I had a few emails in Japanese about this when I woke up this morning from my Fighters friends -- "You probably already know, but Kobayashi-coach died of a heart attack..."
Shigeru Kobayashi died on Sunday at a hospital in Fukui at the age of 57. He was with the Fighters as a ni-gun pitching coach in 2009 and was set to become the ichi-gun pitching coach in 2010, with Masato Yoshii being assigned to a ni-gun coaching role.
The stupid thing is, I never actually talked to Kobayashi, nor do I even have any photos of him from this year. I mean, I certainly saw him around, but my friends were better friends with the other coaches like Shimazaki and Yamanaka and Arai and all, so those were the coaches I ended up talking to or taking photos of. (Well, and Hajime Miki-coach, who is a week older than me.) I best remember Kobayashi as being "that guy who goes on roadtrips when Shimazaki isn't there". Like, I remember seeing him at minor-league games at places like Sagamihara.
There's already a pretty good obituary in English on the Japan Times site. Kobayashi had an extraordinary career in some ways, or more like, he had a few years of greatness that unfortunately mostly left him as a historical footnote for a lot of people of my generation.
If you've heard of the "Egawa Affair", where hotshot pitcher Suguru Egawa came out of Hosei refusing to play for any team but the Giants, but was drafted by Hanshin and tried to sign with Yomiuri after holding out for a year, and eventually Hanshin was essentially forced to trade Egawa to the Giants (despite a rule that said you could not trade first-year draftees) for the Giants' "best" pitcher in 1978 -- the 1977 Sawamura-award-winning, sidearm righty Shigeru Kobayashi. The story says that Kobayashi was at the airport on the way to spring training in January 1979 when he learned of the trade, and was diverted from a flight to Giants' spring camp to the Hanshin camp instead. Despite Hanshin only being barely over .500 that year at 61-60-9, Kobayashi became a Giants-killer, went 22-9 in 1979 with a 2.89 ERA, including being 8-0 against the Giants, and won ANOTHER Sawamura Award.
He retired young, at the age of 31; according to his Wikipedia page, after going 11-9 in 1982, he said "If I can't get at least 15 wins next year, I'm giving up and quitting", and he went 13-14 in 1983 and thus retired. He went on to do various TV work including sportscasting and a few spots in TV dramas, and then became a coach for Kintetsu for a few years, also coached for the SK Wyverns in Korea, and then came to the Fighters for the 2009 season.
Some comments from Fighters staff are in the official team release, too. It's kinda sad, even Darvish is like "I never really got much of a chance to talk to the guy, but he was really enthusiastic and I was hoping to work with him this year at ichi-gun. This is a real shock."
If you're in Japan near the Tokyo area, they have a little... I'm never quite sure how to translate kenkadai (献花台), which is basically that place where people put a photo of a deceased person and offer flowers and other stuff to it. Kind of like an altar, but that's not exactly right either. Ojisan has a photo of the kenkadai up on his blog if you want to get an idea what it looks like; in this case they've put a photo and a uniform and cap, and allowed fans to come out with flowers and messages. According to the Fighters website, it'll be out there at Kamagaya from Monday to Wednesday.
I wonder what the team's going to do about it -- my guess is Yoshii's going to be back up at the top team for a year and we'll find someone else to work with the farm, but who knows.
Sanspo also has a photo gallery of Kobayashi up from when he was a player and such, including a great one of him with Nashida and Mayumi joining the Buffaloes in 1997.
EDIT>
First, the Japanese baseball card blog did a nice post about Kobayashi with some old cards.
Second... it seems that Takeshi Shimazaki is going to take over as the ichi-gun pitching coach. I'm happy for him but am going to miss him at Kamagaya this year :(
Monday, January 18, 2010
Friday, January 08, 2010
Friday Foto: Bloggers Vs. Hara
I had the fortune of joining Michael Westbay and Patrick Newman for lunch today; Patrick is in Japan for a week or so visiting family-in-law, so we made him come down to the Tokyo Dome and hang out for a while. Mostly we just babbled about baseball for a few hours until we all had to go our separate ways.
I thought it'd be amusing to take a photo in front of the Giants' pale imitation of the Bobby Valentine shrine, that is, the Tatsunori Hara statue in front of the Adidas store. We got a random lady walking by to take the picture, and she asked us in Japanese, "Do you know who he is?"
I pointed to the Fighters mascot dangling from my bag like "I'm a Fighters fan. I hate this guy."
Friday Foto: A Trip To Obama
This is only partially baseball-relevant, but me and the Fighters mascot B*B went up to Fukui prefecture this week to see Obama City!
We used a Seishun 18 ticket, which lets you ride unlimited trains anywhere in the country for 2300 yen per day... unlimited local trains, that is. You can't take any limited express trains, or the shinkansen or anything like that. It's a fantastic way to see the countryside, but not really a particularly efficient way to travel. (I went to Koshien using it this summer, but it took me 10 hours to get to Osaka, and another 12 from there to Fukuoka. You can get to Fukuoka in 5 hours from Tokyo via shinkansen.)
The first day, we went to Tsuruga (Fukui Prefecture), with a stop in Kofu (Yamanashi Prefecture) for lunch, and also took 2 hours to visit Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture.
B*B really liked Matsumoto Castle, though he was a little surprised by how much it focused on their guns and artillery of the period.
I debated trying to find Tsuruga Kehi High School while I was staying in Tsuruga, but it was pretty far out of the main part of town, and it was freezing cold out, so I wasn't going to walk a mile or two out there. I saw them play at Koshien and despite them getting steamrollered by my hometown Teikyo team, I really liked their lefty pitcher Nobuyoshi Yamada... who later was drafted by Orix.
For the record, there is very little in Tsuruga, as far as I could tell -- if you are heading to Obama City you'll probably end up going through there as it's a terminus for the Obama Line, but like many other "countryside" cities, there isn't very much to do there, nor anything much open at either 10am or 10pm.
The next day, we woke up and went to Obama City, which is about an hour from Tsuruga, on the northern coast of Japan.
However, the day I was there, it was raining and snowing and windy and cold and wet and generally horrible. So all I saw was the ruins of the former Obama Castle, where there is now the Obama Shrine, and I walked along the waterfront a bit. What I was told is that there are a lot of temples in the area, and nice seafood restaurants, and a good beach, and local craft stores, but what you should really do is apparently go there in the summer and rent a bicycle and ride around, rather than coming there in the winter and staggering through sleetstorms. Also, a lot of things were closed still for New Year's, including many stores, restaurants, and the Chopsticks museum.
I did find one great souvenir store that was open:
This is Wakasaya, where you can get a ridiculous amount of "I ♥ Obama" stuff from the "Obama City Supporting President Obama" group. They have Obama banners up all over town, too, which is a little surreal. You can buy Obama chopsticks, or cookies, or t-shirts, all kinds of stuff.
And then I wandered around town taking photos of any sign with "Obama" on it, no matter how irrelevant:
I actually had lunch at the fisherman's wharf, but instead of seafood, I had sauce-katsudon, which is also a specialty of Fukui prefecture, it seems.
This is Obama Shrine. It stands on the ground where Obama Castle used to be until it burned down in 1871. The shrine was also closed, so I couldn't get an Obama protective charm, but I did climb to the top of the highest part of the old castle's wall, and even though it was rainy and cloudy, I could tell it had a great view of the area and the mountains and the sea and all.
We gave up on Obama City a bit after that and took the train to Hikone.
The next day we went to see Hikone Castle in the morning...
It was snowing that day too. On the way to the castle, we passed by two boys carrying Ohmi HS sports bags and wearing baseball pants -- and I realized the school must be pretty close to there!
Sure enough, once we climbed to the top of the castle, and looked out over the city, one of the landmarks they pointed out was, infact, Ohmi HS and Shiga Prefectural Stadium (which the Ohmi team uses, apparently):
Ohmi has represented Shiga Prefecture in 5 out of the last 10 summer Koshien tournaments -- they've never won the entire thing, although in 2001 they lost the finals to Nichidai Sanko.
I sadly didn't really have any time to walk over to the school to take a look, because I had to be in Nagoya by noon to meet up with a friend for lunch.
After lunch I wandered over to the Nagoya Dome on a whim to see if I could get a set of Tatsunami retirement cheersticks (the only chance I had at Tatsunami retirement goods was the final Dragons game at Jingu on October 12, and it all sold out about an hour before the game started). They did, infact, have plenty of Tatsunami stuff at the store, but even weirder, there was a line of people outside the dome, at 2:30pm...
It turns out that there was a Tatsunami Thanks Party of sorts (立浪選手に感謝する会) going on at the Dome at 6:30pm. What timing! I briefly thought about whether it'd be possible for me to stay in Nagoya long enough for it, but decided I really didn't feel like taking a night train back to Tokyo again, and so I sighed and was on my way.
Stopped off in Shizuoka for dinner -- which is a soccer town, not a baseball town -- and got back home around 11pm.
We used a Seishun 18 ticket, which lets you ride unlimited trains anywhere in the country for 2300 yen per day... unlimited local trains, that is. You can't take any limited express trains, or the shinkansen or anything like that. It's a fantastic way to see the countryside, but not really a particularly efficient way to travel. (I went to Koshien using it this summer, but it took me 10 hours to get to Osaka, and another 12 from there to Fukuoka. You can get to Fukuoka in 5 hours from Tokyo via shinkansen.)
The first day, we went to Tsuruga (Fukui Prefecture), with a stop in Kofu (Yamanashi Prefecture) for lunch, and also took 2 hours to visit Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture.
B*B really liked Matsumoto Castle, though he was a little surprised by how much it focused on their guns and artillery of the period.
I debated trying to find Tsuruga Kehi High School while I was staying in Tsuruga, but it was pretty far out of the main part of town, and it was freezing cold out, so I wasn't going to walk a mile or two out there. I saw them play at Koshien and despite them getting steamrollered by my hometown Teikyo team, I really liked their lefty pitcher Nobuyoshi Yamada... who later was drafted by Orix.
For the record, there is very little in Tsuruga, as far as I could tell -- if you are heading to Obama City you'll probably end up going through there as it's a terminus for the Obama Line, but like many other "countryside" cities, there isn't very much to do there, nor anything much open at either 10am or 10pm.
The next day, we woke up and went to Obama City, which is about an hour from Tsuruga, on the northern coast of Japan.
However, the day I was there, it was raining and snowing and windy and cold and wet and generally horrible. So all I saw was the ruins of the former Obama Castle, where there is now the Obama Shrine, and I walked along the waterfront a bit. What I was told is that there are a lot of temples in the area, and nice seafood restaurants, and a good beach, and local craft stores, but what you should really do is apparently go there in the summer and rent a bicycle and ride around, rather than coming there in the winter and staggering through sleetstorms. Also, a lot of things were closed still for New Year's, including many stores, restaurants, and the Chopsticks museum.
I did find one great souvenir store that was open:
This is Wakasaya, where you can get a ridiculous amount of "I ♥ Obama" stuff from the "Obama City Supporting President Obama" group. They have Obama banners up all over town, too, which is a little surreal. You can buy Obama chopsticks, or cookies, or t-shirts, all kinds of stuff.
And then I wandered around town taking photos of any sign with "Obama" on it, no matter how irrelevant:
I actually had lunch at the fisherman's wharf, but instead of seafood, I had sauce-katsudon, which is also a specialty of Fukui prefecture, it seems.
This is Obama Shrine. It stands on the ground where Obama Castle used to be until it burned down in 1871. The shrine was also closed, so I couldn't get an Obama protective charm, but I did climb to the top of the highest part of the old castle's wall, and even though it was rainy and cloudy, I could tell it had a great view of the area and the mountains and the sea and all.
We gave up on Obama City a bit after that and took the train to Hikone.
The next day we went to see Hikone Castle in the morning...
It was snowing that day too. On the way to the castle, we passed by two boys carrying Ohmi HS sports bags and wearing baseball pants -- and I realized the school must be pretty close to there!
Sure enough, once we climbed to the top of the castle, and looked out over the city, one of the landmarks they pointed out was, infact, Ohmi HS and Shiga Prefectural Stadium (which the Ohmi team uses, apparently):
Ohmi has represented Shiga Prefecture in 5 out of the last 10 summer Koshien tournaments -- they've never won the entire thing, although in 2001 they lost the finals to Nichidai Sanko.
I sadly didn't really have any time to walk over to the school to take a look, because I had to be in Nagoya by noon to meet up with a friend for lunch.
After lunch I wandered over to the Nagoya Dome on a whim to see if I could get a set of Tatsunami retirement cheersticks (the only chance I had at Tatsunami retirement goods was the final Dragons game at Jingu on October 12, and it all sold out about an hour before the game started). They did, infact, have plenty of Tatsunami stuff at the store, but even weirder, there was a line of people outside the dome, at 2:30pm...
It turns out that there was a Tatsunami Thanks Party of sorts (立浪選手に感謝する会) going on at the Dome at 6:30pm. What timing! I briefly thought about whether it'd be possible for me to stay in Nagoya long enough for it, but decided I really didn't feel like taking a night train back to Tokyo again, and so I sighed and was on my way.
Stopped off in Shizuoka for dinner -- which is a soccer town, not a baseball town -- and got back home around 11pm.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Choji Murata is STILL awesome!
Yeah, I'm cribbing from a post title two years ago. But it still stands.
I'll try to write a bit more a bit later, but basically, tonight I went to see the Pro Yakyu OB All-Star Athlete's Cup game at the Tokyo Dome. This year the Master's League found itself in somewhat dire financial straits with a lack of sponsors and so on, so rather than playing a ton of games, they only played two games, an East-West game back in November and the Pacific-Central game today.
The big deal today on the program was having 65-year-old Yukio Ozaki pitch to 65-year-old Isao Shibata, as a reinactment of Koshien 1961; Ozaki from Namisho would go on to be Rookie of the Year in 1962 with the Toei Flyers (the former Fighters, who won the Japan Series that year), but Shibata from Hosei #2 would go on to be the leadoff batter for the Oh-Nagashima V9 Giants.
But the big deal for me was seeing Choji Murata pitch. He just turned 60 years old this November, and HE STILL THROWS 135KM/H (about 83 mph). Seriously! I was amazed by him 2 years ago and am still amazed now. See, a lot of the guys who play in this event, they are mostly names in a book for me, and even now seeing them in these OB games, it's like, "Look at the old dude". But for Murata -- the first 4-decade player in Japan, as well as the first guy to have Tommy John surgery -- seeing him now is not entirely unlike seeing him 20 years ago! He still throws with the same high-kick motion, and still throws really fast, although I realize in his prime he could kick it up to the mid-150's.
Anyway, I'll try to write a bit more about the game soon (the Pacific beat the Central 7-2, but I'm not sure it really is all that relevant), but for now, some Murata photos from tonight:
The last one is just to prove that I'm not joking about the speed. I only caught the scoreboard with him at 131, but still.
And here's my scorecard transcribed:
(BTW, it's not a typo that Matsumoto pinch-ran twice and also played left field. That's the same Tadashi Matsumoto, late of the Giants, wearing #2 -- he pinch-ran twice, and then when Masahiro Ishii fell over fielding a ball in left field and got carried off the field on a stretcher -- not a joke -- Matsumoto took over in the field.)
All around, it was a fun game. There were vague ouendan in the outfield, there were tons of kids yelling for baseballs, there were lots of AWESOME old uniforms (rather than the crappy Master's League uniforms), there was Shigeki Sano's hat flying off, there was Masanori Murakami coaching, a 53-year-old Hiromichi Ishige diving for grounders at shortstop, and there was Norihiro Komada looking a lot thinner than last time I saw him. Oh, and Tsutomu "Maido!!" Iwamoto pitched to Tatsuo Ohmiya for 2 innings to finish out the game in a Fighters battery, though he totally ran out of steam in the 9th inning and couldn't even get up to 100 km/h. Poor guy :(
You know what's scary? Ozaki and Shibata are 65 -- the same age as my childhood hero Steve Carlton. And Choji Murata is 60 -- the same age as Mike Schmidt. That's startling when I think about it, but also puts their careers into a little more context for me, timeline-wise.
Anyway, I'll try to put up more photos soon, but I'm leaving shortly for a trip to Obama City, and then after that going to the US for a month and a half. But I really do want to put them up -- the old uniforms were so very very cool!
I'll try to write a bit more a bit later, but basically, tonight I went to see the Pro Yakyu OB All-Star Athlete's Cup game at the Tokyo Dome. This year the Master's League found itself in somewhat dire financial straits with a lack of sponsors and so on, so rather than playing a ton of games, they only played two games, an East-West game back in November and the Pacific-Central game today.
The big deal today on the program was having 65-year-old Yukio Ozaki pitch to 65-year-old Isao Shibata, as a reinactment of Koshien 1961; Ozaki from Namisho would go on to be Rookie of the Year in 1962 with the Toei Flyers (the former Fighters, who won the Japan Series that year), but Shibata from Hosei #2 would go on to be the leadoff batter for the Oh-Nagashima V9 Giants.
But the big deal for me was seeing Choji Murata pitch. He just turned 60 years old this November, and HE STILL THROWS 135KM/H (about 83 mph). Seriously! I was amazed by him 2 years ago and am still amazed now. See, a lot of the guys who play in this event, they are mostly names in a book for me, and even now seeing them in these OB games, it's like, "Look at the old dude". But for Murata -- the first 4-decade player in Japan, as well as the first guy to have Tommy John surgery -- seeing him now is not entirely unlike seeing him 20 years ago! He still throws with the same high-kick motion, and still throws really fast, although I realize in his prime he could kick it up to the mid-150's.
Anyway, I'll try to write a bit more about the game soon (the Pacific beat the Central 7-2, but I'm not sure it really is all that relevant), but for now, some Murata photos from tonight:
The last one is just to prove that I'm not joking about the speed. I only caught the scoreboard with him at 131, but still.
And here's my scorecard transcribed:
Central OB 2 - 7 Pacific OB
Saturday, January 02, 2010
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Central League OB 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 12 0
Pacific League OB 1 0 0 0 5 1 0 0 0 7 17 1
Central AB R H RB K BB SH SB E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Wakamatsu, rf 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 G5 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Nagashima, rf 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. E6 .. G4 .. .. .. ..
Tatsukawa, c 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. S9 .. ..
Ichikawa, c 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. G4
Takahashi, ss-cf 5 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 G5 .. F8 .. S9 .. D7 .. f5
Suzuki, 3b 4 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 F8 .. KC .. S9 .. s9 .. ..
Komada, 1b 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. F8 .. S9 G6 .. L6 .. ..
Fukui, 2b-ss 4 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. D9 .. F7 KS .. .. S7 ..
Yashiki, cf 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 .. G6 .. KC .. .. .. .. ..
Satoh, ph-2b 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. G3 .. S7 ..
Gotoh, lf 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. F7 .. S9 .. .. .. .. ..
Ishii, ph-lf 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. S8 .. d5 ..
Matsumoto, lf 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Sugiyama, c 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. G6 F5 .. .. .. .. ..
Kawabata, ph-rf 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. d6 .. G1 ..
Kawato, dh 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. S3 .. .. .. .. .. ..
Matsumoto, pr 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Kameyama, ph 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. D8 .. .. .. ..
Matsumoto, pr 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Shibata, dh 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. F7 .. ..
Wakana, dh 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. G5
Central IP BF H HR K BBH WP RA ER
Awano 1 5 2 0 0 0 0 1 1
Endoh 1 5 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ohkawa 1 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nakata 1 5 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Saitoh 1 9 6 0 0 0 0 5 5
Masumoto 1 5 2 0 0 0 0 1 1
Hashimoto 0.1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ishige 0.2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Maeda 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pacific AB R H RB K BB SH SB E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Ishige, ss 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 D7 F9 .. F9 .. .. .. .. ..
Ozeki, ph-cf 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. F8 .. .. S6 ..
Motonishi, 2b 3 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 D9 .. G5 .. D9 .. .. .. ..
Takashiro, 2b 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. G3 .. .. ..
Muraoka, ph-2b 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. d4 ..
Matsunaga, 3b 5 2 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 F8 .. G4 .. D7 T8 .. T7 ..
Yoshinaga, c 3 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 G3 .. S3 .. S9 .. .. .. ..
Arita, c 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. G5 .. .. ..
Ohmiya, c 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. G1 ..
T.Murakami, cf-ss 4 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 F8 .. F7 .. F7 D7 .. .. ..
Fujimoto, 1b 3 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. S8 .. F1 S9 .. .. .. ..
S.Murakami, 1b 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. F3 .. .. ..
Kazu Yamamoto, dh 4 1 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 .. S4 .. S8 T8 .. F9 .. ..
Takahashi, lf 4 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. F7 .. D7 F7 .. F7 .. ..
Ohtsuka, rf 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. F8 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Hirano, ph-rf 2 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. G5 S7 .. .. .. ..
Ryutaro, ph 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. G4 .. ..
Pacific IP BF H HR K BBH WP RA ER
Yamada 0.1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nonaka 0.2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kohno 1 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Matsunuma 1 5 1 0 1 0 1 0 0
Sano 1 5 2 0 1 0 0 0 0
C.Murata 1 6 3 0 1 0 0 1 1
Yamazaki 1 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ozaki 0.1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
T.Murata 0.2 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 1
Iwamoto 2 7 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
(BTW, it's not a typo that Matsumoto pinch-ran twice and also played left field. That's the same Tadashi Matsumoto, late of the Giants, wearing #2 -- he pinch-ran twice, and then when Masahiro Ishii fell over fielding a ball in left field and got carried off the field on a stretcher -- not a joke -- Matsumoto took over in the field.)
All around, it was a fun game. There were vague ouendan in the outfield, there were tons of kids yelling for baseballs, there were lots of AWESOME old uniforms (rather than the crappy Master's League uniforms), there was Shigeki Sano's hat flying off, there was Masanori Murakami coaching, a 53-year-old Hiromichi Ishige diving for grounders at shortstop, and there was Norihiro Komada looking a lot thinner than last time I saw him. Oh, and Tsutomu "Maido!!" Iwamoto pitched to Tatsuo Ohmiya for 2 innings to finish out the game in a Fighters battery, though he totally ran out of steam in the 9th inning and couldn't even get up to 100 km/h. Poor guy :(
You know what's scary? Ozaki and Shibata are 65 -- the same age as my childhood hero Steve Carlton. And Choji Murata is 60 -- the same age as Mike Schmidt. That's startling when I think about it, but also puts their careers into a little more context for me, timeline-wise.
Anyway, I'll try to put up more photos soon, but I'm leaving shortly for a trip to Obama City, and then after that going to the US for a month and a half. But I really do want to put them up -- the old uniforms were so very very cool!
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