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。
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