High School Game Report: Rikkio Ikebukuro vs. Toritsu Edogawa

(Tons more photos at the bottom of the post.)

So on Sunday, I went to the Meiji University Stadium to watch some high school baseball. The Meiji stadium is out in Fuchu city, in west Tokyo -- I went with one of my Big 6 bleacher friends who is a Meiji fan, since she knows the place really well. It took us 20 minutes to walk there from the nearest station, and she said that was using the shortcut the players told her about. Yikes.

But the reason I went all the way out there was not to watch college ball, nor to watch one of the awesome Tokyo schools like Teikyo or Shutoku or Nichidai San or whoever...

...no, I went to watch Rikkio Ikebukuro take on Toritsu Edogawa. Why? Because Rikkio Ikebukuro's #20 player, the last kid on the roster, the only freshman to make the cut, was a kid named Hoshino... who graduated last year from the JHS I teach at. He was a fantastic student in English class, a class leader, very funny and clever, and since he's a smartass and a baseball player we got along pretty well. I hadn't seen him since graduation, but since our school doesn't have a baseball club, I'd never actually seen him play baseball.

(The few kids at my school who play baseball are on local little league teams. Hoshino was the captain of his team last year, actually, and last summer there was a week when I was helping him and some other kids practice for the Eiken interview speaking test. His interview time was scheduled for the same time as a big game for his little league team, and we spent a good chunk of our practice sessions discussing whether he should go to the baseball game or the English test. In the end he took the English test, passed with flying colors, and his baseball team lost the game without him. I firmly believe, though, that part of why he got into Rikkio in the first place is because he could pass their English interview as well as their normal test and interview process -- it is a pretty selective school. Heck, looking at the roster for their high school baseball team, 15 out of 20 of them went to the Rikkio Ikebukuro middle school as well.)

I had no idea what to expect from this experience to be honest. I went to a Saitama regional tournament game last year at the huge 30,000-seat Omiya Prefectural Stadium, for Urawa Gakuin vs. Seibo Gakuen, two Saitama powerhouse highschools, so nobody really cared at all about a random gaijin showing up in the midst of the tons of other people there. But Meiji's stadium has 200 seats or so and this was a 1st-round game between two average teams -- neither school has ever gone to Koshien. So the stands were pretty much filled with parents and siblings of the players, and some assorted kids from the respective schools.

But we showed up and were greeted by some women wearing purple Rikkio parents' shirts, and purple Rikkio towels, and they asked if we were cheering for Rikkio and we said yes, so they gave us purple St. Paul's fans to wave and bottles of green tea, and told us to sit in the front row. (Good thing we showed up early!) This was both good and bad -- good to be close up, bad because little kids kept getting in the way standing in front of me. My friend told me that when Meiji plays games at the stadium, it is usually pretty much empty.

When the team guys were assembling down on the field, I did yell down "HOSHINO!" and he looked up with a complete look of WTF on his face when he saw me, and for lack of anything else to yell, I followed it with "GANBARE!" It was right before his team was getting into a circle though so I may have totally embarrassed him. Who knows :) I spotted his mother a bit after that since the Rikkio parents' shirts had names embroidered on the sleeves, so I introduced myself as a teacher from his junior high school and apologized, and she didn't really seem to know how to react, but was like "I see, thank you for taking care of him in JHS. And thank you for coming! Did you get a bottle of green tea?"

Anyway, as expected, he didn't actually play for real in this game -- I actually have a hunch that part of why he made it onto the team at all is that they didn't HAVE a reasonable backup catcher last year!

Edogawa won this game 3-1 (here's the Asahi official score). But in reality, it was a hell of a close game, and the entire thing was decided on one error, pretty much.

Edogawa HS 3 - 1 Rikkio Ikebukuro HS 
Sunday, July 11, 2010 

                      1  2  3   4  5  6   7  8  9   R  H  E
Edogawa               0  3  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   3  3  0
Rikkio Ikebukuro      1  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   1  6  1


Edogawa              AB  R  H RB  K BB SH SB  E     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
Nihei, cf             3  0  0  0  1  1  0  0  0    F8 HP .. .. KS .. .. G5 ..
Tsukui, ss            4  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    G4 .. f5 .. KS .. .. G5 ..
Hariyama, 1b          4  0  0  0  2  0  0  0  0    L6 .. F9 .. .. KS .. .. KC
Ajiro, c              4  1  1  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. D8 G6 .. .. f5 .. .. KC
Itoh, lf              3  1  1  0  0  1  0  0  0    .. BB .. D9 .. G5 .. .. F8
Yagi, rf              2  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. KC .. G1 .. .. .. .. ..
 Kubo, ph             1  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. KS .. ..
 Kanemura, rf         0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Ozawa, 3b             3  1  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. E6 .. G6 .. .. G4 .. ..
Minami, 2b            3  0  1  3  0  0  0  0  0    .. T7 .. G6 .. .. F9 .. ..
Michishita, p         3  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. KS .. .. G5 .. .. G4 ..


Rikkio Ikebukuro     AB  R  H RB  K BB SH SB  E     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
Sakuma, cf            4  1  1  0  0  0  0  0  0    S9 .. F7 .. G6 .. .. G5 ..
Hosoki, ss            3  0  1  0  0  0  1  0  1    b1 .. F7 .. F8 .. .. S7 ..
Masuda, 1b            4  0  1  1  0  0  0  0  0    S9 .. F9 .. .. G6 .. G4 ..
Enari, 3b             4  0  1  0  0  0  0  0  0    F8 .. .. G4 .. G3 .. .. D9
Nanbu, 2b             4  0  0  0  2  0  0  0  0    KC .. .. KS .. L4 .. .. G5
Itoh, rf              4  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. KS .. G6 .. .. F9 .. G6
Murata, lf            3  0  1  0  1  1  0  0  0    .. KS .. .. BB .. S9 .. G4
Semoto, c             2  0  1  0  0  0  1  0  0    .. D9 .. .. b3 .. F9 .. ..
Matsuba, p            1  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. KS .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
 Masaki, ph           0  0  0  0  0  1  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. HP .. .. .. ..
 Hagimoto, p          1  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. KC ..


Edogawa             IP  BF   H  HR   K  BBH  RA  ER
Michishita (win)     9  34   6   0   6   2   1   1


Rikkio Ikebukuro    IP  BF   H  HR   K  BBH  RA  ER
Matsuba (loss)       5  20   3   0   4   2   3   2
Hagimoto             4  12   0   0   4   0   0   0

This game could be summed up pretty quickly:

In the bottom of the first inning, Rikkio's leadoff Sakuma singled to right, Hosoki bunted him up, and then Masuda singled to right to drive in a run to make it 1-0.

Edogawa answered that in the top of the second inning when cleanup batter Ajiro doubled to center to lead off, and then Itoh walked on four straight pitches following it. The next batter struck out... and then Ozawa grounded to short. In a college game or pro game it would have been a very easy double play and the inning would have been over. In this game, however, Rikkio shortstop Hosoki couldn't get his hands on the ball and the ball bounced up past him, and the runners were all safe on the error. This set the stage for second baseman Minami to hit the ball over the left fielder and into the gap for a bases-clearing triple, and by the time the dust cleared, Ajiro, Itoh, and Ozawa had all scored, making it 3-1. Another strikeout and then leadoff man Nihei was hit on the shoulder by a pitch... and then picked off first base a few throws later to end the inning.

That is the entirety of the scoring for this game. And without that error, Edogawa might have only pulled one run if any -- had Rikkio gotten the double play, there would be no runs scored.

I would say Rikkio had two more moments when they could have maybe pushed something ahead but failed. In the 5th inning, Murata walked and was bunted up, and a pinch-hitting Masaki was hit by a pitch. With two on and one out, though, Sakuma grounded into a 6-5 force out at third, and then Hosoki -- the boy who made that original error -- hit a monster shot out to right-center. It looked like it could go all the way out, and I watched both center and right fielders running back to the wall... and then the two little boys who kept blocking my vision jumped up and I couldn't see what happened. I had to judge by the cheers on the other side of the stands and the disappointed sounds on our side to know that the ball had been caught. A shame, because a home run at that point would have turned the game to Rikkio's favor.

The other sad part was when Murata singled in the 7th, and then Semoto hit a fly ball to right... and Murata was off running and got himself doubled off first.

Enari actually led off the bottom of the 9th with a double, but the rest of the team couldn't bring him in, despite that Edogawa's pitcher Michishita pitched the entire game. Alas. So the game ended at 3-1.

The Meiji scoreboard was broken due to hard rain the day before, and so it only showed Edogawa on the lit scoreboard -- a bunch of Meiji HS boys had to manually be the Rikkio scoreboard, sitting in the outfield at the bottom of the board. So amusingly, in that inning where Rikkio had 2 guys on base, one kid was sitting there with a "2" waiting to put it on the board, assuming Rikkio could bring some of their runners in... and he finished the inning by putting back the 2 and getting out a 0.

I wasn't that impressed by either starting pitcher, though they were certainly good enough for high school teams. Michishita did make it through the entire game and only allowed the one run, but he was helped a lot by having some really good defense behind him, particularly the shortstop. Rikkio's Matsuba wasn't all that impressive either, though he certainly wasn't bad either.

The guy I was most impressed by, or at least most enjoyed watching, was Rikkio's second pitcher, Hagimoto. He was a side armer, or more like a submarine delivery, and his pitches came into the corners and fooled a lot of batters, sort of like Shunsuke Watanabe. He threw four perfect innings to end the game, striking out 4 -- the Edogawa hitters really had no idea what to do with him, except once or twice where he'd accidentally hang a pitch and it looked more like a slow-pitch ball -- but even in that case they just hit fly balls to the outfield, luckily. I dunno, I am a fan of non-standard deliveries, and in this game at least, his seemed to work well. It'd be cool if he ends up at Rikkio University next year, although I probably won't ever be here to watch him.

And as for my former student Hoshino? Well, he didn't enter the game for real -- Semoto, the 3rd-year catcher, played the entire game. But, a few times when Semoto was the last batter of the inning, or was left on base at the end of the inning, Hoshino came out and caught for the pitcher warming up, so unlike a lot of other kids who get stuck in the dugout the entire game, I at least got to see him do SOMETHING.

I kind of wanted to hang out after the game and see if I could talk to Hoshino, but I figured he might be kind of embarrassed (everyone would be like "why is this crazy gaijin stalking him?") and it was really crowded outside the stadium due to the first two teams getting out and the next two teams coming in anyway. So, my friend and I cleared out and went to sit in the outfield for the second game. There aren't seats in the outfield, just grass, BUT the centerfield steps happen to be halfway between the Meiji University dorm and the training ground, so it turned out to be an opportune place to see the Meiji college baseball players walking back and forth as well as a reasonable place to watch the HS game from. This is what they call "personal training" season for college baseball players... which basically means that everyone still just shows up as a team to work out together. So most of the Meiji university team was around, except for a few guys who are going to go do crazy things like play in the WUBC in a few weeks.

Most of the guys know my friend since she goes to a lot of their games and other events, and some of them know me because I stick out, so a few of them stopped by to chat on their way to/from the fields, kinda like "What are YOU guys doing here? This is high school baseball," and she would explain "oh, I'm just here with her -- she has a former student who plays for Rikkio HS now." "How'd they do?" "They lost and her student didn't play." "Oh, that sucks." Still, it was kinda cool to see them out there. My current favorite Meiji player, bullpen catcher Shuhei Ikenaga, was driving around a tractor-thingy -- I don't know exactly what you call it, it looked like a lawnmower but was used to straighten dirt. Anyway, he was driving it down a hill and pretending to try to run over some of the freshmen. It was pretty funny.

We watched the second game, which took all of 5 innings before being called. Nittai Ebara beat the crap out of Bunkyodai 13-2. The Meiji HS boys keeping score only had to put out numbers for the Bunkyo team, and that meant lots and lots of zeroes for a very long time. They were probably pretty happy about that. Infact, halfway through that game, since about 5 boys were assigned to scoreboard duty, 3 of them started playing catch behind the scoreboard instead, while the other two sat and watched the game with a "Oh my god these guys suck" look on their faces.

We looked at the player meikan later and it seems that Bunkyo was almost entirely freshmen, while Ebara has actually been a fairly strong school over the years even if not a perennial powerhouse, and their team was mostly 3rd-years with a few others scattered in. These games always seem to happen in the first few rounds, totally lopsided contests between schools with real teams that have like 100 kids in the baseball club, and ragtag teams that have like 11 kids in the club total, so that IS their roster.

After that was another long walk back to the station and a long train journey home, so I was pretty wiped out by the end of it all. But, still a good day. I wish Rikkio had won though, their next match would be at Jingu on Saturday if so.

Here are a whole ton of photos from the day:


The Meiji University - aka Utsumi/Shimaoka Ballpark, from the outside with the signs all over the place.


This is what my view was like from my seat for the Rikkio game. There were a few little kids that kept running in front of me, so sometimes they'd be in a fine place for me to catch the action and sometimes they would be right in front of me.


The deck on the Rikkio side. A club member would hold up each player's name, though I am not sure why as there was no organized ouendan type thing. This one says "Nanbu".


The rest of the club members who weren't playing in the match were also up there yelling general encouragement at the players on the field.


Final score of the first game, 3-1. You can see the boys walking out to set that final 0.


Here is the view of the infield from the outfield, sitting next to the scoreboard. The boys sitting at the bottom of the stairs were from the Edogawa team. They get to play Ebara next week.


Closeup of the Ebara side.


Closeup of the Bunkyo side.


The scoreboard as seen from the outfield, with the Meiji dorm in the background.

And some game action...

Edogawa starter Michishita:






(and one more of him at bat)


Rikkio starter Matsuba:


My new favorite sidearm high school pitcher Hagimoto:








(and one more because I managed to get a ball-leaving-his-hand shot -- it's not great but you would be surprised how hard a shot that was to get at all given that half the time I had little kids running in front of me)



Yeah.

Some game action shots:


This is Sakuma splattering himself into home plate in the first inning to score the run for Rikkio.


Edogawa's Minami hitting the triple that scored the rest.


Ajiro runs home.


Ozawa also scores in the top of the 2nd to make it 3-1 Edogawa.


Rikkio's Murata walked and is at first, as Edogawa's Hariyama tries to hold him to the bag, 5th inning.


Hosoki hits that monster shot out to right-center that ALMOST but not quite went for a homer.


Edogawa's team all gets together and high-fives and yells to congratulate the outfielders after that catch.


Rikkio Ikebukuro's captain Nanbu, who used a yellow bat. (They all use metal bats, btw.)


Rikkio's first baseman Masuda, the biggest kid on the team.


Hariyama at bat. Oddly, Edogawa's captain was listed as being #3, Matsunaga, but this Hariyama kid, #13, played first in this game. He was really good, too.


The extra players on the Edogawa team did a kind of fist-pumping-and-leg-kick thing to start each defensive inning.

Okay, and one last thing...


The Rikkio players line up to bow to the stands after losing the game. The kid in the catching gear is my former student.






And here he is at the plate warming up a pitcher between innings. Very cool. It's still neat just to be like "Hey, that boy out there used to nitpick with me for extra points on his speaking tests."

Oh, and because I'm still trying to make sure I get a photo of myself at every new stadium I go to, even if it is something silly like a college park in the middle of nowhere, I asked my friend to take this one of me out by the outfield wall, by the Asahi flag that is always shown around these Koshien regional tournaments:



So, yeah, pretty cool.

I'm not sure what my next high school games will be, though I am hoping to get to a few of them since I am not going to Koshien this year (well, 99% sure I won't be -- I'll be in Seattle from July 26 to August 17). I'm kind of interested in a few teams, and their schedules are right now:

East Tokyo, Teikyo:
15th, Ota, 12:30 (can't go, school)
18th, Edogawa, 12:30 (maaaaybe can't go)
20th, Jingu #2, 10:00 (can't go, school)
23rd, Jingu #2, 10:00 (could go)
25th, Jingu, 10:00 (probably can go)

East Tokyo, Shutoku:
15th, Jingu, 9:00 (can't go, school)
18th, Jingu, 9:00 (same as Teikyo -- and would hate to choose)
20th, Jingu, 9:00 (can't go, school)
23rd, Jingu, 9:00 (can go, but would again have to choose between Teikyo)
25th, Jingu, 10:00 (wouldn't it be nice if this game was Shutoku vs. Teikyo?)

Saitama, Urawa Gakuin:
18th, Omiya, no time listed (argh)
21st, Omiya, no time listed (could probly go, my school ends on the 20th)
23rd, Omiya, 10:00 (could go but would have to choose this over the others)
25th, Omiya, 10:00 (same)

The Kanagawa ones would be nice to try to get to but a lot of them are pretty far out from here. Still, a few schools I would be interested in:

Keio:
If they make it far enough, I can probably swing the 22nd at Sagamihara or the 24th at Hiratsuka.

Tokaidai Sagamihara:
Same, the 22nd at Hodogaya, or they also play on the 24th at Hiratsuka.

Yokohama:
I can't do the 12th, 14th, or 18th, but on the 21st they play at Hiratsuka and the 24th and 25th are actually at Yokohama Stadium. These seem the most likely for me to make it to if I do a Kanagawa game at all -- I prefer stadiums that don't involve walking for half an hour from the nearest station in the dead heat of July, thanks.

West Tokyo's Nichidai San also plays on the 24th at Jingu, which might be a better draw if they make it that far. But we'll see.

Game Report: Fighters vs. Hawks @ Tokyo Dome - Hichori Home Run!

The most notable thing about this game is that HICHORI MORIMOTO HIT A HOME RUN AND I FINALLY SAW IT IN PERSON!

A few weeks ago at my JHS, I was asked to write a "postcard from Deanna" for a midterm exam for our 9th-graders, something they would have to read and answer some questions about. So I wrote a postcard about a fictitious trip to Sapporo and included the following lines, as the major grammatical point this semester was the use of perfect tense ("Have you ever been.." "I have never seen..." "I have just eaten dinner" etc):

"Yesterday, I went to the Sapporo Dome to watch a baseball game. The Sapporo Dome was built in 2001. It is used for soccer games and baseball games. I have been to the Sapporo Dome many times. But I have never seen a soccer game there, only baseball.

The game was very exciting! The Fighters won the game. Hichori Morimoto hit a home run. I have never seen him hit a home run before, so I was very happy!"

A few days later, I'm chatting in the library with a few students. One of my students is pretty serious about his Little League team and wants to go to a big baseball highschool next year and is a Teikyo (and sadly Yomiuri) fan. We talk about baseball fairly often (in Japanese of course), so this time he said "Hey, did you really write that Sapporo postcard on our test?"

"Yeah, I did. Could you understand it?"

"...mostly. Hahahaha, you never saw Hichori hit a home run? Really? I saw him hit a home run... I think it was at the Tokyo Dome during interleague..."

"Wasn't this year or last year... and two years ago was when that jerk Kentaro Nishimura broke Hichori's hand with a pitch."

"Was Hichori pissed?"

"No, but the rest of us sure were. Lots of booing."

"I know I saw him hit a home run though. I don't like the Fighters but I like Hichori because he's from Arakawa and Teikyo."

"He hit one last year in Chiba in the first inning. I showed up in the second. Go figure."

Anyway, this became sort of a running joke for a bit, because we trash-talk all the time about the Fighters and Giants. He tends to remind me as often as possible that the Giants are in 1st place and the Fighters are (until recently) in last place.

So I'm at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday night watching the Fighters-Hawks game. Yoshio Itoi hits a 3-run homer in the first inning off Softbank starter J.D.Durbin to put the Fighters up 3-0. The Hawks manage to run themselves out of their half of the 5th inning, and then the Fighters get two guys on base as Kaneko and Kensuke both hit singles.

Hichori comes to the plate, two on, no out, and BLAM! He smacks the ball out to center. Out, out, and OVER the wall! 3-run homer, 6-0!

I go nuts because I'm half thinking "Dude! Hichori just hit a home run!" and also "Dude! I hope my students are watching this one!"

Amusingly enough, Ojisan posted a video he took of the cheering section to his blog, and in the video, when Hichori hits the home run, can you hear the really high-pitched screaming? That's me :)

Even better, so Durbin comes out of the game after that, and Masahiko Monkeyboy Morifuku comes in to pitch to Inaba... and Inaba ALSO cranks a home run. 7-0.

So yeah, the Fighters won this game and took the series from the Hawks. The game heroes were Hichori, and Masaru Takeda, who pitched 8 scoreless innings. Kazunori Yamamoto, who was spending a brief few days up at ichi-gun, threw a scoreless 9th as well.

The women sitting next to me also double as Yakult fans, and know I'm a Mikinori Katoh fan, so they continued to update me on the Yakult game. "You're never going to believe this, but your beloved Mikinori is about to get his first career win... the Swallows are up 9-3 right now..."

So yeah, it was good. Although I am increasingly annoyed at how the Tokyo Dome big screen seems to only be willing to show me if I am NOT holding up signs or cheering or otherwise actually looking like I know what the hell I am doing, like they must keep up their stereotypes that white people are all tourists. I noticed, infact, that my group of friends ("Team 52") that all hold up matching towels and signs... we never got on the screen when I sat with them on Tuesday, but they were there several times on Wednesday and Thursday when I sat elsewhere. Coincidence? Maybe, but it's sure enough to make a gaijin paranoid.

Anyway, I come to school on Friday and tell my student about Hichori's homerun. His reaction? "His hand healed?"

"Eh?"

"From Nishimura's pitch."

"Dude, that was TWO YEARS AGO."

"It was?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you said..."

"I probably screwed up the Japanese. Anyway, Hichori! Yay!"

"Uh... yeah. Hichori! Yay?"

Game Report: Fighters vs. Hawks @ Tokyo Dome - Game, Settsu, Match!

Well, maybe not match. Not quite yet. We'll leave that to Thursday's game.

So, this game went a LOT better than Tuesday's. Shinsuke Ogura started for Softbank, and I actually don't think I ever saw him before. Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters.

Bizarrely, before the game when I did pinbadges, I got a Yanuki pinbadge -- "Ah, that's yesterday's starter!" and then the next one to come out was a Yagi pinbadge -- "Ah, that's tonight's starter! Is the next one going to be tomorrow's starter?" but it was Tadano, so obviously not.

Still, it seemed like a good omen. And well, the first three innings of the game went really quickly on both sides. I was sitting in the front row again with Ojisan's group, and a lot of our friends weren't coming until after 7pm, and we were like "They're going to miss half the game!"

The Fighters scored a run in the bottom of the 4th when Hichori singled and Itoi drove him in a little bit later. 1-0.

So that was good, except that Jose Ortiz hit a 2-run homer in the top of the 6th to make it 2-1.

That seemed kinda ominous, and it wasn't helped any by having them show Sadaharu Oh on the big screen during the Hawks' Lucky 7. (I couldn't find my camera. Argh.)

Tadashi Settsu came in to pitch the bottom of the 7th, and everyone groaned, since he usually kicks our butts.

But I guess something was different this time, because Yoshio Itoi led off against him with a single to center, and then Tomochika Tsuboi pinch-hit for Ugumori (which was very exciting, I hadn't seen Tsuboi in forever) and Settsu hit him in the shoulder with a pitch. Dai-kan Yoh struck out... and Masayoshi Katoh, who just got called up earlier in the day, pinch-hit for Shota Ohno and singled to center, a low fly ball that fell inbetween Kawasaki and Hasegawa, so it was too shallow for anyone to score, but the bases were loaded for Makoto Kaneko, who single to left, scoring Itoi. Tie game! 2-2.

Kensuke Tanaka came up and singled to right, the ball veering off into foul territory, so Kensuke tried to stretch things into a double and was thrown out at second. But in the meantime, Tsuboi and Masayoshi scored, so 4-2!

Hichori followed that up with a dramatic infield single where he headslid into first base to beat out the throw just barely, and Kaneko scored. 5-2.

Inaba grounded out to first after that, though the Hawks almost didn't make the play, some weird miscommunication between Petagine and Settsu.

Anyway, Keisuke Kattoh pitched the 8th for Softbank, and he gave up another run to the Fighters as Itoi led off with a double and then Tsuboi singled to left, reaching second as the Hawks tried to throw to the plate to get Itoi, but failed, so 6-2. Exciting!

(Actually, to me, the most exciting part of the 7th and 8th innings were that we finally did a whole bunch of other chance music other than freaking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which I am sick of. We did the special Tokyo Dome theme a few times, and we finally did Kita no Kuni Kara for Inaba's at-bat, and we even did the Wasshoi one that I haven't heard in YEARS. Yay for variety. Now can we just get some ouenka for guys like Ohno and Yoh and Ugumori?)

Naoki Miyanishi and Hisashi Takeda pitched a scoreless 8th and 9th and that was the game.



Starter Tomoya Yagi and go-ahead-2-RBI-single-hitting Kensuke Tanaka were the game heroes.

So several players on the team came out and threw signed baseballs into the stands, and then later Yagi and Kensuke came out and threw a stuffed BB doll and some baseballs into the crowd, and then we had a long post-game cheering session where we did a whole bunch of themes and songs and whatnot, including even a song for Tanabata, which is the Star Festival celebrated on July 7th.

Afterwards, when things were winding down, my friend Tsuji came down to the front row and said, "Deanna, put out your hand."

"What?"

"Don't ask, just do it."

So I did, and you'd never believe what he gave me:



Yeah -- he was sitting about 4-5 rows behind me and he managed to catch a signed ball thrown by Shota Ohno. He was like "You like Ohno a hell of a lot more than I do, so here you are."

So cool!

I actually have one other ball like this -- I got it last year when the Hawks played the Fighters in the Tokyo Dome, a ball thrown by Kensuke. But I really do like Ohno, so this is pretty awesome. I totally freaked out and was basically like "OMG OMG OMG OMG YOU'RE KIDDING" for like 5 minutes.

Dude. My friends rock.

After the game I also met up with blog reader Hema for a bit and we walked to the station together. It was a good game.

Game Whine: Fighters vs. Hawks @ Tokyo Dome - Utter Defeat

(I've been meaning to post something about that other BCL game in Gunma, but I got totally swamped this last week and weekend due to taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on Sunday. This week, I am attending the Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome on Tue/Wed/Thurs. This is about Tuesday's game.)



No, really. I mean, what else can be said about this?

Toshiya Sugiuchi pitched a complete-game shutout against the Fighters. The only time he even allowed two runners in one inning was in the 9th, when Koyano singled and Ugumori walked two batters later (the only walk of the game, against 9 strikeouts). It was pretty unreal. The only batting the Fighters accomplished at all was Atsunori Inaba hitting his career 350th double in the first inning, which they stopped the game for in order to give him flowers and recognize the achievement.

Toshiyuki Yanuki started for the Fighters, and let's just say that obviously the Hawks offense fared a lot better:

- Every starter got on base at least once.
- Every starter got a hit except Nobuhiro Matsuda (he was hit by a pitch).

Some scary lines:

- Nobuhiko Matsunaka, DHing and batting 6th, walked twice, and hit a 3-run homer in the 6th. This is notable because his home run went 130 meters and LANDED IN THE UPPER DECK IN RIGHT FIELD. I've lost count, but I have seen Matsunaka hit at least 15 home runs in person over the last 3 years. This is not an exaggeration.

- Munenori Kawasaki went 4-for-5, had a walk too, and a stolen base, and one of his hits was a badass triple off the wall in the rightfield corner that probably missed being a home run by about 2 meters. He scored 3 of the 12 runs for his team, too.

- Hitoshi Tamura went 3-for-4 with 3 RBI, basically hitting in a run every time he got a hit. And he was taken out of the game in the 6th inning at that. He's scary when not injured.

- I gotta tell you that another thing I have lost count of is how many teams I have seen Roberto Petagine play for at this point, but I am fairly sure I have now seen him get a hit in at least 5 different uniforms.


Ah, whatever.
The stupid thing is, the Fighters ouendan really wanted to do the Tokyo Dome chance theme, but the Fighters couldn't get anyone on base, so we basically just sang it through the entire 9th inning for the heck of it, despite the team being down 12-0.

The stadium was PACKED with Softbank employees. It seems that Softbank gave free tickets or discounted tickets to their Tokyo-area employees and also gave them a bag with a yellow Hawks flag and a black Hawks jersey and cheer sticks and whatnot in it -- so when I showed up, there were a ton of these Softbank people in their suits, carrying briefcases and the Hawks gear bags. It was nuts though, they filled up over half the stadium; even the 2nd floor was opened for the overflow of Softbank people. Enough of them sat on the 1st base side that several people remarked "This doesn't really feel like a Fighters home game, does it?"

(I later confirmed this with a friend who works at Softbank; he said he'll be at Wednesday's game.)

Apparently the Softbank CEO was there as well as Sadaharu Oh, but I think I got there too late to see either of them, and when I did arrive I was too busy trying to get food and pinbadges and everything done in time for the game to start. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I can get there before the start at all, really; a lot of the people I knew at the game had to show up late after their work shifts.

Speaking of errands before the game, when I was going to get food in the concourse near home plate, I saw a familiar woman walking by, she nodded and smiled at me so I said hi to her in Japanese, she said hi back, we both kept walking, and it wasn't until about two minutes later I realized HEY WAIT A MINUTE THAT WAS HICHORI MORIMOTO'S MOM. Hichori's parents run a yakiniku restaurant and I've been there a whole bunch of times, so it was kind of cool that she remembered me.

The crazy groundskeeper who used to do funny crap during YMCA wasn't there yet again, and infact I'm not sure he was there at all this year. I wonder if he either got fired or told to tone it down or what.

After the game, I headed outside and walked around to home plate since I usually see a bunch of people I know out there, and this time was no different. After catching up for a bit, the Fighters mascot BB came out... with both of the Hawks mascots as well! A huge line formed to get photos taken with them. I thought about it for a bit and realized this might be my only chance to get a photo with the Hawks mascots -- I'm not sure when I will get back to the Yahoo Dome again if ever to be honest, but I have a feeling I won't be back there this year just due to all the other stuff I want to do.

So I waited in line for about 10 minutes, and fortunately wasn't cut off! My biggest worry was that they'd just say "Okay, sorry, no more photos" and leave. But they didn't.



I actually had no clue that the female hawk was named Honey until just now when I looked it up. I knew Harry the Hawk, but I usually have trouble keeping track of auxiliary mascots, especially when teams like Rakuten add 10 mascots every year.

Game Report: Lions vs. Fighters @ Omiya - Vuvuzela Power!

Look, we brought South Africa's game atmosphere to Saitama!



This game was a perfect example of several things:

1) Regional stadiums are fun
2) Ouendan leaders are crazy
3) Never EVER leave a game early even if it is 5 hours long, because you will probably miss something exciting and cool if you do.

Seibu seems to be making a point of "connecting with Saitama Prefecture" at these games in Omiya, so for this game they had invited Kobaton, the black pigeon mascot of Saitama, to come to the game, and the big event was that they had the cast of Ookiku Furikabutte on the field before the game. (They also apparently had a talkshow with Taisei Takagi, who is interesting, but I was too late for that.)

I'll be honest, I knew nothing about Ookiku Furikabutte before the game, since I don't really follow manga or anime, but my friends explained that the manga takes place in Saitama; Asa Higuchi, who drew it, went to Urawa Nishi high school, and the "Nishiura" team in the manga is based on that school's baseball team. Also, she threw out the ceremonial first pitch, which reached home plate but was a bit wild.

In other Saitama things, the "player of the day" was Yoshihito Ishii, who is from Saitama and went to Urawa Gakuin HS, and Hiroshi Hirao was batting 5th -- Hirao is not only from Saitama but he went to Omiya Higashi HS, which is literally less than a mile from Omiya Stadium. I've rarely seen Hirao at ichi-gun let alone in the starting lineup, and I feel like most of the time I've seen him play, it was at Omiya Stadium actually, although I learned his cheer song ("...warera no Hira-OH-OH-OH!") at the 2008 Asia Series.

The game started about 15 minutes late, and we were told it was due to ground conditions (it had rained earlier in the day and Omiya Stadium is a mudpit) but it also seemed like it was due to these anime voice actors taking forever for their speeches. And the outfield slope cheering area was relatively empty compared to the "outfield" seats with real bleachers in the infield. This is because Omiya's outfield is REALLY sloped -- if you sit at the top, as me and my friends did, it is okay, and if you sit at the bottom, it is okay, but sitting on the actual slope really royally bites, it is hard to stand up and keep your balance, and you can't really put any of you stuff down because it slides down the slope. Hell, when a guy got really excited and came up to high-five a bunch of us, he slipped on the slope and fell flat on his face. Seriously. Slopes suck. But Omiya sucks even more than usual. Even Sagamihara wasn't quite that bad, nor is the Seibu Dump itself.

But one funny thing about Omiya Stadium is that the fences are only 99 meters away at the corners, and thanks to said slope, it is a bit easier to hit a home run straight out of the actual ballpark than it is in a lot of other places...

...which is precisely what happened in the 2nd inning. The ouendan leader had yelled, "Omiya Stadium is a bit smaller than most so let's yell a good cheer for Itoi to hit a home run out here! So-re, KOKO MADE TOBASE ITOI!!" Which means "Hit it here", and we cheered that twice, and in the middle of the third cheer he BLASTED a home run towards us -- towards us -- OVER us -- and OUT OF THE STADIUM! That made it 1-0.

Hiroyuki Nakajima answered it with a home run of his own in the 4th, a 2-run shot to make it 2-1. And the Fighters then answered THAT in their half of the 5th, ater Koyano and Itoi singled, Dai-Kan Yoh hit a sac fly to score Koyano and tie the game. Shinji Takahashi doubled to put Itoi on 3rd, and then Itoi scored on a wild pitch during Shota Ohno's at-bat to make it 3-2, and then starter Ryoma Nogami came out of the game and Chikara Onodera came in and shut down the Fighters for a bit (including striking out Kensuke, Hichori, and Inaba for a flawless 6th).


Doing the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance theme on the hillside of Omiya Outfield. This was retarded for two reasons: 1) the hillside is dangerous, and 2) there were very few women at the game relatively, so when it gets up to "UTTE UTTE YOH DAI-KAN!" suddenly most of the cheer fell silent.

Fighters starter Tomoya Yagi only fared slightly better than Nogami -- he gave up another homer in the 5th, this time a solo shot to Yasuyuki Kataoka that tied it up at 3-3, and Yagi came out with the bases loaded in the 6th, for Takeharu Katoh to fortunately strike out Tatsuyuki "Who the hell are you anyway" Uemoto to end that threat.

At this point, the game was tied, and it stayed tied for a long long time, even into extra innings. The game was also SLOW. It turns out the rule at Omiya Stadium is that trumpets and drums are all forbidden after 9:30pm, which we hit in the bottom of the 8th inning, in the middle of an at-bat at that, and just like that the music cut out and turned into clapping and singing only.

Well, to make it easier for us to cheer together, the ouendan rounded up people in the bench seats and brought them in the outfield to consolidate. Case in point:


Right-field stands at the start of the game.


Right-field stands in the 9th inning.


Flags at the start of the game.


And here we go into extras...

I have to admit something about this game -- I was actually pretty tired from having been up since 6am after staying up late to try to catch the Japan-Paraguay World Cup game, and then I was really grumpy that it seemed like the ouendan seriously won't do any other themes in Kanto except CCBB, which is kinda sorta fun but it would be nice to have some variety, we haven't done some of the other themes in YEARS, literally.

So just as I was thinking, man, this game is in extra innings, it is late, I am tired, I am bored, the Lions are just going to win anyway, why are these ouendan so stupid, etc,

Crazy Glasses Dude and High-Pitched Guy start coming around with the cardboard megaphones that Seibu had been giving out before the game for that anime Ookiku Furikabutte. Their instructions? "Let's make these into vuvuzelas and annoy the crap out of the Seibu fans. Fold this into a megaphone and blow them when Seibu makes an out."

People thought that was a good idea, so we did just that.





As you can see in the video embedded at the top of this post, we actually had a pretty damn good imitation going there, much to everyone's amusement. Infact we continued blowing them as vuvuzelas well into the Fighters' at-bat cheering as well, which resulted in things like us doing a Kensuke call and then vuvuzelaing. "SE-NO -- KENSUKE!!!!!!! vzvzvzvzvzzvzvzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....."

Anyway, I guess the vuvuzelas helped the Fighters -- or more like, it was the Lions switching from Brian Sikorski to Koji Ohnuma in the top of the 11th. We were all pretty psyched about that. Kaneko grounded out to lead off, but then Kensuke singled to center, Hichori walked, and Inaba ALSO walked to load the bases. Koyano lined a shot into left-center and that scored Kensuke and Hichori to make it 5-3 Fighters. Ohnuma came out of the game at that point and Hironori Matsunaga replaced him on the mound. Itoi hit a pop fly out but Dai-Kan Yoh singled to center, scoring a pinch-running Toshimasa Konta, 6-3. Shinji Takahashi followed that up with ANOTHER single, scoring Koyano, 7-3. Shota Ohno unfortunately ended the inning by striking out -- he was the only starting member of the Fighters to not collect a hit, walking once, striking out three times, and hitting a sac bunt once. Oh, and his other at-bat he lined a ball into Brian Sikorski's stomach.

Either way, Hisashi Takeda came out to close out the bottom of the 11th. Yoshihito Ishii, another "pride of Saitama" player, pinch-hit for Hiroshi "Omiya's Finest" Hirao to lead off. Hirao was actually 3-for-3 with a walk, but Ishii one-upped him by hitting a home run to right -- infact it landed 10 feet to the right of me, a guy in the next group of friends over caught it on a bounce. 7-4. But that was it and the game ended three batters later.



Apparently I was on TV during the post-game celebrations, or so said a few friends that sent me email about it. They said they saw me in my black jersey standing near a bunch of Inaba jerseys against the back wall. Those would be Taicho's -- he's been an Inaba fan for years and years and years and brings his jerseys to each game and usually has people stand up and wave them with him. "Taicho" is not actually his name, but it's a shortened version of 稲葉応援隊長, or "Inaba cheering chief".


These are Taicho's jerseys.


And this is Taicho. I knew him by his insane Inaba jerseys long before I actually met him.

One more thing from this game: I received this from a friend who makes a ton of cheering towels. Most of Team 52 have a whole bunch of them for lots of the players, but I really just wanted the Ohno one, so she gave it to me. Whee!



Okay, and one last thing: Here we are doing an Inaba Jump with no trumpets or drums, and on the side of a hill. Whee.



So, the game ended at around 11pm and I didn't get home until well after midnight, and there was a long boring period of the game itself, but... overall with the vuvuzela craziness and the Fighters pulling out a crazy win, it was a pretty good game. Wish I could go to Thursday's since they have Salaryman Night and all my friends will go play catch on the field at the Seibu Dump, but I have my final Japanese class before the JLPT exam on Sunday. Sigh.