Gifu is so close to Nagoya, and I even went there two weeks ago to watch the Dragons).

Scenes of Morino & Doala, a short music video which is ridiculously adorable if you are a huge fan of Morino and of Doala, which, naturally, I am.

Doala! which was tagged as Morino and Doala, but doesn't really involve Morino, but it's so cute I want to share it. Basically a Doala video set to "Sunny Day Sunday" by Sentimental Bus, one of my favorite not-exactly-baseball-related-but-close-enough songs ever.

Sigh. I hope I'm overreacting. It's just that last time I saw an outfielder getting carried off the field on a stretcher it was Hitoshi Tamura, and he's gonna be out for like two months.

勝ったけど森野選手しか考えられない。
早く戻ってきて下さい！
ドアラも待ってることでしょう。

Labels: Dragons, Masahiko Morino

Today is the birthday of one Bobby V,
Who starred in a film that you all ought to see.
It airs at 9 Eastern, on ESPN,
And it has a good dose of some pure Bobby Zen.

The filmmakers took on a fresh attitude;
tried biking and subways and every town's food;
To learn about yakyuu -- that was the main plan --
But also to bring home a slice of Japan.

The camera followed through cold days and warm;
adventures on Fuji in darkness and storm;
They saw highschool baseball, and sumo as well,
and tried karaoke and gave Bobby hell.

Of baseball, the passion's what really appealed --
The true dedication both on- and off-field.
They filmed from the dugout, the rooftop, the stands,
And captured the spirit of players and fans.

To Bobby: we thank you for being so vocal
on improving the game AND on keeping it local.
So for all that you've done and for all that you do --
Have another great year! Happy birthday to you!!



(Photo taken by Larry Rocca, and presented without explanation, because it's funnier this way, I think.)

Labels: Japanese Baseball, Lotte, Movie reviews, Poetry

The Dragons' rotation -- and Kenichi Nakata in particular -- continued to break down on Sunday night at the Tokyo Dome, as Alex Ramirez and Michihiro Ogasawara hit home runs off of him and weren't even the game heroes in a 9-3 smackdown.

This was also yet another episode in the continuing saga of the dysfunctional Chunichi oendan organization. As far as I could tell, the cheering group at the Tokyo Dome was being led by a few random guys with small Chunichi flags and megaphones who were sitting in the middle of the cheering seats area. There were no trumpets, no drums, but amazingly enough, that didn't stop everyone from doing the chance music that sort of needs music and fanfares; I think they just banged cheer sticks even louder to compensate. Due to specifically being in the Tokyo Dome, the cheers also added a "Yomiuri taose o!" ("Defeat the Giants!") after every batter call, which is always a special occasion as well. Also, I saw some pretty great jerseys in the crowd; one guy had "Nice Leed #27", a reference to Tanishige's cheer song, and another person had "Ara Iba 2x6". If it was my jersey it'd say "Arakibata", but I'm weird. Heck, I'm still debating getting "Dragonbutt #31"...

Sunday was not only Kenichi Nakata's turn in Chunichi's rotation on Sunday, but it was also his 26th birthday. As such, we all sung Happy Birthday to him before the game, and before his at-bats. I took a video of one such occasion:


Tsuyoki no shoubu de, shouri wo tsukame
Ikkyu nyuukon, soreyuke Nakata!
Kattobase Nakata, YOMIURI TAOSE O!

Sadly, he struck out. Which is really pretty much what he did for the evening. I'm a little worried about Nakata -- I saw him pitch in Gifu on 4/29 and he was fantastic, but then on May 5th he was devoured by the Hanshin Tigers, who got 7 runs off him in the first inning alone. How he would bounce back tonight was a big question mark to everyone, but I think we hoped he'd have a good birthday wish come true and beat the Giants. With Kazuki Yoshimi having a bad start on Saturday, we were definitely hoping for some sort of extra luck.

But from the very first batter he faced, it wasn't meant to be.

Yoshiyuki Kamei (Rock Star #1, drums, age 25) led off the bottom of the first with a single, and then when Nakata tried to pick him off first, he overthrew and the result was Kamei on third when Hayato Sakamoto (Rock Star #2, guitar, age 19) hit a long fly ball to centerfield for a sacrifice. 1-0.

The Dragons had shifted their lineup back to Byung-Gyu Lee in the 3-spot and Masahiko Morino batting 7th for this game -- Morino had moved up after being overall awesome and Lee had cooled off from a hot start, but the switch seemed to have made both of them worse -- so it was Morino, not Lee, leading off the top of the 3rd inning. Which presented a perfect opportunity for me (and the other few crazy Morino fans in the section) to get out my towel and prepare to yell a lot. And it worked! Morino singled to center! Nice Leed Tanishige walked, and then Birthday Boy Nakata, amidst the strains of Happy Birthday, executed a sac bunt which moved the runners to second and third. Giants starter Seth Greisinger, who was overall solid for the evening, threw a pitch that even Abe couldn't stop, and so Morino scored and Tanishige made it to third. We all jumped up to celebrate the 1-1 tie, and Araki walked a pitch or two later.

I thought we couldn't do the Nerai Uchi chance music without trumpets, but I was wrong. And, it seems to have worked -- Araki stole second, and then Ibata hit a single which brought home the guys on base. 3-1. Lee, batting in the 3-spot, grounded to Sakamoto at short, who stepped on second base and threw to first for a double play to end the inning.

(So now we're back to Morino kicking butt out of the 7-spot and Lee sucking in the 3-spot? That's not good...)

Nakata had struck out Tomoya Inzen (Rock Star #3, lead vocals, age 23) to end the second inning, and so he started off the bottom of the 3rd by striking out Ryota Wakiya (Rock Star #4, bass, age 26), and striking out pitcher Greisinger, and getting a foul fly out of Kamei. Great!

With two outs in the bottom of the 4th, Alex Ramirez hit a 110-meter home run to right field, rounded the bases, and went into his dance routine with the Giabbit at the plate. 3-2. Shinnosuke Abe followed that up with a hit that bounded off Tyrone to end up in the right field corner for a double, but Luis Gonzalez struck out to end the inning.

Rock Star #3, Inzen, led off the bottom of the 5th with a single to right, and sat there on first as Rock Star #4 hit a pop foul, and Greisinger struck out bunting a third strike foul. So with Rock Star #1 Kamei at the plate, Inzen stole second. A pickoff throw to second actually looked pretty good, but he got back to the base safely. On the next pitch, Kamei hit the ball to right field for a double, scoring Inzen. Tie game -- again. 3-3. Rock Star #2 struck out to end the inning.

Ogasawara's clean-shaven doppleganger led off the bottom of the 6th inning by BASHING Nakata's 88th pitch of the evening 135 meters into the Giants faithful in right field. 4-3. It all kind of fell apart from there. Ramirez came to the plate and Nakata's first pitch to him sailed over him to the backstop; four pitches later he walked. Abe struck out, Rami advancing on a wild pitch. Gonzalez singled to center, Morino throwing in the ball fast enough to prevent a run from scoring. The infielders were all playing in for Rock Star #3's at-bat with runners at the corners, so he obliged them by hitting a single to where Ibata probably normally would have been playing, and Ramirez scored. 5-3. Rock Star #4 followed it up with another single to left which scored Gonzalez. 6-3. Greisinger grounded out, moving the rock stars to second and third, and that's when Nakata came out of the game. He had blown out 8 candles in 5.2 innings, but also gotten 6 pieces of cake smashed in his face (5 earned).

Lefty Masato Kobayashi came in to pitch, and walked Rock Star #1 but got Rock Star #2 to hit a pop fly foul out to Tyrone. Thank god, because I was out of space for the inning on my scorecard.

For the record, the Dragons didn't do a damn thing on offense from the 5th inning onwards. I even ended up leaving the ouendan area in the middle of the 8th, although I had another reason for that which will become more apparent some other time.

The Giants tacked on another 3 runs in the 7th inning to make it 9-3, topped by a 2-RBI double by Rock Star #4 and capped by Tyrone Woods making a somersaulting catch of a foul fly by Rock Star #1 for the third out. The Dragons cheerers cheered madly -- and I giggled. "Mezurashii..."

(Jim Allen had given Tyrone a 5-yen piece for good luck before the game, and being as Tyrone hit 2 of the Dragons' 4 hits and made some pretty good plays in the field, you could say it worked.)

Makoto Kosaka actually got an at-bat in the 8th inning but struck out. I wonder: will Kosaka get his first hit of the year before or after Tatsunami gets his second?

Daisuke Ochi pitched the 9th for Yomiuri, being as they suddenly were in no need of a Kroon save by then, and he put down Lee, Woods, and Wada pretty quickly to end the game.

Oddly, the game hero wasn't Ramirez with his two hits and runs and the homer; nor Greisinger with his 7 strong innings pitched, nor Gonzalez with his two hits and two runs scored. No, it was all four of the aforementioned rock stars -- Kamei, Sakamoto, Inzen, and Wakiya.

Tomoya Inzen should have probably been the sole hero of this gang -- in his first time EVER in the starting lineup, no less -- from being 3-for-4 with 3 RBIs and scoring the tying run in the 5th inning, and his smart baserunning, but, hey, whatever. During the hero interviews [YouTube], the first three guys were asked about the Young Giants kicking ass in the game, and they were all like "Oh, today it was all Inzen." So the camera pans to Inzen and he's just like "THIS IS THE BEST!!!!!"

I'm not a Giants fan in the least, but I have to admit it IS refreshing to see the game getting carried by foreigners and by young guys who were actually drafted and brought up by the Giants, because the stereotype is for foreigners to come to the Giants and take a lot of money and totally fail at baseball, and for the Giants to just buy big stars off other teams and never actually develop their own prospects.

On the other hand, it would have been nice for Nakata to get a win on his birthday, not face another blowout. Poor guy.

Labels: Dragons, Game Reports, Yomiuri Giants

One of the major differences I noticed between Fighters fans in Sapporo and Fighters fans in Tokyo is that Sapporo fans tend to really get decked out in unique ways to support the team. The Tokyo crowd mostly has standard jerseys -- name/number, the letters in English, and the "unique" people are the ones wandering around wearing the 1993-2003 jerseys with things like "Tanaka #6" or "Nishizaki #21" or "Iwamoto #18" or even some crazy ones like "Hirose #1" or "Nishiura #66". Some brave souls even still wear the bright orange pre-1993 jerseys as well.

Now in Sapporo, you don't see the oldskool jerseys much at all, but you see some really special stuff nonetheless. There's a few major themes I've noticed to the jerseys:

1) Using kanji for player names instead of English letters (ie, "稲葉篤紀 41")
2) Using the player's first name or nickname instead of last name (ie, "Mack 8", "Naoto 5")
3) Adding various phrases to the jersey in Japanese (I'll show a few below)
4) Adding various COLORS to represent each different player (ie, Hichori jerseys have black letters with green borders, Kensuke's have pink borders, Kaneko's have blue, etc)
5) Adding shiny/glittery stuff around the letters (particularly pink shiny Kensuke letters)
6) Adding various other things (My favorite was a girl with a "Konta #52" jersey with the word "LOVE" added underneath it in purple, with little pink hearts all over it)


Kensuke and Hichori jerseys. I thought I wanted to do one like these, maybe.


Really huge Naoto Inada fan who perhaps had one of the most elaborate and beautiful jerseys I saw there -- I really appreciated the amount of effort she put into this thing. She explained that she fell in love with him for his fighting spirit after the Naoto vs. The Cameraman episode during the Japan Series, and I don't blame her one bit for that.


This is Makoto Kaneko's cheer song. On a jersey. How awesome is that?

So the thing is, I have a couple of Fighters replica jerseys -- a current home one with Ogasawara #2 on the back, which I rarely wear; a current away one with no number, and an old Tokyo Fighters away jersey with no number that I bought like 6 years ago. I was originally thinking I'd get a new jersey when I went to Sapporo -- I really wanted one of the beautiful blue Hokkaido ones, but they aren't sold anymore. And then I couldn't decide on a player to get a standard jersey for (I think if they'd actually sold Tadano #16 I would have gone ahead and gotten one, but they didn't), plus I realized -- why get a new jersey when I can just get numbers/letters added to one of the ones I have already?

The Sapporo Dome shop sells iron-on letters in the Fighters uniform font so you can make your own jersey, but it's like 400 yen per letter and 900 yen per number, so when I realized getting "Kensuke 3" or "Hichori 1" would cost like 3700 yen, I decided to think about it for a day or two. And then after seeing all of the crazy awesome unique jerseys around the stadium for the weekend, I decided: if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do something really special and different.

When I came back to Tokyo, I stopped by Sports Authority and picked up a uniform catalog, and it seems pretty likely I can get them to do a jersey for me. Now the only question is, WHAT to do?

I think I might get a "Tanaka #6" added to the old jersey, because I really do want something commemorating Yukio Tanaka. Another idea was getting "田中幸雄 #2000 5.15.07" on the newer jersey, or maybe "TANAKA" and then under it "賢介 3 幸雄 6" or something like that.

(An alternate Kensuke Tanaka idea -- since a LOT of women have Kensuke jerseys now, especially with pink borders or shiny borders and with his name in kanji -- was to do his cheer song - どこまでも飛ばせ 賢介 ガッツだゴーゴーゴー 僕らは待つよ 輝く瞬間 - like that Makoto jersey the other lady had, only putting the name Kensuke in huge pink letters. Though I also fear it might be costly to get quite so many letters made.)

Another idea was getting a green-bordered set of letters that says "Piccolo #1" in honor of Hichori's costume at the all-star game in 2006, but I don't know if people would get it.

I also thought about simply getting a weird player that nobody else has. "Imanari #62" came to mind. But who knows if he'll ever make it to ichi-gun, really.

So after thinking about it for the last week, what I really, really, really think I want is a non-player-related one. Namely, I want to get one like this:


Oi, oi, Hokkaido! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

The question is, is there anything really wrong with doing something like that? I'm basically stealing someone else's idea, and if they ever see me in such a jersey, maybe they'd get mad. Or maybe they'd be flattered? On the other hand, maybe they stole the idea from someone else to begin with. Who knows.

I really like this one, because it isn't tied to a specific player, so whether or not someone succeeds or fails or LEAVES THE TEAM AND GOES TO THE GIANTS or whatever doesn't really affect the jersey still being cool.

I suppose some Japanese people might think it was pretty strange seeing a foreigner walking around in a jersey full of Japanese writing, but whatever, they think it's pretty strange seeing me walk around no matter what I do. Of course, it might be even WEIRDER to wear it around in America someday, but that's not my concern right now.

Anyway, as soon as I decipher the order form, I'll probably go ahead and get the Oi Oi Hokkaido jersey made, unless I come up with something better in the meantime.

Labels: Fighters

May 7th is my birthday, but May 6th is the last day of Golden Week, so technically you could say the game I went to in Yokohama on Tuesday was my birthday game. I mean, the 7th was Darvish vs. Wakui at the Seibu Dump, and would have been a perfect birthday game, except I had to work all evening. And Nashida left Darvish in too long and the Fighters lost anyway. On the bright side, about 150 miles from here, the Chunichi Dragons won their game, and on an even brighter side, Masa Yamamoto started and got the win. So now he only needs 6 more to go for 200 career wins! GO OLD MAN GO! YOU CAN DO IT!

(On a less bright side, about 150 miles away from here in the ocean, there was just a series of earthquakes that measured between 5.1 and 6.8 on the Richter scale, and my apartment was shaking on and off for a good hour between tremors. That was SCARY. Thanks for the birthday quake, Japan, but you really shouldn't have. Honest.)

Anyway, on Tuesday, I was lucky enough to get to go to a Baystars vs. Yakult game with Michael Westbay (of japanesebaseball.com fame) and his son. Westbay doesn't do the whole cheering thing, but his son is totally into banging cheersticks and yelling a lot, so I had a sidekick to yell with :) Plus his son is a big fan of Tatsuhiko Kinjoh (who batted 3rd), and I am a big fan of Takuro Ishii (who batted 7th), so we had pretty good yelling coverage of the lineup.

But, first, I had to go spy on the Yakult Swallows during their fielding practice; since it was a gorgeous sunny day out, I brought my camera and went around stealing souls for a bit:


This is Kyohei Muranaka, a 20-year-old lefty who had a no-hitter going for 8.1 innings against the Giants the other day only to lose the game 5-0 in the 9th.


Shinya "Captain Japan" Miyamoto goes flying through the air with the greatest of ease!


Shingo Kawabata just LOVES fielding practice!

See more pictures here.

The pre-game was most of the usual stuff -- the Yokohama dancing cheer girl team, which is called diana, but is pronounced the same as "Deanna", has a new t-shirt they're selling now and some new pregame dances, with the loudspeaker playing "Go! Go! Diana!" as part of it. So I come back from the concourse, and Westbay's like "Go! Go! Deanna!"

The starters for the game were both non-Japanese -- Mike Wood for the Baystars, and Daniel Rios for the Swallows. Rios is an incredibly intriguing pitcher to me -- he was born in Spain, grew up in the US, pitched in the minors and majors over here, then went all over the damn place in independent leagues and Mexico, before spending a couple of years in Korea. Last year he had what was one of the most amazing years ever by a pitcher in the KBO, going something like 22-5 with a 2.07 ERA for the Doosan Bears, so naturally the next step up was coming to Japan. Or something. So far he is now 1-4 with a 5.09 ERA for Yakult, though, making him one of the weaker starters on the team, oddly. It was still exciting to see him pitch though, and he went pretty deep into this game.


Yakult starter Danny Rios.


Baystars starter Mike Wood.

I'm going to list the lineups a second, because they were kind of wacky to me for various reasons:

Yakult               Yokohama
------               --------
Keizo 3B             Ohnishi LF
Fukuchi CF           Fujita "2B"
Beavis 2B            Kinjoh CF       
Guiel RF             Murata 3B    
Miyamoto SS          Uchikawa 1B
Yuichi 1B            Yoshimura RF 
Iihara LF            Takuro SS           
Yoneno C             Tsuruoka C
Rios P               Wood P

Wacky #1: No Aoki! Turns out he has a mild injury, but we didn't know that at the time.
Wacky #2: Yuichi Matsumoto at first base instead of Adam Riggs?
Wacky #3: Uhh... Yoneno?
Wacky #4: No Nishi? And Takuro Ishii batting 7th?

Also, we saw Shingo Nonaka out there playing catch with Yoshimura between innings, and I was all like "LOOK! IT'S NONAKA!!!!!" and everyone's like "So what?"

We were sitting in Field A seats, which means we were actually pretty close to the field, but the way Yokohama Stadium works, that area isn't really slanted much at all, so your view of home plate will often be worse than your view of most other parts of the field, if just one tall person is sitting in your way. Which, of course, always inevitably happens to me. But Westbay's son was also having trouble seeing -- he kept standing up and looking around like "I can see... kind of... through that LITTLE BITTY HOLE there!"

Thus I ended up making my photography goal for the day to get a good shot of someone getting tagged on a pickoff to first, since I had a clear shot of first. And naturally, every time there was a pickoff throw, someone was in my way -- a beer girl, a random kid standing up, etc. It was pretty amazing.

So here's about the best I could do:


Yuichi Matsumoto looks like he's going to backhand Takuro Ishii upside the head or butt or something.


One of the better ones to come out, of Yasushi Iihara diving back into first.


Fukuchi almost looks like he's doing pushups here.

And the funny part is, the Baystars put guys on base a LOT, so I should have had plenty of pickoff photo fodder. (They also LEFT a lot of guys on base, but that's another story.) They loaded the bases in the 2nd inning on consecutive singles by Takuro Ishii and Kazunari Tsuruoka, and then pitcher Mike Wood actually WALKED, but then Hiroaki Ohnishi grounded out.

In the bottom of the 4th, they put on plenty of runners again -- Uchikawa led off with a single, Yoshimura followed it with another single, and then Takuro sac bunted the guys over to second and third. Fine. With Tsuruoka at bat, and one out, I watched as Yakult's second baseman Hiroyasu Tanaka pretty much looked at the pitcher, looked at the plate and took about five steps to his right. Five seconds later, Tsuruoka grounded the ball RIGHT TO HIROYASU, who fired it home to catch Uchikawa in plenty of time. Sheesh.

"Hey," said Westbay, "What on earth was that second baseman doing in perfect position to make that play?"

"Oh," I said, "He was totally waiting for it. You know, when that Hiroyasu Tanaka kid got the Best Nine award at second base last year, and most people were like 'Who!?', I do think he might have actually deserved it..."

In the top of the 5th, Shinya "Captain Japan" Miyamoto hit the ball deep to right field, where it momentarily seemed like Yuuki Yoshimura made the catch, but he couldn't hold onto the ball, and it dropped for a double.

"They called that a HIT?!" said Westbay in disbelief.

"Well, it WAS kind of a tough play...? I mean, I like Yuuki a lot but to be honest, I'm amazed he even touched the ball before it hit the ground. He's not exactly the fastest guy out there."

"He got a late start on it though."

So Yuichi Matsumoto sac bunted Miyamoto over to third, and then Iihara walked, so with runners at the corners and one out it wasn't too difficult even for Yoneno to pull off a squeeze bunt. Baystars 2B Kazuya Fujita, whom Westbay had been commenting all game on the lack of fielding ability thereof, or at least his range compared to Nishi, was late covering first and almost didn't make the play at all. Yikes. So, Miyamoto scored, and that made it 1-0, and the umbrellas came out in full force in the leftfield bleachers.

Keizo Kawashima led off the top of the 6th with another double, Fukuchi sac bunting him over to third as well. "Great," I said, "Here comes another run." But Hiroyasu grounded out, as did Guiel. The guys sitting to my left, who had been yelling random silly crap all game, decided that Hiroyasu's chant reminded them of Shinnosuke Abe's for some reason, and they started cheering "Shinnosuke!!!" for him, which was just... plain... weird.

In the realm of Players Doing Things I Want To Punch Them For, Seiichi Uchikawa slid headfirst into first base on a groundout, which never fails to annoy me for some reason. But then Yoshimura walked and stole second! Scoring position with Takuro Ishii at bat!

"TAKUROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" I yelled, having been holding up my Ishii towel during all of his atbats and doing my Takuro Ishii's Biggest Fan act. "TANOMU YO!" (Which is about the equivalent of "Come on, we're begging/asking/counting on you!!") The guy to my left laughed and also yelled "TAKURO!! TANOMU YO!" Anyway, Takuro also walked. Exciting! Kind of! Time for chance music! Time for Tsuruoka to come to bat! Time for Tsuruoka to ground into a fielder's choice and end the inning! How totally anticlimactic.


"Our nice white uniforms are very very dirty," says Takuro Ishii, "And we still don't have any freaking runs scored to show for it."

In the top of the 7th, for the THIRD INNING IN A ROW, the Swallows led off with a double and sac bunted the runner over to third, this time the perpetrators being Miyamoto and Yuichi yet again. Difference this time is that Fujita pulled a Hiroyasu and actually pegged Miyamoto at the plate, so another run did NOT score. Whew.

The Lucky 7 inning came and went. Matt Wood came out of the game and Travis Hughes came in for Yokohama to pitch the top of the 8th. Hughes proceeded to strike out two guys, walk one, and strike out another. Cute.

Tatsuhiko Kinjoh led off the bottom of the 8th by promptly hitting a liner straight into Hiroyasu Tanaka's glove ("Why is that pesky second baseman ALWAYS there to make the play?" said Westbay), and Shuuichi Murata, The Man, hit a biiiiiiiig towering fly ball that landed in now-centerfielder Keizo Kawashima's glove. So with two outs in the bottom of the 8th it seemed like things were pretty futile.

But then Uchikawa hit a sharp liner out towards right center that looked like it might end up as a homer. Might... might... not quite, but it bounced high on the wall and fell in for a double. And then Yuuki Yoshimura walked, and here was Takuro Ishii up to bat again with runners at first and second. Time for lots of yelling! And this time, Takuro hit a nice clean single to left! Uchikawa ran all the way around from second, beat the throw, and SCORED! 1-1 tie game!


First Yokohama run of the game scores!

And then, pinch-hitting in the 8 spot, was none other than another one of my favorite old dudes on Yokohama, Takahiro Saeki. More chance music! Utte utte Saeki, utte utte Saeki, kattobase Saeki! Utte utte Saeki, utte-- WAIT WTF JUST HAPPENED? Everyone's running! Where's the ball! What the heck?

It seems that Rios faked a pickoff throw to first -- or made some sort of weird motion -- and then actually threw to first, but stumpy first baseman Shinichi Takeuchi wasn't expecting that either, and so the ball flew wild towards the dugout. Yuuki Yoshimura ran home from third and scored easily. 2-1. And in the confusion trying to actually recover the ball and stop the damage, Takuro Ishii made it all the way around to third base. Saeki ultimately ended up walking, and that's when Daniel Rios came out of the game.

Former Fighters pitcher Takahiko Oshimoto came in for Yakult, and got Tatsuya Ozeki to ground out to end the inning, but that was still a pretty good amount of excitement. Westbay's son said, "They call it Lucky 7 but today it was really Lucky 8!"

What was also awesome about the entire turn of events was that I got to see Hayato Terahara in his new role as Yokohama's closer. I think this is actually a role that totally suits him. Terahara was known for setting a speed record at Koshien back in high school, and he's still quite capable of rearing back and throwing 97 mph. The problem is, as a starter, he can't go out there and throw like that every pitch. But as a closer, he can just let loose for one inning and just go for pure power, and everyone's all like "Ooooh, 155!!" as they watch the scoreboard. He dealt with Guiel, Miyamoto, and Takeuchi in pretty quick order and then the game was over! Yay! The Baystars ACTUALLY WIN ONE!

Game heroes were Takuro and Terahara. I stood up on my chair, cheered, and took pictures:


"Were you trying to do something really big when you came to bat in the 8th inning, Takuro?"
"Not really."


明日の星を掴めよ石井その手で。

The Baystars players all threw their hats into the crowd after the game, and then after the hero interview, Takuro and Terahara went out and threw a bunch of signed baseballs into the crowd. I stood up on my chair and held up my Ishii towel and yelled "TAKUROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" It didn't result in anything getting thrown my way, though, sadly.

The guys two rows in front of me were like "Hey look at her with her Takuro towel," and the one guy's like "I have Nishi, see?" and waves his Toshihisa Nishi towel, and then the other dude holds up a Kimiyasu Kudoh towel and I just crack up like "Oyaji?" Because, after all, Kudoh's 45th birthday was on Monday.

We pack up our stuff to leave the stadium. It's a pretty exciting day -- nice weather, fun game, big dramatic comeback win out of nowhere, and then I realize something kind of stupid.

"This win was nice and all," I said, "but the Baystars still haven't reached double digits in wins yet, have they?"

"I don't think so," said Westbay.

"Wow." I pause. "They're REALLY sucking it up this year."

(For the record, they still haven't gotten to 10, having dropped their next two games after this one. I'd say I should go back and cheer for them more, since they won both times I cheered for them this year, but I think the next time I plan to head to Yokohama is when the Fighters play there on June 8/9...)

Labels: Bay Stars, Game Reports, Japanese Baseball, Photos, Yakult

I have this feeling that Toru Hosokawa has hit exactly two grand slams in his career, both against the Fighters, and I have been there for both of them. Seriously.

(My first game at Seibu was two years ago, and Satoru Kanemura started for the Fighters and gave up a grand slam to Hosokawa and the Lions won that game 6-2. There are some things you never forget, and grand slams hit by catchers who come out to Hikawa Kiyoshi's "Zundoko Bushi" are definitely up there.)

I got there later than I wanted to -- around 1pm for a 2pm game -- and thus I couldn't find a patch of ground in the serious ouendan but ended up a little further out. But the people around me were fairly nice and it was still a place where everyone was standing up to cheer, so that was good. I wore my green Morimoto #1 shirt, my Hichori towel, and my origami Hichori hat that was the giveaway at the Sapporo Dome on Sunday. To my surprise, I saw a few OTHER people with those, which means they ALSO had to be in Sapporo yesterday! Crazy! (But they were too far away to ask about it.)

Before the game, the ouendan leaders came out to teach us all the new Kanto-area chance theme that they apparently just started using last week. We couldn't read the words from where we were but caught the important parts (to yell "utte utte _____!" at the right times).

The Fighters got off to a really quick 3-0 lead off of starter Matt Kinney -- Hichori and Kensuke both walked, and then Inaba... uhh, well, Inaba hit the ball to second, or first, or I don't know, but basically it would have most likely been a close infield single, or maybe a 3-1 out, except Kinney didn't make it there to cover the bag. Nobody did. So the ball ended up by the dugout and the Fighters guys just kept running until it was 2-0. Tomoyuki Oda added an RBI single to make it 3-0 that inning, and Kinney actually came out of the game after only one inning, too.

Fighters added another 3 runs to their tally in the top of the 5th -- infield single by Kudoh, Inaba walk, and a RBI single from Sledge; 4-0. Add another RBI single from Oda to make it 5-0. Sledge had to hold at third on another single by Chon-so Yoh, but then Shinya Tsuruoka hit a huge pop fly to center and that was good for a sacrifice so Sledge could come home, 6-0.

(For the record, people did the Inaba Jump here too when he came to bat with runners on base.)

Anyway, the game entered the bottom of the 5th with a 6-0 score in favor of the Fighters, AND Brian Sweeney hadn't given up a hit yet. And just as I'm sure someone was saying that very thing on TV, GG Satoh singled to center. And then Takeya "wants-to-look-like-Norihiro" Nakamura walked. And Yoshihito Ishii singled as well. And with the bases loaded and Toru Hosokawa at bat, I had this really horrible sinking feeling of deja vu...

...and sure enough, Hosokawa pounded the ball into the leftfield stands by the foul line. Grand slam, 6-4.

Hiroyuki Nakajima led off the bottom of the 6th with a home run to the same exact place. 6-5.

And then Hisashi Takeda came in to pitch the bottom of the 8th, and I love Hisashi, but he had a baaaaad day. Yasuyuki Kataoka led off with a single that bounced off of Naoto Inada and then into Yuuji Iiyama's glove but not in time for the throw. Kuriyama bunted him over. Nakajima struck out, but then Craig Brazell singled home Kataoka, 6-6. And then GG Satoh came to the plate and well, you can guess what happened... he hit a home run to the deepest part of centerfield, making it 8-6. And well, that's where it ended, Youhei Kaneko grounding into a double play to end the game.

The guy next to me was like "I can NOT believe they lost after getting out to a 6-0 lead like that. WTF."

So rather than focusing on that aspect of the game... did I mention there's some new Fighters chance music? After the 7th inning, when we sang it with Naoto Inada up to bat, I was frustrated that I couldn't pick up the words that were being sung during the song part of it, and wasn't able to read the words at the beginning, so I went back to ask the ouendan, and someone actually told me the words to it, and I wrote them down on my ouenka paper. She was first like "Do you know Shiki-shiki-ban-ban"? And I was like "Err... no..." but then later I realized that's the Japaneseization of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Heh.

I only see one place with the lyrics online so far, and that is here. They also have a link to a sound file of people singing this theme. Which I think helps a LOT. But anyway, here you go:

ファンファーレの後に・・・　レッツゴー○○！
After the fanfare... "Let's go [player name]!"

（本　編）
(main theme)
（曲） かっ飛ばせ○○ （曲） かっ飛ばせ○○ （曲） ウ～～イェイ！（ジャンプ！）
(music) Kattobase [player name] (music) Kattobase [player name] (music) whhhoooooooa - YAY! (jump!)

頑張れ僕らのファイターズ　走れ速く　頑張れ僕らのファイターズ　決めろ早く
Ganbare bokura no FIGHTERS, hashire hayaku
Ganbare bokura no FIGHTERS, kimero hayaku

男性：打って～！　打って～！○○！　（男性のみで歌う）
Men sing: Utte! Utte! [player name]!
女性：打って～！　打って～！○○！　（女性のみで歌う）
Women sing: Utte! Utte! [player name]!

全員：（ドンドドン）今だチャンスだ！○○！
Everyone sings: Ima da CHANCE da [player name]!


It's a little tricky to get the hang of at first -- those "ganbare bokura no fighters" lines are really quick. But overall I think it is fun -- the jumping part reminds me of the old Yukio Tanaka cheer -- and a lot more unique than doing the other chance themes, which are fairly generic all things considered (cmon, doesn't EVERY team have a Wasshoi chant?)

By the way, "Seibu Dump" is my official new name for the stadium in Tokorozawa, because it just kind of sucks. It's like you get the worst parts of an indoor stadium (awful lighting and acoustics) combined with the worst parts of an outdoor stadium (humidity and wind), plus the stupid concourses, PLUS the slanted outfield "seating". I mean, the stupid part about the concourse is, the better your seat is, the further you are from the concourse, so you have to climb up a ridiculous amount of stairs to go to the bathroom or go get food. And if you sit in the visitor's outfield section, I swear we had access to exactly THREE food stands, none of which sold anything particularly appealing. Of course, I could see the KFC and the soba stand, but needed a real ticket to get into that area. Grr.

And in case you're wondering, yes, someone spilled beer near me, although amazingly, this time they didn't spill it ON me. It was during the Fighters' Lucky 7 song, and it was the guy to my right, and he was really embarrassed about it, but fortunately he and his friend had brought a ton of newspapers to sit on, so they just used more newspapers to clean it up. I really do get the feeling there's no such thing as a Seibu game where somebody doesn't spill something in the outfield "seating". The beer girl wasn't even that surprised when she came back a few minutes later and he was like "Another beer please. I spilled the last one." "Oh," she said, "That happens all the time."

So to sum up my last few days of watching the Fighters:
4/30 @ Chiba: Fighters win
5/1 @ Hillman's Hangout: Fighters win
5/2 @ Sapporo Dome: Fighters win
5/3 @ Sapporo Dome: Fighters win
5/4 @ Sapporo Dome: Fighters lose
5/5 @ Seibu Dump: Fighters lose

But there has been no Shinji Takahashi in any of those games and I am not entirely sure why not.

They're now in 2nd place. And Kudoh and Kensuke have been ON FIRE. Kensuke even got another triple today. If he keeps this up I'm going to start calling him our Chase Utley or something. (I mean, that seems like the most appropriate thing to call a heartthrob second baseman who bats left-handed and starts tearing up the league in his age 26-27 season...)

And even better, on the way home I stopped by the Tokyo Dome to get a ticket for the 5/26 Giants-Fighters game. (I've already got plans & tickets for the Sunday 5/25 game, but wasn't sure what I'd do for the Monday one.) They had the visitor's ouendan section marked as sold out, but when I told her I just wanted one ticket, she said "Oh, I can sell you one visitor's ouen-seki ticket, we just don't have TWO together." Sheesh. And then I picked up 5 packs of 2008 BBM v1 baseball cards at Yamashita, and in those packs I got TWO signature cards -- Kensuke Tanaka, and Takahiro Arai. Talk about an awesome pull.

Tomorrow's the last day of Golden Week, and I'm actually headed down to Yokohama, where I'll get to see the Baystars play against the other team with a kickass second baseman named Tanaka.

Labels: Fighters, Game Reports, Japanese Baseball, Ouenka, Seibu

Hokkaido is actually well-known for its excellent and affordable food. Before I came here, my students and friends told me things like "Oh, you HAVE to go try the sashimi, and crab, and potatoes, and corn, and jingisukan (barbecued lamb), and the fresh fish, and Ramen Alley, and blah blah blah blah..."

So what have I been eating since I got here? Ballpark food, and Fighters-related food. I justify it to myself by thinking that, well, since I don't have a Japanese palate, it's actually fairly likely I wouldn't appreciate the food for what it is. Plus, I don't really know which places are the best ones to go to. AND, hey, I came to Sapporo to be the World's Biggest Hokkaidork Fighters Fan, and I must say, I am doing quite a good job of it so far.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this entry is because tonight I went to the "Fighters Official Restaurant" in the Sapporo Ario mall, and it SUCKED. And like any internet geek, my reaction is "Oh, this place sucks! And I just wasted my evening there! What can I do about this? I'm going to... I'm going to WRITE ABOUT IT ON MY BLOG!!"

So, anyway, this entry is about some of the food I've been eating the last few days, and places I've gone to.

Hillman's Hangout
Rating: Made Of Awesome

This place is in the Susukino area of Sapporo. The only downside to it is that it's a little hard to find if you're not familiar with Sapporo, especially since Google Maps completely BARFS on Sapporo addresses -- unlike most of Japan, Sapporo is actually laid out on a really strict grid, which I get the impression helps you once you know it, but completely messes with your head if you don't. Sort of like Seattle!

Anyway, it's on the third floor of the Norbesa building. Norbesa is this building with a gigantic ferris wheel sticking out of it, and it's a block or two from the normal Susukino station. I recommend looking at Norbesa's map to find it -- the map on the HH site is actually pretty bad. I spent a good 45 minutes trying to find the place, especially since I went to Hosui Susukino station instead (which also has a nearby McDonald's). Oops.

But once you get there, especially if you get there during a Fighters game, it is made of pure awesome!

I'd say that the stuff there is maybe 50% Hillman-centric and 50% Fighters-centric. Each booth table has pictures of Hillman with his family and friends, and there's a display case with stuff of his from the various teams he worked with. But all over the place are posters of current and former Fighters players -- including Seggy, and Ogasawara. And in the back is a foosball table area! (Hillman put a foosball table in the Fighters clubhouse at one point as a way to loosen people up.) There's no such thing as a table where you cannot see a TV showing the Fighters game -- whether you're up front by the big TV or watching the others displayed around the room.

Also, the food choices are AWESOME and full of Fighters and Hillman references. They have the entire menu on the website, but among the sorts of things you can get are "Trey's Enchilada", the "Hillman's Family Weekend BBQ Ribs", or "Lil' Brianna's Kids Plate", or "TJ's Bacon Cheeseburger", or "Marie's Special Recipe Chocolate Brownie Sundae". And for baseball references there's the "Naoto Sausage Plate", the "BB Combo", and "Mack's Parfait". The last one was the funniest one to me -- it's named after Fighters shortstop Makoto "Mack" Kaneko, whose uniform number is #8, and the parfait costs... Y888.

There's also a pretty wide drink menu, including anything from local Sapporo beers to things like Guinness. I got a Sapporo Classic and it was pretty good. For food I ordered the TJ Bacon Cheeseburger -- I probably should have had Mexican food, oh well. But the burger was perfect.

And the experience was perfect too -- the Fighters game was on TV, and the place wasn't crowded per se, but there were people banging tambourines and a bunch of us occasionally started singing along to the cheer music. And the Fighters won, and every time they made a good play or got a hit, the entire place erupted in applause and shouts. The staff were all into the game too (one waitress was even doing Inaba's cheer with us) but not so much that they were unable to keep bringing beers to people who needed them.

And after the game I went around and took pictures of EVERYTHING there. I asked first and the waitress was like "Please go ahead! Take your time, take pictures of whatever you want, enjoy!" So I did. And I talked to random people and they were all really nice and funny and in a good mood due to the Fighters winning and all. I got one of the waitresses to take my picture in front of one of the displays, and after I paid and was leaving, and apologized for being such a dork, the waitress was like "Oh, no problem, you seem like a really big Fighters fan and very happy," and she said "hold on a second," and dug around for something behind the counter, and came up with a HILLMAN'S HANGOUT COASTER SIGNED BY TREY HILLMAN and gave it to me! Seriously, it's like the people working there pretty much embodied all of the niceness of Hillman into this awesome little sports bar in Susukino, and it was just a totally happy experience for me.


Entering the restaurant from Norbesa 3F.


Wide view of the restaurant during the Fighters game -- you can see the booths and the big screen.


Some of the Hillman-related stuff they had there.


The bar. With Guinness.


Sapporo Dome Food
Rating: Made Of Interesting

To be fair, the first day I had KFC at the park.

Then today, I had this:


The amazing Atsunori Inaba... bento box.

I would tell you what was in it, but I'm not entirely sure. Basically there's a noodle bowl with some stuff in it, and then a rice bowl with corn and a bunch of fried things, and a little square of nori with "Inaba #41" printed on it. Also, you get a special "Bento Card" with the box. SO cute!

It wasn't bad. I'm not sure which one I'll try tomorrow.

Edited in, May 6th:

So, this is the one I ended up getting the next day:


Fighters No. 1 Bento!

It's also super-cute. It came with a scorecard in the top of the box to make it a souvenir, as well as a lyric sheet for Go! Go! Fighters. The food was a wide variety -- the top left is some fried stuff, including something I think was crab claw, and the top right is shumai and some fish'n'onions, and some beans, and a bit of warabi mochi, and the bottom right had some kind of burger patty and veggies, and the lower left was pickled stuff. The middle is rice, sausage, and a little fried egg piece SHAPED LIKE HOKKAIDO. I didn't even notice that at first, heh.

I think this bento was better than the Inaba bento, anyway, and they both cost the same, 1000 yen. I'm bad at judging this stuff though because I get the feeling there are some bento items that are totally lost on me that other people love, though.

Fighters Gourmet - Official Fighters Restaurant
Rating: Made of Kanemura's Socks

This is the place that inspired me to write this damn entry.

So, I figured I had two choices tonight for where to go -- try to hunt down that Ramen Alley, or go check out the Fighters Official Restaurant, which I'd heard about from my crazy Chunichi friend Anthony who went on a tour of all the stadiums in Japan last year. I figured I wasn't going to get to go there tomorrow, so this was my last shot.

However, there were a few big obstacles:
1) it was COLD outside -- seriously, it was 24 degrees C when I went into the Sapporo Dome this morning/afternoon and something like 12 degrees C when we all came out. I do have my winter coat with me, but still.
2) it's something like a mile from my hotel and
2a) it was 8:15 by the time I was able to ponder this and
2b) they take last food order at 9pm

So I ended up taking a taxi over there. Taxicabs in Sapporo are amazingly plentiful -- moreso than anywhere in Tokyo, you can ALWAYS find a cab here. But they COST the same as Tokyo. Grr. But they're kind of like these magical teleportation devices -- if you don't know how to get to, say, the Ario Sapporo mall, you just get in a cab and say "Hey, I'm going to Ario", and then the cab driver takes you there! It's magic! Expensive magic, but magic!

(Honestly, I think I figured out where the mall was, but their maps and access page is fairly incomprehensible. It seemed like if I just walked east from Sapporo station I'd hit it eventually -- I knew I saw it from the JR tracks when arriving in town -- but that seemed like a not great plan when it's cold out and you have a time deadline.)

I actually live fairly close to an Ario mall in Kawaguchi and like it quite a lot, but I don't usually eat the mall food because they're mostly generic Japanese family restaurants. And so it shouldn't have surprised me that the Official Fighters Restaurant is basically a Generic Japanese Family Restaurant With Some Fighters Stuff In It.

No, seriously. The menu was COMPLETELY generic and mostly consisted of Japanese burger meals -- which does not mean burgers like Americans think of it, with bread around it and a side of fries or onion rings, but what Japanese people usually call "hamburger steak"... which is basically a hamburger, on a platter, with sauce on top of it, and some sort of veggie side. I got a plate that had sausage and burger and potato salad, and it was... generic. I mean, not bad, but nothing particularly fantastic, either. I could get this same platter pretty much anywhere.

And that's what bugged me -- they could have bothered to at least have some Hokkaido-specific stuff, if they weren't going to have some American-specific, or baseball-specific, or ANYTHING to set them apart. But there weren't even like, baseball-named dishes or anything. It made me sad.

ALSO, the staff were downright rude to me. I walked up to the restaurant entrance around 8:40 -- long before closing -- and the guy at the counter was dealing with someone paying the bill. Okay, that's fine, but... some other staff guy came up, saw me, ignored me, and asked the cashier a question, and walked off. A waitress also walked by, looked at me standing there, and also ignored me. And then the counter guy started dealing with ANOTHER customer -- without even so much as a nod or a "please wait a moment" to me. Finally, after I had been standing there for like 5 minutes, he looked at me -- didn't even say a Japanese equivalent of "can I help you?", but more of a look of "God, I hope she doesn't expect me to speak English."

What the hell?

I hadn't paid ten bucks to a taxi to come here for nothing, though, so I said (in Japanese) "Hey, is it too late to get a seat? Table for one, please."

The guy's like "Do you smoke?"

"No smoking seats, please," I replied.

And then he was going to seriously make me write my name on a paper and wait around when I could see that EIGHTY PERCENT OF THE RESTAURANT WAS EMPTY.

"Uhhh, if it's a problem, anywhere is fine, I don't care," I said.

Then the other dude came back, kinda said something to the first guy, then looked at me, and grabbed a menu, and said "Please follow me," and showed me to a table. I saw the screen, which was showing an awfully familiar-looking Fighters game, and said "Hey, is this today's game?" and he said "Yeah, it is," and I said "Oh, I was there! It was a great game!" and he just nodded and said "please take your time" and walked off.

(And I mean, I was still wearing a green shirt under my Morimoto #1 Fighters t-shirt, and my Hichori wristband. You'd think that'd at least get some sort of "oh, cool, Fighters fan" treatment, but I guess not. I mean, even when I stopped in Marui Imai today after the game still in Fighters gear, the cashier was like "did you go to the game? wasn't it interesting?" and I was like "yeah, did you see Yoh's home run?" "Yeah! Surprising, huh?")

After about 5 minutes of me reading the menu, a waitress finally came over and took my order. And then an inning or two later I actually got my food. Though that's not necessarily a bad thing since I got to see the replay of that crazy play today where Kaneko struck out -- or didn't -- it's unclear, he kinda swung at the third strike and threw his bat and the ball got away from the catcher and maybe it actually hit his bat now that I see the replay but who knows and either way he advanced to first and Oda scored on the play and it was bizarre.

After I finished eating I asked if I could take pictures of the restaurant and they were like "uhh... sure, go ahead, it's okay". So I did. And the staff kept staring at me in that "what is the crazy gaijin doing?" sort of way, so I didn't really take as many as I would have otherwise. Which is kind of a shame, because they actually did have a whole bunch of cool stuff there -- autographed baseballs, posters, old jerseys and bats from players (including some Shinjo and Yukio stuff, sigh), and even a bunch of photo books which you could look through. Oh, and about half the tables had glass plates in them with Fighters baseball cards underneath. Which was cool -- and me being me I was like "hey, I have this one... and this one.. and this one..."

But overall I felt pretty unhappy about the experience there. Heck, I went outside and asked a random passerby to take my picture by the restaurant sign, because I didn't feel comfortable asking any of the staff. Sheesh.

OH, and to add insult to injury, I got lost trying to get home -- I was going to walk to Naebo station and take a train, but I couldn't find the station, so eventually I gave up and found another taxi. So not only did I have a bad time at the restaurant but I ended up spending like $20 on taxis to get there and back.

Bah.



View of the restaurant entrance from the mall.


What most of the restaurant looked like. There are a bunch of smaller rooms off to the side for parties, I guess.


The baseball card table.


Display case with various Fighters jerseys and bats.

Anyway, in my honest opinion:
Neither of these restaurants beat Yakiniku Erika (Hichori's parents' restaurant in Nippori) for pure awesomeness of Fightertude during eating dinner. But I have to admit that if I was in Sapporo and wanted to eat yummy food and watch an out-of-town Fighters game, I would not hesitate to go to Hillman's Hangout. Just seemed like a pretty good all-around place. BUT I would undoubtedly gain a ton of weight if I went there all the time, so it's just as well that it isn't in the same city as me.

But if you're in Sapporo and have only one evening and are trying to choose between the two of them? Go to the Hangout. The other one isn't going to be anything special. I'm not just saying this because Hillman told me to go there and he may read this someday. The only reason I can think of for going to the Gourmet is if you are touring the nearby Sapporo Beer Museum (which closed too early for me to get to) and have nothing better to do for dinner afterwards.

And above all, go to the Sapporo Dome! And sit in the outfield! And eat a Fighters bento! It's all amazing.

Labels: Fighters

I'd been saying for ages how happy I was that the Fighters drafted Kazuhito Tadano, and I was super-excited when I saw him at Kamagaya Fighters Fan Fest, and tonight's game, where he DOMINATED the Rakuten Golden Eagles, was sort of a great moment that took 5 months to be realized. Or, on a more personal level, that took something like 5 YEARS to be realized. I've been wanting to go see the Fighters in Sapporo ever since they moved there, and so tonight was my first time being at the Sapporo Dome - and coincidentally it was also Kazuhito Tadano's debut game!

I'll admit that I was actually a bit worried because the Eagles were putting up Hisashi Iwakuma, who has been nigh untouchable so far this year. I figured, this is my only chance to see a game from the cheering sections at the Sapporo Dome, and Iwakuma's gonna do something like pitch a one-hitter and I won't get to do the Inaba Jump or sing Oi Hokkaido or anything fun, and people are going to be all grumpy...

...well, I was COMPLETELY WRONG. I mean, someone pitched a one-hitter and ruined the opposing fans' day, it just wasn't Iwakuma.

*Tadano* pitched seven innings of one-hit baseball. Seriously. He allowed exactly one runner the entire time he was out there and that was catcher Akihito Fujii, who got a single to center in the 3rd inning. HE. WAS. AWESOME. That's all. He stared at guys like Rick Short, Jose Fernandez, and Takeshi Yamasaki, and made them SIT RIGHT BACK DOWN. It was amazing.

In the meantime, Iwakuma ran into a whole bunch of trouble early on. In the first inning, he walked Takahito Kudoh, and then Kensuke Tanaka hit a double to left, and then we all started the Inaba Jump! (And I was REALLY excited about that. So was the little boy sitting two seats down from me who had a big Inaba sign.) Inaba singled to left as well, and Kudoh and Kensuke scored! Wheee! 2-0. However, Inaba then got caught stealing, and Sledge grounded out.

The Fighters put a few more runners on base over the next few innings, but I wasn't really taking notes because I was doing more important things like yelling "KENSUKEEEEEEEEE!!!" at the top of my lungs, and singing cheer songs, and stuff like that.

In the 5th inning, with one out, Hichori hit the ball along the right field line which stayed barely fair and went into the corner for a double. Kudoh struck out, but then Kensuke Tanaka TRIPLED! Because he is AWESOME! Hichori scored, 3-0. We jumped for Inaba and he responded by also hitting a double, scoring Kensuke. 4-0. Funny part is, in most stadiums a lot of these doubles would actually be home runs, but the outfield walls in the Sapporo Dome are approximately six Hichoris high and thus a lot of things just bounce off the wall for doubles. Quite the pitcher's park. Anyway, Terrmel Sledge -- who comes out to Peter Gabriel's song Sledgehammer, and who the fans wave giant inflatable sledgehammers for -- also hit a double off the leftfield wall (I actually thought it was going to be a home run as it sailed towards us, but my guess is it fell a few feet short), scoring Inaba, so 5-0, and that's when I found out that they really do play Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey Goodbye over the speakers when the opposing starter is knocked out. Iwakuma left the game and Yoshizaki came in, and he struck out a pinch-hitting Takaguchi to end the inning.

As I mentioned, Tadano pitched 7 fantastic, amazing innings. His act was followed up with Naoki Miyanishi pitching a mostly-uneventful 8th, and then Yachiho Hoshino pitching a... more eventful 9th. A pinch-hitting Kenshi Kawaguchi popped out to right, but then Naoto Watanabe singled to short and Yuji Iiyama overthrew to first, so while Naoto Inada was recovering the ball, the other Naoto made it to second. Takasu singled to left after that, and only a bullet-shot throw from Kudoh in left kept Watanabe from scoring. Rick Short hit a pop fly out -- two outs. One more person! One more! But that one more was Jose Fernandez, who hit a clean single that bounced in shallow right field, scoring Naoto Watanabe. 5-1. And just to prove that we were NOT messing around anymore, they brought out Micheal Nakamura to pitch to The Big Man, Takeshi Yamasaki... and Yamasaki grounded out to third base and that was the game and the FIGHTERS WIN IT! YEEEEEAH!

I got to be in the midst of the big gold streamers flying all over the place afterwards, and then Tadano and Kensuke were the game heroes and it was awesome. I recorded most of the hero interview and just made a Youtube account so I can upload it, but seem to be having some trouble actually doing so (though other stuff uploaded fine). I'll try again tomorrow.

Okay, so the game aside, I had a fantastic time at the Sapporo Dome. I showed up around 3:30pm, I guess, and hit the one really sad spot in my day -- went into the Dome shop and found out that THEY DON'T SELL THOSE BEAUTIFUL BLUE HOKKAIDO JERSEYS ANYMORE. I had been looking forward to buying one for ages, and it seems it was just a summer special last year. ARGH! I also found out they didn't have the green Morimoto #1 t-shirts in my size, which sucks, I might go to the Fighters store in Marui Imai tomorrow morning before I head to the park and check there, before deciding what stuff to get instead. (I saw that letters are 400 yen each and big numbers are 900 yen... so "Takeda #2138" is probably not happening, but I think I'll end up getting letters to make "Kensuke #3" for my numberless away jersey.

One thing I have to mention is that Fighters fans in Hokkaido are CREATIVE. The ones in the outfield, seriously, most people had signs for at least one player -- usually for many players -- and a LOT of people had cool homemade jerseys with various numbers and players and phrases. When I get around to cropping and uploading most of my pictures there'll be some examples, including a dude who had "Oi Oi Hokkaido, Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!" on his, and a lady who went overboard with Naoto Inada stuff. I saw a LOT of people with pink-bordered Kensuke lettering, blue-bordered Makoto Kaneko, and green-bordered Hichori, among other things, and most people had kanji, too, which is NOT sold in the official store. (I asked one girl how she made her jersey and she said she went to a sporting goods store and bought the kanji patches there and sewed them on.)

You would be surprised how many of the young guys on the Fighters without much top league experience, who seem to get largely forgotten in Tokyo, have huge followings in Hokkaido. There were a TON of Youhei Kaneko fans, and even MORE Naoto Inada fans, and tons of Kudoh shirts too... heck, even a few rows ahead of me was the Tomoyuki Oda cheering contingent. Oda has been on the team as long as *I* remember, yet he hasn't particularly done much in the last few years, so it was surprising. (Plus he embarrasses me because his cheer song is "Ganbare ganbare Oda, right, left, center e" and I always, always, always STILL get them backwards and look stupid.) Anyway, this is a good thing being as the team is kind of going through a transition again from old guard to new, but still, it's a little weird.

The other thing I have to say about Fighters fans is that they are AWESOME as always. I have never, ever, ever, felt as comfortable in a big group of baseball fans as I have been around Fighters fans forever and ever. I was wearing my super-old Tokyo fighters jersey and taking pictures of stuff and a lot of people just chatted with me. It reminded me of my first Fighters game, when everyone was like "Come join us! Let's sing! Let's cheer for the Fighters!" I was watching most of the game with a big stupid "I'm in Sapporo Dome this is SO COOL" grin on my face, I'm sure.

There was a ton of stuff going on for fans in the Dome, too -- outside was some sort of Fighters festival which involved speed pitch and batting cages, some normal carnival game type things, a golf game, a stage that people were doing stuff on I couldn't figure out, a ton of picnic tables and food stands, and the weirdest of all was probably the animal petting zoo -- no joke, they had ducks and bunnies and hamsters for kids to play with, as well as an emu and a goat and another animal I forget what it was. Oh, and an animal handler was holding a snake that people could pet as well. Pretty crazy. Inside was a lot of stuff that I think is normal -- a BB booth for kids to pose with the Fighters mascot, a Nintendo Wii stand where people could play Wii Sports, and oh, the craziest thing -- they have these gatchapon capsule games, with Fighters player pins inside, that you can only get at the Sapporo Dome. Only catch is, in order to use the capsule machine, you have to go buy special coins that go into it, which cost 200 yen each. And the only way to buy those special coins is if you are a Fighters fan club member -- and each member can only buy 5 coins per game. I bought 2 because I wasn't sure what they were for, and I got a Kensuke Tanaka (!!!!!) pin and a Tatsuo Katoh, which I didn't care so much about. So the next two days I have to make sure to buy 5 each, of course :)

Another crazy thing is that today they had a very special ceremonial first pitch -- Hideki Saijo, who is a fairly well-established singer in Japan. Why was he there? Well, because the Fighters play YMCA (the Japanese version, called "Young Man") every game in the 5th inning. And would you guess who sang the original "Young Man" back in 1979 or so? Hideki Saijo, of course. So people cheered like mad when he threw out the pitch, and then during the 5th inning, he actually sang YMCA/Youngman LIVE! That was really really cool! (And by the way, unlike in America where people only dance during YMCA if they want to be on the big screen, EVERYONE dances to YMCA here. If you don't, you risk getting hit in the head by people making Y's.)

Speaking of music, they play "Who Let The Dogs Out?" after pretty much every 1-2-3 inning from the opposing team, and maybe even more, I dunno, but EVERYONE claps along to the "woof woof woof" part. It's pretty funny. People clap along to all of the player at-bat music as well (and in general the at-bat music is pretty good), although it's not integrated into the cheers like, say, the Giants AB songs are.

Oh yeah, and in the 6th inning this vaguely familiar Japanese guy comes down the aisle and says (in Japanese), "hey -- were you at Hillman's Hangout last night?" and I said yeah, and he said, "I thought so! I was there too, we were a few tables over from you," and I'm like "Oh yeah, I remember you guys!" and he points up to the top of the next section and there's his girlfriend and she's waving at us. Wow! That was pretty funny too. Turns out he also keeps a scorecard too, so at the top of the 7th I went up to where they were sitting and we compared American and Japanese scorebooks. Oh, even BETTER, the two of them told me they live in Shinjuku (the guy has been a Fighters fan ALL HIS LIFE, and is also a huge Yukio Tanaka fan) and ALSO just came up to Sapporo for the weekend just for the Fighters series. Holy crap! ("You're CRAZY! You came all the way here for the games too!" "No, YOU'RE crazy! You came here alone!") They're gonna be at the Giants-Fighters games later this month but actually managed to get tickets in the outfield, unlike me. Lucky!

After the game I ran into them again on my way out and chatted some more, and we got a security guard to take our picture together, so this is my "Look I'm in the Sapporo Dome" picture, only you can't really tell it's the Sapporo Dome:



Oh, and while I'm at it -- so today I had a goal of learning the cheer songs for Terrmel Sledge and for Takahito Kudoh, so I recorded videos of everyone singing those songs acapella and with trumpets, and with my brand new awesome Youtube Account, I can now show you those videos! Cool, huh?


ノースカロライナパワー　ホームラン　スレッジ
大地に万里風吹かせよ　熱くなれ　ハンマー・スレッジ

North Carolina power, homerun Sledge
Daichi ni banrifuu fukaseyo atsuku nare Hammer Sledge
(Go go let's go su-re-ji!)


さぁ行けよ工藤　疾風の如く
フィールド駆け抜け勝ち取れ　勝利の栄光を

Saa ikeyo Kudoh, hayate no kodoku
Field kakenuke kachitore shouri no eikou wo
(Kattobase Kudoh!)

After the game, getting home was kind of a NIGHTMARE, though. There's only one subway stop near the Dome, and so 40,000 people at once are all going towards it, which results in insane clogging, of course. Though, I ended up stopping in Ito Yokado by the station and found the BB Ears that I wanted, so that was good. I'm going to look crazy ridiculous wearing them, but I don't think I care.

Okay, off to sleep with me. And to think I have TWO MORE DAYS OF THIS! Although the next two days I won't actually be in the outfield, so it might be slightly less fun. We'll see. Tomorrow is Shugo Fujii vs. Domingo Guzman, so I really have absolutely no clue how this game's gonna go. I did make one decision though, and that's that I will try one of the Inaba bento boxes tomorrow for lunch.

Labels: Fighters, Game Reports, Japanese Baseball, Ouenka, Rakuten

The Dragons were playing one of their "local" games at Nagaragawa Stadium in Gifu Prefecture on April 29th. It was a national holiday and I'd wanted an excuse to go to Nagoya and visit some friends for a while. (Gifu City is so close to Nagoya -- it's like a 18-minute train ride from Nagoya Station to Gifu Station -- that I pretty much just say "going to Nagoya" when I am going to Gifu.) Jeff and Miyuki managed to get three tickets to the game, so there was my excuse!

First, I went to the Nagoya Dome, and took many pictures on the way there. My mission was to buy a copy of Moeyo Dragons 2008, and Doala ears, and something Tatsunami-related, and see what Japan Series Victory stuff they still had, and get some more Morino stuff. I succeeded in all fronts except the Doala ears, which they said they don't even make this year. Though upon listening to the CD, I was disappointed to hear that Moeyo Dragons 2008 has Wada 3rd, Morino 5th, Norihiro 6th, Lee 7th. Where the heck did they get THAT lineup?

After that I made my way to Gifu station, but by the time I got there it was seriously like 3:30pm. Jeff picked me up from the station, then we got Miyuki, then after a brief stop we went down to the Gifu Athletic Complex...

...and waited for like 50 minutes to get into a parking lot. No joke. Basically cars couldn't enter until other ones left so we had to wait for cars from the earlier events in the day -- a golf tournament and whatnot -- to leave so we could go in. At least it gave us a chance to hang out and chat, and for me to give Jeff the Fukudome t-shirt I'd picked up for him in Chicago, which he immediately put on to wear to the game.

After finally getting a spot, we also had to still walk to the stadium. I get the distinct impression that this field is perfectly great for most of the things it's used for -- high school regional qualifying tournaments, Chunichi preseason games, other similar events -- but for an ACTUAL PRO GAME THAT COUNTS? No way. For one thing, there isn't even really public transportation that goes there -- it's about 2-3 miles from Gifu station and there are only one or two bus routes that go there. So most people will drive, and the normal parking capacity is not up to a packed stadium's car crowd, so everyone ends up parking pretty far away and walking over.


The stadium, and the crowds.

We finally got into the stadium around 5:30-5:35, since we had to wait in line for a while at the gate as well, and then we immediately were thrown into our choice of three lines of people to wait in, which were all kind of mixed together: 1) the line of people waiting to buy food, as there seemed to be exactly one set of food stand tables; 2) the line of people waiting to get into the bathrooms, and 3) the line of people waiting to get into the SEATING AREA. Which was kind of mingled with the lines for the bathroom, since there was no room for the bathroom lines inside the bathrooms themselves. (And, as I discovered, the women's bathroom only had Japanese-style toilets. Wheeeee.)

I couldn't really figure out why the lines were so long to get into the seating area, but it seems that there's pretty much only one walkway in the infield -- you either go up, or you go down, so everyone entering or exiting the seats was trying to move through a place that was only maybe 2-3 people wide. Hence, even once you get onto that walkway, you still have to inch your way over to where you're sitting.


Cluster of people waiting to get to their seats.

While I was waiting to get in, I heard a helicopter coming over the stadium, and I could see it drop something, but I had no idea what it was. Fortunately, Jeff took a bunch of pictures at the event too, and so it turns out it was Doala catching a flag dropped from the helicopter. Or, more like, a flag falling from a helicopter and Doala comically failing to catch it, as I was told later.

I had the sense to not wait in line to buy food/drink at the concourse, at least; instead, once I got out onto the walkway and out of the congested part, I flagged down a drink vendor for a soda, then flagged down a food vendor for a bento. The bento was full of bizarre random things, half of which I couldn't identify, and 70% of which I actually ate, which is pretty good all things considering.

And once I finally was in my seat and the game was on the verge of starting, I forgot all about the part where we had to wait in line for ninety years to get to that point, because, hey, I was seeing a Dragons home game for the first time in ages! And there was cheering! And Doala! And Morino! And Nakata! And all kinds of stuff! Baseball! Yay!

(I don't want you to think I'm a big horrible negative person -- but basically the experience was an hour and a half of being like "OMFG WHEN WILL THE WAITING STOP", and then a great ton of fun during the game itself, which of course went by way too quickly.)


As you can see, the stadium seating is primarily bleachers, and the infield is a big dirt infield!


Starting lineups.


You can see Gifu Castle on top of that mountain in the distance, kind of.

Anyway, we were fairly far out on the first base line, but in extended infield, so not in that part of the stadium where you actually stand up and cheer. That didn't stop me from singing all the player songs (except freaking Norihiro's which I totally can't catch) anyway and cheering a lot, BUT I didn't really get to do my all-out Biggest Gaijin Morino Fan act, which is probably just as well. I did hold up my Morino towels and sing, but I didn't stand up and yell or anything. Plus, as I commented to Jeff, "It's really much funnier when he actually kicks ass." (Not that I'm complaining about 1-for-3 with a sac fly RBI and a double, with stellar defense, of course. Morino!) There was another crazy Morino fan one section over and a few rows in front of us, so I wasn't the only one.

(The other thing was, of course, being as the opponents were the Baystars, and I know all of their songs too, occasionally I'd start singing along without even thinking about it, especially to Takuro Ishii's. Miyuki was like "You're crazy! How do you know all of these?" Jeff's like "Her brain is... err... full of baseball...")

I doubt anyone would remember this, but last time I went to Nagoya and saw a game with Jeff, the Dragons won 4-1 by scoring 4 runs in an early inning and the other team never catching up, Nakata pitched 8 innings and struck out a whole ton of people, and Iwase came in for the save. So it should surprise nobody that this time, the Dragons also won the game 4-1 by scoring 4 runs in an early inning and the other team never catching up, Nakata pitched 8 innings and struck out a whole lot of people, and Iwase came in for the save. The big difference is that this time we saw them in Gifu -- and that this time I wasn't hit by a truck the day before going down there. Either way, I think we can call it a tradition now for the 4-1 Nakata-Iwase win, right?

The other cool difference is that Nakata himself even hit a double in this game and scored a run! The second inning was the big inning for the Dragons; Tyrone led off with a double, and Wada singled; Morino hit a huge fly ball which was not a homer but far enough out to get Tyrone home (1-0), and then Norihiro Nakamura hit a MONSTER home run that almost hit the back wall of the leftfield bleachers (3-0!); people had been cheering "Jougai homerun Norihiro", which means "hit it OUT OF THE STADIUM, Norihiro". That would have been awesome and probably quite possible in Gifu. Kouhei Oda (cheer: "O! D! A!"), grounded out, and with two outs Nakata came to the plate, and Jeff's like "ok, there's the inning," and I said "wait, Kenichi might hit a home run too!" and then he hit a huuuuge shot to left-center, which fell for a double! Exciting! Araki singled him home (4-0) and then Ibata grounded out to end the inning.

The Dragons fans had been throwing streamers and confetti onto the field whenever anything cool happened, and by the end of the 2nd inning, there was an announcement of "Please refrain from throwing confetti or balloons." Another one of Jeff's excellent photos shows Yuuki Yoshimura standing in right field among pools of streamers, contemplating why the Baystars suck this year.

Araki, who played stellar defense for most of the day, kind of fell apart a bit in the 6th inning and made a Buckner-style error to start it off, the ball going through his legs into right field on what should have been a routine grounder. Takuro Ishii reached base on that play, and was driven in on singles by Nishi and Murata. 4-1.

Hidenori came out to play defense in the 9th inning and got a huge cheer - he is from Gifu, as is Kazuhiro Wada, so the crowds were very supportive of them. To be honest, the Dragons have a lot of "local boys" - Iwase is from Aichi, Asakura is from Gifu, the Donoues are from Aichi, Asao is from Aichi, they have a bunch of kids from Mie and Fukui as well.

Doala came out several times to do flips and cartwheels and throw stuff to the crowd and whatnot. Doala is cool.

We actually didn't stay long enough to find out who the game hero was -- we wanted to get back to the car as soon as possible -- but I can't imagine it wasn't either Norihiro or Nakata.

We did have to wait another hour to get out of the parking lot afterwards, but Jeff's car has TV, so we watched some sports highlights of soccer and baseball and whatnot. Eventually we finally were free, and went to get miso katsu for dinner, and then I took a night train (the Moonlight Nagara) back to Tokyo. What I learned from that experience is that night trains are cheap and convenient, but it's pretty impossible to sleep on that one because it makes about 15 stops between Nagoya and Tokyo, from midnight to 5am, and I'd wake up every 15-20 minutes when the train stopped. Still, I'm all for trying new and interesting things, so it was good to find out -- but I think in the future I'll just spend the extra $50 and take the shinkansen.

So anyway, on one last note:


Jeff, being the American in the Cubs t-shirt.


Me, being Morino's Biggest Gaijin Fan Ever. Morinoooooooooo!

Good times. I'm hoping I can go back down to Nagoya in September or so.

Labels: Bay Stars, Dragons, Game Reports, Japanese Baseball

I'm in Sapporo and I have ninety billion things to write about but I'm in Sapporo, dammit, so I don't know how much time I'll spend writing. Yesterday morning I got to go to a press conference about the Zen of Bobby V, then I flew to Sapporo. Last night I went to Susukino and hunted down Hillman's Hangout and watched the Fighters game from there -- quite the awesome experience :)

Here's 50 photos or so from Tuesday afternoon when I went through the tunnel from Nagoya Dome mae subway stop to the Nagoya Dome. They changed it a bit from last time I was there -- I guess that's bound to happen when you actually win a Japan Series.


Click to enter Dragons Road 2008!

More later.

Labels: Dragons, Friday Foto, Photos