Sorry for lack of posts here. I've been doing stuff but didn't know if I should just write stuff here even if it's not coherent. Let me at least start by saying that yes, the bigger earthquakes are kind of scary when they happen although it's rather infrequent, and people are concerned about radiation although I don't think it's really THAT bad, and the power problem has been a little weird although I myself have not experienced any blackouts. But overall I have been enjoying my trip to Japan quite a lot. Getting to see my JHS kids graduate was worth the entire trouble of coming here; everything else is just gravy. I'm currently planning to try to stay until April 11 or 12.
Baseball in general here has been kind of annoying in that a lot of games have been cancelled, so my usual way of doing things has been changed quite a bit. I was most devastated when the Big 6 league cancelled their industrial league 3-day tourney. As of right now, opening day for the Central League should be Mar 29, Pacific League on April 12, and minor-league games are already going on, probably because they don't use a lot of power. I still believe that the NPB should be doing their best to hold games and collect donations for the earthquake. One of the worst things about this time is that a lot of businesses are closed and/or cutting down due to power, which means a LOT of people are out of work. I know a lot of people depend on baseball games for their part-time jobs, so I worry that the lack of games is yet another economic hit here.
Anyway, I went to the Yakyu Inari shrine on Saturday and to a Seibu-Baystars ni-gun game on Sunday. I'm heading to Osaka today for Days 2-4 of Senbatsu. If you read this blog and live in Osaka drop me a line :) I'll also be coming back to Tokyo through Nagoya.
Maybe I'll try to put up some photos tonight if I have time while hanging out in Osaka.
Again, I apologize. You know, I'm coming up on 6 years of this blog, and it's clear I've gotten kind of burned out on it.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Baseball after the Quake
My opinion, in a word: Yes.
Teams have cancelled most of, if not all, of their preseason games, although teams are still playing practice games to stay in shape for opening day. (I guess the idea is that if there are no fans there, it conserves power and reduces the risk of danger to fans in earthquake-shaken stands.)
And some players (Darvish being one that gets quoted a lot) say things like, "How can we even think about playing baseball at a time like this?"
But here's the thing. If you're not going to play baseball, what are you going to do? How exactly are you justifying not playing? Baseball brings distraction and entertainment to millions of people. It brings groups of people together in a way that a lot of other things do not. Not starting the season on time is going to disrupt social ties in some pretty big ways -- and this at a time where people need to get together with friends and family and just be glad to be alive and to be together, right?
And moreso, if you're not going to play baseball, then you should be spending your time trying to help the quake victims, right? But how exactly are you going to do that? Going to the worst of the ravaged areas is NOT the right thing for tons of people to do -- reading Daisuke Wakabayashi's twitter convinced me of that much. (Forwarded from Simon, who also works at the WSJ.) There are organizations and trained rescue workers and such who'll be doing that, and what we've been hearing all along is, "If you want to help... donate."
So. NPB, that's exactly what you need to do here.
Donate.
The Giants and Tigers played a preseason game at Gifu Nagarakawa Stadium yesterday and put out donation boxes and supposedly collected over a million yen for earthquake relief! From only 14,000 fans or so! The flags were at half-mast, and there was a 30-second moment of silence for the lives lost in the quake. But clearly, people want to see baseball and to be together and help others at a time like this.
Seriously. Donate a portion of the proceeds from each game to the earthquake. Or have donation boxes at the gates. Get efforts together to have places to donate clothes, food, etc at each game. Offer a 100 yen ticket discount for people who bring a can of food to donate to the earthquake. Have the JRC set up blood donation booths outside the stadium, or even inside the stadium.
What to do about Rakuten's team and the stadium, I'm not entirely sure. Opening Weekend was supposed to be up there between the Marines and Eagles, so maybe those would have to be moved elsewhere. But other than that, I think that really, the best way for players to help the earthquake victims is to play ball and raise money for them.
(BTW... I'm supposed to fly to Japan tomorrow. I'm still kind of planning to, though I know it might be kind of crazy.)
Teams have cancelled most of, if not all, of their preseason games, although teams are still playing practice games to stay in shape for opening day. (I guess the idea is that if there are no fans there, it conserves power and reduces the risk of danger to fans in earthquake-shaken stands.)
And some players (Darvish being one that gets quoted a lot) say things like, "How can we even think about playing baseball at a time like this?"
But here's the thing. If you're not going to play baseball, what are you going to do? How exactly are you justifying not playing? Baseball brings distraction and entertainment to millions of people. It brings groups of people together in a way that a lot of other things do not. Not starting the season on time is going to disrupt social ties in some pretty big ways -- and this at a time where people need to get together with friends and family and just be glad to be alive and to be together, right?
And moreso, if you're not going to play baseball, then you should be spending your time trying to help the quake victims, right? But how exactly are you going to do that? Going to the worst of the ravaged areas is NOT the right thing for tons of people to do -- reading Daisuke Wakabayashi's twitter convinced me of that much. (Forwarded from Simon, who also works at the WSJ.) There are organizations and trained rescue workers and such who'll be doing that, and what we've been hearing all along is, "If you want to help... donate."
So. NPB, that's exactly what you need to do here.
Donate.
The Giants and Tigers played a preseason game at Gifu Nagarakawa Stadium yesterday and put out donation boxes and supposedly collected over a million yen for earthquake relief! From only 14,000 fans or so! The flags were at half-mast, and there was a 30-second moment of silence for the lives lost in the quake. But clearly, people want to see baseball and to be together and help others at a time like this.
Seriously. Donate a portion of the proceeds from each game to the earthquake. Or have donation boxes at the gates. Get efforts together to have places to donate clothes, food, etc at each game. Offer a 100 yen ticket discount for people who bring a can of food to donate to the earthquake. Have the JRC set up blood donation booths outside the stadium, or even inside the stadium.
What to do about Rakuten's team and the stadium, I'm not entirely sure. Opening Weekend was supposed to be up there between the Marines and Eagles, so maybe those would have to be moved elsewhere. But other than that, I think that really, the best way for players to help the earthquake victims is to play ball and raise money for them.
(BTW... I'm supposed to fly to Japan tomorrow. I'm still kind of planning to, though I know it might be kind of crazy.)
Friday, March 11, 2011
Earthquake off the coast of Miyagi
Being reported anywhere from 7.9 to 8.8 magnitude.
I've been watching the Japanese TV feed over justin.tv, thanks to Ken for the link. It's pretty crazy. I'm really glad I'm not there... and really worried for my friends.
(Well, though, I'm GOING back to Japan in 5 days... and staying at my old house... hopefully it hasn't collapsed... I've been in Seattle for 2 months, I'm in the process of moving back to the US.)
I was going to make a post about the Kamagaya Festival that's going to take place on March 12 -- which is tomorrow in Japan -- but since Chiba prefecture got hit pretty hard by the earthquake (an oil refinery exploded, some power plans are down, and most of the coastline is flooded) I have no idea whether they're still planning to hold it.
EDIT> Kamagaya cancelled everything for the weekend -- the festival is completely cancelled as are the games on Saturday and Sunday.
Either way, if you read my blog and you are in Japan, please let me know that you are okay and if there's anything I can do to help.
EDIT> Jason Coskrey was at Yokohama when the earthquake hit.
All open-sen games are cancelled on Saturday.
I've managed to get in touch with most of my friends in Japan; most are shaken but not hurt (literally).
Still not sure if I'll be able to actually LAND THERE on Wednesday though...
I've been watching the Japanese TV feed over justin.tv, thanks to Ken for the link. It's pretty crazy. I'm really glad I'm not there... and really worried for my friends.
(Well, though, I'm GOING back to Japan in 5 days... and staying at my old house... hopefully it hasn't collapsed... I've been in Seattle for 2 months, I'm in the process of moving back to the US.)
I was going to make a post about the Kamagaya Festival that's going to take place on March 12 -- which is tomorrow in Japan -- but since Chiba prefecture got hit pretty hard by the earthquake (an oil refinery exploded, some power plans are down, and most of the coastline is flooded) I have no idea whether they're still planning to hold it.
EDIT> Kamagaya cancelled everything for the weekend -- the festival is completely cancelled as are the games on Saturday and Sunday.
Either way, if you read my blog and you are in Japan, please let me know that you are okay and if there's anything I can do to help.
EDIT> Jason Coskrey was at Yokohama when the earthquake hit.
All open-sen games are cancelled on Saturday.
I've managed to get in touch with most of my friends in Japan; most are shaken but not hurt (literally).
Still not sure if I'll be able to actually LAND THERE on Wednesday though...
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Takeuchi Times Two
I was reading the winter Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine while on a recent trip, and while going through the Chukyodai Chukyo page, trying to memorize Junpei Morimoto's face so I can stalk him in the Hosei preseason, noticed that a 3rd-year pitcher/1B named Hirotaka Takeuchi (竹内啓貴) was going to be entering Keio this year. And in his comments, he said how "I learned so much from my older brother, I owe my baseball success to him."
Wait... a Chukyodai kid, going to Keio, named Takeuchi, talking about his older brother... my first thought was, is he Daisuke's brother? (Upcoming 3rd year Keio pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi also is from Chukyodai Chukyo HS, graduated the year before they won Koshien, sadly). From the photo in the Koshien magazine, I thought he bore a vague resemblance to my current favorite Keio lefty.
But, no. Hirotaka's older brother is actually ANOTHER Chukyodai Chukyo baseball club alum named Hiroaki (啓明), who was on the Chukyodai team that made it all the way to the Best 8 in the 2004 summer Koshien tournament. Hirotaka was in 6th grade at the time and watched his brother on TV and decided he wanted to someday play at Koshien too. So Hiroaki, who is now in grad school studying sports medicine at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki and coaching Mito Daiichi's baseball team, came down to Koshien to watch his little brother play in Senbatsu 2010. It's a nice story, really, the Japanese press loves stuff like this.
Also, someone else has scanned a bunch of the stuff from that Koshien no Hoshi, the Chukyo Story is the 2nd picture there. And the next entry mentions how Hirotaka got into Keio, too.
The notes on Hirotaka that I've seen mostly read as follows:
中京大中京背番号10竹内啓貴、AOで環境情報学部に合格。
野球部入部志望のAO入試は11人受験して4人合格とのこと。（中日スポーツ）
竹内は去年の夏も優勝メンバーとしてベンチ入りしていた。
今年春選抜も野手としてレギュラーだったが夏は控え投手。
堂上弟や慶大4年山口尚記と同じ名古屋北シニア出身。
Basically, he passed the entrance exam for Keio, and apparently of the 11 who applied early as hopefuls for the baseball team, only 4 managed to actually pass the exam. (Keio doesn't have a "sports recommendation" entrance exam, but I think there are various reasons they'll let people apply early decision, and sports is one of them.) They mention he was on the roster for the team that won Koshien, played as a regular this past year, and his little league team was Nagoya Kita Senior, the same team that both Donoue brothers (Naomichi and Takehiro, both currently Chunichi Dragons players) and Naoki Yamaguchi (graduating from Keio this month) played on.
And, no relation to Daisuke. But I'm betting that I'm not the only person who wondered!
(For the record, Koji Fukutani, upcoming 3rd-year righty ace, was also an Aichi kid who aced the Keio entrance exam. He's also really nice and really smart (and wrote a Keio team blog entry recently, thanking the past and present baseball team faculty advisors and marvelling in that they're both professors from the department of science. I'm really psyched that I'll get to be in Japan for a bit of the college preseason, even though I won't be around for the actual season -- I think Keio will do really well this year, though.)
Oh! And just as an aside, since I haven't been writing much, but this was really cool to find out about -- Shogo Shashiki, graduating this month from Meiji, is going to be playing for the Ishikawa Million Stars in the Hokushinetsu Baseball Challenge League this year! That's really great for him, they've been a very strong team, have had guys drafted into the NPB every year of their existence, and it appears former Washington Nationals minor-leaguer and Komadai Tomakomai HS grad Naoya Washiya is also staying with them for this year as well. Shashiki had told me he hoped to play in the US this year, and even did come to the US in the fall with Yoshihiro Doi to try out for some major league scouts, but I guess nobody picked him up. A shame, but I think the Ishikawa team will be a good experience for him, and he'll be close enough to his hometown Osaka that his family can come see him, too. (He was one year ahead of Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin, they used to bat 3rd and 4th in the lineup.)
And while I'm at it... Dave over at Japanese Baseball Cards notes that he thinks there is a Big 6 Card Set this year after all, despite the lack of Saitoh. I guess BBM changed their minds, since a bunch of players had told me they were told there wouldn't be another set. Good for BBM if so, and good for the players too! (This is one case where I'd be overjoyed to be completely wrong.) I noticed that on the page from Discount Niki that Dave linked, that the set says "Featuring this year's draft candidates Yusuke Nomura and Hayata Itoh! Get your insert cards of famous Big 6 alumni like Kenshin Kawakami, Yoshinobu Takahashi, and Atsunori Inaba! 2 insert cards per box!" So, we'll see. It may not come out in time for me to actually get a copy while I'm in Japan, but so what?
Oh, so yeah, I'll be in Japan from March 16 until April 8th or so (it's still undecided; I have to be back in Seattle by April 12, but don't have my return ticket yet), by the way. I won't be there for most of the rest of the year, though, so if you want to go to a game with me, act now :) I am planning to go to Senbatsu if at all possible, as well as a bunch of preseason college games and early season pro games...
Wait... a Chukyodai kid, going to Keio, named Takeuchi, talking about his older brother... my first thought was, is he Daisuke's brother? (Upcoming 3rd year Keio pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi also is from Chukyodai Chukyo HS, graduated the year before they won Koshien, sadly). From the photo in the Koshien magazine, I thought he bore a vague resemblance to my current favorite Keio lefty.
But, no. Hirotaka's older brother is actually ANOTHER Chukyodai Chukyo baseball club alum named Hiroaki (啓明), who was on the Chukyodai team that made it all the way to the Best 8 in the 2004 summer Koshien tournament. Hirotaka was in 6th grade at the time and watched his brother on TV and decided he wanted to someday play at Koshien too. So Hiroaki, who is now in grad school studying sports medicine at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki and coaching Mito Daiichi's baseball team, came down to Koshien to watch his little brother play in Senbatsu 2010. It's a nice story, really, the Japanese press loves stuff like this.
Also, someone else has scanned a bunch of the stuff from that Koshien no Hoshi, the Chukyo Story is the 2nd picture there. And the next entry mentions how Hirotaka got into Keio, too.
The notes on Hirotaka that I've seen mostly read as follows:
中京大中京背番号10竹内啓貴、AOで環境情報学部に合格。
野球部入部志望のAO入試は11人受験して4人合格とのこと。（中日スポーツ）
竹内は去年の夏も優勝メンバーとしてベンチ入りしていた。
今年春選抜も野手としてレギュラーだったが夏は控え投手。
堂上弟や慶大4年山口尚記と同じ名古屋北シニア出身。
Basically, he passed the entrance exam for Keio, and apparently of the 11 who applied early as hopefuls for the baseball team, only 4 managed to actually pass the exam. (Keio doesn't have a "sports recommendation" entrance exam, but I think there are various reasons they'll let people apply early decision, and sports is one of them.) They mention he was on the roster for the team that won Koshien, played as a regular this past year, and his little league team was Nagoya Kita Senior, the same team that both Donoue brothers (Naomichi and Takehiro, both currently Chunichi Dragons players) and Naoki Yamaguchi (graduating from Keio this month) played on.
And, no relation to Daisuke. But I'm betting that I'm not the only person who wondered!
(For the record, Koji Fukutani, upcoming 3rd-year righty ace, was also an Aichi kid who aced the Keio entrance exam. He's also really nice and really smart (and wrote a Keio team blog entry recently, thanking the past and present baseball team faculty advisors and marvelling in that they're both professors from the department of science. I'm really psyched that I'll get to be in Japan for a bit of the college preseason, even though I won't be around for the actual season -- I think Keio will do really well this year, though.)
Oh! And just as an aside, since I haven't been writing much, but this was really cool to find out about -- Shogo Shashiki, graduating this month from Meiji, is going to be playing for the Ishikawa Million Stars in the Hokushinetsu Baseball Challenge League this year! That's really great for him, they've been a very strong team, have had guys drafted into the NPB every year of their existence, and it appears former Washington Nationals minor-leaguer and Komadai Tomakomai HS grad Naoya Washiya is also staying with them for this year as well. Shashiki had told me he hoped to play in the US this year, and even did come to the US in the fall with Yoshihiro Doi to try out for some major league scouts, but I guess nobody picked him up. A shame, but I think the Ishikawa team will be a good experience for him, and he'll be close enough to his hometown Osaka that his family can come see him, too. (He was one year ahead of Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin, they used to bat 3rd and 4th in the lineup.)
And while I'm at it... Dave over at Japanese Baseball Cards notes that he thinks there is a Big 6 Card Set this year after all, despite the lack of Saitoh. I guess BBM changed their minds, since a bunch of players had told me they were told there wouldn't be another set. Good for BBM if so, and good for the players too! (This is one case where I'd be overjoyed to be completely wrong.) I noticed that on the page from Discount Niki that Dave linked, that the set says "Featuring this year's draft candidates Yusuke Nomura and Hayata Itoh! Get your insert cards of famous Big 6 alumni like Kenshin Kawakami, Yoshinobu Takahashi, and Atsunori Inaba! 2 insert cards per box!" So, we'll see. It may not come out in time for me to actually get a copy while I'm in Japan, but so what?
Oh, so yeah, I'll be in Japan from March 16 until April 8th or so (it's still undecided; I have to be back in Seattle by April 12, but don't have my return ticket yet), by the way. I won't be there for most of the rest of the year, though, so if you want to go to a game with me, act now :) I am planning to go to Senbatsu if at all possible, as well as a bunch of preseason college games and early season pro games...
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
RIP Wally Yonamine, 1925-2011
Wally Yonamine, the first Japanese-American to play baseball in Japan after World War 2, died of complications from cancer on Monday. He was 85.
Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to go to a book reading/signing at the Tokyo American Club, when Rob Fitts's Wally Yonamine biography came out. Rob and Wally were a two-man show, with Rob playing the straight man and answering questions about the book, and reading a scene from the book, and Wally sitting there with a big smile on his face, entertaining the crowd with stories about his life.
Wally told many stories that day, about dealing with the grim postwar Japan, about bringing his American football and baseball play style to Japanese baseball, about Hiroshima Carp fans lying in front of the bus and throwing things at him in the outfield, and about a foggy game at Koshien where he faked catching a fly to centerfield that really bounced off the fence, and so on. All of these stories are in the book, but getting to hear them straight from the man himself made them that much more real and amusing.
I feel really lucky that I got to meet him, even if only for a few minutes that afternoon. He was a Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer but also just a real class guy; by the sheer number of people gathered at the Tokyo American Club that day, he clearly had a very full life with a huge circle of family and friends, both in Tokyo and back in Hawaii. I felt a little bit nervous as a complete stranger (I think many of the people there knew Wally through his family or his church, and it was my first time meeting Rob, too) but when I went up to ask him to sign my book and told him how much I enjoyed his speech, he was very friendly and kind.
Wally making a point in one of his stories.
Rob's on the left, Wally's on the right, I'm in the back!
I never reviewed the Yonamine biography here because I got sidetracked from the blog that winter when my father died of cancer. Now I feel really bad about that. Really, if you want to know more about Wally, and certainly if you want to know more about the 1950's era of baseball in Japan, I recommend reading the book. There were some typoes in the first edition that I think were fixed for a second printing, because other than that, it's a pretty solid account of the 1950's Giants, the 1970's Dragons, and the state of postwar Japan, as well as Hawaii in those days. There really aren't nearly enough accounts in English of Japanese baseball, especially historical; this and Rob's other book Remembering Japanese Baseball are both a good read both for stories about Wally and stories about the era.
It's never easy to be a foreigner in the world of Japanese baseball, but certainly, it's nowhere near as difficult as it must have been right after the war, so you have to respect and admire him for what he accomplished, and for being who he was and enabling so many other foreigners to play baseball in Japan, and bringing the two worlds closer together.
You can also read a few other obituaries of Yonamine here, here, here.
Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to go to a book reading/signing at the Tokyo American Club, when Rob Fitts's Wally Yonamine biography came out. Rob and Wally were a two-man show, with Rob playing the straight man and answering questions about the book, and reading a scene from the book, and Wally sitting there with a big smile on his face, entertaining the crowd with stories about his life.
Wally told many stories that day, about dealing with the grim postwar Japan, about bringing his American football and baseball play style to Japanese baseball, about Hiroshima Carp fans lying in front of the bus and throwing things at him in the outfield, and about a foggy game at Koshien where he faked catching a fly to centerfield that really bounced off the fence, and so on. All of these stories are in the book, but getting to hear them straight from the man himself made them that much more real and amusing.
I feel really lucky that I got to meet him, even if only for a few minutes that afternoon. He was a Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer but also just a real class guy; by the sheer number of people gathered at the Tokyo American Club that day, he clearly had a very full life with a huge circle of family and friends, both in Tokyo and back in Hawaii. I felt a little bit nervous as a complete stranger (I think many of the people there knew Wally through his family or his church, and it was my first time meeting Rob, too) but when I went up to ask him to sign my book and told him how much I enjoyed his speech, he was very friendly and kind.
Wally making a point in one of his stories.
Rob's on the left, Wally's on the right, I'm in the back!
I never reviewed the Yonamine biography here because I got sidetracked from the blog that winter when my father died of cancer. Now I feel really bad about that. Really, if you want to know more about Wally, and certainly if you want to know more about the 1950's era of baseball in Japan, I recommend reading the book. There were some typoes in the first edition that I think were fixed for a second printing, because other than that, it's a pretty solid account of the 1950's Giants, the 1970's Dragons, and the state of postwar Japan, as well as Hawaii in those days. There really aren't nearly enough accounts in English of Japanese baseball, especially historical; this and Rob's other book Remembering Japanese Baseball are both a good read both for stories about Wally and stories about the era.
It's never easy to be a foreigner in the world of Japanese baseball, but certainly, it's nowhere near as difficult as it must have been right after the war, so you have to respect and admire him for what he accomplished, and for being who he was and enabling so many other foreigners to play baseball in Japan, and bringing the two worlds closer together.
You can also read a few other obituaries of Yonamine here, here, here.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Tokyo Big 6 Spring Camp / Preseason Games
Last spring, Rikkio, Meiji, AND Waseda all did spring camps in the US, representing fully half of the Tokyo Big 6.
This year, now that I'm in the US, NOBODY is coming to the US for spring camp. Go figure.
The official Big 6 site some of the spring information up:
Spring Camps:
(The Tokai region is kind of the part of Japan between Osaka and Tokyo, so like, Nagoya and Shizuoka and such.)
And here's the entire Big 6 preseason game schedule, in Japanese. All the games are either at the colleges' home fields or at the opponents' home fields, with the exception of the 3-day industrial league exhibition at Jingu, which appears to be from March 31 (thurs) to April 2nd (sat).
I'm guessing that Opening Weekend is still April 10/11, since only Meiji and Hosei still have preseason games going on until then; they were 3rd and 4th place last fall so they don't have league games until the 2nd week of the season anyway (the opening matchups will be Todai-Waseda and Rikkio-Keio). I still doubt I'll be able to stay in Japan that long during my March trip.
Patrick pointed out that the biannual USA-Japan collegiate match is going to be in North Carolina over July 4, apparently, so I'll hopefully be able to go to a game or two of that, and I'm pretty sure a few of the Big 6 boys will make the national squad (like Meiji's Nomura and Keio's Itoh and hopefully Hosei's Taki), so I'll get to stalk them there.
And speaking of Big 6 players that I used to stalk, here's a funny article about the Baystars ni-gun squad showing up in Okinawa, for their spring camp. Kisho Kagami's mom is from there (from the Tomigusuku area, it seems) and has a bunch of sisters and a whole bunch of her family still live there, so about 11 of his family members showed up at the Naha airport to greet him with signs and t-shirts and all. The Baystars will play against the Carp in July in Naha, so his family hopes he'll be at ichi-gun then and plans to have a big family cheering section for him, an "itoko-kai" (or "Cousin Clan" basically).
As for Kagami, he said, "It was REALLY embarrassing," and laughed, "but I'm glad that my grandparents and family members were so happy. I'll have to do my best because they came to support me [and so they can in the future]."
This year, now that I'm in the US, NOBODY is coming to the US for spring camp. Go figure.
The official Big 6 site some of the spring information up:
Spring Camps:
Camp Regional Preseason
Rikkio: 3/8 - 3/19: Saito City, Miyazaki 3/1 - 3/8: Tokai Region
Waseda: 2/28 - 3/2: Urasoe City, Okinawa
Keio: 2/28 - 3/15: Ishigaki City, Okinawa 3/15 - 3/21: Tokai Region
Meiji: 2/16 - 2/24: Numazu City, Shizuoka 2/27 - 3/10: Kyushu, Kansai, Tokai
Hosei: 2/20 - 3/2: Kamogawa City, Chiba 3/2 - 3/4: Kisarazu (Chiba)
Tokyo: 3/9 - 3/20: Miyazaki City, Miyazaki
(The Tokai region is kind of the part of Japan between Osaka and Tokyo, so like, Nagoya and Shizuoka and such.)
And here's the entire Big 6 preseason game schedule, in Japanese. All the games are either at the colleges' home fields or at the opponents' home fields, with the exception of the 3-day industrial league exhibition at Jingu, which appears to be from March 31 (thurs) to April 2nd (sat).
I'm guessing that Opening Weekend is still April 10/11, since only Meiji and Hosei still have preseason games going on until then; they were 3rd and 4th place last fall so they don't have league games until the 2nd week of the season anyway (the opening matchups will be Todai-Waseda and Rikkio-Keio). I still doubt I'll be able to stay in Japan that long during my March trip.
Patrick pointed out that the biannual USA-Japan collegiate match is going to be in North Carolina over July 4, apparently, so I'll hopefully be able to go to a game or two of that, and I'm pretty sure a few of the Big 6 boys will make the national squad (like Meiji's Nomura and Keio's Itoh and hopefully Hosei's Taki), so I'll get to stalk them there.
And speaking of Big 6 players that I used to stalk, here's a funny article about the Baystars ni-gun squad showing up in Okinawa, for their spring camp. Kisho Kagami's mom is from there (from the Tomigusuku area, it seems) and has a bunch of sisters and a whole bunch of her family still live there, so about 11 of his family members showed up at the Naha airport to greet him with signs and t-shirts and all. The Baystars will play against the Carp in July in Naha, so his family hopes he'll be at ichi-gun then and plans to have a big family cheering section for him, an "itoko-kai" (or "Cousin Clan" basically).
As for Kagami, he said, "It was REALLY embarrassing," and laughed, "but I'm glad that my grandparents and family members were so happy. I'll have to do my best because they came to support me [and so they can in the future]."
Friday, February 04, 2011
Baseball Shrine?
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.
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.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Mariners Fanfest 2011
I've been back in the US for almost two weeks now, and I'm still somewhat shell-shocked. Every morning I still wake up and want to hop on a train somewhere and see interesting things and eat delicious things and listen to people speaking in Japanese, but the reality is that here in the Seattle suburbs, the best I can do is to walk a mile to Safeway. Bleh.
Anyway, Mike (the boyfriend) and Jason (a friend who was crazy enough to go with me to Fanfest 2007) and I headed down to Safeco Field yesterday to take in the sights. The only thing is, Fanfest doesn't really change all that much from year to year, so most of the stuff there, we'd already done before. But it was Mike's first time so we did some of it again for his sake.
When I originally looked at the schedule, I thought it'd be cool to get into Dan Wilson's autograph session and have him sign my glove since I already had Jamie Moyer sign it several years ago, but when we arrived around noon, they still had 1:30 session vouchers, but Dan The Man's session was gone. With a choice of "Miguel Olivo and Brandon League / Michael Pineda and Kyle Seager / Jason Vargas" as the possible ones we could get, we ended up opting for... nobody. Maybe in retrospect I should have pushed for going to Jason Vargas's autograph session, but eh. Dan Wilson's Dugout Dialogue was at 1pm, and at 1:30 they had Jay Buhner and Bret Boone, and at 2pm they had Felix, so we figured we'd probably want to go listen to some of those instead, which is exactly what we did.
So first we listened to Rick Rizzs with Dan Wilson, and then Rick with Jay Buhner and Bret Boone. Those were actually pretty entertaining. Dan Wilson is still the Nicest Guy Ever, and most of the "questions" for him were actually from 40-something-year-old women in the stands wanting to say "I love you and you were my favorite Mariners player and I'm going to share a memory I have of you" rather than actual questions, although some people asked some good stuff, like "What's your favorite team prank that ever happened?" and he started telling the story about Griffey putting a cow in Lou Piniella's office during spring training one year, and he had another story about a rookie regifting a team member's wedding present a year later, as part of "tell us about Kangaroo Court". Someone asked who his favorite guys to catch were and he started with Randy Johnson but said how later on he always loved catching Jamie Moyer because it was so interesting AND because his hand wouldn't hurt nearly as much afterwards ("Jamie couldn't get anyone out with his fastball, not even you, Rick.") I thought about asking about what it was like for Dan to return to college after retiring from baseball -- he mentioned at the beginning that he'd moved his family to Minnesota to finish out his degree at the University of Minnesota, but didn't talk much about it. Some people asked if Dan was interested in coaching the Mariners and he said that he was getting his coaching skills honed by coaching his kid's softball team, so a 12-year-old kid asked, "Uh, so I play softball... do you have any advice for me?"
Then there was Bone and Boone... neither of them appear to have changed at all since last we saw them, by which I mean Buhner was entertaining and Boone was actually looking so bored on the stage that he yawned a few times, so their session was dominated by Buhner, which was probably for the best. He recounted stories of the 1995 team of course, ("'Forget' the Wild Card, we're taking the AL West? Oh, that's the PG-13 version, Rick!") and some memories of the Kingdome in general, and someone brought up the time some chick in Boston jumped onto the field to give him a hug and he told stories about that... just various stuff, but it was pretty funny overall.
We actually skipped out after that, before the Felix Hernandez session... I wanted to take a few photos of Felix but we had other things to accomplish and I didn't want to be rude and leave DURING the session. We did listen to it since they broadcast the dialogues on the big board and over the PA system. Felix's English is really good now, I remember the first time I saw him at a Fanfest, he had an interpreter, so that's great too.
We got photos with the Moose, though they turned out pretty crappy. Then we went to play catch in the outfield; I'd even brought my glove for that, and they also have gloves you can borrow for it anyway. Turns out they only give you 3 minutes to play, though, which kind of sucks; I'm more used to getting 45 minutes or so on the outfield turf at the Seibu Dome or wherever. Still, that was something new and different to do, since I'd never played catch on a GRASS outfield in a real stadium before...
Then we ran the bases (or walked) and took photos in the dugout. After that I ended up talking in Japanese to some people filming a show for NHK; I overheard this lady on camera talking in Japanese about how "at the American fan fests, you can run on the field and do so many activities and there are sign-kais and talkshows and everything!" So I asked what show it was for, though it sounds like it's some sort of special program, not one of the regular MLB ones. That was surreal. At least I was wearing my 野球道 t-shirt so it lent some cred to my "I lived in Tokyo for several years, I'm a Fighters fan" story.
We wandered indoors after that because it was so cold out, and saw the clubhouse and locker room and the Dave Niehaus tribute and the history exhibit, and then got in an elevator and found out they'd let us go into the press box, so we went there, and... that was about it, everything started closing down a little before 4pm. I hadn't actually been in the press box before, so that was cool, and obviously the Niehaus exhibit was new, but other than that almost everything there was stuff we'd seen before.
I guess it was a fun day, but I'm still not all that psyched about watching MLB games again. We'll see what happens.
Rick Rizzs and Dan Wilson.
Dan Wilson.
The Bone and Boone panel.
Jay Buhner tells it like it is.
Bret Boone looks bored.
Lots of people had Thin Mints boxes wandering around... and apparently here was the cookie booth that was the source.
I found a Yunker ad! In English! Neat. (Ichiro's on most of their ads in Japan.)
Getting ready to play catch in the outfield.
Jason's chasing down a ball in the right field corner just like he's Ichiro.
There was this huge "MY OH MY" chalked in piles of sand in the infield dirt... here's one of the MYs. I'm standing on second base at the time but you can't tell.
In the dugout.
Outside the dugout.
Here's that chick from NHK doing the Japanese TV program.
If any of my readers have a clue who she is, let me know.
The Dave Niehaus Tribute in the Diamond Club.
More Niehaus.
I kid you not, when we went into the clubhouse, I asked if it was okay to take pictures of everything, and the guy at the door told me, "Yeah, go ahead. In fact, when you go through that door right there, you can take photos of Felix Hernandez's Cy Young Award-winning socks in the locker on the left."
The mailboxes for players in the locker room. That really full box on the lower left belongs to Milton Bradley. Wonder if it's because people are pissed off at him or what.
The clubhouse computers. There's a paper on the right explaining how they can get onto the clubhouse wireless as well, although when I tried to connect with my wifi-enabled cellphone, it didn't work :)
Weight room.
Part of the "History of Baseball in the Northwest" exhibit.
You could color in outlines of players and possibly get your coloring up on the big board during a game, apparently. I didn't take part in this.
But here's the rest of the press dining room. It is not that impressive.
Press room.
Someday, I would like to be sitting in this seat for real work, not just at a fan fest.
Nice view you get from there, too.
You know, I still haven't put up photos from Yakult's fanfest that I went to this fall, have I? Maybe I should go do a retro fanfest post or two.
Anyway, Mike (the boyfriend) and Jason (a friend who was crazy enough to go with me to Fanfest 2007) and I headed down to Safeco Field yesterday to take in the sights. The only thing is, Fanfest doesn't really change all that much from year to year, so most of the stuff there, we'd already done before. But it was Mike's first time so we did some of it again for his sake.
When I originally looked at the schedule, I thought it'd be cool to get into Dan Wilson's autograph session and have him sign my glove since I already had Jamie Moyer sign it several years ago, but when we arrived around noon, they still had 1:30 session vouchers, but Dan The Man's session was gone. With a choice of "Miguel Olivo and Brandon League / Michael Pineda and Kyle Seager / Jason Vargas" as the possible ones we could get, we ended up opting for... nobody. Maybe in retrospect I should have pushed for going to Jason Vargas's autograph session, but eh. Dan Wilson's Dugout Dialogue was at 1pm, and at 1:30 they had Jay Buhner and Bret Boone, and at 2pm they had Felix, so we figured we'd probably want to go listen to some of those instead, which is exactly what we did.
So first we listened to Rick Rizzs with Dan Wilson, and then Rick with Jay Buhner and Bret Boone. Those were actually pretty entertaining. Dan Wilson is still the Nicest Guy Ever, and most of the "questions" for him were actually from 40-something-year-old women in the stands wanting to say "I love you and you were my favorite Mariners player and I'm going to share a memory I have of you" rather than actual questions, although some people asked some good stuff, like "What's your favorite team prank that ever happened?" and he started telling the story about Griffey putting a cow in Lou Piniella's office during spring training one year, and he had another story about a rookie regifting a team member's wedding present a year later, as part of "tell us about Kangaroo Court". Someone asked who his favorite guys to catch were and he started with Randy Johnson but said how later on he always loved catching Jamie Moyer because it was so interesting AND because his hand wouldn't hurt nearly as much afterwards ("Jamie couldn't get anyone out with his fastball, not even you, Rick.") I thought about asking about what it was like for Dan to return to college after retiring from baseball -- he mentioned at the beginning that he'd moved his family to Minnesota to finish out his degree at the University of Minnesota, but didn't talk much about it. Some people asked if Dan was interested in coaching the Mariners and he said that he was getting his coaching skills honed by coaching his kid's softball team, so a 12-year-old kid asked, "Uh, so I play softball... do you have any advice for me?"
Then there was Bone and Boone... neither of them appear to have changed at all since last we saw them, by which I mean Buhner was entertaining and Boone was actually looking so bored on the stage that he yawned a few times, so their session was dominated by Buhner, which was probably for the best. He recounted stories of the 1995 team of course, ("'Forget' the Wild Card, we're taking the AL West? Oh, that's the PG-13 version, Rick!") and some memories of the Kingdome in general, and someone brought up the time some chick in Boston jumped onto the field to give him a hug and he told stories about that... just various stuff, but it was pretty funny overall.
We actually skipped out after that, before the Felix Hernandez session... I wanted to take a few photos of Felix but we had other things to accomplish and I didn't want to be rude and leave DURING the session. We did listen to it since they broadcast the dialogues on the big board and over the PA system. Felix's English is really good now, I remember the first time I saw him at a Fanfest, he had an interpreter, so that's great too.
We got photos with the Moose, though they turned out pretty crappy. Then we went to play catch in the outfield; I'd even brought my glove for that, and they also have gloves you can borrow for it anyway. Turns out they only give you 3 minutes to play, though, which kind of sucks; I'm more used to getting 45 minutes or so on the outfield turf at the Seibu Dome or wherever. Still, that was something new and different to do, since I'd never played catch on a GRASS outfield in a real stadium before...
Then we ran the bases (or walked) and took photos in the dugout. After that I ended up talking in Japanese to some people filming a show for NHK; I overheard this lady on camera talking in Japanese about how "at the American fan fests, you can run on the field and do so many activities and there are sign-kais and talkshows and everything!" So I asked what show it was for, though it sounds like it's some sort of special program, not one of the regular MLB ones. That was surreal. At least I was wearing my 野球道 t-shirt so it lent some cred to my "I lived in Tokyo for several years, I'm a Fighters fan" story.
We wandered indoors after that because it was so cold out, and saw the clubhouse and locker room and the Dave Niehaus tribute and the history exhibit, and then got in an elevator and found out they'd let us go into the press box, so we went there, and... that was about it, everything started closing down a little before 4pm. I hadn't actually been in the press box before, so that was cool, and obviously the Niehaus exhibit was new, but other than that almost everything there was stuff we'd seen before.
I guess it was a fun day, but I'm still not all that psyched about watching MLB games again. We'll see what happens.
Rick Rizzs and Dan Wilson.
Dan Wilson.
The Bone and Boone panel.
Jay Buhner tells it like it is.
Bret Boone looks bored.
Lots of people had Thin Mints boxes wandering around... and apparently here was the cookie booth that was the source.
I found a Yunker ad! In English! Neat. (Ichiro's on most of their ads in Japan.)
Getting ready to play catch in the outfield.
Jason's chasing down a ball in the right field corner just like he's Ichiro.
There was this huge "MY OH MY" chalked in piles of sand in the infield dirt... here's one of the MYs. I'm standing on second base at the time but you can't tell.
In the dugout.
Outside the dugout.
Here's that chick from NHK doing the Japanese TV program.
If any of my readers have a clue who she is, let me know.
The Dave Niehaus Tribute in the Diamond Club.
More Niehaus.
I kid you not, when we went into the clubhouse, I asked if it was okay to take pictures of everything, and the guy at the door told me, "Yeah, go ahead. In fact, when you go through that door right there, you can take photos of Felix Hernandez's Cy Young Award-winning socks in the locker on the left."
The mailboxes for players in the locker room. That really full box on the lower left belongs to Milton Bradley. Wonder if it's because people are pissed off at him or what.
The clubhouse computers. There's a paper on the right explaining how they can get onto the clubhouse wireless as well, although when I tried to connect with my wifi-enabled cellphone, it didn't work :)
Weight room.
Part of the "History of Baseball in the Northwest" exhibit.
You could color in outlines of players and possibly get your coloring up on the big board during a game, apparently. I didn't take part in this.
But here's the rest of the press dining room. It is not that impressive.
Press room.
Someday, I would like to be sitting in this seat for real work, not just at a fan fest.
Nice view you get from there, too.
You know, I still haven't put up photos from Yakult's fanfest that I went to this fall, have I? Maybe I should go do a retro fanfest post or two.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)