Friday Foto: Takahiro Fujioka

I'm the happiest girl in the world. I've now managed to get photos with 3 out of the 5 college seniors on the front cover of this semester's Shube college baseball magazine. (The other two being Sugano and Itoh. I doubt I'll ever meet Nakaushiro, and Nomura hates me.)

No, seriously, so Takahiro Fujioka is a tall lefty senior at Toyo University this year. And I've been a pretty big fan of his for a few years. I still remember the first time I saw him pitch, he was a sophomore, I was hoping to see junior lefty Masahiro Inui, I got Fujioka instead, and was like "...this guy is ninety times BETTER than Inui..." He pitched Toyo to the All-Japan victory last summer, too.

And well, I went to Hosei's field again on Thursday for their preseason game against Toyo. I hoped Fujioka would start, and I was delighted when he did, though I felt slightly guilty since I was ostensibly rooting for Hosei, yet taking a bazillion pictures of the opponents' lefty starter yet again (like I did for Shimabukuro when Chuo was there).

Toyo beat Hosei 4-2. Hosei starter Kazuki Mishima, who I also like a lot, had a pretty rough start, though I'm not really sure what exactly was wrong; he didn't look that different than I remember him. There were a whole bunch of scouts there watching Fujioka though, so maybe Mishima was also nervous, who knows.

So, some photos:






Fujioka in action.






Hosei starter Kazuki Mishima.


Ryoto Yoshikoshi finished out the game for Hosei.


Takuya Uchiyama (4th year, Urawa Gakuin, #18)


Junki Fujita (3rd year, Hamada, #15)


Kosuke Suzuki (4th year, Toyodai Ushiku, #16)




Shinko Gakuen's Ryosuke Itoh.




Here's Itoh sliding into third base after walloping a ball into the left-field wall. I thought it was a home run but apparently not.


Hideharu Satoh. The last time I saw him, he was wearing #9 for Teikyo HS and was their team captain at Koshien in 2009.


Yusuke Hasegawa getting tagged out at the plate.


This is probably the best photo I got of Daichi Suzuki, the Toyo captain, the shortstop on the left.


Catcher Shotaro Oka. Formerly from Nichidai San!


Hosei captain Masashi Nanba.


Crowd of people with radar guns and whatnot.


Final score.


Final bow between both teams.


And a bonus thing that I thought was cool:


This is that nice scoreboard, from the back. Can you see a little gold plaque on it? Let me zoom in for a second...


Yes -- the money for that scoreboard was donated to the club from Kazuhito Futagami and Hisashi Takeuchi. How cool is that?


I really enjoyed my day out at the Hosei ground this time! And after the game I hung out with a friend outside the Toyo side bullpen until Fujioka came out; in the meantime we ended up chatting with a bunch of Hosei players and a few of the Toyo players as well. Good times!