Brief NPB roundup

(But first a brief reminder: Book club is tomorrow! 4pm! Elliott Bay! Don't forget!)

Yokohama High School won the Koshien Spring Tournament for the first time since 1998, when Matsuzaka was their star pitcher. They beat Seiho 21-0, though, which is a crazy blowout. Seiho, the first school from Nagasaki to reach the Koshien finals, upset the perennial powerhouse PL Gakuen in the semi-finals. Of course, if Hokkaido's Komadai Tomakomai High School hadn't knocked themselves out of the tournament by having several team members caught illegally drinking and smoking, who knows what would have happened. They have Masahiro Tanaka, the kid who broke Matsuzaka's highschool strikeout record this past year. Hopefully his career won't end up too screwed by all the Komadai team issues (there was also a scandal with one of the coaches beating up players on the team a while back).

I saw a headline that said "Giants' Takahashi breaks cheek bone" and nearly fainted, until I saw it more specifically that pitcher Hisanori Takahashi was hit in the face by a foul ball that shot into the dugout during a Swallows-Giants game. Stupid common family names -- while that really really sucks for him, and means the Giants' pitching is going to be even worse, centerfielder Yoshinobu Takahashi is one of the few Giants I really like, and he was already coming off an injury to start the year, so I would have felt pretty bad for him. Plus, he's really cute, and taking a foul ball in the face would probably affect that quite a bit.

And last, but not least: HELLO CHIBA LOTTE MARINES, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Rakuten 13, Lotte 0. Now, I know Rakuten's keeping up their streak of only winning on Fridays, and also of only winning when Yasuhiro Ichiba is on the mound, but still. 13-0? You guys couldn't even score a single run on them? And you gave up THIRTEEN RUNS to RAKUTEN? Gaaaaaaaaahhhh. This is comparable to how lousy it'd be if the White Sox lost 13-0 to Kansas City. Conveniently, the White Sox are playing the Royals this weekend, so maybe we can test that theory.