The first game I went to was a minor-league game at Lotte Urawa Stadium, where the Marines farm team plays. I had been there once before in November to, er, check it out, but I had never actually seen a game there. The opponent was the Yakult Swallows farm team. For anyone who knows the geography of Saitama -- the Marines play at a stadium near Musashi-Urawa station, and the Swallows play at a stadium on the water in Bijogi Park, kind of near Toda Koen station. Either way, their stadiums are a mile apart from each other, and both about 3-4 miles from where I live.
What ruled about this game is that it was absolutely free. I rode my bike there -- a nice 7-mile round trip -- and bike parking is free -- and admission is free -- and I brought a bottle of water and some raisin bread with me to eat. (I'm not sure I saw anyone selling food come to think of it, but I wasn't looking. They had vending machines for drinks.)
But, sadly, there are huge fences. Everywhere. You cannot avoid them. If you want to take pictures, you have to get there early, and set up in the front row so you can aim your camera through the fences. Which I didn't do -- I arrived at like 12:45pm for a 1pm game. Went around the Marines fan side and asked if any spots were open and was told no by many people. Saw Szu-yu Wu warming up in the bullpen and then decided to wander around to the Yakult side and see if I'd have more luck finding a seat there. On my way walking around the back of the stadium, I saw a really familiar-looking dude walking by with one of the coaches, and no joke, it was freaking Saburo! I thought about saying something like "ganbatte", but figured that if he was stuck on the farm team, he probably really didn't feel like listening to random gaijin fans wishing him luck.
On the Yakult side, there were no bench spots, but a guy was like "it's a little hard to see sometimes, but you can sit here," about the grassy hillside. So I figured what the heck, and plunked down on the ground with the people there. Thus for the first four innings of the game I ended up sitting on a semi-muddy hillside while hoping for a bench spot to clear up:
There are THREE benches for seating! Wow!
(In the fourth inning someone behind me left and this old guy was like "hey Gaijin-san, you can come sit up here". Which I did, because my legs were KILLING me from trying not to fall off the hill.)
There aren't any ouendan at these games as far as I can tell. It's actually fairly quiet all things considered -- there's not even really music or gimmicks or much of anything, just an announcer reading the player names as they come up to bat and all. It might be different at other stadiums -- I get the vague impression some minor league teams actually have mascots and bigger stadiums (like Yokohama's Shonan SeaRex, or the Fighters' Kamagaya mascot Cubby), but this was a pretty laid-back deal.
Anyway, the Marines KILLED the Swallows. To be fair, Yakult's farm team was really a farm team, but Lotte's farm team was actually half guys I think should be on the top team (Saburo, Takehara, Heiuchi, etc).
Here's my scorecard from the game. I admit that I didn't always see if the strikeouts were swinging or called so if I didn't write it down I've just put in swinging. And I think there were one or two times where someone stood up or sat down and I couldn't exactly see the play. You see, there are NO scoreboards there, no lists of players, not even a list of how many hits -- just one of those ones that lists the runs per inning, and a B/S/O light counter. However, IMO, this is an AWESOME fun challenge to keep score for, because I really have to listen well to the announcements and look at all the action on the field:
April 27, 2008 - Lotte Urawa Stadium
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Swallows (ni-gun) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 3
Marines (ni-gun) 2 1 1 5 0 0 2 0 x 11 14 1
Swallows AVG AB R H RB K BB SH SB E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Yoneno, C .000 4 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 KS .. KS .. .. KS .. .. E6
Mizuno, pr .333 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Kawabata, ss .429 3 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 KS .. .. F7 .. G3 .. .. BB
Miwa, pr .412 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Hatakeyama, 1b .244 4 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 KS .. .. G5 .. .. G4 .. S8
Onizaki, pr .170 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Miyade, rf .000 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. KS .. L6 .. .. G4 .. ..
Ueda, rf .196 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. G5
Ono, dh .313 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. KS .. .. S7 .. .. .. ..
Shida, pr-dh .278 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. G4 .. KS
Noguchi, lf .250 3 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 .. BB .. .. d1 .. .. G6 KC
Kajimoto, 2b .245 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 2 .. KS .. .. S7 .. .. BB ..
Ohhara, 3b .167 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 .. .. G6 .. L7 .. .. BB ..
Ohtsuka, cf .182 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. G6 .. .. F8 .. d6 ..
Marines AVG AB R H RB K BB SH SB E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hayasaka, 2b .245 4 1 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 E4 BB BB L9 .. KC .. KS ..
Satoh, rf .277 5 2 4 2 0 0 1 0 0 D7 s9 G1 S7 .. .. S4 S8 ..
Saburo, dh .667 5 2 3 3 1 1 0 0 0 S7 BB .. D8/KC .. .. H7 F9 ..
Takehara, lf .154 4 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 d4 F7 .. BB G5 .. G6 BB ..
Kohbe, 1b .232 4 2 2 1 0 2 0 1 0 BB .. H9 S9 G6 .. HP .. ..
Heiuchi, 3b .222 4 1 1 4 1 1 0 0 0 KS .. G1 H8 BB .. E6 .. ..
Minami, cf .162 5 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 .. KS S7 G5 F8 .. KS .. ..
Kanazawa, c .208 5 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. E4 KS D9 .. F9 G4 .. ..
M.Watanabe, ss .235 3 0 2 0 1 2 0 0 1 .. S6 S8 BB .. KC .. BB ..
Swallows ERA IP BF NP H HR K BBH RA ER
Takaichi (loss) 4.96 2.1 16 5 1 3 3 4 1
Maruyama 0.00 0.2 4 1 0 1 1 0 0
Nishizaki 18.00 1 10 5 1 1 2 5 5
Uehara 0.00 1 4 0 0 0 1 0 0
Okamoto 0.00 1 3 0 0 2 0 0 0
Yoshikawa 9.00 1 7 2 1 1 1 2 2
Kamada 0.00 1 6 1 0 1 2 0 0
Marines ERA IP BF NP H HR K BBH RA ER
Wu (win) 5.03 5 17 2 0 7 1 0 0
Tejima 3.60 2 6 0 0 1 0 0 0
Hattori 9.53 1 4 0 0 0 2 0 0
Aihara 2.03 1 6 1 0 2 1 1 0
(Batting averages and ERAs are from the Eastern League page on the official NPB site. I checked my numbers with the score summary for that day. BTW, I don't know how they estimate the audience at 775 people given that they don't charge admission or take tickets AND people just go in and out of the stadium all the time...)
Wu was REALLY dealing for the first three innings. Infact, he struck out the first 5 guys that Yakult brought to the plate, and had a no-hitter into the 4th, having only walked one guy, striking out 7 in the first three innings. It was really pretty crazy. (One of the guys he struck out was Ryuuji Miyade, but the third strike got dropped... and Miyade kinda started jogging to first, and one of the people yelled "RUN FASTER, MIYADE! DON'T YOU WANT TO GET BACK TO ICHI-GUN?")
Szu-yu Wu in the midst of striking out a whole bunch of people.
I snuck down for about 30 seconds to quickly aim my little camera through the fence and snap a few pictures, but in general just didn't bother taking any. Sometime I will come back on a weekday afternoon when I have no classes to teach, and then I will go crazy!! Hopefully.
You can also see by the density of that box score that the Marines batters were just teeing off on the Yakult pitchers. By the time four innings had gone by, they were already up 9-0. Some of this was due to errors -- Yakult second baseman Kajimoto dropped the ball not once but twice, both times leading to runners who scored. Takumi Kohbe led off the third inning with a home run that got tangled in the rightfield netting and fell back onto the field, and in the fourth inning Heiuchi hit a grand slam over the centerfield wall. The Marines would later tack on two more runs on a Saburo home run that flew over the leftfield wall.
To his credit, Miyade played right field nicely and made a lot of good plays, but he couldn't seem to get anywhere at the plate. Which disappointed me greatly since I really wanted to see him at first base standing next to Takumi Kohbe. Miyade is listed at 190cm and Kohbe at 191cm -- both about 6'5", which makes them among the tallest Japanese players out there.
Takumi Kohbe
Kohbe, by the way, is a monster. He's gigantic and strong and bats left-handed and if he ever gets his skills up to the ichi-gun level, is going to scare the crap out of some pitchers. I mean, that home run of his, he CLUBBED it. And even more funny, he stole a base in the first inning. He was the ONLY player to steal a base all day -- and that's counting all of those little fast dudes on Yakult.
The Swallows really didn't do anything for most of the game on offense. It was really pretty sad to watch an 11-1 blowout like that.
After the game, people were all trying to crowd the players for autographs as they were escaping the park. (The perils of having a disconnected clubhouse.) Saburo in particular looked like a rock star with a gigantic entourage following him. Some other minor-leaguers were just kind of hanging out -- one guy was even throwing pitches in the bullpen after the game. On the Yakult side, they had a team meeting and then the players had to go drag bags back from the bullpen and all. Pretty crazy how open and informal the entire deal really was. If I hadn't had to get home quickly afterwards, I would have stuck around to observe more and maybe get a few pictures of players, but alas. In most ways this was just a decision on a whim to go check out a minor-league game, and it was fun!
I went home, and then headed down to Jingu for the Chunichi game vs. the top Yakult team. More on that a bit later...
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