Tokyo Big 6 Fall Semester

Tokyo Big 6 released their Fall 2010 Schedule and also the preseason games in August and September. Hosei has the longest preseason stretch with the most games, starting with a game against Tsukuba University on August 5th and going through to the 6th of September. Hopefully this means they want to get in a lot of practice and claw their way back from finishing 5th last semester.

As for the season, the opening ceremony is September 11th at 10:15am. The rest is as follows:

Date            3rd      1st         3rd      1st
Week 1:
9/11            Keio  -  Tokyo       Hosei  - Waseda
9/12            Waseda - Hosei       Keio  -  Tokyo

Week 2:
9/18*           Meiji  - Tokyo       Hosei  - Rikkio
9/19*           Rikkio - Hosei       Tokyo  - Meiji

Week 3:
9/25            Keio  -  Rikkio      Waseda - Meiji
9/26            Meiji -  Waseda      Rikkio - Keio

Week 4:
10/2            Hosei  - Keio        Waseda - Tokyo
10/3            Tokyo  - Waseda      Keio  -  Hosei

Week 5:
10/9            Hosei  - Meiji       Tokyo  - Rikkio
10/10           Rikkio - Tokyo       Meiji  - Hosei

Week 6:
10/16           Meiji  - Keio        Waseda - Rikkio
10/17           Rikkio - Waseda      Keio  -  Meiji

Week 7:
10/23           Meiji  - Rikkio      Tokyo  - Hosei
10/24           Hosei  - Tokyo       Rikkio - Meiji

Week 8:
10/30           Waseda (Away, 1st) - Keio (Home, 3rd)
10/31           Keio (Away, 3rd) - Waseda (Home, 1st)

(The final week is what's called "Soukeisen" (or Keisousen depending on what college you cheer for) and is the biannual Waseda-Keio slugfest, so Waseda is always 1st base and Keio is always 3rd base regardless of who is the "home" team in either game.)

These are all Saturday-Sunday pairs, all games played at Jingu Stadium. They play best-of-3 matches each weekend, so if one team doesn't win both games, they go to a third game on Monday (and rainouts and ties will force it to Tuesday or Wednesday, which then wreaks havoc with the Tohto League game schedule). What this means is that in practice, Tokyo almost never plays Monday games, but you can usually count on at least one series per weekend going to 3 games otherwise.

The first game of the morning starts at 11am and the second one theoretically around 1:30pm, except for on September 18/19 when Yakult has evening games at Jingu, so the first game is at 10:30am, and they won't play into extra innings. (It's likely that a few rainouts at Jingu will also get rescheduled for weekends and push back a few other Big 6 games as well, but we won't know until later in September.)

Just like last year, prices are 1300 yen for special seating behind home plate, 1100 yen for normal infield unreserved, 800 yen for students (JHS, HS, college) for infield unreserved, 500 yen for "ouenseki" which means infield but past the base, and under the designation of the specific college's ouendan leaders (they can tell you where to sit and what to do). The outfield is free for women and for kids up through junior high school, and men of HS age or higher have to pay 700 yen -- except in Soukeisen, where everyone has to pay to get in. Kids up to elementary school get in free anywhere as long as they're with a paying adult.

What's crazy about this year is that since Hosei and Rikkio switched places, the typical Week 7 Hosei-Meiji and Tokyo-Rikkio matches that we've seen the last few semesters have been moved up to Week 5. And this year Ohishi isn't playing a game on his birthday (Oct 10th)...

Anyway, I will probably be at a good chunk of these games, particularly Saturdays where Hosei is playing.

I'll be missing most of the preseason games, but oddly enough, I had already planned a trip to Shikoku for the last weekend in August, so when I found out about the Botchan Stadium 10th Anniversary Tokyo Big 6 All-Star Game on August 28th, I was totally all over the idea of going to that. I've already got my ticket.

(And I'm going to cut this off and continue that in another post... despite being on vacation, I have no time to blog after all. Whoops.)