No, not exactly. But I recently learned about a shrine in the northern reaches of Saitama called the 箭弓稲荷神社, or Yakyu Inari Jinja.
Now, on its own, there shouldn't be anything special in particular about a shrine to the Shinto god Inari -- there are MANY Inari shrines all over the country. You can usually spot them because they have bright orange torii, and often statues of foxes.
But this one in particular, being as the name of the area is "Yakyucho" -- yes, the kanji is different, 箭弓 vs the 野球 that means baseball -- apparently, over the years, it has become a vaguely popular place for pro players to go pray for success before the season, and especially the Seibu Lions because it's in Saitama prefecture.
(Of course, I actually read about it on the Rikkio baseball team's blog -- their team is also based out of Saitama, on the Niiza campus. They posted some photos from going there and the bat-and-plate-shaped ema, or wooden prayer boards.)
But anyway, the reason this place is even cooler is that in recent years, to embrace the fact that the city's name is a homonym for the word baseball, they sell baseball bat luck charms (mamori), and bat and plate prayer boards (ema). That's REALLY neat!
There's a shrine in Kyoto called the Shiramine Jingu, which is sort of known as a soccer shrine because the god there happens to be the god of an ancient Japanese "kickball" game of sorts, so lots of pro soccer players go there to pray, and so a bunch of my JHS students went there and told me about it. But at the time we didn't know of any baseball-related shrines. So now I do!
I'll be back in Japan for a week or two in March, and I'm going to see if I can get up to this Yakyu Jinja while I'm there, because I think it'd be really cool.
And in the meantime, I recommend reading the Tokyo Big 6 2011 blogs in general. You can learn all kinds of interesting things like how Keio's captain Hayata Itoh, aka Clutchy McClutchitude, knows Pi to 115 places. Or you can read Hosei's spastic manager Yokoyama's ramblings about Facebook and Twitter (there are many). Or you can get a lesson in Toyama regional dialect from Todai's Yohei Tachi. Or... actually, I was remiss in my updating about it, but back in December, the Meiji team posted about how third-year baseball club member Tama died in a car accident. That was pretty sad.
Showing posts with label Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stuff. Show all posts
Friday, February 04, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Things I have!
I have a new Baystars jersey!
Well, technically, I got this new Baystars jersey on November 7th, the week after the draft. But now it is in the form that I want it to be:
(If you can't read Japanese, the name is "Kagami Kisho". If you don't know why I spent 3000 yen getting his name and number put on a jersey, you should read back all posts on this blog labelled "Hosei".)
For the record, I got my jersey done at the Sports Authority near where I live in Akabane. I also got my Ryota Imanari jersey done there two years ago. As you can see, the Imanari jersey is signed at the bottom... I need to get that done to the Kagami jersey ASAP too!
As it is, the Baystars site finally put up their information on rookie training at Yokosuka Stadium, and even do say "Please come support us!", so I think I'll go down there later this week. Their off days are the 11th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, if you are thinking of going. (I'm only here until the 18th.)
I'm also thinking of going to try to stalk Tatsuya Ohishi since I couldn't do that for his time at Waseda. The Lions rookie training schedule has them off on the 11th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 27th, if you're curious.
I wish I could go stalk Shuhei Fujiya at Lotte Urawa but there just probably won't be time. Maybe in the spring. I know they're training up there, and I even have a friend who wants to stalk Shota Ishimine, but, timing.
I'll be at Kamagaya on the 16th for the unveiling of the new rookies there. I hear it's going to be insane, but my connections (read: Ojisan) should make it possible for me to get in regardless. I'm a little depressed about Saitoh-mania, to be honest... and here I'm just hoping to meet Masaru Saitoh, or Masahiro Inui or Yodai Enoshita or Haruki Nishikawa. It's bizarre, but I saw almost all of the Fighters draft picks play as amateurs.
Anyway.. this post is called "Things I have", so I wanted to mention something else.
I came back from my trip to Kyushu over the weekend, spending about 22-23 hours on local trains over the course of 2 days. I stopped along the way in illustrious places like Fukuyama (where I failed to see Taishi Ota.. no, just kidding) and Wakayama City (where I failed to see Tama the Stationmaster Cat because it turns out she doesn't "work" on Sundays, sheesh) and at the Osaka Dome, where I happened to be there the day after the Buffaloes unveiled their new uniform design.
(I'll post a few more pictures of the Buffaloes store and display soon, if you happen to check back.)
To be honest, the Buffaloes new design was not so intriguing to me, as they only had t-shirts with the logo on it, sweatshirts, towels, and cellphone straps. If they'd had t-shirts with player names/numbers I might have gone for one, either T-Okada or Ohbiki or someone. But, alas.
So instead, I got one of the T-Okada Home Run King foldout thingies they made. This is actually a pretty cool little contraption:
From the outside it almost just looks like an oversized baseball card.
But then you unfold it...
And it is a big series of photos of each of his home runs for the season! Except... you might notice it only goes up to 32... and he had 33 home runs...
...because the back side is a huge poster of home run 33.
Pretty neat, huh?
Well, technically, I got this new Baystars jersey on November 7th, the week after the draft. But now it is in the form that I want it to be:
(If you can't read Japanese, the name is "Kagami Kisho". If you don't know why I spent 3000 yen getting his name and number put on a jersey, you should read back all posts on this blog labelled "Hosei".)
For the record, I got my jersey done at the Sports Authority near where I live in Akabane. I also got my Ryota Imanari jersey done there two years ago. As you can see, the Imanari jersey is signed at the bottom... I need to get that done to the Kagami jersey ASAP too!
As it is, the Baystars site finally put up their information on rookie training at Yokosuka Stadium, and even do say "Please come support us!", so I think I'll go down there later this week. Their off days are the 11th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, if you are thinking of going. (I'm only here until the 18th.)
I'm also thinking of going to try to stalk Tatsuya Ohishi since I couldn't do that for his time at Waseda. The Lions rookie training schedule has them off on the 11th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 27th, if you're curious.
I wish I could go stalk Shuhei Fujiya at Lotte Urawa but there just probably won't be time. Maybe in the spring. I know they're training up there, and I even have a friend who wants to stalk Shota Ishimine, but, timing.
I'll be at Kamagaya on the 16th for the unveiling of the new rookies there. I hear it's going to be insane, but my connections (read: Ojisan) should make it possible for me to get in regardless. I'm a little depressed about Saitoh-mania, to be honest... and here I'm just hoping to meet Masaru Saitoh, or Masahiro Inui or Yodai Enoshita or Haruki Nishikawa. It's bizarre, but I saw almost all of the Fighters draft picks play as amateurs.
Anyway.. this post is called "Things I have", so I wanted to mention something else.
I came back from my trip to Kyushu over the weekend, spending about 22-23 hours on local trains over the course of 2 days. I stopped along the way in illustrious places like Fukuyama (where I failed to see Taishi Ota.. no, just kidding) and Wakayama City (where I failed to see Tama the Stationmaster Cat because it turns out she doesn't "work" on Sundays, sheesh) and at the Osaka Dome, where I happened to be there the day after the Buffaloes unveiled their new uniform design.
(I'll post a few more pictures of the Buffaloes store and display soon, if you happen to check back.)
To be honest, the Buffaloes new design was not so intriguing to me, as they only had t-shirts with the logo on it, sweatshirts, towels, and cellphone straps. If they'd had t-shirts with player names/numbers I might have gone for one, either T-Okada or Ohbiki or someone. But, alas.
So instead, I got one of the T-Okada Home Run King foldout thingies they made. This is actually a pretty cool little contraption:
From the outside it almost just looks like an oversized baseball card.
But then you unfold it...
And it is a big series of photos of each of his home runs for the season! Except... you might notice it only goes up to 32... and he had 33 home runs...
...because the back side is a huge poster of home run 33.
Pretty neat, huh?
Friday, May 14, 2010
Trey Hillman No Longer Has To Bear a Royal Weight On His Shoulders
...because he has been fired as Royals manager.
I honestly haven't been following the MLB in the last few years, so I truly have no clue how the Royals were doing, other than that they were still generally losing games. I'm still guessing that the Royals lost a lot of games not because of Trey per se, but more because they just aren't very good at baseball. Still, a manager is always a convenient person to fire when a team sucks, I suppose.
(Hillman managed the Nippon Ham Fighters from 2003-2007. I basically became a Fighters fan about the same time he became the manager, though these things were coincidental.)
I don't know a lot about the situations involved with the Royals, though, obviously, so here are a few articles I read to find out more:
Royals send Hillman off as a winner - apparently he was given the choice whether to manage Thursday night's game, and went ahead and did it -- and Greinke got his first win of the year as such, and Trey didn't have to finish on a 7-game losing streak.
GM’s firing of a friend could be a positive sign for the Royals - only three days ago Dayton Moore said at a press conference that Hillman was "exactly what our organization needs at this point in time." But I guess there is some backstory going on here, including them blaming Hillman for screwing up Gil Meche. (Naturally, many Mariners fans would be happy to point out that Gil Meche was already kinda screwed up.)
Hillman's genius lost in translation - as always, a unique perspective from Joe Posnanski. I remember him writing about the Fighters in 2007 during the Japan Series, too.
I dunno. I got to talk to Trey a little back in April 2008, but at the time he had just started his job with the Royals, so I didn't really get a lot of insight on that. I will say that he was an extremely nice guy, and I really had a lot of respect for him when he was in Japan, and he was very popular with the Fighters fans. (One of my friends still wears a Hillman #88 jersey to Fighters games now.) I think it sucks that he got fired from the Royals, but I'm sure he'll find something else to do in baseball. Maybe he can even come back here to Japan!
I honestly haven't been following the MLB in the last few years, so I truly have no clue how the Royals were doing, other than that they were still generally losing games. I'm still guessing that the Royals lost a lot of games not because of Trey per se, but more because they just aren't very good at baseball. Still, a manager is always a convenient person to fire when a team sucks, I suppose.
(Hillman managed the Nippon Ham Fighters from 2003-2007. I basically became a Fighters fan about the same time he became the manager, though these things were coincidental.)
I don't know a lot about the situations involved with the Royals, though, obviously, so here are a few articles I read to find out more:
Royals send Hillman off as a winner - apparently he was given the choice whether to manage Thursday night's game, and went ahead and did it -- and Greinke got his first win of the year as such, and Trey didn't have to finish on a 7-game losing streak.
GM’s firing of a friend could be a positive sign for the Royals - only three days ago Dayton Moore said at a press conference that Hillman was "exactly what our organization needs at this point in time." But I guess there is some backstory going on here, including them blaming Hillman for screwing up Gil Meche. (Naturally, many Mariners fans would be happy to point out that Gil Meche was already kinda screwed up.)
Hillman's genius lost in translation - as always, a unique perspective from Joe Posnanski. I remember him writing about the Fighters in 2007 during the Japan Series, too.
I dunno. I got to talk to Trey a little back in April 2008, but at the time he had just started his job with the Royals, so I didn't really get a lot of insight on that. I will say that he was an extremely nice guy, and I really had a lot of respect for him when he was in Japan, and he was very popular with the Fighters fans. (One of my friends still wears a Hillman #88 jersey to Fighters games now.) I think it sucks that he got fired from the Royals, but I'm sure he'll find something else to do in baseball. Maybe he can even come back here to Japan!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Yoshihiro Satoh Retired Today
(If you're basically thinking "Who?" or "Yoshinori?!?!" or something along those lines, just bear with me and skip this post. I'm talking about a Fighters mostly-ni-gun outfielder who I watched quite a bit last year and this year.)
I got a cellphone email an hour or two ago from one of my Fighters friends that simply read: "Yoshihiro Satoh retired today, I just heard." with a bunch of sad faces.
At first, I looked at it thinking, "Did I read that right? SATOH? Yoshihiro!? ...RETIRED?!?!!?"
I went and looked on the Fighters website, and sure enough, it's not a joke, Yoshihiro Satoh is retiring.
I don't really get why, though. He's 26 years old and just about to enter his prime. He hasn't gotten that many chances at ichi-gun, but every time he has, he's hit a home run! (Seriously. He has 4 ichi-gun hits ever and 3 of them are home runs.) He's been AWESOME on the farm team, I was really impressed with him this year, both on defense and running speed, and his bat is great too (he had an .830 OPS this year), and he's a lefty at that. I realize he must feel hopelessly blocked as an outfielder right now with Itoi, Inaba, and Hichori starting and guys like Kazuya Murata and Toshimasa Konta in the wings as well as veteran Tsuboi and sometimes Sledge as well, but... ugh, I dunno. To me it seems he quit one year too early, but for him, maybe after 8 years in the minors he felt it was time to just move on and do other things.
It says he's going to become staff with the team in some capacity, so maybe we'll see him again at Kamagaya anyway. (When Teppei Komai retired last year he became a Kamagaya bullpen catcher and we still see him all the time.)
Something odd, now that I think about it:
In 2008, I managed to get photos with 8 Fighters players at one point or another. 2 of them are no longer on the team.
This year, I managed to get photos with 17 Fighters players at one point or another, mostly ni-gun, and 5 of them are no longer on the team and 2 more are questionable.
Maybe it's me that curses these players somehow?
Here's my Fighters "2-shot" photo tally for the year, by category:
Players I got photos with that are not returning in 2010
Jason Botts - DH, already went back to the US, barely had any ichi-gun playing time
Luis Jimenez - DH/1B, cut from the team in mid-summer. Nice guy, too.
Yohei Kaneko - DH/OF, contract not being renewed next year :( I'm really going to miss him.
Kiyoshi Yamanaka - ni-gun battery coach, gone off to be Lotte's new battery coach. Yamanaka is crazy and was really popular with the postgame Kamagaya loitering crowd.
Yoshihiro Satoh - outfielder. Retired today and inspired this post.
Foreign players unknown for 2010
Terrmel Sledge - OF/DH, had an amazing year, was playoff MVP even.
Brian Sweeney - pitcher, struggled this year a bit but also ran into some really bad luck where other pitchers let his runners score or lost his games for him.
Other players I got photos with this year
Tomoya Yagi - pitcher, had a pretty awesome comeback this year!
Toshiyuki Yanuki - pitcher, rookie, currently in the Arizona Fall League
Takeshi Shimazaki - pitching coach, always scoops us on the ni-gun rotation
Suguru Matsuyama - pitcher, young, still learning
Yataro Sakamoto - pitcher, also struggled this year quite a bit
Hideki Sunaga - pitcher, had a few starts at ichi-gun this year, still not really ready
Kazuya Murata - outfielder, up-and-coming player, even if he's shorter than me
Chon-so Yoh - outfielder or infielder? Unclear, but he should at least be a supporting cast member at ichi-gun again sometime.
Ryuichi Watanabe - catcher, went to HS next to the Sapporo Dome, but boy do we have an abundance of good catchers right now
Takuya Nakashima - IF, rookie, will be interesting to see how he develops, but right now he's only 18
It's weird, I remember before I moved to Japan, when Fighters players got cut, they were mostly ni-gun guys I was barely familiar with at all, so it didn't make that big an impact to me. Last year when Komai and Oyama and Katoh and Kanazawa and all were cut, I had at least seen them play a decent bit, so they were real guys being cut, not just names and uniform numbers. But this year since I started hanging out with the postgame crowd and actually talking to players a bit, when Yohei Kaneko got cut it was more like "Hey... wait a minute... that's a guy I say hi to every time I'm at the stadium! They CAN'T cut him! Can they?"
With Satoh retiring, I mean, I always saw him at Kamagaya, though I was too shy for a while to ever go up to him. He was always really polite to fans, very courteous, ALWAYS willing to sign stuff for kids or to pose for pictures, but one of the relatively quieter members of the Kamagaya squad.
Anyway, my best Satoh memory from this year:
It was July 7th, at the Seibu Dome. A bunch of us had been at Kamagaya for the Fighters-Marines games on July 4th and 5th, and Satoh had played in those games... so when I arrived at the Seibu Dome at the top of the 2nd inning and was filling in my scorecard, like "Whoa! *WE* have a Satoh playing left field too? He's at ichi-gun? But we just SAW him a day or two ago in Kamagaya...?" Usually a Satoh in left field at the Seibu Dome wouldn't be too strange, as the Lions have Tomoaki and G.G. Satoh on their squad.
But no, this was OUR Satoh. Making his first ichi-gun appearance of 2009.
He came to the plate, and before the Seibu fans could even look at his batting average of ".---" and say "Who dat?", Yoshihiro Satoh launched a home run into the Fighters cheering section.
We went CRAZY.
He didn't get any more hits that day, nor did he rack up that many this season. But either way, that was sure one great way to make his 2009 debut.
This makes me even more curious which direction the Fighters will go in the 2009 Draft. I guess there's only two days left until we find out...
I got a cellphone email an hour or two ago from one of my Fighters friends that simply read: "Yoshihiro Satoh retired today, I just heard." with a bunch of sad faces.
At first, I looked at it thinking, "Did I read that right? SATOH? Yoshihiro!? ...RETIRED?!?!!?"
I went and looked on the Fighters website, and sure enough, it's not a joke, Yoshihiro Satoh is retiring.
I don't really get why, though. He's 26 years old and just about to enter his prime. He hasn't gotten that many chances at ichi-gun, but every time he has, he's hit a home run! (Seriously. He has 4 ichi-gun hits ever and 3 of them are home runs.) He's been AWESOME on the farm team, I was really impressed with him this year, both on defense and running speed, and his bat is great too (he had an .830 OPS this year), and he's a lefty at that. I realize he must feel hopelessly blocked as an outfielder right now with Itoi, Inaba, and Hichori starting and guys like Kazuya Murata and Toshimasa Konta in the wings as well as veteran Tsuboi and sometimes Sledge as well, but... ugh, I dunno. To me it seems he quit one year too early, but for him, maybe after 8 years in the minors he felt it was time to just move on and do other things.
It says he's going to become staff with the team in some capacity, so maybe we'll see him again at Kamagaya anyway. (When Teppei Komai retired last year he became a Kamagaya bullpen catcher and we still see him all the time.)
Something odd, now that I think about it:
In 2008, I managed to get photos with 8 Fighters players at one point or another. 2 of them are no longer on the team.
This year, I managed to get photos with 17 Fighters players at one point or another, mostly ni-gun, and 5 of them are no longer on the team and 2 more are questionable.
Maybe it's me that curses these players somehow?
Here's my Fighters "2-shot" photo tally for the year, by category:
Players I got photos with that are not returning in 2010
Jason Botts - DH, already went back to the US, barely had any ichi-gun playing time
Luis Jimenez - DH/1B, cut from the team in mid-summer. Nice guy, too.
Yohei Kaneko - DH/OF, contract not being renewed next year :( I'm really going to miss him.
Kiyoshi Yamanaka - ni-gun battery coach, gone off to be Lotte's new battery coach. Yamanaka is crazy and was really popular with the postgame Kamagaya loitering crowd.
Yoshihiro Satoh - outfielder. Retired today and inspired this post.
Foreign players unknown for 2010
Terrmel Sledge - OF/DH, had an amazing year, was playoff MVP even.
Brian Sweeney - pitcher, struggled this year a bit but also ran into some really bad luck where other pitchers let his runners score or lost his games for him.
Other players I got photos with this year
Tomoya Yagi - pitcher, had a pretty awesome comeback this year!
Toshiyuki Yanuki - pitcher, rookie, currently in the Arizona Fall League
Takeshi Shimazaki - pitching coach, always scoops us on the ni-gun rotation
Suguru Matsuyama - pitcher, young, still learning
Yataro Sakamoto - pitcher, also struggled this year quite a bit
Hideki Sunaga - pitcher, had a few starts at ichi-gun this year, still not really ready
Kazuya Murata - outfielder, up-and-coming player, even if he's shorter than me
Chon-so Yoh - outfielder or infielder? Unclear, but he should at least be a supporting cast member at ichi-gun again sometime.
Ryuichi Watanabe - catcher, went to HS next to the Sapporo Dome, but boy do we have an abundance of good catchers right now
Takuya Nakashima - IF, rookie, will be interesting to see how he develops, but right now he's only 18
It's weird, I remember before I moved to Japan, when Fighters players got cut, they were mostly ni-gun guys I was barely familiar with at all, so it didn't make that big an impact to me. Last year when Komai and Oyama and Katoh and Kanazawa and all were cut, I had at least seen them play a decent bit, so they were real guys being cut, not just names and uniform numbers. But this year since I started hanging out with the postgame crowd and actually talking to players a bit, when Yohei Kaneko got cut it was more like "Hey... wait a minute... that's a guy I say hi to every time I'm at the stadium! They CAN'T cut him! Can they?"
With Satoh retiring, I mean, I always saw him at Kamagaya, though I was too shy for a while to ever go up to him. He was always really polite to fans, very courteous, ALWAYS willing to sign stuff for kids or to pose for pictures, but one of the relatively quieter members of the Kamagaya squad.
Anyway, my best Satoh memory from this year:
It was July 7th, at the Seibu Dome. A bunch of us had been at Kamagaya for the Fighters-Marines games on July 4th and 5th, and Satoh had played in those games... so when I arrived at the Seibu Dome at the top of the 2nd inning and was filling in my scorecard, like "Whoa! *WE* have a Satoh playing left field too? He's at ichi-gun? But we just SAW him a day or two ago in Kamagaya...?" Usually a Satoh in left field at the Seibu Dome wouldn't be too strange, as the Lions have Tomoaki and G.G. Satoh on their squad.
But no, this was OUR Satoh. Making his first ichi-gun appearance of 2009.
He came to the plate, and before the Seibu fans could even look at his batting average of ".---" and say "Who dat?", Yoshihiro Satoh launched a home run into the Fighters cheering section.
We went CRAZY.
He didn't get any more hits that day, nor did he rack up that many this season. But either way, that was sure one great way to make his 2009 debut.
This makes me even more curious which direction the Fighters will go in the 2009 Draft. I guess there's only two days left until we find out...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Things I Saw This Weekend
I spent all weekend watching baseball or talking about baseball, thus I had no time to blog about baseball. So in the next day or two I'm going to try to play some catchup, but wanted to mention a few things quickly...
Final score from the Meiji-Hosei game today.
Hosei beat Meiji to take their 43rd championship title in the Tokyo Big 6 University League. I was sitting in the right field stands, taking advantage of the whole free baseball thing, though it was pretty rainy. I'll write a lot more about the game soon enough -- but in short, it was really close. Hosei won it on a walkoff solo home run by Ryo Imai, whose hero interview speech basically consisted of "YAY!" The losing pitcher was Yusuke Nomura, who was brought into the game in the 8th inning despite throwing 148 pitches the day before -- really, I know he's the best Meiji has, but it's still no surprise that he gave up a home run like that (and there's historical precedent for this kind of thing, even).
Final score from the Todai-Rikkio game.
I also caught the last few innings of the most ridiculous landslide win ever. I hope Suzuki-kun can pitch again next season so Todai might actually win a game, since they didn't manage to win a single one this season. On the other hand, I still maintain that Todai has the best marching band in the entire league.
In the realm of crazy things I saw OUTSIDE Jingu...
Masaichi Kaneda was doing a signing session.
Yes, really. Masaichi FREAKING Kaneda. The Meikyukai Man himself.
I came out of the stadium after the final ceremonies for the Big 6 championship and all, and there were several huge crowds; some were waiting to get into the evening's Softbank/Yakult game, but there were also a TON of people around this little tent. I wondered, "What on earth is in THERE?" and then I saw the sign explaining that Kaneda was doing a signing session and my jaw dropped. I have NO clue how you could actually get into it, and I basically took photos with my little camera while on my tiptoes trying to see over people, but, WOW, I was standing like 15 feet from the winningest pitcher in Japanese baseball history! How cool is that?
In the category of things I saw on Saturday...
Final score from the Marines-Dragons game at Chiba Marine Stadium.
I guess this was the weekend for crazy walkoff games, because the Dragons-Marines game also was that way. The Dragons had a narrow 1-0 lead for most of the game behind Wei-yin Chen, but as soon as he came out of the game the Marines offense caught up with the Dragons bullpen, culminating in a walkoff hit by game hero Shoitsu Ohmatsu. The only sad part is that my boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe (seriously, I still have a knack for showing up only when he pitches) didn't get the win, though he pitched really well regardless.
In case you are wondering:
So far, the people outside of Chiba Marine Stadium with the Bobby 2010 banners have collected 63580 signatures, which is approximately the same number of people who have attended Yokohama Baystars games this year. (Zing!)
I took my usual 800 photos and have barely been able to go through them, let alone crop/resize them, so I'll just post a random one that I really liked:
Koichi Hori breaking his bat in the 6th inning.
And another topic for this post should probably be "people I saw this weekend":
In addition to all of the usual suspects around Chiba Marine Stadium, I also got to meet the authors of two other Japanese baseball blogs, which is always fun, because I love being able to put a face to a name and just to geek out about baseball with people.
After the game was over, I caught up with Steve Novosel, who writes We Love Marines, a blog about the Chiba Lotte Marines that is all about the Marines and a lot funnier than my blog. Steve managed to end up on TV the other day cheering, so now he's also getting random Marines fans coming up to him saying "OMG! I saw you on TV!"
And for part of the game and for quite a while after the game I got to talk to Gen Sueyoshi, who runs SimCentral, and very specifically writes a blog called Japanese-American Perspectives which is mostly about Japanese baseball. He writes game summaries EVERY day and translates snippets of interesting news articles, kind of like what Gary Garland used to do on japanbaseballdaily before he got burned out. I'd say that Gen and I both spend the same amount of time being obsessed about baseball, only I spend a lot more of that time going to games and singing a lot, and Gen spends a lot more time actually doing useful things like translating articles.
OH! And before I forget, technically Friday was this weekend, so this sort of counts -- you may recall I got my Fighters jersey signed by my favorite Fighters ni-gun player, catcher Ryota Imanari, a few weeks ago down in Kamagaya. Or actually, maybe not, since I didn't write about that game! Crap, add another thing to my list of Stuff I Need To Post About. Anyway, the day before my birthday I dropped off my jersey at Sports Authority to get them to put his name and uniform number on it, and on Friday they called me to say that it was finished!
Watch, now he'll get traded. Or change numbers. Or both.
The guy at the shop also told me that it was the first time he'd ever seen a gaijin come in and order a jersey with kanji on it. I told him that well, I figured that if I was going to get a jersey made in Japan, I ought to get it with Japanese on it, right?
I'm psyched, though. I'm going to try to make it down to the Fighters game in Yokohama on Thursday, even though I know I can't get there until 6:30 or so, because when the going gets tough, the tough get ouen. Or something like that.
Speaking of everyone's favorite Fighters ni-gun players, that Nakata Sho kid got called up to ichi-gun last week since Sledge got taken off the active roster for a week or two to heal a hamstring strain. Sho-kun got to be the starting DH in Saturday's game against Yakult and he got his first ichi-gun hit, which I'm sure he's delighted about. Then on Sunday he made a pinch-hitting appearance and also got a hit. If the Fighters could just clear up the logjam at 1B/DH they'd have a spot for him, although to be fair, his defense is so bad that he's not even all that dependable as a first baseman.
I'll be honest -- I'm happier to see Shintaro Ejiri up at ichi-gun again and being productive so far with his new sidearm delivery. I'm a pretty big Ejiri fan and I really want him to succeed, plus the Fighters bullpen really needs it.
If I took over the Fighters, I'd keep Sho at ni-gun for the year, and then in the offseason make some moves to open up the DH spot for him at ichi-gun, and shift the foreign talent towards pitching rather than hitting. And I'd also invent a time machine and undo the Nioka trade. Though there was a big deal a few days ago about Micheal Nakamura getting sent down to the minors by the Yomiuri Giants because he hasn't been good enough for them; I think it's just that he's still resisting the Giabbits with their big pointy teeth attempting to devour his soul. Maybe I'll just pretend that the Fighters were REALLY trading for Masanori Hayashi all along.
Final score from the Meiji-Hosei game today.
Hosei beat Meiji to take their 43rd championship title in the Tokyo Big 6 University League. I was sitting in the right field stands, taking advantage of the whole free baseball thing, though it was pretty rainy. I'll write a lot more about the game soon enough -- but in short, it was really close. Hosei won it on a walkoff solo home run by Ryo Imai, whose hero interview speech basically consisted of "YAY!" The losing pitcher was Yusuke Nomura, who was brought into the game in the 8th inning despite throwing 148 pitches the day before -- really, I know he's the best Meiji has, but it's still no surprise that he gave up a home run like that (and there's historical precedent for this kind of thing, even).
Final score from the Todai-Rikkio game.
I also caught the last few innings of the most ridiculous landslide win ever. I hope Suzuki-kun can pitch again next season so Todai might actually win a game, since they didn't manage to win a single one this season. On the other hand, I still maintain that Todai has the best marching band in the entire league.
In the realm of crazy things I saw OUTSIDE Jingu...
Masaichi Kaneda was doing a signing session.
Yes, really. Masaichi FREAKING Kaneda. The Meikyukai Man himself.
I came out of the stadium after the final ceremonies for the Big 6 championship and all, and there were several huge crowds; some were waiting to get into the evening's Softbank/Yakult game, but there were also a TON of people around this little tent. I wondered, "What on earth is in THERE?" and then I saw the sign explaining that Kaneda was doing a signing session and my jaw dropped. I have NO clue how you could actually get into it, and I basically took photos with my little camera while on my tiptoes trying to see over people, but, WOW, I was standing like 15 feet from the winningest pitcher in Japanese baseball history! How cool is that?
In the category of things I saw on Saturday...
Final score from the Marines-Dragons game at Chiba Marine Stadium.
I guess this was the weekend for crazy walkoff games, because the Dragons-Marines game also was that way. The Dragons had a narrow 1-0 lead for most of the game behind Wei-yin Chen, but as soon as he came out of the game the Marines offense caught up with the Dragons bullpen, culminating in a walkoff hit by game hero Shoitsu Ohmatsu. The only sad part is that my boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe (seriously, I still have a knack for showing up only when he pitches) didn't get the win, though he pitched really well regardless.
In case you are wondering:
So far, the people outside of Chiba Marine Stadium with the Bobby 2010 banners have collected 63580 signatures, which is approximately the same number of people who have attended Yokohama Baystars games this year. (Zing!)
I took my usual 800 photos and have barely been able to go through them, let alone crop/resize them, so I'll just post a random one that I really liked:
Koichi Hori breaking his bat in the 6th inning.
And another topic for this post should probably be "people I saw this weekend":
In addition to all of the usual suspects around Chiba Marine Stadium, I also got to meet the authors of two other Japanese baseball blogs, which is always fun, because I love being able to put a face to a name and just to geek out about baseball with people.
After the game was over, I caught up with Steve Novosel, who writes We Love Marines, a blog about the Chiba Lotte Marines that is all about the Marines and a lot funnier than my blog. Steve managed to end up on TV the other day cheering, so now he's also getting random Marines fans coming up to him saying "OMG! I saw you on TV!"
And for part of the game and for quite a while after the game I got to talk to Gen Sueyoshi, who runs SimCentral, and very specifically writes a blog called Japanese-American Perspectives which is mostly about Japanese baseball. He writes game summaries EVERY day and translates snippets of interesting news articles, kind of like what Gary Garland used to do on japanbaseballdaily before he got burned out. I'd say that Gen and I both spend the same amount of time being obsessed about baseball, only I spend a lot more of that time going to games and singing a lot, and Gen spends a lot more time actually doing useful things like translating articles.
OH! And before I forget, technically Friday was this weekend, so this sort of counts -- you may recall I got my Fighters jersey signed by my favorite Fighters ni-gun player, catcher Ryota Imanari, a few weeks ago down in Kamagaya. Or actually, maybe not, since I didn't write about that game! Crap, add another thing to my list of Stuff I Need To Post About. Anyway, the day before my birthday I dropped off my jersey at Sports Authority to get them to put his name and uniform number on it, and on Friday they called me to say that it was finished!
Watch, now he'll get traded. Or change numbers. Or both.
The guy at the shop also told me that it was the first time he'd ever seen a gaijin come in and order a jersey with kanji on it. I told him that well, I figured that if I was going to get a jersey made in Japan, I ought to get it with Japanese on it, right?
I'm psyched, though. I'm going to try to make it down to the Fighters game in Yokohama on Thursday, even though I know I can't get there until 6:30 or so, because when the going gets tough, the tough get ouen. Or something like that.
Speaking of everyone's favorite Fighters ni-gun players, that Nakata Sho kid got called up to ichi-gun last week since Sledge got taken off the active roster for a week or two to heal a hamstring strain. Sho-kun got to be the starting DH in Saturday's game against Yakult and he got his first ichi-gun hit, which I'm sure he's delighted about. Then on Sunday he made a pinch-hitting appearance and also got a hit. If the Fighters could just clear up the logjam at 1B/DH they'd have a spot for him, although to be fair, his defense is so bad that he's not even all that dependable as a first baseman.
I'll be honest -- I'm happier to see Shintaro Ejiri up at ichi-gun again and being productive so far with his new sidearm delivery. I'm a pretty big Ejiri fan and I really want him to succeed, plus the Fighters bullpen really needs it.
If I took over the Fighters, I'd keep Sho at ni-gun for the year, and then in the offseason make some moves to open up the DH spot for him at ichi-gun, and shift the foreign talent towards pitching rather than hitting. And I'd also invent a time machine and undo the Nioka trade. Though there was a big deal a few days ago about Micheal Nakamura getting sent down to the minors by the Yomiuri Giants because he hasn't been good enough for them; I think it's just that he's still resisting the Giabbits with their big pointy teeth attempting to devour his soul. Maybe I'll just pretend that the Fighters were REALLY trading for Masanori Hayashi all along.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Friday Foto: No insulation, but plenty of decoration
It's really cold in my apartment right now, and probably will continue to be really cold for the next few months. I really ought to figure out a way to use all of my baseball magazines and books as insulation.
Today I went to the fire department building in Akabane and asked them if I could have an Ayumi Kataoka smoke alarm poster, since I've seen these posters up all over the place in the last few weeks. They seemed REALLY amused when I explained that I love baseball and I respect Ayumi a lot, and gave me TWO posters! Whee! For those who don't know, she is a female professional baseball player in Japan. She's an infielder for Kin-chan's club team, the Ibaraki Golden Golds. They play in the industrial/club leagues in Japan, so not quite NPB, but still.
The poster is of Ayumi holding a smoke detector sort of the way one would normally hold a baseball. From a distance you'd almost think it WAS a baseball:
So, this called for rearranging the posters on my wall. I put Ayumi where Kazumi Saitoh used to be, shifted him down, and added a Morino page from Dragons magazine:
Baseball wall!
Above Ayumi is a Hanshin Tigers poster of Shinobu Fukuhara which I randomly got last year and just like, and the 2005 Mariners Little League Day poster, and the Go Mariners card I got signed by most of the bullpen near the end of the 2006 season. Dangling from my loft ladder are cheer sticks for the Dragons, Fighters, and Baystars.
This is what that corner of my room looked like a few weeks ago. Yes, that's a John Olerud poster on the other wall:
You might notice that there is an extremely cute pair of stuffed animals sitting there. Yes, the Phillie Phanatic is holding onto my cardboard noisemaker from the Keio-Waseda game:
And the Inaba home run ball I caught back in August is being guarded by two Mariners rubber duckies, which are perched on top of my 100-yen-shop plastic drawer tower. The top drawer contains this season's baseball tickets, too:
"Wait," you're thinking, "Deanna, you're a gigantic Fighters fan. Where is all of your Fighters stuff?"
Oh, well, see, that's all on my closet door, on the other side of the room:
And while we're at it, let me show you something else I have in my room: championship t-shirts from the Fighters and Dragons. I know it's fitting because of the magnitude of the championship, but seriously, the Dragons shirt is 32293402343289582342 bazillion times cooler than the Fighters one. It features a nice gold victory dragon logo on the front, and on the back, a caricature of Ochiai pointing into the distance, and the Chunichi roster. It's a really nice silkscreen, and cost me 2650 yen:
The Fighters one, on the other hand, cost like 3000 yen and is just a lame white shirt with nothing on the back and practically a dot-matrix-printer iron-on on the front:
Anyway, it's cold. I can't seem to go more than about 2-3 feet from my space heater without my fingers turning blue. I was going to go to Yokohama for the Baystars Fan Fest today, but that's REALLY far away from my space heater, so we'll see if I make it down there without freezing to death first.
Today I went to the fire department building in Akabane and asked them if I could have an Ayumi Kataoka smoke alarm poster, since I've seen these posters up all over the place in the last few weeks. They seemed REALLY amused when I explained that I love baseball and I respect Ayumi a lot, and gave me TWO posters! Whee! For those who don't know, she is a female professional baseball player in Japan. She's an infielder for Kin-chan's club team, the Ibaraki Golden Golds. They play in the industrial/club leagues in Japan, so not quite NPB, but still.
The poster is of Ayumi holding a smoke detector sort of the way one would normally hold a baseball. From a distance you'd almost think it WAS a baseball:
So, this called for rearranging the posters on my wall. I put Ayumi where Kazumi Saitoh used to be, shifted him down, and added a Morino page from Dragons magazine:
Baseball wall!
Above Ayumi is a Hanshin Tigers poster of Shinobu Fukuhara which I randomly got last year and just like, and the 2005 Mariners Little League Day poster, and the Go Mariners card I got signed by most of the bullpen near the end of the 2006 season. Dangling from my loft ladder are cheer sticks for the Dragons, Fighters, and Baystars.
This is what that corner of my room looked like a few weeks ago. Yes, that's a John Olerud poster on the other wall:
You might notice that there is an extremely cute pair of stuffed animals sitting there. Yes, the Phillie Phanatic is holding onto my cardboard noisemaker from the Keio-Waseda game:
And the Inaba home run ball I caught back in August is being guarded by two Mariners rubber duckies, which are perched on top of my 100-yen-shop plastic drawer tower. The top drawer contains this season's baseball tickets, too:
"Wait," you're thinking, "Deanna, you're a gigantic Fighters fan. Where is all of your Fighters stuff?"
Oh, well, see, that's all on my closet door, on the other side of the room:
And while we're at it, let me show you something else I have in my room: championship t-shirts from the Fighters and Dragons. I know it's fitting because of the magnitude of the championship, but seriously, the Dragons shirt is 32293402343289582342 bazillion times cooler than the Fighters one. It features a nice gold victory dragon logo on the front, and on the back, a caricature of Ochiai pointing into the distance, and the Chunichi roster. It's a really nice silkscreen, and cost me 2650 yen:
The Fighters one, on the other hand, cost like 3000 yen and is just a lame white shirt with nothing on the back and practically a dot-matrix-printer iron-on on the front:
Anyway, it's cold. I can't seem to go more than about 2-3 feet from my space heater without my fingers turning blue. I was going to go to Yokohama for the Baystars Fan Fest today, but that's REALLY far away from my space heater, so we'll see if I make it down there without freezing to death first.
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