Don't Mess With Benny

After three Marines players were hit by pitches in five at-bats, Benny Agbayani showed that he can throw baseballs AND throw catchers equally well.


Photo from Jiji.

See, Seibu had a magic number of 1 going into today's game. And for the first three innings everything was level at 0-0, but then into the top of the 4th, Shoitsu Ohmatsu hit a 2-run homer, and then there were a whole ton of hits, and then... and then Wakui hit Tomoya Satozaki on the elbow with a pitch... with the bases loaded. That made it 4-0. They switched pitchers to Koji Mitsui, who struck out Hashimoto before hitting Julio Zuleta on the elbow with ANOTHER pitch. Ohmatsu came up and hit a double for yet another 2 RBI (how often does a guy get 4 RBI in one inning without a grand slam, I wonder?)

Anyway, they switch pitchers to Ming-Chieh Hsu, who hits Benny in the left hip with a pitch. And well, Benny is PISSED OFF, with good reason. I don't know what Toru Hosokawa said to him, but a second or two later Benny just grabbed him and threw him to the ground, a perfect judo move, and a brawl started.

Here's a pretty good Youtube video of it. Go to 4:04 if you want to see the at-bat.



I feel bad that this had to happen on the same night as Sadaharu Oh's retirement speech and doage, Kenshin Kawakami's first appearance on the top team since the Olympics (and subsequent win PLUS getting hit PLUS Tatsunami finally crossing the Mendoza line), and the continuation of the deadlock between Hanshin and Yomiuri as both teams won their respective games today, plus a shout-out to Hiroshima for having awesome throwback uniforms.

But yeah. Don't mess with Benny.

Unfortunately, Seibu heads up to Sapporo after this and will play games against the Fighters on Friday and Saturday. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I think even if Seibu loses, if Orix loses too, Seibu clinches anyway, so it seems they'll be doing their beer-kake party with a ton of Sapporo beer.

(EDIT: I have been informed by Simon in the comments that Hosokawa will be out for a while with a dislocated shoulder. That actually sucks a lot. I know I joke all the time about hating on Hosokawa because all of his career grand slams have pretty much happened while I was watching him beat the Fighters, but this could actually be pretty bad for Seibu. Last time Hosokawa sat out with an injury, they got plastered 16-0 by Lotte...)