Sunday's results

First off, I'm going to Japan Series Game 3 tomorrow with Steve from We Love Marines. If you want to know about the Japan Series, I recommend reading his blog as he is going to EVERY game of the Series because he is crazy like that. I didn't even watch Game 1 because I opted to go to a dinner party with non-baseball friends who are moving out of Tokyo in two weeks (Lotte won 5-2), and then I watched most of Game 2 on TV, though by the time I got home from Jingu and turned it on, Chunichi was already up 10-1 on their way to winning 12-1.

Actually, Steve invited me to Nagoya for the weekend too since he had an extra ticket, but I decided to stay at home because first, shinkansen tickets are expensive (and as it turns out the shinkansen stopped running through parts of Shizuoka thanks to the typhoon anyway), and second, I really wanted to go to my final Soukeisen.

Going into Soukeisen, the final week of the season, the standings were such that no other team could catch Waseda, and the Waseda-Keio records were:

          G   W   L   T   SP   WP%
Waseda   10   8   2   0   4   .800
Keio     12   6   4   2   3   .600

So if Waseda won one game of Soukeisen at all, even if Keio won the other two, Waseda would get the pennant as their record would be 9-4 and Keio's could only reach 8-4 at best.

But if Keio won both games, they would have an identical 8-4 record.

So this would force a one-game playoff for the championship. Thanks to there being a national holiday on November 3rd, a few days before Soukeisen, the Big 6 league announced that should it come to a playoff, that playoff game would be on November 3rd.

Keep in mind that the Big 6 Rookie Tournament is supposed to take place for 3 days following the end of the season. I originally figured I'd get to go to at least one day of it on November 3rd. But no dice this time -- they will probably hold it on November 2, 4, and 5, thanks to the weekend's results...

Basically, Saturday was rained out, thanks to the typhoon, so the two Soukeisen games were moved to Sunday/Monday.

I went on Sunday. It was a fantastic game and I want to post photos and more details of it later. Yes, it was PACKED -- reported attendance 33000, I would guess more like 35000. Yes, it was Yuki Saitoh vs. Daisuke Takeuchi, and yes, Tatsuya Ohishi pitched too. What rocked is that Keio's Hitoshi Fuchigami led off the game by hitting a home run off Saitoh, and Keio eventually won the game 2-0. Some of my friends lined up for seats at 7am (for a 1pm game) and we sat in the front row! And afterwards I got autographs and photos with a whole bunch of guys from the Keio team! (And gave a bunch of them bags of Halloween candy because, hey, it was Halloween.)


(megaphone autographed by Iba, Takeuchi Kazuma, Fuchigami, Nagasaki, Takeuchi Daisuke, and Fukutani)

Now, where things get interesting is...

If Keio wins today, Monday -- the game on Wednesday Nov 3rd is the playoff for the league championship. It will be PACKED. You can buy tickets for it at a convenience store or ticket-seller, and I recommend you do, if you are thinking of going.

If Waseda wins today, Monday -- they win the Big 6 league, there will be some kind of parade and celebration and whatnot tonight or tomorrow. However, the season will NOT actually be finished, and so I think what will actually happen is in that case, the game on Wednesday will be the final game of Soukeisen. Which makes it the final game of the semester. Which means lots of 4th-years playing for their final game and getting all emotional about it. Especially for Keio, since the core of this team has now been playing together for SEVEN YEARS, through Keio HS as well.

I live for this stuff.