Thursday, March 23, 2006

Book Club Reminder and NPB Opening Day link

I have nothing useful to say today, so I just want to remind you all that you should be reading Out of Left Field, as there's about a week and a half left until Opening Day, and thus about two and a half weeks until the first meeting of the Seattle Baseball Book Club!

Wait, I do have one useful thing to say. For all of you newly-converted yakyuu fans, Opening Day for the Pacific League is this Saturday at 1pm -- which is actually Friday night at 8pm in Seattle (thanks Sam - I got my timezone math backwards again). The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles will be playing the Nippon Ham Fighters at the Sapporo Dome, the Orix Buffaloes will be playing the Seibu Lions at the Invoice Dome, and the Chiba Lotte Marines will be playing the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks at the Yahoo Dome.

The last game is the most important, not only because these excellent teams played against each other in the PL playoffs last year, but because it's the one I know the link for if you want to watch it live over the Internet. I don't know what the other teams will be doing for live broadcasts this year if anything, but the Hawks will be streaming their home games over Yahoo again -- and thus, the Hawks-Marines Opening Day game will be watchable from this page via Yahoo. Several of the Japanese WBC players you enjoyed watching will probably be in that game -- Nishioka, Imae, and Satozaki of the Marines (and possibly relief pitchers Yabuta and Fujita; I'm not sure who's starting) and Kawasaki and Matsunaka of the Hawks (rumor is that the awesome Kazumi Saitoh is starting). And of course, the legendary Sadaharu Oh manages the Hawks and the ebullient Bobby Valentine manages the Marines. So stay tuned!

(EDIT: We've been informed that Kawasaki tweaked something sliding home to get through the Great Wall of Cuba, so he is sitting out the opener to make sure he doesn't aggravate it. So, uh, Matsunaka.)

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