Knockdowns and coneheads

(Just an excuse for me to post some photo links.)

Last Tuesday there was a scuffle during the Buffaloes-Marines game; it seems that in the first inning Greg LaRocca got hit by a pitch and wasn't too happy about it, and when he grounded out to first in the next at-bat, he clipped Naoyuki Shimizu, the pitcher who was covering first. Next at-bat is Tuffy Rhodes, who gets a ball high and inside, and somehow ends up trying to beat up Tomoya Satozaki, the Lotte catcher.

Photo here. You know, I like Tuffy and all, but nobody punches my Satozaki and gets away with it.

Anyway, the second picture to share is from the all-star game. I'm sure everyone wondered exactly what Hichori Morimoto was going to be up to this year, after dressing up as Piccolo from Dragonball Z at last year's all-star game. It appears that this time around he dressed up as a Conehead of some sort, shown there posing for a picture with LaRocca. I get the impression he didn't keep this costume on for the whole game this time, though.

Third picture: Nobuhiko Matsunaka shaking hands with Randy Bass. I don't know why I found this funny, I just did.

As for the All-Star games themselves, if anyone's curious, the Central League plastered the Pacific League in both games (english boxscores provided via my translation scripts!):

Game 1: Central 4, Pacific 0
Game 2: Central 11, Pacific 5

This is kind of odd, because the Pacific League has been owning in interleague play AND in the last several Japan Series, so you'd sort of expect them to win the All-Star games too, wouldn't you?