Japan Photos, Part 7a - Chiba

I had two whole days of pictures from Chiba Marine Stadium this trip, so here's the first day's set, from September 11th. The second set, from September 13th, will feature the Marines Museum too, and will theoretically go up tomorrow.

You can read my blog entry about the day or look at the game report on the Marines site, which has pictures that are a lot like mine, but taken by someone much closer to the action, and featuring less cheerleaders :) The Eagles beat the Marines 6-2, with a whole lot of guys named Yamazaki scoring runs for Rakuten. I went to the game to see Yoshihisa Naruse, the young lefty Lotte rookie pitcher, but now looking back, it's cool that I got to see the Rakuten starter Ryan Glynn, since he'll be on the Fighters next year! Yay!

Full photoset with thumbnails and descriptions here:
Marines vs. Eagles at Chiba Marine Stadium, September 11, 2006

And as usual I'll throw up a few highlights of the set. If that Matt Watson fan from Athletics Nation is around, he'll love this set, because I have a whole lot of "Watty", as he was playing right field and I was sitting right near there.

Chiba Marine Stadium, at night, infield, outfield, and scoreboard:


Eagles starter Ryan Glynn, Lotte starter Yoshihisa Naruse, Lotte outfielder Saburo Ohmura:


Cheerleaders welcome players, Tatsuya Shiokawa falls down turning a double play, and Teppei is out at the plate:


Matt Watson (x2), Hisao Heiuchi, Masato Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Nishioka:


Aono at bat, cheer girls dancing, mascots posing, and a young Satozaki fan:


There's more in the full set, with the balloon launching and sightings of Satoru Komiyama and Justin Miller, among other things, but I'm kind of bad at picking these highlight sets out.

NPB Roundup: Quickie

I really just needed an excuse to pass along this Sports Illustrated Q&A with Kei Igawa which is the funniest sports interview I've ever read in my entire life. You have to wonder if he was trying to be deadpan, or if things got lost in translation, or what. Make sure you read the second page as well. (Thanks to mijow on the jb forums for posting it; it gave me a huge laugh when I really needed one.)

The Lotte Zuleta deal became official. So did Guiel with Yakult.

Fighters pitcher Tomoya Yagi, 2006 PL ROY, cut his hair really short and it looks weird.

Well, you know I'm a huge Makoto Kaneko fan, and I hadn't noticed that he was still doing Weekly Mack radio interviews even after the Japan Series, though the last one is from Christmas, talking about Christmas memories and about how he got his nickname and random other stuff. Also, the 2007 Jan/Feb wallpapers on the official Fighters site are of Kaneko and of manager Hillman. I've got the Kaneko wallpaper up; it's cute because it looks like he's staring in confusion at all my desktop icons.

Nikkan Sports has been doing daily "New Face" articles on the new Fighters draftees and I was thinking I'd translate and compile highlights of them when they're all done, but if you want to read what's there so far, today's was of Ken Miyamoto, their college/industry kibouwaku pick from Waseda. They did articles on the high school picks first, with Mitsuo Yoshikawa, Yuusuke Uemura and Romash Tasuku Dass.

Michihiro Ogasawara's clean-shaven doppleganger is training at his old stomping grounds at the NTT Kanto facilities in Funabashi, where he played in the industrial leagues. His theme for this year is 挑戦, "Challenge". He apparently got a little sunburned while travelling in Hawaii over New Year's. See, that's what he gets for shaving his beard off and leaving the Fighters!

There's a rumor that Nolan Ryan might coach the Fighters for a week or two during spring camp, helping out fellow Texans Trey Hillman and Dave Owen. No idea if there's any substance to it, but that'd be damn cool if it came to pass. Also, maybe he could help straighten out the Ryan Glynn / Andy Green name issue by being another "Ryan".

Actually, players are doing personal training all over the place -- you know, the training they do BEFORE reporting to Spring Camp on February 1. Fortunately, reporters are following them all over the place. While several of the Hawks are going to Guam, Hiroki Kokubo and Kazumi Saitoh are apparently coming to Arizona to train for a few weeks, actually, but of course, I have no idea where in Arizona exactly.

On a sadder note, Giants slugger Seung-Yeop Lee's mother died of a brain tumor today. That sucks.

EDIT 1/7>
I don't feel like making a whole separate entry for these links but:
Kazuo Fukumori goes to Todaiji and tries to fit through the "nose of the Daibutsu" hole in a wooden pillar near the Buddha. I swear to god my best friend and I spent like twenty minutes watching various people try to do this when we went there in September. It was hilarious.

Nikkan Sports has a little part of their site called Darvish's Room. You know, just so there can be a nice little section of the web that is All Darvish, All The Time. I love it, I really do. It goes perfectly with their Shinjo Legends page...

EDIT 1/8> Keisaku Itokazu and Kazunori Yamamoto were added to the Fighters new faces, so I'm keeping track here.

Mariners Caravan and Fan Fest 2007

(I originally wrote this for here, then Blogger barfed on me so I posted it to Lookout Landing, now I'm going to post it here anyway. So there.)

The Mariners have info on their website now about Fan Fest 2007 and the Mariners Caravan 2007.

I have to admit that Fan Fest really doesn't look all that exciting yet. I mean, the scheduled players as of yet are Felix, Betancourt, and JJ Putz. Whee. Though, to be fair, I'm not sure everyone who actually appeared last year was listed beforehand; guys like Norm Charlton and Mike Blowers and Dave Valle also gave Q&A sessions and chatted with people, for example, and even Mike Hargrove was wandering around at one point. (Another thing Hargrove and Bavasi have in common are that they're both left-handed and are pretty nice if you stop and ask them to sign something, if you're wondering.) Hopefully a couple more players will be there, or it's going to be a lot of long boring Q&A sessions with Bavasi and Lincoln.

Anyway, Fan Fest is January 27th and 28th, from 10am to 4pm, at Safeco Field. Adults are $10, kids ages 6-14 are $5 and kids under 5 years old are free. If you want to get a specific player's autograph, you should probably show up at least an hour before the gates open in order to get an autograph voucher. I have no idea if we'll pull together a blog contingent for it this year or not.

In case you are nowhere near Seattle, but are within the Mariners geographical market, they also have the wonderful Mariners Winter Caravan, coming soon to a place near you!

I thought the opening stop at IKEA last year was actually pretty fun, and they had Jamie Moyer as well as Sherrill and Putz, and Jamie's just great with fans and is really funny to see when he's dressed in street clothes. But this year, there's no kickoff event like that, and the closest they seem to be getting to Seattle is either the Alderwood Mall team store, or the UPS Fieldhouse down in Tacoma, both towards the end of the tour.

They spend about half of their time sessions in elementary schools and the Mariners Care get-well sessions, and about half the time in public autograph sessions. For the full details on these locations, see the official page. The public ones are:

Week 1: Jones and Morse
Jan 9, 4:30-6pm : Olympia, Mariners Team Store: Adam Jones, Mike Morse, Rick Rizzs, the Moose
Jan 12, 4-5:30pm : Longview, Lower Columbia College: Adam Jones, Mike Morse, the Moose

Week 2: The Green Woods
Jan 16, 4:15-5:45pm : Wenatchee, Wenatchee Valley College Gym: Sean Green, Jake Woods, the Moose
Jan 17, 4:30-6pm : Pasco, Columbia Basin College Gym: Sean Green, Jake Woods, the Moose
Jan 18, 4-5:30pm : Walla Walla, Whitman College Sherwood Center: Sean Green, Jake Woods, the Moose
Jan 19, 4:15-5:45pm : Spokane, Spokane Falls Community College: Sean Green, Jake Woods, Dave Valle, the Moose

Week 3: How's Your Elbow?
Jan 23, 4:15-5:45pm : Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley College Pavilion: JJ Putz, Mark Lowe, the Moose
Jan 25, 4:30-6pm : Lynnwood, Alderwood Mariners Team Store: JJ Putz, Mark Lowe, John McLaren, Rick Rizzs, the Moose
Jan 26, 4:15-5:45pm : Tacoma, Univ. of Puget Sound Memorial Fieldhouse: JJ Putz, Mark Lowe, John McLaren, Rick Rizzs, the Moose


I would vaguely consider trying to go up to the Lynnwood one, except that with normal working hours and rush hour traffic, it's fairly impossible for me to get there by 6pm. I took off a few hours early from work to go to the IKEA one last year, and PositivePaul went down to the Olympia one (and had quite an adventure meeting George Sherrill). If anyone ends up going to some of these, you should totally share your stories (and harrass Rick Rizzs about his facial hair)!

Happy New Year, or something

Happy New Year, folks. I'm still in Philadelphia, where the Iggles managed to somehow win their division with a bunch of second-string and third-string guys on New Year's Eve. For a while this weekend I was fairly sure that "E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!" was Philadelphian for "Happy New Year 2007!", as I remember drifting off to sleep around 3am on New Year's Day, when all of a sudden, outside my window, some more people were stumbling home from the bars down the street yelling "E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!!"

But anyway, that's why I haven't really written much. (The being in Philadelphia and celebrating New Year's part, not the football part.) I did pick up a book about Veterans Stadium the other day, which could potentially be very good or very bad; it's by Rich Westcott, and my general opinion of his books is that they are full of awesome information but I have a lot of trouble staying awake while reading them. He tends to write about Philly sports in general, and I have no doubt in my mind that his brain is a vast store on the subject.

Today I went to the Franklin Institute, which is a really old science museum in Philadelphia which I went to several times a year when I was growing up here. They have a great room now on "Science and Sports", which has things like a simulated wheelchair race, a rockclimbing wall, a racecar reflex test, a "how high can you jump?" measuring gadget, and a speed pitch machine, among other stuff. I throw like a girl. But that's beside the point -- another feature of the room is a bunch of sports figures pictured along one wall, including Bobby Abreu to represent baseball, and Al Iverson to represent basketball, and they even have the Phillies and Sixers uniforms from those two framed and displayed. I don't think they actually had a named Eagles player on the wall, but I'm sure whoever that is would have to get traded soon too!

In sadder news, George Sisler Jr. died this weekend of Alzheimer's. The strange part is that I read it first in the Japanese baseball news instead of over here. I didn't even realize that Sisler Jr was a minor-league GM and president for a while; to be fair, I know very little of the Sislers except for the George whose record Ichiro broke. I should remedy that sometime.

Song Parody: Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 Seattle Mariners

Same routine as last year and the year before, my dear readers -- I'm no good at these "serious year-end summary" things, so I write a silly song about the team instead.


Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 Seattle Mariners
To the tune of "Wild Wild West" by the Escape Club
New lyrics by Deanna "Marinerd" Rubin

Forty men with big dreams playing on the same team
Morse, Reed, Meche, Dobbs, all with the same jobs
Kenji's in the dugout waiting for the third out
Carl's up at home plate, driving people crazy

Diss my team, but I don't care
I love the teal in the shirts they wear
Down at the field that we love best,
Starting with the Angels
Playing in the AL West
The AL West

Richie is a big chump, Beltre's in the same slump,
Sherrill's got the left waves, Putz's getting big saves
Ninety-seven strikeouts Felix has so far
Got to vote 'em in, vote 'em in,
Jose's on the All-Star

Diss my team, but I don't care
I love these guys when they're on a tear
Games with the league that we love best
Sweeping out the Giants,
Beating up the NL West
The NL West

Now put your trades on the line and send your players down
You can call 'em up, call 'em up, waive 'em out of town
Ed to the Red, Choo to the Tribe
I don't care since we get to see Doyle tonight

Diss my team, but I don't care
Of how they suck, I am quite aware
Watching this streak has me depressed
Heading back to Oakland
Losing to the AL West
The AL West

Heading out to center, Ichiro's the mentor
Watching Willie Boom-Boom, striking out like Bret Boone
Give me give me Mark Lowe
Give me give me Fruto
Give me Jones, give me Green
Give me time to vent my spleen

This team sucks, and I don't care
I've lost all hope from this bad, bad year
They traded the guys that we liked best
I'm moving back to Philly,
Fed up with the AL West
The AL West

Friday Foto: Hard Hats Required

I'm in Philly now. Yay.

I hear Barry Zito signed with the San Francisco Giants for a metric bucket of money, with an option for an additional bucket of money. Hmm, maybe this gives me more of an excuse to try to go down for this year's Giants-Phillies games.

On the way up to Philly, I stopped in DC to hang out with a good friend of mine. We were debating what to do for a few hours before my train, and since he's also a baseball geek and has become a bit of a Nats fan, we thought we'd go wander down to the area near the Navy Yard metro stop and look at the new stadium construction:


This is probably my oddest "Look, I'm at a stadium" picture ever.
(Bonus points if you can identify the shirt I'm wearing.)

The area around the New Ballpark, as it's currently called, is really a dump. We're under the impression they'll be trying to gentrify it a bit, as the area across the street from the construction site is basically all deserted and abandoned buildings. We walked around the area a bit and took a bunch of pictures (I'll post more some other time if people want to see them, but right now I don't really have good photo editing stuff so I just resized that one with Paint), which seemed to amuse the construction workers who were leaving the site -- I get the impression they don't get all that many tourists there.

As an aside, my mom and I drove past the Richmond Braves stadium the other day when we were near there, and I was impressed by how big it seemed compared to Cheney! I haven't really been to all that many AAA stadiums, so maybe I'm just easily impressed.

NPB Roundup: The Wrath of Contracts

In ten hours I'm getting out of the boonies and working my way up to Philly, where I will promptly be engulfed in a storm of hoagies, cheesesteaks, and Tastykakes, drowned in birch beer.

Okay, not really. And I am unfortunately one day late to celebrate Cole Hamels's birthday. But since I'm on the net since it still feels too early to sleep, I might as well share some of the stuff I'm reading.

First, WE GOT TSUBOI BACK!!!!!! Yay! Err, by "we" I mean the Nippon Ham Fighters and by "Tsuboi" I mean Tomochika Tsuboi, the often-injured but otherwise-awesome former-Tiger-now-Fighters outfielder, who was released immediately after the Japan Series. The reason the Fighters dismissed him in the first place was that they thought they were paying him too much for such a low contribution to the team, so in re-signing him they gave him a much lower contract (about $150k) and will see how this season goes. Still, this makes me feel a lot better about the outfield situation, and if we're lucky Tsuboi will stay healthy and hit over .300 for a whole year, too!

Of course, Fighters corner outfielder and big bat Atsunori Inaba nearly doubled his salary after his amazing performance this past year and in the postseason. Now, the only question still is... whither Fernando Seguignol?

I mentioned a few weeks ago how Hanshin management had dissed Kentaro Sekimoto during contract talks to the point of tears. Well, good news on the followup to that -- Sekimoto got a raise to 50 million yen after all, a decent compromise. Yay! Also, Tsuboi and Sekimoto will be training together in the offseason. They were teammates and good friends on the Hanshin Tigers, and I'm happy for both of them!

Chunichi has been handing out raises a-plenty to their Japan Series heroes, even though they lost. Ace pitcher Kenshin Kawakami got a raise to 340 million yen, while Masa Yamamoto stayed about the same as 240 million. Funniest part is how in that article they mention Kawakami's salary matching Koji Uehara's and surpassing Hitoki Iwase. So of course a few days later, Koji Uehara got a pay cut and Iwase got a raise. The bizarre part here is that Iwase was the highest-paid Japanese player for Chunichi (who knows if that'll change when Kosuke Fukudome goes in to negotiate his contract), and is right now the highest-paid pitcher in Japan. And he's a closer. Yes, a closer getting paid more than any other starter. Iwase's amazing -- I won't deny that -- but it seems sort of backwards, doesn't it?

As a side note, Koji Uehara basically said "I know I'm stuck here another year because Yomiuri doesn't post players. But I'm going to go to the MLB in 2007 when I'm a free agent."

Old man Yamamoto wants to reach 200 wins next year; he's currently at 191. If he can stay in the rotation, I can't see any reason he shouldn't reach that goal somewhere around mid-August next year. Book it.

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, who wasn't really a Series "hero" per se, but who has had a long and impressive Hall of Fame career, is losing the battle with Dragonbutt for the Chunichi third base starting position after all, and got his salary cut in half. Poor guy. My guess is if he doesn't get to play enough in 2007 he'll retire.

In the whole "Big Payouts for Big Relievers" trend, Tigers ace reliever/closer Kyuji Fujikawa also got a hefty raise to 180 million yen.

The Chiba Lotte Marines are supposedly after Julio Zuleta since he couldn't come to an agreement with Softbank. Different details are all over the place. With the prospect of Zuleta remaining in the Pacific League, Fighters pitcher Satoru Kanemura is taking up aikido and designing a special armored pitching helmet. (I'm just kidding about that last part. See here if you don't get it.)

The Yomiuri Giants signed Damon Hollins out of the murky depths of Tampa Bay. The Yakult Swallows are using some of their Iwamura money to get Aaron Guiel (or at least, it's in the works).

Daisuke Matsuzaka was asking Chunichi pitcher Denney Tomori for advice. Tomori, who has an interesting history if there ever was one, spent the 2005 season in the Red Sox minor league system. What did Denney say? Basically, "Make sure you talk to those veteran pitchers. Schilling's a monster who can teach you a lot. He's won a ton of games. Timlin's also a good one to talk to. As for training, practices are shorter, just take things at your pace and don't overwork yourself. Just gimme a call if you need any more advice, okay?"

I usually throw a photo in here, so this is Yu Darvish. Really. I thought it was Shinjo at first, then realized he was too young and too thin. He was being interviewed after leaving a sports award ceremony that he was all dressed up for.

Sigh, I have a lot more articles I want to read but I've really got to go. See y'all from Philly in a day or so.

Movie Review: Rookie of the Year (1993)

Rookie of the Year (1993, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Gary Busey)

This was on TV last night completely randomly and I watched it with my mom. I'd never seen it before. I'm not great at reviewing movies, but I've mostly been off the net the last few days so this is what I've got to work with :)

In short, this is a fun little movie to watch if you see it playing on TV late at night, but otherwise it's not really worth your time unless you're either a 12-year-old kid wishing you could play for the Cubs, or if you like kid movies with Disney endings.

Thomas Ian Nicholas, who six years later would play Kevin in American Pie (which I realized about halfway through this movie), plays Henry, a 12-year-old kid who breaks his arm in a bizarre baseball accident and it heals in a bizarre way that allows him to snap some tendons and suddenly throw a baseball 100 miles per hour. Gary Busey plays a veteran pitcher who's all but done for in his career. Bruce Altman plays Jack, a guy who is dating Henry's single mom (Amy Morton). Jack becomes Henry's "manager", and you basically spend the rest of the movie learning to hate him and to love Busey's pitcher character, essentially.

In addition to having to figure out how to throw 100mph and actually throw strikes, Henry also has to figure out how to talk to 12-year-old girls at the school cafeteria, and how to not piss off his two best friends, who follow him around just about everywhere.

Pretty much everything about this movie is predictable, and in the end everyone lives happily ever after, but there are a few good laughs along the way; John Candy plays the role of the announcer in the style of Bob Uecker in Major League, and has a couple of good one-liners. Daniel Stern, just a few years removed from his role as one of the burglars in Home Alone, plays the insane Cubs pitching coach who's constantly getting himself locked away various places, to the benefit of everyone else involved; and he bears a scary resemblance to Nate Robertson, the current Tigers pitcher.

Watch it with a little kid and you won't be too unhappy about it.