Daily Reporter at Kamagaya -- Sept 26

I was actually somewhat specifically asked to blog about this experience, so I'm writing an entry.  I guess maybe there are still readers of this blog who don't know me in other channels, but I'm back in Japan for a month (have been from Sept 5 to Oct 8, basically).  I've already gone to around 25 games here, and have a few more to go.

Anyway, so I went to Kamagaya yesterday afternoon.  My intention for the day was to do absolutely nothing special -- I wasn't going to bring my huge camera and take photos, I wasn't even wearing a Fighters jersey (just a t-shirt), I wasn't going to spend time after the game getting photos or autographs, I was just going to go by myself and do nothing but watch the damn game for a change.

I should know by now that this sort of thing never works out, and adventure happens to me whether I like it or not.

Basically, the guy who used to be one of the interpreters for the team, Mr. Araki, works in the Kamagaya office now, which partially means he helps run all of the daily "events" at Kamagaya.  During the weekend these events can get pretty crazy -- like this upcoming weekend is the Hokkaido Festival, and holiday weekends also tend to have big things where they'll have food tents and rides for kids and a stage set up with singers and dancers and "talk shows" with the players, and autograph tables, and all kinds of crazy things.  During the weekdays, the events tend to be a lot more low-key, like a "special dessert" that might be on sale only in the 5th inning, or the pre-game ceremonial first pitch, or dancing on the field in the 7th inning, etc.

Anyway, one thing that I always saw at Kamagaya but never understood fully was a bunch of people who'd get introduced on the field before the game, just random fans.  And then another thing is that there's this huge book of daily reports from the Fighters Kamagaya games that sits on a table in the concourse, and you can look through it and see what people wrote about the games for the past 2 years or so.  Some are detailed, some are just a drawing and a sentence or two, it depends.

So Araki came up to me and said (in English) "Hey, long time no see.  Would you like to be a daily reporter today?  You get to go on the field before the game and be introduced, and then you write a report about the game that we put in our book.  Maybe you can write about it on your blog."

Well, I was super-nervous but it sure sounded like a new and interesting experience, so I said sure, and about 15 minutes later my name got called out with 5 other people and I reported to the stadium clubhouse entrance thingy.  We got a brief explanation of the Daily Report form and then were escorted into the stadium -- my first time there!  (I'd been on the field before once or twice for various post-game events, but we always entered from the outside of the stadium.)  We went through the lobby (where I saw former Fighter Komai and some other guys working on something) and down a hallway, past a bunch of rooms that had various people in them that looked like media or players getting set up to chart stuff, etc, and waited outside the Fighters dugout:



They told us a little bit about what would happen on the field... now the silly thing is, they specifically asked me if I could speak Japanese, and of course I'd been talking in Japanese up to that point.  But they thought it'd be funny if we did both languages... the suggestion was to do like a comedy routine where I'd say something in English, the announcer would look confused and call for the interpreter and then I'd just repeat myself in Japanese. 

But what actually happened is more like, we went out there, and when the guy got to me he just said in English "Oh hello how are you" and I'm thinking "wait WTF", so I just said something in English like "Hi I'm Deanna, I'm happy to be a daily reporter, I love the Fighters and Kamagaya!" and then he said "oh okay!!" and went on to the next person.

Then a friend of mine from the stands yelled down in Japanese "Oi Deanna, why didn't you say that in Japanese?" and I yelled back "He didn't ASK me in Japanese!" and then the announcer was like "Wait, you speak Japanese?  Then in Japanese please!" and so I repeated myself, kinda, like "let's have a great game today, go Fighters!"

And as a joke he asked the next guy to give his answer in English. 

The other funny thing is that the last guy in the group is actually one of my Kamagaya friends (and is one of the ouendan leaders), but he was wearing a Searex t-shirt, so they were giving him crap about that.

Anyway, that was quite a crazy experience, it was really weird looking out into the stands and realizing how many people I recognized out there -- it sounds crazy but in the last 5 years I've met a LOT of the Kanto-area Fighters fan regulars!

I made Araki-san take photos while I was on the field, so here, you can see that I'm not making this crazy thing up:

Here we are on the field, getting ready to be introduced as daily reporters.


I am looking around at all the people in the stands and definitely being like "WTF am I doing here!"


And here I am being interviewed myself.  How bizarre!  Apparently Nakahara-san didn't get the memo about the comedy thing but it sounds like it was still funny to everyone, so that's good.

Anyway, so after that we were led off the field, back through the clubhouse, back outdoors, and given clipboards with the Daily Report thingies on them, and then went back to our seats!  Lots of my friends were like "OMG I SAW YOU!  SO FUNNY!"

Oh yeah, also, before the game started I went and got a photo with Cubby.  I'd been told that the person inside the Cubby outfit has changed, and there's a new uniform too:

 

So yeah, there was a game.  Because I was a Daily Reporter, I took very careful notes all game!  (Just joking, I kept my normal scorecard, which was more than enough.)

Takayuki Makka started for the Baystars (you may or may not remember that he has my undying support since another craziest day ever of mine) and Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters (you may remember him being our Rookie of the Year in 2006 and never being quite so awesome ever again.  Sigh, I still have hope for him though.)  So two lefties, exciting.

Only thing is, Makka had a really tough time in the first inning, and so after getting two quick outs, he gave up two hits in a row to Shingo Ishikawa and Atsushi Ugumori, walked Takahiro Imanami to lead the bases, and then gave up a grand slam to Masaya Ozaki.  Don't get me wrong, I love my ni-gun Fighters, but I'm not sure the last time I ever saw anyone hit a grand slam in Kamagaya.  So this brought the Fighters out to a quick 4-0 lead.

Though Makka did go 5 innings and only give up those runs in the first inning.  In the meantime, Yagi didn't make it through 5; he came out in the top of the 5th, after giving up a run in the second inning (and then the Baystars ran themselves out of it) and then giving up 4 hits into the 5th inning... so when he left it was 4-3 and two runs had just come in on a Hyuma single that took an awkward bounce up the middle, and then runners were at the corners.  Masao Kida replaced Yagi, gave up a hit to Noriharu Yamasaki, and that made it 4-4.


Makka pitching to Masaya Ozaki.


Yes, Masao Kida turned 44 a week or two ago and actually IS still playing baseball, he hasn't retired.  My friend and I were just talking about that a few days ago.

So then both teams put out a whole bunch of relievers for the next few innings.  The Fighters put out Takahiro Matsuka (yay!!! Todai!!) and Ryuji Wakatake (booo!) and Yutaka Ohtsuka (yay!!! Soka!!) and the three of them kept the next 3 innings scoreless.  The Baystars put out Atori Ohta (yay!!!  Teikyo!!!) and Takehiro Fukuda and Shigeki Ushida (yay Meiji?) and they kept the next 3 innings scoreless.

Then we got Masahiro Inui pitching the 9th.  Look, I know Inui is doing very well on the farm even if he hasn't done a lot with the top team yet.  And I was a fan of his when he was a sophomore at Toyo University. It's just that ever since I saw Takahiro Fujioka pitch instead of him one fateful day in April 2009, I haven't been able to see Inui as anywhere near as awesome since because Fujioka is just that much better.

So when Inui pretty much immediately gave up a home run to Yuki Takamori (who I am also a big fan of), making it 5-4, I wasn't all that surprised.  He hasn't been great whenever I'm watching for quite some time now.

Tangent time!

In the 4th inning or so, my friends were all going back to get lottery cards for an end-of-game event.  Again, these are the things I think I've been aware of but just had never seen or never had anyone tell me what was going on when they happened.  So I went back and got a ticket too, and my friends explained, "At the end of the 8th inning they'll call out 5 or 6 numbers from the 100, and those people get to go on the field at the end of the game and have their photo taken with the game hero, if the Fighters win.  If the Fighters don't win, you can still go on the field but you get your photo with Cubby." 

Well, get this, it was apparently my doubly-lucky day, since my ticket number ALSO got called.

But at the time the game was tied, so everyone was joking how "you'll get to meet Cubby on the field later!"

Then Takamori hit that home run and they were like "Yeah... have fun with Cubby!"



Lottery ticket for the picture-taking at the end of the game.

Anyway.

So with that in mind, the Fighers came up in their half of the 9th, and of all of the people to pitch for the Baystars, they bring out former Fighter Masanori Hayashi, who gets a flyout from Ozaki, a strikeout from Sekiguchi, and then with a very full count and many foul balls, Yuji Arahari walked.  Konta pinch-ran for him, and then, out of absolutely nowhere, Suguru Ichikawa smacked a TRIPLE down the right-field line, scoring Konta and tying the game 5-5.  Go Matsumoto hit a pop fly out, but the game was going into extra innings!

Suddenly I had a lot more to write and no room left on my Daily Report form, oops :)

Ryo Sakakibara handled the Baystars in the top of the 10th and then the Stars sent Shintaro Ejiri to the mound for the bottom of the 10th.  Everyone loves Ejiri, he was with the Fighters for years, I was a huge fan of his then too, so we're all like "well, we want to win but does Ejiri have to lose?"

Unfortunately, yes, that's how it worked.  Murata led off with a double, moved to third on a groundout by Takumi Ohshima (whee!) and they intentionally walked a pinch-hitting Kenji Satoh, to change pitchers to Shoma Satoh.  Shoma pitched to Takahiro Imanami, who hit a single up the middle and Murata scored and that was it!  6-5!!

Apparently Imanami's parents were at the game, or at least several people told me that.


Final score.


Here I am posing with my Daily Report thingy.


And here's my Daily Report.  Fortunately, since I was a Junior High School teacher at some point, and had seen this at Kamagaya before too, I was vaguely familiar with what you were supposed to do for them.  I decided to go all out and write mine in both Japanese and English, which meant a bunch of people were staring over my shoulder like "OMG YOU CAN WRITE KANJI" and "Wow, you really took good notes today huh?"

So as I mentioned before, I won this lottery thing to go on the field.  I went down to the area by the door again and... ran into my friend Tomoko, who had another friend of hers there with her who was a big Imanami fan, and she's like "Deanna, you got a winning ticket?  Can my friend go with you?  He really wants to meet Imanami.  He made this banner and brought it today."  What was I supposed to say, no?  It's really awkward when people put me in those situations, but since I know I owe a lot to my friends here I generally go along with these kinds of things.  You know, like they do a lot of things for me like saving seats or taking photos or trading pinbadges or whatever, we all kind of look out for each other, that's how the whole group dynamic works here in Japan.  (Honestly, had it just been someone I actually knew, I would have been absolutely totally fine with it with no reservations whatsoever, but this was some random dude I had never ever seen before who had never spoken to me... and since almost everyone at Kamagaya has spoken to me at SOME point, I felt kind of weird.  It would have been a lot better if Tomoko came with us, but she wouldn't for some reason.)


On the other hand, I WAS GOING BACK ON THE FIELD!  WHEEE!  So I tried not to feel weird about the situation and just went with the other people, back through the clubhouse again, and back onto the field for the second time in a day.

We had to wait for the team meeting to be over first, so a bunch of us just went around the area behind home plate where we were waiting, taking pictures of ourselves with various things:


Tomoko's friend's Imanami banner that he made and brought that day, pretty lucky that Imanami was the game hero, right?


One of the other guys wanted to pose with the sweepermobile and I was like "OMG ME TOO!!!"  I tried to figure out how to drive it -- that looks hard, there are like 3 separate brushes on the back.


Anyway, after a while, Imanami came out, we lined up in our 6 groups/pairs, and each group took a photo with him as their group, and then all of us together took a photo with him (and the banner).  The only catch is, we weren't allowed to use our own cameras, the Fighters staff take the photo with their camera, and then they'll print out one print for you, that you can pick up at a later game.  Well, I won't *be* here for the final games this weekend, or even in Japan that much longer, so I just told the Imanami fan that he could have the photo print since it meant so much to him.

Plus, really, the nice thing was mostly just getting to say hi to Imanami, congratulate him on a good game, shake his hand, you know?  The entire experience is worth a lot more to me than the photo -- besides, I actually got a photo with Imanami once before, about four years ago, and I have met him and said hello to him after many games at Kamagaya, and even had him sign my uniform, so it's really not that big a deal to me.  Don't get me wrong, I like Imanami and hope he does well with the team someday, but since I'm also high on Haruki Nishikawa I'm not sure where Imanami fits in.

So, very very crazy day.  I got to go through the Fighters stadium building twice, I got to write a report thingy, I got to talk to someone at Kamagaya in actual English for a change, I got to see a lot of my friends, and then, even crazier, when I got on the bus to Nishi-funabashi afterwards, I ran into two MORE friends of mine from my normal Fighters cheering group, who had been sitting in the back and never came over to say hi, so we rode all the way back to town together. 

Unfortunately, when I went to the Tigers-Swallows game that evening, Ryota Imanari wasn't starting for the Tigers as he had been on Tuesday night.  Alas.  The Swallows beat the crap out of the Tigers and it was an all-around good evening with my Jingu friends too.

I should probably write some more about other games I've been to on this trip -- I wonder if maybe I'll have some time to write about them when I get back to the US instead, and whether I'll remember all the details by then.  At least I can post photos, maybe.

Game Reports: Fighters vs. Lions and Swallows vs. Baystars

Monday, I decided not to go to the 3rd game of the Meiji-Hosei series and instead did a doubleheader of the Lions vs. Fighters at the Seibu Dump, then the Swallows vs. Baystars at Jingu.

I guess I arrived at Seibu around 12:30pm. First thing I noticed was a lot of people taking photos of the Seibu train cars. This is why:



I'm assuming it must be a new makeover for the cars or something. Remember, if 20 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it must be special.

I tell you this because I went into the stadium, put down my stuff in the spot my friends had saved for me, and then noticed another huge group of people clustered by the outfield fence taking photos of something. This is why:



Apparently Yuki Saitoh is working on a new pitch. I dunno. Clearly if 50 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it REALLY must be special. Me, I spent 4 years watching Saitoh pitch for Waseda, so I'm kind of already over the hype, you could say.

Seibu still sucks for actually getting decent food within the stadium, at least if all you have is an outfield ticket, so like most people, I went back OUTSIDE of the stadium to find lunch. They had a lot of fancy bento boxes for various players, but what caught my eye was their "special limited edition Sapporo vs. Tokorozawa" bento:





Interesting mix of stuff, though I have to admit I don't really get how it was either Hokkaido-themed OR Saitama-themed except for the potato croquette (that's a typical Hokkaido thing). I'm a sucker for these kinds of bento boxes, though; I love how you get a filling healthy meal with such a wide variety of stuff for such a reasonable price.

I guess we spent the next hour before the game either chatting, doing opening cheers, or watching the Lions fans do their new chance theme which reminds me of a weird cross of MVP-era Lotte plus the Fighters Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cheer, as it had a lot of "LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAA" stuff going on, as well as a split part where men sing first and then women.

Shota Ohno was playing in this game, and hadn't at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday, so I spent a while studying his cheer, too. Fortunately, one of my friends who's a college student and fluent in English was sitting next to me, so I made him help me figure them all out.



Brian Wolfe started for the Fighters, and Kazuhisa Ishii for the Lions.

The first half of this game was pretty awesome from a Fighters fan perspective. We got on the board in the 3rd inning when Bobby Scales hit a home run, and then added two more runs to it in the 4th inning on a Sugiya hit, stolen base, an RBI double by Koyano, and an RBI single by Inaba-sama. 3-0.

We loaded the bases in the top of the 5th, even, when Ishii hit both Yoh and Itoi with pitches. Unfortunately, we didn't DO anything with that.

Even so, things seemed good going into the bottom of the 5th. But Yutaro Ohsaki led off with a close single to second. Shogo Akiyama followed that up with a single, and Ginjiro bunted them both up to 2nd and 3rd. Yasuyuki Kataoka, batting 9th (??) singled in Ohsaki, making it 3-1. Well, okay. But then Takumi Kuriyama followed that with another hit, bringing in Akiyama, 3-2. And Takuya Hara followed that with YET ANOTHER HIT, bringing in Kataoka, 3-3.

Naturally the only other thing that could possibly happen then was a 3-run homer from Hiroyuki Nakajima, right? Right. 6-3. By this point I'd had enough and got up to go to the bathroom, expecting that Wolfe would be taken out and I'd have some time, but apparently that isn't what happened, and instead, while I was in the bathroom I could hear a really big roar of Lions fans cheering... as Okawari-kun Nakamura had hit his 41st home run of the year. 7-3.

I've joked in the past that Seibu should hang me from the ceiling as an omamori for their players hitting homeruns, because BOY do they hit a lot of homers when I'm there.

(Side note: I don't know if it's this new ball or what, but it's kind of insane that Okawari has 41 homeruns, the next highest in the PL is Softbank's Matsuda with 23, then Seibu's Nakajima with 16. Even in the CL, the leader is Wladimir Balentien with 27 right now. There are some TEAMS -- I'm looking at Lotte with their 39 and Hiroshima with their 43 -- that barely as a WHOLE TEAM have as many homers as Nakamura does.)

Got back to my seat to see the inning end, anyway. And I got to see Kazuhito Tadano pitch the 6th, and I'm a relatively big fan of his all things considered, so it was nice to see him get into a game, at least.

The Fighters managed to take back 2 runs in the 7th from a Sugiya double, an Itoi single, a Koyano RBI single and an Inaba fielder's choice, making it 7-5, but that's all they'd get as the Lions won the game.

To nobody's surprise, the game hero was Nakajima:



But I didn't stick around for the post-game at all because I was running off to Jingu. I basically quickly gathered up my stuff, packed up my bag, had Taicho make fun of me for having an Iihara jersey, and then ran to the Seibu train station. Quite frankly, my legs were killing me after 3 hours of sitting/standing on the slanted Seibu outfield turf -- I'd forgotten how painful that gets when you're not used to it.

The only other comment I have about the Seibu game offhand was that I'm not sure how to explain the exact difference, but without Hichori and Hichori fans in the outfield, there's a slightly different feel to things at Seibu. He was always a really big showman of sorts and always waved to fans and threw them baseballs and did antics and climbed on the fences, and his fans also kind of had goofy banners and lots of crazy green stuff, and I guess with Hichori gone and Kensuke injured, it felt like a lot of the goofiness was gone, and mostly replaced by a sort of glumness. And lots of Saitoh jerseys.

But anyway.

Onward to Jingu -- I managed to get a Seibu train that went straight from there to Shibuya, and then took the subway to Gaienmae, and I got into Jingu at about 6:30pm, or in the bottom of the 2nd inning.

Now, the nice thing about being late is that I deliberately decided not to keep a scorecard, which means that as a result, if you really want to read a more detailed log of what happened in the game, you ought to go read the official Tsubamegun writeup on their blog.

I mean, what I recall is:

- It was 1-0 when I arrived
- I saw Aoki hit his homer into the foul pole shortly after that to make it 1-1
- I had gotten back from my first jaunt around the concourse (more on that in a second) in time to see the WTF moment of the game when Fukuyama balked in a run to make it 2-1
- I saw Aikawa's home run too, which made it 3-1.



Now anyway, for what really happened to me during this game:

Kozo and I went hunting for food at some point in the 3rd or 4th inning. I bought a Shingo Kawabata t-shirt first, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, and then we surveyed a bunch of the places in the left field stands before Kozo decided to just get bulgogidon at the yakiniku-place that I forget the name of.

HOWEVER, when we got to the end of the stands, I saw Hossiezo, one of the Baystars mascots, posing at the food counter and with some fans! I went to take a photo and one of the "diana" girls was like "Would you like your picture with him?" and I said sure. I also told her how my name is ALSO Deanna, pronounced the same as their "diana", but spelled different.

I was so super-psyched about this, except GET THIS, the "diana" girl didn't press the button on my camera hard enough for the flash to fire, and the picture DIDN'T TAKE!

SIGH.

I was really bummed out about that. It's silly because usually I wouldn't have even had the chance to get a photo with a mascot anyway, this was just dumb luck, and I did get a photo with a Baystars star mascot a few years back. But it still kind of sucks to have that chance and to pose and all and then not get a picture. I realize that part of it is that I have a really cheap camera, but...

Anyway, we got food and went back to the stands. Shortly after that, I decided I wanted some soft serve ice cream, and went back hunting for that. The stupid thing there is that they sell it literally right underneath where we were sitting, but I didn't notice, and walked all the way to the other end of the outfield and back before figuring it out.

So, public service announcement: IF YOU WANT SOFT ICE CREAM AND ARE SITTING IN THE RIGHT FIELD BLEACHERS AT JINGU, IT IS IN THE SAME STAND ALCOVE AS THE PLACE WITH THE SAUSAGES. Which makes it right under the ouendan, basically.

Though I have to admit that the Belgian waffle place that just opened this year looks pretty damn good too. I'll try to report on that at a future time.

Anyway, I think that I had a decent time at this game, relaxing for once and not keeping score, mostly hanging out with Kozo and our friend Kentaro, who wants me to come to a Carp game with him sometime (and I really should, since I brought my Carp Saitoh jersey with me to Japan). Though I dunno, I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to Jingu in the first place -- the Fighters game took a lot out of me. So I was mostly at Jingu to hang out, really, and so the Swallows win was nice, but since I was zonked and since it was against the Baystars, I guess it didn't really feel like that big a deal.

Oh, one final photo from the day, along the same sort of "Spot what's wrong with this" variety:



DEAR THE SEIBU LIONS:

I AM FAIRLY SURE YOUR LITTLE SCHEDULE BOOK DOES NOT INFACT SAY WHAT YOU THINK IT SAYS. ARE YOU PLANNING TO INCINERATE ALL OF YOUR PLAYERS?

LOVE, THE MARINERD

Game Report: Swallows vs. Baystars - "But Takasaki's Their Ace!"

After spending all afternoon Saturday at Jingu dying of heatstroke, and being unable to endure the pro game that evening, I came up with the brilliant idea to only watch 1.5 games of Big 6 ball on Sunday and go home for 2-3 hours to change and shower and cool off and become human again. Then I came back to Jingu for the pro game in the evening.

I was at this game with Kozo and David from Tsubamegun, and also Ben, a a friend of ours who used to live in Tokyo and come to games sometimes, but now lives in Osaka. I had bought Ben's ticket that morning, so I met up with him at the subway station, and when we got to Jingu, guess what we saw -- fans taking photos with Swallows mascots! So I made Ben line up with me and take my photo with Entaro:



Then spent the hour before the game basically greeting people and getting food and learning the new songs and so on. (No, I'm sorry, but Hatakeyama's cheer is right out. His old one was hard enough, why did they have to change it?)

I will say that it was a spectacular sunset over Jingu, as usual:



And actually, apparently, due to it being some kind of Yakult Family Night thing where they were giving out tickets or selling cheap tickets to Yakult company employees, a lot of the stadium was PACKED. The outfield was REALLY PACKED and even the infield on the 1st-base side was pretty full. Here's a view during the 7th-inning stretch:



Now uh... the bad thing is that the first time anyone got out their umbrellas WAS infact the 7th-inning stretch.

(If you don't know, when the Swallows score a run, the Swallows fans get out umbrellas and sing "Tokyo Ondo" and dance around with umbrellas. If you don't know Tokyo Ondo, you might know it as "the 'Kutabare Yomiuri' song". The other time that Swallows fans get out the umbrellas is always for the middle of the "Lucky 7"th inning.)

The Baystars' starter was Kentaro Takasaki, who I was saying is their "ace". This is because he had 4 wins to his name (5 now!), which is more than anyone else on their pitching staff. He also has thrown more innings than anyone else on the team, and, honestly, were he on any other team in the league, he'd probably have a winning record rather than his current 5-12, 3.08 mark. 115 strikeouts and 34 walks in 155 innings is really not bad at all. Also, he's a pretty decent soccer player, which I learned this winter. But that's beside the point.

Takasaki, for better or worse, basically was just mowing down the Swallows lineup left and right. He pitched 4 PERFECT INNINGS before finally giving up a base hit to Shinichi Takeuchi. And it didn't stop there -- in eight innings, Takasaki allowed two baserunners. TWO. That Takeuchi hit, and a Kawabata hit that was barely a hit, if it hadn't gone off Tsutsugo's arm. Seriously.

In the meantime, the Swallows starter was Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi. Don't get me wrong, I loved Masubuchi as a reliever, and always looked forward to seeing him come into the game, and not just because he uses that Taio Cruz "Break Your Heart" song as his entrance music. (True story: I was in a store in Seattle, and that song came on the radio/whatever, and I just stopped in my tracks and said "Masubuchi??" Several people looked at me really weird. But I digress.) I don't know, though, I've never really thought he's all that great as a starter. Or maybe he just has bad starts whenever I see them.

In this case, he gave up a home run to Shuichi Murata in the 4th inning -- and we'd just been saying how Murata's power numbers are down this year. Then he had a disaster of a 5th inning, where even pitcher Takasaki led off with a single, and then Aranami tried to bunt him up but replaced him on base instead with a 1-6 FC. Ishikawa also singled, and then Shimozono walked, which loaded the bases for Murata... who didn't hit another homer, but instead was HIT BY A PITCH to give the Baystars another run. To add insult to oshidashi, then Tsutsugo hit a sac fly to center, and Tatsuhiko Kinjoh (!!) singled in another run. It was 4-0 by the time everything cleared.

Everything was looking great for Takasaki even into the 9th inning -- Aikawa led off with a single, but a pinch-hitting Whitesell hit a pop out to second, and then Aoki hit into a fielder's choice -- almost a double play but not quite. With two outs and Hiroyasu Tanaka at bat, Aoki ran to second base on defensive indifference. Unfortunately, that might have made the big difference in the game -- Hiroyasu then hit a solid single to center which scored Aoki to make it 4-1. Having lost the shutout, the Baystars pulled Takasaki and put in Shun Yamaguchi, their closer. Yamaguchi then walked Kawabata, putting runners at 1st and 2nd for Hatakeyama... who hit a REALLY HIGH POP FLY right over the mound and would you believe it, whoever fielded it (Tsutsugoh?) DROPPED THE CATCH. Oh man. Hiroyasu scored. 4-2.

But that was it -- Takeuchi then hit a pop fly to right that even Kinjoh couldn't possibly not catch, and that was the game.



Most of the people in the group we were cheering with fell asleep up on the tarps for half the game. They at least woke up for the 9th inning.

Takasaki was, understandably, the game hero. And he mentioned how it was the first time since June that the Baystars had won 2 consecutive games, and how he was proud of the whole team's effort in the game. I think I'm finally over my anger at the Baystars administration to the point that I now just feel bad for them.

Photopost: Seibu vs. Baystars 1.5-gun

So, last Sunday, March 20, I decided I was going to go to a ni-gun game of some sort. The easy option would have been the Marines-Swallows at Lotte Urawa, which is an hour from me by bicycle, or 25 minutes from me by train and walking. The "hard" option would be Yokosuka Stadium for the Baystars-Lions, which is more like 1.5-2 hours from me by train and walking. However, I'd heard that the Baystars were getting practice time for their ichi-gun players in the ni-gun games, so I could see Hichori! Plus I'd never seen a game at Yokosuka before, plus I was kinda hoping to meet Takayuki Makka and Taketora Anzai again and give them some Seattle omiyage because of how nice they were to me back in January. (Unfortunately, I didn't, so it's unlikely I will at all, but it's the thought that counts, maybe?)

Anyway, there's really kind of 2 parts to this photopost. The first is more of interest to people who are all about the earthquake and the charity things people are doing to help, so I'll cover that.

Before the game, there was a table set up outside the stadium. The Searex mascot Reck, who has apparently kept his job despite the Searex ceasing to exist as a moniker, was out at the table, along with a few staff who had the donation boxes. I bought my ticket to the game for 1000 yen and then went up and put 1000 yen into their donation box. I received a Reck postcard that was basically a cute "Come cheer for the ni-gun team in 2011!" as well as a "Play for Nippon" business card which may or may not be a typo. But the back of the card says "This is a receipt that you donated money to help the Tohoku earthquake victims," and also says "Bring this card to Yokohama Stadium and get a 300 yen discount off your game ticket."

The Yokohama Baystars are clearly DOING IT RIGHT.


Here's the donation table out front.


Me with Reck!


A whiteboard with the starting lineups, as well as information about which ni-gun games are being moved from night games to day games to conserve power. (They didn't actually have the lineups on the scoreboard, maybe also to conserve power?)

So that was before the game.

During the game, I'm not making this up, one of the women I was sitting with tagged another one of her friends who's a huge Takayuki Makka fan (even moreso than I am now), and was like "I just read Daisuke Miura's blog and he is going to be at the Sotetsu Yokohama Station from 2:30pm collecting donations along with a bunch of other players and look there's Makka and Ejiri and...!!!!!" So two of the other women looked up the train info and said "We can get there in about 29 minutes! Let's run!"

It was basically a bunch of guys who weren't going to be playing in the ni-gun game, and since there's no ichi-gun games or anything yet, they basically worked out in the morning and then went to collect donations in the afternoon.

(I think every day since then Miura's posted a "Here's where I'll be today collecting donations and here's the other Baystars players I've managed to drag with me. Come say hi and give money to charity!")

After the game, the ENTIRE BAYSTARS TEAM came out with donation boxes and were swarmed by the 1500 or so fans who were there! The players also had those "Play for Japan" business cards so the more popular players got TOTALLY swamped by people wanting to throw money into their box in order to get a card from that particular player, not that there is anything different about any of the cards. Players weren't signing things or taking photos or anything, just basically saying "Please help out with a donation," or saying thank you and whatnot to people who did put in donations; I saw some people shake hands, but that was about it.

Hichori was clearly not only the most popular but he was also the most engaging with people; I think the two biggest swarms of people basically were going for Hichori and for Shuichi Murata, who yes, had played in the game that afternoon. Some of the lesser-known players looked kinda sad that nobody was coming up to them. Keijiro Matsumoto looked distinctly almost like "WTF am I doing here," although Takeshi Hosoyamada was standing next to him with his usual easygoing smile like "Thank you for your help!" to everyone. (I later commented on this to a Waseda friend of mine, who said "Keijiro can be shy. I don't think he realizes that he comes off as so standoffish. I'll go complain to his brother.")

And Hichori even made a speech to address the crowd and thank everyone, reiterating how important it is for everyone to band together in a tough time and help each other out.


Team members being swamped by fans.


Shuichi Murata in the middle (I believe the other two are Shinji Niinuma and Yoshiyuki Kuwahara)


Hichori!


Hichori makes a speech to the crowd and the press.

As for the game itself... well... these were the starting lineups:

Seibu                 Yokohama
-----                 --------
Asamura, 1B           Watanabe Naoto, 2B
Kumashiro, CF         Ishikawa, SS
Akiyama, RF           Kinjoh, LF
Gotoh, DH             Murata, 3B
Abe, 3B               Yoshimura, LF
Kurose, 2B            Ikki, DH
Sakata, LF            Hichori, CF
Takeno, C             Tsutsugoh, 1B
Hayashizaki, SS       Takeyama, C
                
Nakazaki, P           Ohka, P

Notice that the Baystars lineup is pretty much completely ichi-gun players, but the Seibu one is clearly ni-gun? Heck, 3 of those Lions players (Akiyama, Hayashizaki, Kumashiro) were just drafted last fall.

To be fair, by the 5th inning the Baystars team out there was mostly ni-gun, but still.

The amusing thing, really, is that the Baystars still lost.

The first batter of the game, Hideto Asamura, singled off of Tomokazu Ohka, was bunted up, advanced on a groundout, and then scored on a double by Taketoshi Gotoh, to make it 1-0. Then in the 5th inning Tatsuya Takeno led off with a double, was bunted up by Ryo Hayashizaki, and scored on a single by Asamura, to make it 2-0. (Though Asamura was subsequently and amusingly picked off first.)

Lefty Yuta Nakazaki started for the Lions and pitched 5 decent innings, and then Ryohei Fujiwara and Tomoki Hoshino and Yosuke Okamoto held the Baystars scoreless for the next 3 innings, so it was still 2-0 going into the bottom of the 9th. Tetsuya Iwasaki took the mound for Seibu. He has a BIZARRE motion, I'm not sure I ever remember seeing him pitch in person before. But basically he has a hitch in his motion where he kinda crouches and kicks out backwards before stretching forwards. Kinda like this:



Anyway, so Yuta Naitoh grounded out, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh struck out. People packed up their stuff to go home, but Shingo Takeyama singled to right. Kazuya Fujita then grounded to first... except... the ball went right through Asamura into right field for an error! Takeyama made it to third and Fujita ended up on 2nd. And then Junya Ohhara, who the people around me were cheering "J! J! J!" for -- there were two Ohhara's drafted this fall, the other being pitcher Shinji, so they've apparently been nicknamed "S" and "J" -- anyway, "J" hit a clean double to left, scoring Takeyama and Fujita to make it 2-2. Iwasaki intentionally walked Keijiro Matsumoto after that, and struck out Shotaro Ide to end the inning.

We thought there'd be no extra innings thanks to the recent rulings, but it seems that they went ahead with it anyway (after all, Yokosuka stadium uses like ZERO power). So, there was extra innings. Yataro Sakamoto took the mound for the Lions. Shoma Satoh took the mound for the Baystars. (After 7 innings of Ohka, Takehiro Fukuda and Shun Yamaguchi each threw an inning.) And the 10th inning was scoreless.

Suguru Matsuyama, another former Fighter, and alum of Yokohama Shokodai HS, and a pretty nice kid as well, took the mound for the top of the 11th, and immediately gave up 4 hits in a row to Akiyama, Gotoh, Takuya Hara, and Kurose, and that was the game pretty much and the Lions won the game 4-2.

Here's some photos. They kinda suck, probably because I was way in the back and because my lens has a lot of crap in it. I ended up replacing it tonight with another cheap zoom lens. Who knows if it'll help.


Yuki Yoshimura


Tatsuya Takeno


Lions starter Yuta Nakazaki




Hichori!


Baystars starter Tomokazu Ohka


Shogo Akiyama, from Hachinohe University


Masahiro Abe can hit


Shuichi Murata can hit


Ryo Hayashizaki can bunt


Keijiro Matsumoto can pout


Tomoki Hoshino can be left-handed


Shingo Takeyama can accidentally foul a ball into his own head


"J" Ohhara can throw a bat


Takehiro Fukuda can throw a ball


Shun Yamaguchi


Shoma Satoh


Yataro Sakamoto


Final score.

Also...


Yokosuka Stadium


My "tourist shot" so I can collect this stadium too


This one is kinda hard to explain but basically, whenever pitching coach Takeo Kawamura came out to the mound, this one dude a few rows ahead of us would yell "KAWAMURA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" really loud. Kawamura is a former Baystars player and was pretty popular. And so these two guys were waving these huge fans out in the stands and yelling "KAWAMURA!!!!!!!! NICE COACHING!!!!!" every time there was a pitching change. It was amusing, I guess. The guy also started yelling a lot of the players' names too. "TAKEYAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


Anyway.

This game was crazy for me because I showed up by myself, the stadium was pretty full, so I ended up taking a seat on the Seibu side. But due to the way the stadium is with the fences, I kept climbing to the back of the stands to go take photos of stuff going on on the field. After an inning or so I walked over to the Baystars side anyway, so I could take photos of right-handed batters (and Nakazaki the lefty pitcher) from the proper side.

I was hanging out in back on the Baystars side when a lady comes up to me like "Hey! Do you remember me?" I didn't. But I'm figuring... well... she had to be someone from that infamous day at Baystars Kyujo, so despite that no, I did not recognize her face, I said "Yeah! I met you at Baystars Kyujo in January?" and she said "Yeah! The day that we all met Kagami! You were so happy!"

So she invited me to come sit with her. Her group was in a FANTASTIC set of seats with a great view of the field for taking photos. Plus they kept calling out to random friends of theirs who walked by like "This is that girl we told you about, the big Kagami fan! She came BACK to Japan! Isn't that amazing?"

I guess sometimes the stupid things I do end up having some positive repercussions after all.