And the Chiba Lotte Marines are your 2010 Japan Series champions!
I spent today watching college football (yes, the kind with the prolate spheroid) with Kozo down in Yokohama and told Steve that I'd "try to be back home in time to watch the 11th inning". It was a joke due to Game 6 ending in a 6-hour 15-inning tie. But infact... I got home in the 8th inning and it was a 7-6 game at the time with Lotte leading, and sure enough, Kazuhiro Wada hit a triple to lead off the bottom of the 9th and next thing you know, it was a tied 7-7 game in extra innings yet again.
In the 12th, with Asao still in (and Firearm IMing me to say that "Ochiai just went full retard, Asao for a 4th inning?!"), Imae walked, pitcher Itoh bunted him over and for once did NOT fail. Satozaki grounded out and then Okada -- who the announcers kept marvelling at how he went from being an ikusei player to playing at THE JAPAN SERIES -- slammed one out to right field, back to the wall, and well, when the dust cleared, Imae was in for the go-ahead 8-7 run and Okada the ikusei wonder was on 3rd.
Iwase got my beloved Heiuchi to hit a fly out but well, this game was over. The bottom of the 12th featured a Tanishige fly out, Ibata watches a 3rd strike go by for the second out, and then a pinch-hitting Fujii grounded out to short.
And the Marines are the champions.
It feels still very weird and detatched for me for whatever reason. And my TV feed cut out so I don't even know yet who got the MVP or anything else.
EDIT> Word in from Nagoya (ie, Steve, who is in the Lotte ouenseki) is that Imae is the Series MVP, which totally makes sense, just like he was in 2005. My god, has it seriously been 5 years since then? I still remember staying up until 6-7am every morning to track the Marines-Tigers games back then.
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tokyo Big 6, Week 7 Part 1 (and congrats to the Chunichi Dragons!)
It's gonna be a Dragons-Marines Japan Series! Hooray! That is interesting! Though if I do get to go to any games, I'm not sure what I'll do. Probly will wear like, a Marines t-shirt and a Dragons jersey together, or vice versa.
I only saw the last few innings of the final playoff game, though. It was 2-1 when I came in, then Chunichi went up 3-1 on a walked-in run after an intentional walk. Ouch. But then the Giants tied it up off Asao... and then finally, in the bottom of the 9th, a pinch-hitting Ryoji Nakata walked. Morino was up after him, so I was hoping for a Morino MVP Moment where he'd hit a home run. But no, he also walked. So instead, Kazuhiro Wada, Gifu's Giant-Killer (not really), came up and lined a single into left field. "RUN HOME, FAT BOY!" I yelled at my TV as Ryoji Nakata came in and was immediately pounced by the rest of his team as the Dragons won the game. HOORAY.
The reason I didn't see the game, of course, was because I was busy with college ball. Week 7 doesn't actually matter for the standings, so there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens. For example, I saw Yuugo Satoh make his league debut, pitching one inning for Rikkio. He's a lefty pitcher from Seibo Gakuen, in Saitama... and I saw him pitch last summer during the prefectural tournament. So that was exciting. Games like this involve an interesting combo of "let's give some new kids a chance to get out there" with "...let's give our 4th-years a chance to play in one final game", so there were definitely a few pinch-hitters or relief pitchers who were largely "Who?" to me, despite that I've been going to these games for several years now.
The game results were predictable though. Meiji beat Rikkio, and Hosei beat Todai. Though Todai captain Maeda was really giving it his all -- he pitched very well for a few innings until he ran out of steam, even striking out a few guys. Kagami pitched for Hosei and threw 8 innings in what should be his last college game ever; in the "give the 4th-years a chance" vein, Shoya Yamamoto pitched the 9th.
The exciting thing for me was that I got to meet not one but TWO boys who played on Koshien championship teams!
One was 2009 champion Chukyodai Chukyo's Kanji Kawai, now a freshman at Hosei. I was at the Koshien game last summer where he hit a sayonara homer in the 10th inning. So it's only fitting that in this game he also hit a 2-run homer. I didn't really get to talk to him, but after the game I gave him a stack of photos I'd printed of him in the spring, and I did get an autograph and a photo with him:
(That ball he's holding is his home run ball!)
The other was a lot more interesting. In the second game, I was sitting next to a random drunk Hosei alumni guy who wouldn't shut up, so that was kind of annoying, but next to him was a Hosei baseball club guy, and next to that guy was Mishima's girlfriend. An interesting mix, to be sure.
I finally asked the Hosei baseball guy who he was, since I had seen his face but couldn't remember, and it turned out he was Eiji Egashira! From the Saga Kita 2007 Miracle Kids team! He's now a sophomore at Hosei.
I only talked to him a little during the game itself, but afterwards he was outside by himself when I was waiting for players to come out, so I chatted with him for a while then.
I explained that I moved to Japan in 2007 and that his team's Koshien was my first ever, and that I'd actually been cheering for them. And so we got to talking. I asked if he wanted to face Yusuke Nomura again and he said that of course he did -- maybe next year. (Nomura was the losing pitcher when Egashira's school won Koshien.) We talked about his teammates -- I said that I'd seen Ichimaru-kun play for Waseda a bunch, and he said "Dude! How did he do? Were you at the Waseda-Meiji game?" and we looked at my scorebook (to which he was like "SUGOI!") and we saw that Ichimaru did get a hit off Nomura, and he said "I bet he was really happy. Shohei Habu was also on that Koryo team, now those two are teammates." And then he told me about where a bunch of the other kids are from that Saga Kita Miracle Squad. Almost all of the basic 9 are in college -- places like Chuo, Asia, Fukuoka-dai, various others. Egashira himself, he said he came to Hosei because he got a recommendation from his coach, and being in Big 6 was, in his mind, the top of the top, for playing in college.
And he also said "You've only been living here for 3 years? How do you speak Japanese so well?" and I said "...but I don't! I can talk about baseball very well but everything else is so difficult!"
I asked if he'd be playing in the rookie tournament this time around and he said "I injured my shoulder... I can't throw. I've started rehabbing it but the muscles are still messed up." I was like "OMG that sucks I'm so sorry to hear it. I wanted to see you play again!" He said "Thank you so much. Maybe next year?"
Anyway, he was really nice and I really enjoyed talking to him. It was very surreal to be talking to a guy who I watched on TV 3 years ago when he was in high school. He seemed very humble and very down-to-earth, like, sure, he was part of a team that achieved what every baseball-playing kid in Japan aspires to, but, whatever, he was just another random non-active Hosei baseball club member, for the time being.
Aside from that... I got a few other Hosei guys to be in photos with me...
Kazuki Mishima, who said he'll be pitching on Sunday...
Kota Imamura, who is a really nice guy. I gave him some photos too and talked for a while. I have this hunch he'll be the captain next year but can't really explain why.
I also found Ryo Imai and talked to him for a bit about his plans next year; he's not doing anything baseball-related at all but instead is going to try to get into the business of running a live music house, or a bar with open mic, or something. He's always seemed kind of unique so I think it's great he's trying to follow his own dream, and I told him so.
Some of the other guys have companies to play baseball for next year; captain Ohyagi is going to Oji Seishi, I think, and Kento Kameda is going to Mitsubishi, things like that. I also got autographs from Shoya Yamamoto and Fumiya Kitayama and gave them some photos I had of them from earlier on too.
Oh, and of course, I had to go talk to this guy for the last time... and give him some Halloween candies and wish him luck...
I asked him, "Are you nervous about the draft this week?"
He said "Honestly? Yeah, I am."
I said "Ganbatte. No matter where you end up, I will cheer for you."
He said thanks.
I'm really nervous for Kagami too, of course.
Anyway...
Between the first two games of the day I also was on a rampage for signatures, so picked up a bunch of Meiji guys; Ikenaga, Araki, Kawabe, and Shashiki. Only got one Rikkio guy, but it was a good one, Keisuke Okazaki.
And I got a photo with Shogo Shashiki! I was very happy about that. He's very nice in person, I'd never really talked to him much before beyond simply aisatsu, but always had this image of him being a tough-guy type since he was a year ahead of Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin. Instead, he turned out to be very sweet.
So, that was very cool. And I still have tomorrow to stalk more Meiji and Rikkio guys. Hooray!
I should add that the funniest of the Meiji guys was Shuhei Ikenaga -- I noticed him a year or two ago, he wears glasses and is a catcher, so of course my image is of him being cool like Furuta. And every time I've seen Ikenaga, even just as a bullpen catcher, he's always got a big smile on his face and is being cheerful and encouraging to the guys he's catching for. But trying to tell people that my favorite player on the team is a bullpen catcher is always kind of embarrassing. I'd never approached him before, so when I asked him for a signature he was like "...WTF? You want MY autograph?" and I said "YES! I think catchers who wear glasses are really cool!" He laughed. I told him I had two photos, please sign one and I'll give you the other, and he was like "seriously? you're awesome! thanks so much!" I'm glad to know that my perception of him was pretty close to the reality. Wish I'd gotten a photo with him, but the time between games is a little more frantic for the players trying to get to the team bus.
And for the record, Kazuki Nishijima was giving off a total "Do NOT come near me" aura as he RAN for the bus. So I didn't. Grr. Yusuke Nomura, on the other hand, bothered to say "My arm hurts, I'll sign stuff tomorrow, I promise."
I only saw the last few innings of the final playoff game, though. It was 2-1 when I came in, then Chunichi went up 3-1 on a walked-in run after an intentional walk. Ouch. But then the Giants tied it up off Asao... and then finally, in the bottom of the 9th, a pinch-hitting Ryoji Nakata walked. Morino was up after him, so I was hoping for a Morino MVP Moment where he'd hit a home run. But no, he also walked. So instead, Kazuhiro Wada, Gifu's Giant-Killer (not really), came up and lined a single into left field. "RUN HOME, FAT BOY!" I yelled at my TV as Ryoji Nakata came in and was immediately pounced by the rest of his team as the Dragons won the game. HOORAY.
The reason I didn't see the game, of course, was because I was busy with college ball. Week 7 doesn't actually matter for the standings, so there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens. For example, I saw Yuugo Satoh make his league debut, pitching one inning for Rikkio. He's a lefty pitcher from Seibo Gakuen, in Saitama... and I saw him pitch last summer during the prefectural tournament. So that was exciting. Games like this involve an interesting combo of "let's give some new kids a chance to get out there" with "...let's give our 4th-years a chance to play in one final game", so there were definitely a few pinch-hitters or relief pitchers who were largely "Who?" to me, despite that I've been going to these games for several years now.
The game results were predictable though. Meiji beat Rikkio, and Hosei beat Todai. Though Todai captain Maeda was really giving it his all -- he pitched very well for a few innings until he ran out of steam, even striking out a few guys. Kagami pitched for Hosei and threw 8 innings in what should be his last college game ever; in the "give the 4th-years a chance" vein, Shoya Yamamoto pitched the 9th.
The exciting thing for me was that I got to meet not one but TWO boys who played on Koshien championship teams!
One was 2009 champion Chukyodai Chukyo's Kanji Kawai, now a freshman at Hosei. I was at the Koshien game last summer where he hit a sayonara homer in the 10th inning. So it's only fitting that in this game he also hit a 2-run homer. I didn't really get to talk to him, but after the game I gave him a stack of photos I'd printed of him in the spring, and I did get an autograph and a photo with him:
(That ball he's holding is his home run ball!)
The other was a lot more interesting. In the second game, I was sitting next to a random drunk Hosei alumni guy who wouldn't shut up, so that was kind of annoying, but next to him was a Hosei baseball club guy, and next to that guy was Mishima's girlfriend. An interesting mix, to be sure.
I finally asked the Hosei baseball guy who he was, since I had seen his face but couldn't remember, and it turned out he was Eiji Egashira! From the Saga Kita 2007 Miracle Kids team! He's now a sophomore at Hosei.
I only talked to him a little during the game itself, but afterwards he was outside by himself when I was waiting for players to come out, so I chatted with him for a while then.
I explained that I moved to Japan in 2007 and that his team's Koshien was my first ever, and that I'd actually been cheering for them. And so we got to talking. I asked if he wanted to face Yusuke Nomura again and he said that of course he did -- maybe next year. (Nomura was the losing pitcher when Egashira's school won Koshien.) We talked about his teammates -- I said that I'd seen Ichimaru-kun play for Waseda a bunch, and he said "Dude! How did he do? Were you at the Waseda-Meiji game?" and we looked at my scorebook (to which he was like "SUGOI!") and we saw that Ichimaru did get a hit off Nomura, and he said "I bet he was really happy. Shohei Habu was also on that Koryo team, now those two are teammates." And then he told me about where a bunch of the other kids are from that Saga Kita Miracle Squad. Almost all of the basic 9 are in college -- places like Chuo, Asia, Fukuoka-dai, various others. Egashira himself, he said he came to Hosei because he got a recommendation from his coach, and being in Big 6 was, in his mind, the top of the top, for playing in college.
And he also said "You've only been living here for 3 years? How do you speak Japanese so well?" and I said "...but I don't! I can talk about baseball very well but everything else is so difficult!"
I asked if he'd be playing in the rookie tournament this time around and he said "I injured my shoulder... I can't throw. I've started rehabbing it but the muscles are still messed up." I was like "OMG that sucks I'm so sorry to hear it. I wanted to see you play again!" He said "Thank you so much. Maybe next year?"
Anyway, he was really nice and I really enjoyed talking to him. It was very surreal to be talking to a guy who I watched on TV 3 years ago when he was in high school. He seemed very humble and very down-to-earth, like, sure, he was part of a team that achieved what every baseball-playing kid in Japan aspires to, but, whatever, he was just another random non-active Hosei baseball club member, for the time being.
Aside from that... I got a few other Hosei guys to be in photos with me...
Kazuki Mishima, who said he'll be pitching on Sunday...
Kota Imamura, who is a really nice guy. I gave him some photos too and talked for a while. I have this hunch he'll be the captain next year but can't really explain why.
I also found Ryo Imai and talked to him for a bit about his plans next year; he's not doing anything baseball-related at all but instead is going to try to get into the business of running a live music house, or a bar with open mic, or something. He's always seemed kind of unique so I think it's great he's trying to follow his own dream, and I told him so.
Some of the other guys have companies to play baseball for next year; captain Ohyagi is going to Oji Seishi, I think, and Kento Kameda is going to Mitsubishi, things like that. I also got autographs from Shoya Yamamoto and Fumiya Kitayama and gave them some photos I had of them from earlier on too.
Oh, and of course, I had to go talk to this guy for the last time... and give him some Halloween candies and wish him luck...
I asked him, "Are you nervous about the draft this week?"
He said "Honestly? Yeah, I am."
I said "Ganbatte. No matter where you end up, I will cheer for you."
He said thanks.
I'm really nervous for Kagami too, of course.
Anyway...
Between the first two games of the day I also was on a rampage for signatures, so picked up a bunch of Meiji guys; Ikenaga, Araki, Kawabe, and Shashiki. Only got one Rikkio guy, but it was a good one, Keisuke Okazaki.
And I got a photo with Shogo Shashiki! I was very happy about that. He's very nice in person, I'd never really talked to him much before beyond simply aisatsu, but always had this image of him being a tough-guy type since he was a year ahead of Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin. Instead, he turned out to be very sweet.
So, that was very cool. And I still have tomorrow to stalk more Meiji and Rikkio guys. Hooray!
I should add that the funniest of the Meiji guys was Shuhei Ikenaga -- I noticed him a year or two ago, he wears glasses and is a catcher, so of course my image is of him being cool like Furuta. And every time I've seen Ikenaga, even just as a bullpen catcher, he's always got a big smile on his face and is being cheerful and encouraging to the guys he's catching for. But trying to tell people that my favorite player on the team is a bullpen catcher is always kind of embarrassing. I'd never approached him before, so when I asked him for a signature he was like "...WTF? You want MY autograph?" and I said "YES! I think catchers who wear glasses are really cool!" He laughed. I told him I had two photos, please sign one and I'll give you the other, and he was like "seriously? you're awesome! thanks so much!" I'm glad to know that my perception of him was pretty close to the reality. Wish I'd gotten a photo with him, but the time between games is a little more frantic for the players trying to get to the team bus.
And for the record, Kazuki Nishijima was giving off a total "Do NOT come near me" aura as he RAN for the bus. So I didn't. Grr. Yusuke Nomura, on the other hand, bothered to say "My arm hurts, I'll sign stuff tomorrow, I promise."
Monday, October 04, 2010
Photopost: Dragons Victory Sales!
I went to Nagoya for the weekend, and saw the Dragons lose their final game to the Swallows, but have a huge championship ceremony thing after the game anyway. More on that later. I'm a little swamped catching up on stuff, so here are some photos of what is REALLY important to the residents of Aichi Prefecture when the Dragons clinch the pennant: victory SALES!
Here I am in front of the big Victory Sale sign outside Bic Camera.
The next several shots are from the AEON Mall right by the Nagoya Dome...
Baskin Robbins had a victory sale sign up...
...but I am unclear what the sale was. Some kind of present for kids who got ice cream.
This place gave a 50 yen discount on negitorodon, which is basically raw tuna mixed with scallions on top of rice.
We actually got ice cream from this place, but not the sale items... they had 30-yen discounts on their waffle cone sundaes.
Here:s a jewelry store. Not sure what their discount was.
Another jewelry store which appears to just have a big 20% off sale going.
The middle of the mall -- I actually think these signs are always there, not special for this occasion.
A men's fashion store has a 20-50% sale on certain items.
This watch store, their deal was that if you bought a watch that cost more than 10,000 yen (a little over $100), you got 20% off. This is why these sales rarely matter for me.
A suit store had 20% off various suits.
Shoe store also had a 20% off sale going.
A drugstore in Nagoya station that had 10% off stuff (everything?) and also had a bunch of Doala dolls for sale, randomly... but they were pretty ugly.
Here I am in front of the big Victory Sale sign outside Bic Camera.
The next several shots are from the AEON Mall right by the Nagoya Dome...
Baskin Robbins had a victory sale sign up...
...but I am unclear what the sale was. Some kind of present for kids who got ice cream.
This place gave a 50 yen discount on negitorodon, which is basically raw tuna mixed with scallions on top of rice.
We actually got ice cream from this place, but not the sale items... they had 30-yen discounts on their waffle cone sundaes.
Here:s a jewelry store. Not sure what their discount was.
Another jewelry store which appears to just have a big 20% off sale going.
The middle of the mall -- I actually think these signs are always there, not special for this occasion.
A men's fashion store has a 20-50% sale on certain items.
This watch store, their deal was that if you bought a watch that cost more than 10,000 yen (a little over $100), you got 20% off. This is why these sales rarely matter for me.
A suit store had 20% off various suits.
Shoe store also had a 20% off sale going.
A drugstore in Nagoya station that had 10% off stuff (everything?) and also had a bunch of Doala dolls for sale, randomly... but they were pretty ugly.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Aoki's 200th Hit! And Some Rain! And some Ice Hockey!
On Saturday night, we saw Norichika Aoki get his 198th hit and 199th hit of the season... and get hit by a pitch in his last plate appearance. I said to Kozo, "Does this mean I have to come back tomorrow too? I'm watching ice hockey in Yokohama tomorrow with Simon..."
Naturally, Kozo said, "Drag him here too! Come late if you need to! We'll save seats."
So, that is exactly what I did -- Simon and I went straight from the Shin-Yokohama Skate Center to Meiji Jingu Stadium, with a brief stop to get raincoats, and we arrived at the top of section D right after the Chunichi Dragons scored their first run of the game on an RBI single by my favorite Dragons player, Masahiko Morino, aka Dragonbutt.
The important thing is, we were there for Aoki's first at-bat of the game. I had a feeling it would happen like this -- just like in October 2004 when my friend Brian and I rushed like heck to get to Safeco Field for Ichiro's first at-bat when he got his 257th hit of the year, and then broke the single-season record on his next at-bat. You just kind of know that if you're not there, you'll miss it.
Anyway, Aoki comes up to bat, he's the leadoff man for the Swallows. It's sprinkling rain, but everyone who has something 200-hit-related has their posterboards ready to hold up. So we're cheering and yelling and cheering and yelling, and on the third pitch, BLAM, Aoki hits a low line drive fly ball to right field. It's going, and going, and HEY IT ENTERED THE STANDS AND AOKI'S 200TH HIT OF THE SEASON IS A GAME-TYING HOME RUN!
Homerun!
People hold up signs and start high-fiving and getting out umbrellas for Tokyo Ondo and all.
They don't stop the game exactly but they do announce the feat and put this up on the board for a bit -- it says, basically, that it's honoring Aoki's achievement of hitting 200 hits in a season for the second time.
This is actually from the 7th-inning stretch but should give you an idea of some of the stuff people had prepared in the stands for this game.
After that, Ryosuke Morioka, a former Dragon, came up and got a hit, and was driven in by Jamie D'Antona to make the score 2-1.
Morioka also got a hit in the 2nd inning... and as the Swallows were preparing to take the field for the top of the 3rd, and the Dragons were getting ready to bat...
...the rain started falling a bit heavier, and the umpires called a rain delay.
Kozo apparently spent the entire rain delay singing pop music that was playing over the loudspeakers (he claims that he got in a good 10 minutes of "Don't Stop Believin"), while Simon and I chose to go wander around the concourse and eat food and talk about Yoshinori, who started the game for the Swallows.
The rain delay lasted about 30 minutes, and the game got underway again with rain still falling, but not falling particularly hard. We got the impression that perhaps they were going to do their best to get in at least 5 innings so the game would become official and Aoki's homerun and 200th hit would stand. (If the game got called, everything would be wiped from the records, and he would be back at 199 hits.)
Of course, the joke was that we needed to keep going "for Morioka's sake", to keep HIS two hits.
As it is, Yoshinori managed to pitch SIX PERFECT INNINGS after the rain delay, and handed the ball over to Chang-Yong Lim for the 9th... and with the score becoming 3-1 on a solo homer by Shinya Miyamoto in the bottom of the 6th, the Swallows hung on to win the game. Hooray.
Final score.
I like to title this one "God looks down on the masses". No, just kidding, it's Aoki's hero interview.
Tsubakuro butts in to take a photo with Aoki. Too cute.
I feel a little bit guilty cheering against the Dragons, but basically, I'm a Fighters fan first and foremost, and an anti-Giants fan. After that, I'm not that picky, and Jingu is my second home, after all. (And to be fair, I still sang Morino's cheer song even from the other side, much to everyone's chagrin.)
Also, while I'm at it, did I mention that we watched some hockey? Despite that Simon is too busy to update his blog, he's still pretty much up-to-date on what's going on in Asia League hockey. Me, I've become vaguely familiar with the players over the last 3 years, but since I'm not a hockey expert, it's hard for me to really analyze what the hell these guys are capable of, besides that I can clearly see some guys score more goals than others and some goalkeepers are more insane than others.
So we watched the Tohoku Free Blades take on the Nippon Paper Cranes (another one of those unfortunate company names like the Fighters, the company is Nippon Paper, the team is not the "Paper Cranes", appropriate as that might be). The Free Blades just formed last year in the wake of Seibu's ice hockey team going away, and they were horrible last year, but the team we saw this time started off strong and we seriously thought they were going to win -- they were up 3-1 at one point -- but then the Cranes, veteran championship team that they are, came back to win 4-3 in overtime.
It seems that basically the Free Blades added a few new foreign players, including a new Korean kid right out of college named Hyeok Kim, and also a few new players in general, in addition to picking up the Kawai brothers (Takuma and Ryuichi) mid-season last year, and now filling out the rest of the Tanaka Brothers Set (Go, Sho, and Ryo; Go is the team captain and he spent last year playing in Germany), and then had more time to train together as a unit... they definitely looked more cohesive than last year. And goalie Michio Hashimoto seems to be as solid as ever.
The Cranes seem to be the same team that have been beating up the rest of the Asia League for the last few years, give or take 2-3 players. Notably, I noticed that Darcy Mitani got released and is now playing for the Korean High1 team in Chuncheon. That kind of sucks. But other than that, they looked largely the same as I remember them, with Itoh and Obara and Chris Yule leading the way; Masahito Nishiwaki was in the game a lot but not nearly as aggressive as I expected. The Cranes' goalie this time was Kiyokawa instead of Ishikawa, too.
I didn't really take notes at this game, so I'm just going to throw some photos up that I took with my little point-and-shoot camera:
Face-off was supposed to be at 2pm, but there was some kind of Zamboni Error. Here a bunch of the Cranes players come out to see what's going on, as some staff try to fix the ice.
We were sitting right behind the announcers and scorers. I really enjoy being so close to the rink at games in Japan.
Free Blades line.
Cranes line gets ready on the other side.
Ceremonial First Puck. This kid was apparently the first person to enter the arena that day.
And a real face-off.
Here's the entertainment on the ice between the first two periods, some figure-skater dancer types.
Also during that first break, the Free Blades mascot was sitting a few rows ahead of us (it was technically a Free Blades home game even though we were in Yokohama instead of Tohoku somewhere), and a few people went up to try to get photos of the mascot with their kids, so I was like, "Simon, we gotta go up there too!"
So we did.
The dude behind Simon's arm is a guy from Washington DC, and he gave me a lot of crap for wearing a Flyers shirt, like "What the hell do I have to do to escape you bastards, I come halfway across the planet and I still find Flyers fans?" Rather than admit that I'm just Philadelphia-born, haven't lived there since the 90's, and can probably only name like 3 current Flyers players off the top of my head, I just let Simon do the talking since he follows hockey and actually knows about the Capitals and all. But this DC dude actually yelled "Flyers suck!" at me when he saw me later. Sheesh. It's pretty standard to just wear any hockey gear you have at all to games in Japan, and I'm hoping to get up to Nikko later this year since they actually wear orange and black as their colors, so the Flyers shirt will fit in better there.
Blades are up 2-0 in the second period. Amazing.
The slowest penalty shot known to man.
A zamboni AND a remote-controlled blimp advertising the Xebio sports store chain! Whee!
Puck-throwing, which was the entertainment between the 2nd and 3rd periods -- a bunch of kids tried to hit a sign in the center of the ice. I dunno. We went off to get Simon outfitted in a Free Blades t-shirt at that point anyway.
Simon came back a bit later with this -- nori-covered shoyu dango sticks labelled as the "Tanaka Three Brothers" dango. And it had been signed by two of the three Tanaka brothers (Go and Sho; Ryo is the youngest so we're pretty sure he didn't come with the team this time). This is funny because of a song from a while back called "Dango Sankyodai" -- or "the three dumpling brothers", that was a hit in Japan about 10 years ago. I had no idea at the time that several years later I would meet the singer Kentaro Hayami at Kamagaya, when he started doing all of the Fighters songs for them. Go figure.
Anyway, the dango themselves were just average-tasting, but since Go Tanaka is the team captain, it was kinda cool that Simon got the signed label thingy. There are a LOT of brother pairs in Japanese hockey... it makes sense, really, that the most elite players would probably be kids who grew up skating together from a very young age. Like how Takuma Kawai says that at the age of 3 he just started following older brother Ryuichi to hockey practice, and grew up with the sport.
Cranes celebrate scoring a goal.
Tie game, two guys in the penalty boxes, and less than 2 minutes left on the clock. Oh, the suspense!
Cranes pileup right in front of us after captain Ohsawa shot the winning goal a few minutes into overtime.
Final score.
It really was a very close game, and Simon kept saying he was impressed by how the Blades looked out there. We figure they just ran out of steam, and the veteran Cranes team kept their momentum going and didn't give up when they were down a few points, but found a few openings and took advantage of them.
I'm hoping to do a few hockey roadtrips before I leave Japan this winter. Koriyama is a definite, and hopefully Nikko. We'll see. Nikko signed Yutaka Fukufuji this year, it would be kind of neat to see him play here.
I've taken some much better hockey photos in the past (like this set from the Seibu-Cranes championship Game 7 from the 2008-2009 season) with my real camera but haven't really put a lot of them online, usually due to timing. I should, at some point.
Naturally, Kozo said, "Drag him here too! Come late if you need to! We'll save seats."
So, that is exactly what I did -- Simon and I went straight from the Shin-Yokohama Skate Center to Meiji Jingu Stadium, with a brief stop to get raincoats, and we arrived at the top of section D right after the Chunichi Dragons scored their first run of the game on an RBI single by my favorite Dragons player, Masahiko Morino, aka Dragonbutt.
The important thing is, we were there for Aoki's first at-bat of the game. I had a feeling it would happen like this -- just like in October 2004 when my friend Brian and I rushed like heck to get to Safeco Field for Ichiro's first at-bat when he got his 257th hit of the year, and then broke the single-season record on his next at-bat. You just kind of know that if you're not there, you'll miss it.
Anyway, Aoki comes up to bat, he's the leadoff man for the Swallows. It's sprinkling rain, but everyone who has something 200-hit-related has their posterboards ready to hold up. So we're cheering and yelling and cheering and yelling, and on the third pitch, BLAM, Aoki hits a low line drive fly ball to right field. It's going, and going, and HEY IT ENTERED THE STANDS AND AOKI'S 200TH HIT OF THE SEASON IS A GAME-TYING HOME RUN!
Homerun!
People hold up signs and start high-fiving and getting out umbrellas for Tokyo Ondo and all.
They don't stop the game exactly but they do announce the feat and put this up on the board for a bit -- it says, basically, that it's honoring Aoki's achievement of hitting 200 hits in a season for the second time.
This is actually from the 7th-inning stretch but should give you an idea of some of the stuff people had prepared in the stands for this game.
After that, Ryosuke Morioka, a former Dragon, came up and got a hit, and was driven in by Jamie D'Antona to make the score 2-1.
Morioka also got a hit in the 2nd inning... and as the Swallows were preparing to take the field for the top of the 3rd, and the Dragons were getting ready to bat...
...the rain started falling a bit heavier, and the umpires called a rain delay.
Kozo apparently spent the entire rain delay singing pop music that was playing over the loudspeakers (he claims that he got in a good 10 minutes of "Don't Stop Believin"), while Simon and I chose to go wander around the concourse and eat food and talk about Yoshinori, who started the game for the Swallows.
The rain delay lasted about 30 minutes, and the game got underway again with rain still falling, but not falling particularly hard. We got the impression that perhaps they were going to do their best to get in at least 5 innings so the game would become official and Aoki's homerun and 200th hit would stand. (If the game got called, everything would be wiped from the records, and he would be back at 199 hits.)
Of course, the joke was that we needed to keep going "for Morioka's sake", to keep HIS two hits.
As it is, Yoshinori managed to pitch SIX PERFECT INNINGS after the rain delay, and handed the ball over to Chang-Yong Lim for the 9th... and with the score becoming 3-1 on a solo homer by Shinya Miyamoto in the bottom of the 6th, the Swallows hung on to win the game. Hooray.
Final score.
I like to title this one "God looks down on the masses". No, just kidding, it's Aoki's hero interview.
Tsubakuro butts in to take a photo with Aoki. Too cute.
I feel a little bit guilty cheering against the Dragons, but basically, I'm a Fighters fan first and foremost, and an anti-Giants fan. After that, I'm not that picky, and Jingu is my second home, after all. (And to be fair, I still sang Morino's cheer song even from the other side, much to everyone's chagrin.)
Also, while I'm at it, did I mention that we watched some hockey? Despite that Simon is too busy to update his blog, he's still pretty much up-to-date on what's going on in Asia League hockey. Me, I've become vaguely familiar with the players over the last 3 years, but since I'm not a hockey expert, it's hard for me to really analyze what the hell these guys are capable of, besides that I can clearly see some guys score more goals than others and some goalkeepers are more insane than others.
So we watched the Tohoku Free Blades take on the Nippon Paper Cranes (another one of those unfortunate company names like the Fighters, the company is Nippon Paper, the team is not the "Paper Cranes", appropriate as that might be). The Free Blades just formed last year in the wake of Seibu's ice hockey team going away, and they were horrible last year, but the team we saw this time started off strong and we seriously thought they were going to win -- they were up 3-1 at one point -- but then the Cranes, veteran championship team that they are, came back to win 4-3 in overtime.
It seems that basically the Free Blades added a few new foreign players, including a new Korean kid right out of college named Hyeok Kim, and also a few new players in general, in addition to picking up the Kawai brothers (Takuma and Ryuichi) mid-season last year, and now filling out the rest of the Tanaka Brothers Set (Go, Sho, and Ryo; Go is the team captain and he spent last year playing in Germany), and then had more time to train together as a unit... they definitely looked more cohesive than last year. And goalie Michio Hashimoto seems to be as solid as ever.
The Cranes seem to be the same team that have been beating up the rest of the Asia League for the last few years, give or take 2-3 players. Notably, I noticed that Darcy Mitani got released and is now playing for the Korean High1 team in Chuncheon. That kind of sucks. But other than that, they looked largely the same as I remember them, with Itoh and Obara and Chris Yule leading the way; Masahito Nishiwaki was in the game a lot but not nearly as aggressive as I expected. The Cranes' goalie this time was Kiyokawa instead of Ishikawa, too.
I didn't really take notes at this game, so I'm just going to throw some photos up that I took with my little point-and-shoot camera:
Face-off was supposed to be at 2pm, but there was some kind of Zamboni Error. Here a bunch of the Cranes players come out to see what's going on, as some staff try to fix the ice.
We were sitting right behind the announcers and scorers. I really enjoy being so close to the rink at games in Japan.
Free Blades line.
Cranes line gets ready on the other side.
Ceremonial First Puck. This kid was apparently the first person to enter the arena that day.
And a real face-off.
Here's the entertainment on the ice between the first two periods, some figure-skater dancer types.
Also during that first break, the Free Blades mascot was sitting a few rows ahead of us (it was technically a Free Blades home game even though we were in Yokohama instead of Tohoku somewhere), and a few people went up to try to get photos of the mascot with their kids, so I was like, "Simon, we gotta go up there too!"
So we did.
The dude behind Simon's arm is a guy from Washington DC, and he gave me a lot of crap for wearing a Flyers shirt, like "What the hell do I have to do to escape you bastards, I come halfway across the planet and I still find Flyers fans?" Rather than admit that I'm just Philadelphia-born, haven't lived there since the 90's, and can probably only name like 3 current Flyers players off the top of my head, I just let Simon do the talking since he follows hockey and actually knows about the Capitals and all. But this DC dude actually yelled "Flyers suck!" at me when he saw me later. Sheesh. It's pretty standard to just wear any hockey gear you have at all to games in Japan, and I'm hoping to get up to Nikko later this year since they actually wear orange and black as their colors, so the Flyers shirt will fit in better there.
Blades are up 2-0 in the second period. Amazing.
The slowest penalty shot known to man.
A zamboni AND a remote-controlled blimp advertising the Xebio sports store chain! Whee!
Puck-throwing, which was the entertainment between the 2nd and 3rd periods -- a bunch of kids tried to hit a sign in the center of the ice. I dunno. We went off to get Simon outfitted in a Free Blades t-shirt at that point anyway.
Simon came back a bit later with this -- nori-covered shoyu dango sticks labelled as the "Tanaka Three Brothers" dango. And it had been signed by two of the three Tanaka brothers (Go and Sho; Ryo is the youngest so we're pretty sure he didn't come with the team this time). This is funny because of a song from a while back called "Dango Sankyodai" -- or "the three dumpling brothers", that was a hit in Japan about 10 years ago. I had no idea at the time that several years later I would meet the singer Kentaro Hayami at Kamagaya, when he started doing all of the Fighters songs for them. Go figure.
Anyway, the dango themselves were just average-tasting, but since Go Tanaka is the team captain, it was kinda cool that Simon got the signed label thingy. There are a LOT of brother pairs in Japanese hockey... it makes sense, really, that the most elite players would probably be kids who grew up skating together from a very young age. Like how Takuma Kawai says that at the age of 3 he just started following older brother Ryuichi to hockey practice, and grew up with the sport.
Cranes celebrate scoring a goal.
Tie game, two guys in the penalty boxes, and less than 2 minutes left on the clock. Oh, the suspense!
Cranes pileup right in front of us after captain Ohsawa shot the winning goal a few minutes into overtime.
Final score.
It really was a very close game, and Simon kept saying he was impressed by how the Blades looked out there. We figure they just ran out of steam, and the veteran Cranes team kept their momentum going and didn't give up when they were down a few points, but found a few openings and took advantage of them.
I'm hoping to do a few hockey roadtrips before I leave Japan this winter. Koriyama is a definite, and hopefully Nikko. We'll see. Nikko signed Yutaka Fukufuji this year, it would be kind of neat to see him play here.
I've taken some much better hockey photos in the past (like this set from the Seibu-Cranes championship Game 7 from the 2008-2009 season) with my real camera but haven't really put a lot of them online, usually due to timing. I should, at some point.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Matt Murton gets 200 hits
We interrupt my normal trying-to-write-entries by the fact that I'm watching the Chunichi-Hanshin game on BS1. Matt Murton got his 200th hit of the season, a home run to left field off Kazuki Yoshimi... and the game didn't stop at all (though BS1 put a 200安打達成 line on the screen when replaying the HR). No flowers, no announcement, no nothing beyond the normal high-fives after a player's home run.
Well, Murton's next at-bat he cranks one off Masafumi Hirai that bounces on top of the centerfield wall, and is first waved around as a homer, then Ochiai comes out to argue and the umpires take it back and make it a ground rule double.
It's nuts, really. I've seen the NPB stop games and give flowers to guys for less impressive milestones. I guess maybe it's because Hanshin is the away team, but... I'm wondering, if Modasho Boy makes it to 200 too, what they'll do to commemorate the moment.
Heck, I almost think there was more of a celebration for it being Naomichi Donoue's 22nd birthday today.
Murton, for his part, seems to be taking this all very much in stride; they keep showing him on TV and he's just... out there doing his job like it's any other game. Very stoic, very Japanese. No wonder he's doing so well this year :)
(Anyway, the real message here is, congratulations to Murton. I don't follow the Tigers much, but it's a fantastic accomplishment regardless of what country a ballplayer was born in.)
EDIT>
Murton WAS the game hero in the end. They only showed the first part of his hero interview on the BS1 broadcast, though.
First he came out and tried to say, in Japanese, "神様は私の力です。" (God is my power.)
The interviewer asked, basically, "You got your 200th hit today, how are you feeling?"
"I'm so thankful. I'm humbled by the whole thing. I have such respect for this league. I first want to first say thank you to God and to my family, to the organization, the coaching staff and my teammates that made this possible."
"--And how can I forget the fans? Can you get that in there? Make sure..."
Then the next question was, "What's your secret to staying healthy and hitting well?"
"There's really no secret. You work hard, you have a god-given ability, and then you're given an opportunity. An opportunity is all I could ever ask for and I've been given that, this organization's been good to me and my family and made it a lot more comfortable for us and a lot easier, so I thank them, and we've still got a ways to go here yet, though."
And then it cut out, so I have no idea what else he said, or whether they presented him with anything cool afterwards. I was only watching this game in the first place because today's a national holiday so I had the day off, but it's raining, so all the college/etc baseball games outdoors got cancelled.
Well, Murton's next at-bat he cranks one off Masafumi Hirai that bounces on top of the centerfield wall, and is first waved around as a homer, then Ochiai comes out to argue and the umpires take it back and make it a ground rule double.
It's nuts, really. I've seen the NPB stop games and give flowers to guys for less impressive milestones. I guess maybe it's because Hanshin is the away team, but... I'm wondering, if Modasho Boy makes it to 200 too, what they'll do to commemorate the moment.
Heck, I almost think there was more of a celebration for it being Naomichi Donoue's 22nd birthday today.
Murton, for his part, seems to be taking this all very much in stride; they keep showing him on TV and he's just... out there doing his job like it's any other game. Very stoic, very Japanese. No wonder he's doing so well this year :)
(Anyway, the real message here is, congratulations to Murton. I don't follow the Tigers much, but it's a fantastic accomplishment regardless of what country a ballplayer was born in.)
EDIT>
Murton WAS the game hero in the end. They only showed the first part of his hero interview on the BS1 broadcast, though.
First he came out and tried to say, in Japanese, "神様は私の力です。" (God is my power.)
The interviewer asked, basically, "You got your 200th hit today, how are you feeling?"
"I'm so thankful. I'm humbled by the whole thing. I have such respect for this league. I first want to first say thank you to God and to my family, to the organization, the coaching staff and my teammates that made this possible."
"--And how can I forget the fans? Can you get that in there? Make sure..."
Then the next question was, "What's your secret to staying healthy and hitting well?"
"There's really no secret. You work hard, you have a god-given ability, and then you're given an opportunity. An opportunity is all I could ever ask for and I've been given that, this organization's been good to me and my family and made it a lot more comfortable for us and a lot easier, so I thank them, and we've still got a ways to go here yet, though."
And then it cut out, so I have no idea what else he said, or whether they presented him with anything cool afterwards. I was only watching this game in the first place because today's a national holiday so I had the day off, but it's raining, so all the college/etc baseball games outdoors got cancelled.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Game Report: Giants vs. Dragons @ Tokyo Dome - MORINOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
TLDR version: Morino went 4-for-5 including a double and a homerun, scored 3 runs, Tony Blanco also had 3 RBIs in 3 hits, the Dragons scored a bunch of runs off Dicky Gonzalez and except for the 5th inning where Dragons starter Kazuki Yoshimi gave up 4 runs to the Giants culminating in Ogasawara's Clean-Shaven Doppleganger hitting a 3-run homer, which made it kinda close at 5-4, but the game eventually widened to 7-4 and Iwase closed it out successfully to put the Dragons in first place, half a game up on the Giants! Hooray!
Cheering for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome is pure awesome because there are so many added little "DIE GIANTS DIE" kinds of things into the standard cheers. It'd be even better if the Chunichi ouendan could get their act together and actually get licenses to have trumpets and drums and leaders at games in the Kanto region, but whatever. (Seriously, this will now be the 3rd season without ouendan at the Tokyo Dome if it goes on like this, since the yakuza episode.) I happened to be sitting behind a few guys I recognize as being unofficial cheer leader types, or more like, they're really freaking loud and know all the songs and despise the Giants and coordinate with another group of similarly loud people sitting a few rows back.
I showed up at the Tokyo Dome a little after 5pm wearing my favorite t-shirt, which I covered up fairly quickly with my Morino #31 jersey and all my other Morino #31 stuff. Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino wears #30 this year, but I noticed that very few fans of his actually care and almost all still had #31 jerseys for him. See, the team offered Morino #3 after Tatsunami retired, and he briefly said yes, then a few days (weeks?) later said "Wait a minute, I can't dishonor Tatsunami like that. I am nowhere near as great as he is and cannot wear #3 properly." But by the time that happened, they had already re-assigned #31, so they gave him #30, vacated by Nomoto who took Kazuki Inoue's old #9. But Morino has changed numbers so many times in his career that I think most people have just given up on changing their replica jerseys.
Anyway, I got to talking with the guys sitting behind me, since they had ouenka papers and I had no clue where to get one; turns out I'd missed someone handing them out. They were nice enough to give me one of theirs, "we can share ours, the only new cheers we don't know are Blanco and Nomoto's, really." It turned out they were both from Aichi prefecture but just started college in Tokyo, and one of the guys went to the same high school as outfielder Atsushi Fujii, so we reviewed his cheer song together, "just in case he actually plays today", and then they were like "Why the hell are YOU a Dragons fan?" and I had to explain that I'm really a Fighters fan, started cheering the Dragons several years ago thanks to a close friend in Gifu, and now I really just love Morino and despise the Giants. They were cool with that.
So, anyway. Amidst the chaos of the discombobulated ouendan, I managed to kinda pick up Tony Blanco's new ouenka. It has a fanfare which I decided was irrelevant, and then a semi-catchy actual song...
Ima da koko de misero, aoki toushi tagirasete
Teki o hirumaseru ichida, hanate, haruka kanata
Kattobase, Blanco! (Yomiuri taose o!)
You gotta love this video because of the guys in front of me giving the middle finger to the Giants bleachers every time they yelled the last part, which means "DEFEAT THE GIANTS!"
The cool thing is, Blanco led off the 2nd inning with a single, and then Wada followed it up with a single, and then Ibata followed THAT up with a double to score Blanco and make it 1-0! We changed to the Uchimakure chance theme and that led to consecutive sac flies to center by Kei Nomoto and Motonobu Tanishige to make it 3-0!
The Dragons widened their lead to 5-0 in the 5th inning when Araki led off with a single, Ohshima bunted him up successfully (in the first inning Araki had led off with a double and then got out at third on a terrible bunt by Ohshima, so), and then Morino singled to right-center! Araki almost scored but had to go back and hold at third, and in the meantime as the ball was thrown towards home, Morino managed to stretch it into a double, headsliding into second base safely. Woo! Tony Blanco then hit a single that scored the other two guys, and Wada walked, and THEN the Giants took out Gonzalez, put in Satoshi Fukuda (seriously, "dare aitsu?") who got a double play to end the inning.
Then, yeah, Yoshimi ran into a bit of a rough spot in the Giants' half of the 5th. Shinnosuke Abe led off with a double, and then Seung-Yeop Le singled, which put Abe at third. Sakamoto also singled, which scored Abe to make it 5-1. Matsumoto, who is having a monster start so far, grounded out to third and advanced the runners (I'd hoped Morino would make a play at somewhere besides first, but it didn't work out that way), not that it mattered as OCD hit one of his signature low line drive home runs into the Giants' cheering section to make it 5-4. Grumble.
But it worked out okay. I got out my towel to cheer for Morino again in the 7th inning, the guys behind me were like "Your guy is kicking butt tonight!", and then Morino hit a double into the gap in left-center! Immediately after that Tony Blanco also hit the ball to center. Morino scored, and Blanco tried to stretch it into a double and found himself out at second, but at least he got the run in. 6-4.
And the last Chunichi run was Morino's 5th at-bat, and 4th hit, which was a beautiful home run into the right-field stands hit off of Kiyoshi Toyoda. The entire stadium was silent, and then suddenly we realized it was a home run and all went crazy. Everyone around me was high-fiving me because I had been going so crazy for Morino the entire game. So, 7-4.
Hitoki Iwase closed out the game 1-2-3. We all stood up for the final batter, which was Edgar Gonzalez, and just yelled "I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE!" until it was over.
Not a lot of postgame celebrating though, because there isn't really a cohesive ouendan, which makes it difficult. Plus, the Giants games at the Tokyo Dome don't show hero interviews for the visiting team, which is SUPER lame. (I did learn later that the game hero WAS infact my boy Morino, though.) So we did the 1-9 lineup songs, then an Ochiai cheer, a round of Moe Yo Dragons, and... dispersed.
It was a pretty good evening, really.
Oh, incase any of Tyrone Woods's fans or friends still read this blog... one of the guys sitting in front of me still was wearing this jersey:
I swear I was tempted several times during the game to just start singing the "T!" ouenka.
That guy was also waving this apparatus around from time to time:
Which is a Jaws shark chewing up a white Giabbit doll that they were writing nasty stuff all over.
It might just be that I mostly only cheer for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome these days, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the difference in the mood in the Dragons cheering section as opposed to like, the Fighters; Dragons fans tend to do a lot more booing and swearing, certainly, and have a lot less family and a lot more scary-looking dudes. On the other hand I have found that passionately hating the Giants will usually get me at least tolerated in the crowd, so.
And on one last note: I really like Kei Nomoto's cheer song this year quite a bit. It ends in this line of "KagayaKE, HabataKE, Nomoto KEI!" Very catchy. Given that Nomoto is pretty much the only regular on the team under the age of 30 (scary, huh?) it's good that they have something like that to be around for a while.
Tomorrow (or more like, in about 8 hours) the Tokyo Big 6 league starts! I better get like 3 hours of sleep and go to Jingu!
Cheering for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome is pure awesome because there are so many added little "DIE GIANTS DIE" kinds of things into the standard cheers. It'd be even better if the Chunichi ouendan could get their act together and actually get licenses to have trumpets and drums and leaders at games in the Kanto region, but whatever. (Seriously, this will now be the 3rd season without ouendan at the Tokyo Dome if it goes on like this, since the yakuza episode.) I happened to be sitting behind a few guys I recognize as being unofficial cheer leader types, or more like, they're really freaking loud and know all the songs and despise the Giants and coordinate with another group of similarly loud people sitting a few rows back.
I showed up at the Tokyo Dome a little after 5pm wearing my favorite t-shirt, which I covered up fairly quickly with my Morino #31 jersey and all my other Morino #31 stuff. Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino wears #30 this year, but I noticed that very few fans of his actually care and almost all still had #31 jerseys for him. See, the team offered Morino #3 after Tatsunami retired, and he briefly said yes, then a few days (weeks?) later said "Wait a minute, I can't dishonor Tatsunami like that. I am nowhere near as great as he is and cannot wear #3 properly." But by the time that happened, they had already re-assigned #31, so they gave him #30, vacated by Nomoto who took Kazuki Inoue's old #9. But Morino has changed numbers so many times in his career that I think most people have just given up on changing their replica jerseys.
Anyway, I got to talking with the guys sitting behind me, since they had ouenka papers and I had no clue where to get one; turns out I'd missed someone handing them out. They were nice enough to give me one of theirs, "we can share ours, the only new cheers we don't know are Blanco and Nomoto's, really." It turned out they were both from Aichi prefecture but just started college in Tokyo, and one of the guys went to the same high school as outfielder Atsushi Fujii, so we reviewed his cheer song together, "just in case he actually plays today", and then they were like "Why the hell are YOU a Dragons fan?" and I had to explain that I'm really a Fighters fan, started cheering the Dragons several years ago thanks to a close friend in Gifu, and now I really just love Morino and despise the Giants. They were cool with that.
So, anyway. Amidst the chaos of the discombobulated ouendan, I managed to kinda pick up Tony Blanco's new ouenka. It has a fanfare which I decided was irrelevant, and then a semi-catchy actual song...
Ima da koko de misero, aoki toushi tagirasete
Teki o hirumaseru ichida, hanate, haruka kanata
Kattobase, Blanco! (Yomiuri taose o!)
You gotta love this video because of the guys in front of me giving the middle finger to the Giants bleachers every time they yelled the last part, which means "DEFEAT THE GIANTS!"
The cool thing is, Blanco led off the 2nd inning with a single, and then Wada followed it up with a single, and then Ibata followed THAT up with a double to score Blanco and make it 1-0! We changed to the Uchimakure chance theme and that led to consecutive sac flies to center by Kei Nomoto and Motonobu Tanishige to make it 3-0!
The Dragons widened their lead to 5-0 in the 5th inning when Araki led off with a single, Ohshima bunted him up successfully (in the first inning Araki had led off with a double and then got out at third on a terrible bunt by Ohshima, so), and then Morino singled to right-center! Araki almost scored but had to go back and hold at third, and in the meantime as the ball was thrown towards home, Morino managed to stretch it into a double, headsliding into second base safely. Woo! Tony Blanco then hit a single that scored the other two guys, and Wada walked, and THEN the Giants took out Gonzalez, put in Satoshi Fukuda (seriously, "dare aitsu?") who got a double play to end the inning.
Then, yeah, Yoshimi ran into a bit of a rough spot in the Giants' half of the 5th. Shinnosuke Abe led off with a double, and then Seung-Yeop Le singled, which put Abe at third. Sakamoto also singled, which scored Abe to make it 5-1. Matsumoto, who is having a monster start so far, grounded out to third and advanced the runners (I'd hoped Morino would make a play at somewhere besides first, but it didn't work out that way), not that it mattered as OCD hit one of his signature low line drive home runs into the Giants' cheering section to make it 5-4. Grumble.
But it worked out okay. I got out my towel to cheer for Morino again in the 7th inning, the guys behind me were like "Your guy is kicking butt tonight!", and then Morino hit a double into the gap in left-center! Immediately after that Tony Blanco also hit the ball to center. Morino scored, and Blanco tried to stretch it into a double and found himself out at second, but at least he got the run in. 6-4.
And the last Chunichi run was Morino's 5th at-bat, and 4th hit, which was a beautiful home run into the right-field stands hit off of Kiyoshi Toyoda. The entire stadium was silent, and then suddenly we realized it was a home run and all went crazy. Everyone around me was high-fiving me because I had been going so crazy for Morino the entire game. So, 7-4.
Hitoki Iwase closed out the game 1-2-3. We all stood up for the final batter, which was Edgar Gonzalez, and just yelled "I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE!" until it was over.
Not a lot of postgame celebrating though, because there isn't really a cohesive ouendan, which makes it difficult. Plus, the Giants games at the Tokyo Dome don't show hero interviews for the visiting team, which is SUPER lame. (I did learn later that the game hero WAS infact my boy Morino, though.) So we did the 1-9 lineup songs, then an Ochiai cheer, a round of Moe Yo Dragons, and... dispersed.
It was a pretty good evening, really.
Oh, incase any of Tyrone Woods's fans or friends still read this blog... one of the guys sitting in front of me still was wearing this jersey:
I swear I was tempted several times during the game to just start singing the "T!" ouenka.
That guy was also waving this apparatus around from time to time:
Which is a Jaws shark chewing up a white Giabbit doll that they were writing nasty stuff all over.
It might just be that I mostly only cheer for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome these days, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the difference in the mood in the Dragons cheering section as opposed to like, the Fighters; Dragons fans tend to do a lot more booing and swearing, certainly, and have a lot less family and a lot more scary-looking dudes. On the other hand I have found that passionately hating the Giants will usually get me at least tolerated in the crowd, so.
And on one last note: I really like Kei Nomoto's cheer song this year quite a bit. It ends in this line of "KagayaKE, HabataKE, Nomoto KEI!" Very catchy. Given that Nomoto is pretty much the only regular on the team under the age of 30 (scary, huh?) it's good that they have something like that to be around for a while.
Tomorrow (or more like, in about 8 hours) the Tokyo Big 6 league starts! I better get like 3 hours of sleep and go to Jingu!
Friday, April 09, 2010
Too Lazy For A Game Report: Baystars vs. Dragons - A Typical Night in Yokohama
Went down to Yokohama on Tuesday evening, April 6th, to take in the Baystars-Dragons game with Ken and Westbay. It would have been a lovely night if I hadn't gotten a call from my work supervisor 30 minutes before the game started which basically set off a terrible cascade all week of instability, and I was almost ready to quit by Thursday evening. Everything's fine now for certain values of "fine".
Anyway, this game would have been a lot better if I brought my Chunichi jersey and sat in left field. Daisuke Yamai started for the Dragons and pitched 5ish okay innings, giving up 3 runs (well, 2, and then bullpen switcheroos in the 6th inning allowed the 3rd to score), and Naoyuki Shimizu started for the Baystars, with Tasuku Hashimoto catching for him, and Daisuke Hayakawa in centerfield, and it was windy so it was just like being in Chiba, especially when Shimizu gave up a homer to Tony Blanco. Tanishige also hit a 2-run home run off reliever Hiroki Sanada and the Dragons eventually won 5-3.
Westbay already recounted the game a bit more here, so I'll defer to his writeup.
I will add that when Tanishige hit his home run, Westbay said "Why does he always do that to us? Can't we have him back?" and I replied, "HE'S TURNING 40 THIS YEAR! YOU WANT HIM BACK?"
There were also headslides galore as both Jose Castillo slid into second on a hit he thought should have been a homer but wasn't (hit the wall a little below the top), and Takehiro Ishikawa also did a headslide into first on an infield single later on too. Oddly, I will note: the Baystars scored 3 runs in the game and two of them started with those headslides. Maybe people SHOULD watch Koshien more!
There were indeed some exciting plays at the plate, both in terms of the Dragons being out. The Wada rundown was pretty comical. (Westbay almost thought the Baystars weren't going to manage the tag.)
Ken asked me if I would still be cheering for Morino even if we were on the other side of the field and I said no, but then sang along to his song anyway. Of course my Dragonbutt went 0-for-5. Go figure. Also, it's weird seeing Ibata at 2nd and Araki at short; I kept writing the plays in my scorecard backwards because I'd look to see which number guy made the play and then had to do a double-take.
Daisuke Yamai was the game hero for two main reasons, by the way: first, he pitched the first 5 innings and got the win, but more importantly, he had two RBI singles! Not a joke! That was pretty crazy.
The most exciting part of the game for me -- besides holding up my "GO! GO! SLEDGE" signs for Terrmel Sledge -- was seeing former Fighter Shintaro Ejiri come pitch 2 scoreless innings! Ejiri just got traded to the Baystars and I was very very fond of him, so I really do want him to do well there. It's a little sad to see him without the Fighters, but I'm being a Japanese fan and supporting him wherever he goes unless it involves Yomiuri.
After the game the three of us went out and got a photo taken with Sad Hosshey:
And GUESS WHO WE RAN INTO AFTER THAT!!
Actually, Sign Guy came by and said hi when we were sitting in the stands too. But he didn't have his signs at that point. This one is of a mock newspaper he drew about Terrmel Sledge. Isn't it cute?
The Chunichi ouendan, by the way, are still all messed up. No trumpets, no drums, you can barely follow what's going on. I'll be at the Tokyo Dome for tonight (Friday)'s Dragons-Giants game and we'll see how it goes (mostly I just plan to yell a lot of "Yomiuri Taose o!"
Anyway, this game would have been a lot better if I brought my Chunichi jersey and sat in left field. Daisuke Yamai started for the Dragons and pitched 5ish okay innings, giving up 3 runs (well, 2, and then bullpen switcheroos in the 6th inning allowed the 3rd to score), and Naoyuki Shimizu started for the Baystars, with Tasuku Hashimoto catching for him, and Daisuke Hayakawa in centerfield, and it was windy so it was just like being in Chiba, especially when Shimizu gave up a homer to Tony Blanco. Tanishige also hit a 2-run home run off reliever Hiroki Sanada and the Dragons eventually won 5-3.
Westbay already recounted the game a bit more here, so I'll defer to his writeup.
I will add that when Tanishige hit his home run, Westbay said "Why does he always do that to us? Can't we have him back?" and I replied, "HE'S TURNING 40 THIS YEAR! YOU WANT HIM BACK?"
There were also headslides galore as both Jose Castillo slid into second on a hit he thought should have been a homer but wasn't (hit the wall a little below the top), and Takehiro Ishikawa also did a headslide into first on an infield single later on too. Oddly, I will note: the Baystars scored 3 runs in the game and two of them started with those headslides. Maybe people SHOULD watch Koshien more!
There were indeed some exciting plays at the plate, both in terms of the Dragons being out. The Wada rundown was pretty comical. (Westbay almost thought the Baystars weren't going to manage the tag.)
Ken asked me if I would still be cheering for Morino even if we were on the other side of the field and I said no, but then sang along to his song anyway. Of course my Dragonbutt went 0-for-5. Go figure. Also, it's weird seeing Ibata at 2nd and Araki at short; I kept writing the plays in my scorecard backwards because I'd look to see which number guy made the play and then had to do a double-take.
Daisuke Yamai was the game hero for two main reasons, by the way: first, he pitched the first 5 innings and got the win, but more importantly, he had two RBI singles! Not a joke! That was pretty crazy.
The most exciting part of the game for me -- besides holding up my "GO! GO! SLEDGE" signs for Terrmel Sledge -- was seeing former Fighter Shintaro Ejiri come pitch 2 scoreless innings! Ejiri just got traded to the Baystars and I was very very fond of him, so I really do want him to do well there. It's a little sad to see him without the Fighters, but I'm being a Japanese fan and supporting him wherever he goes unless it involves Yomiuri.
After the game the three of us went out and got a photo taken with Sad Hosshey:
And GUESS WHO WE RAN INTO AFTER THAT!!
Actually, Sign Guy came by and said hi when we were sitting in the stands too. But he didn't have his signs at that point. This one is of a mock newspaper he drew about Terrmel Sledge. Isn't it cute?
The Chunichi ouendan, by the way, are still all messed up. No trumpets, no drums, you can barely follow what's going on. I'll be at the Tokyo Dome for tonight (Friday)'s Dragons-Giants game and we'll see how it goes (mostly I just plan to yell a lot of "Yomiuri Taose o!"
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