Ugh, I have a whole lot of things I want to write but not much mental energy. A side-by-side evaluation of Japanese stadiums has been in the forefront of my mind a bit, along with finishing off the MLB All-Cute Team, though now I'm suddenly inspired to try to do an NPB All-Cute Team as well. I expect to head to a bunch of the Mariners home games next week, so there'll be game reports then, too.
So, um. I put a random sampling of my non-baseball-related Japan pictures online if anyone wants to see them, because it was easier to go through the 500 non-baseball pictures first before fully diving into the 2500 baseball-related ones. It's some stuff from Nara, Asakusa, Hiroshima, etc, mostly castles and deer and the ferris wheels at Aichi and Yokohama. As far as baseball pictures go, what do y'all want to see? Players? Stadiums? Fans? Mascots? Cheer girls? Beer girls?
Also, I finally updated the sidebar and the book club page -- I was expecting the next book club to be October 7th. What time it's at depends on when people can meet. I was just asked to do another project that day that'll run until 6-7pm, so if people could meet that evening, it'd be great, or we can just put it off until after the postseason, maybe. I dunno. The book's going to be Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders, which is a really interesting and entertaining book. If you're interested in book club, I'm hoping to continue it past the baseball season, so any input would be great.
(Unfortunately, the baseball book I'm currently reading wouldn't exactly make the best book club candidate, plus it takes me like 5-10 minutes to read a page)
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Talk Like A Pirate Day
Jim Tracy: Ahoy, mateys, ye might be wonderin' why I've called me fine crew together today!
Jack Wilson: Dude, we just swept the Mets.
Zach Duke: I rule, don't I?
Chris Duffy: I rule too! [high-fives]
Xavier Nady: WHY GOD, OH GOD, WHYYYYY? [breaks down in tears]
Jim Tracy: Avast, ye're all missin' th' point, men. Hear ye, we be about t'begin a three-battle melee with them scurvy dogs of th'western coast.
Ryan Doumit: No problem, chief, we can take them.
Ian Snell: Yeah, it's no big deal. I'll shut 'em down for the first couple of innings tonight and then Torres over there'll slam the door on them. Easy cheesy.
Jim Tracy: Yarrrr, but they be wily curs, full of deceit an' ready t'launch a grapeshot attack 'tany moment. Beware ye their late-inning blasts! 'Twere just Sunday they launched four back-t'back volleys over th'fence. Ye kinnae sink 'em that easy, lads!
Jason Bay: He's got a point. I've got no problem hitting four home runs myself, but I think some of the rest of you are going to have to step up for this thing to work.
Freddy Sanchez: Jay, you know we're not capable of hitting like you are. How about we just try to string together four back-to-back singles a couple of times? A wise man once pointed out that four singles in an inning equals a run.
Chris Duffy: Yo, I am the KING of singles.
Freddy Sanchez: Word.
Jason Bay: Uh, that works. You guys go man the bases and hoist the bats or whatever and I'll go drive in some runs.
Chris Duffy: I can't believe you just said "hoist the bats".
Jack Wilson: Dude, we just swept the Mets.
Zach Duke: I rule, don't I?
Chris Duffy: I rule too! [high-fives]
Xavier Nady: WHY GOD, OH GOD, WHYYYYY? [breaks down in tears]
Jim Tracy: Avast, ye're all missin' th' point, men. Hear ye, we be about t'begin a three-battle melee with them scurvy dogs of th'western coast.
Ryan Doumit: No problem, chief, we can take them.
Ian Snell: Yeah, it's no big deal. I'll shut 'em down for the first couple of innings tonight and then Torres over there'll slam the door on them. Easy cheesy.
Jim Tracy: Yarrrr, but they be wily curs, full of deceit an' ready t'launch a grapeshot attack 'tany moment. Beware ye their late-inning blasts! 'Twere just Sunday they launched four back-t'back volleys over th'fence. Ye kinnae sink 'em that easy, lads!
Jason Bay: He's got a point. I've got no problem hitting four home runs myself, but I think some of the rest of you are going to have to step up for this thing to work.
Freddy Sanchez: Jay, you know we're not capable of hitting like you are. How about we just try to string together four back-to-back singles a couple of times? A wise man once pointed out that four singles in an inning equals a run.
Chris Duffy: Yo, I am the KING of singles.
Freddy Sanchez: Word.
Jason Bay: Uh, that works. You guys go man the bases and hoist the bats or whatever and I'll go drive in some runs.
Chris Duffy: I can't believe you just said "hoist the bats".
Monday, September 18, 2006
I'm still alive
Sort of. I survived the plane flight back, and no, we weren't eaten by a typhoon.
You know, one of my absolute best Japanese baseball memories wasn't actually from this last trip, but was from my trip in April of 2004. I trekked out to Chiba Marine Stadium by myself to see the Fighters play the Marines, sit in the Fighters cheering section, and yell and scream and sing and cheer. I got there early, got a lyrics sheet, and took a seat in the middle of the cheering section, in the middle of a bunch of people who looked at me funny at first.
By the end of the game I was just one of the gang, high-fiving everyone when the team scored runs, chatting about how awesome they were, about how cold the weather was, and sticking around to do the victory songs and cheers, etc, and riding the high as the Fighters won the game. I got on the bus back to the station, and this one guy, maybe ten years older than me, in a Fighters jersey saw me and my Fighters jersey, and looked confused at first, and then said,
"Gaijin da yo..." ("You're a foreigner...?")
"Hai, demo yakyuu ga daisuki da ne!" ("Well, yeah, but I LOVE baseball!")
Well, we get off that bus, and I get on a train at the station, and sure enough, that same guy is on the same car as me.
So he comes over and sits next to me, and despite him not speaking a word of English, and my Japanese being decent but not spectacular, and at the time my baseball vocabulary wasn't all that great either, we sat and talked about baseball and the Fighters for about half an hour. His first year as a Fighters fan was 1981, when they made it to the Japan Series but lost to the Giants in 6 games. I told him about being a Phillies fan when I was a kid, and talked about the Mariners and Ichiro a little bit of course as well. It was really pretty cool.
Anyway, when he reached his stop he said something to me like "Please come back to Japan and cheer for the Fighters again. You'll make them win for sure!"
Well, they've won 20 of their last 24 games and are in first place by a tiny, tiny sliver (79-52 .603, to 77-51-2 .602 and 75-50-5 .600).
I know Seibu gets an easy schedule down the stretch, facing Lotte and Rakuten, while the Fighters and Hawks have to play against each other at the end of the month, but still. I love this team.
And to the guy from the train that day -- I hope they get to the Series, and I hope you get to go with them.
You know, one of my absolute best Japanese baseball memories wasn't actually from this last trip, but was from my trip in April of 2004. I trekked out to Chiba Marine Stadium by myself to see the Fighters play the Marines, sit in the Fighters cheering section, and yell and scream and sing and cheer. I got there early, got a lyrics sheet, and took a seat in the middle of the cheering section, in the middle of a bunch of people who looked at me funny at first.
By the end of the game I was just one of the gang, high-fiving everyone when the team scored runs, chatting about how awesome they were, about how cold the weather was, and sticking around to do the victory songs and cheers, etc, and riding the high as the Fighters won the game. I got on the bus back to the station, and this one guy, maybe ten years older than me, in a Fighters jersey saw me and my Fighters jersey, and looked confused at first, and then said,
"Gaijin da yo..." ("You're a foreigner...?")
"Hai, demo yakyuu ga daisuki da ne!" ("Well, yeah, but I LOVE baseball!")
Well, we get off that bus, and I get on a train at the station, and sure enough, that same guy is on the same car as me.
So he comes over and sits next to me, and despite him not speaking a word of English, and my Japanese being decent but not spectacular, and at the time my baseball vocabulary wasn't all that great either, we sat and talked about baseball and the Fighters for about half an hour. His first year as a Fighters fan was 1981, when they made it to the Japan Series but lost to the Giants in 6 games. I told him about being a Phillies fan when I was a kid, and talked about the Mariners and Ichiro a little bit of course as well. It was really pretty cool.
Anyway, when he reached his stop he said something to me like "Please come back to Japan and cheer for the Fighters again. You'll make them win for sure!"
Well, they've won 20 of their last 24 games and are in first place by a tiny, tiny sliver (79-52 .603, to 77-51-2 .602 and 75-50-5 .600).
I know Seibu gets an easy schedule down the stretch, facing Lotte and Rakuten, while the Fighters and Hawks have to play against each other at the end of the month, but still. I love this team.
And to the guy from the train that day -- I hope they get to the Series, and I hope you get to go with them.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Game Report: Bay Stars vs. Giants - Yoshimi Battles the Orange Giabbots
Hey there. I'm leaving Japan in about 20 hours to return to Seattle, sadly. I have no idea how long it'll take me to get reacquainted with the Mariners once I return; I looked briefly to see that we're completely eliminated from all races at this point (not a surprise), that Ichiro got his 200th hit again (not a surprise), and that Hunter Brown isn't on the expanded roster (goddamnit). Everything else, well, I'll have a lot of catching up to do. Feel free to send some links my way that I need to see.
I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures, even though most of these entries have been typed up haphazardly while I've been on internet cafe 100-yen-per-15-minutes time limits.
Anyway, before I talk about the game I went to yesterday afternoon, let me briefly mention that I went to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame today, which apparently has lifted the ban on pictures that they had when I was there three years ago, so I took a whole bunch. There's a WBC exhibit with trophies and uniforms and pictures and signed baseballs now, and they've got the 2005 Japan Series highlights playing on video in a room. My favorite thing was this gigantic baseball -- I mean, like 8 feet tall -- with stuff written on it from tons of NPB players in the 2005 season, most of which is pretty funny to read. The English stuff is all like "I want to help my team", or "Come watch me hit home runs!" from Alex Cabrera, and so on. Japanese players wrote things like "Watch my guts pose after our victory" from Kenshin Kawakami, or "We exist only for the fans!" from a signature I couldn't read, and of course a certain Fighters outfielder wrote simply "SHIN-JOY". The second most interesting thing to me was a base sent to Yutaka Fukumoto from Rickey Henderson, back when Fukumoto broke Lou Brock's career stolen base record (which of course Henderson later passed). I think my least favorite thing, though, is that they seemed to have a lot more non-baseball-players in their hall of fame than we do -- business people, architects, college players, etc. It's a little weird.
The upshot is, I know a lot more about Japanese baseball history now than I did a few years ago, so I appreciated the museum a lot more. I think last time I was just going around saying things like "My god, did ANY of these teams keep their names the same for more than ten years?"
Anyway, I went to a game yesterday, where the Yomiuri Giants pounded the Yokohama Bay Stars 5-2, but I'm not sure anyone actually noticed who wasn't at the game themselves, because the big news yesterday was that Chunichi's Masahiro Yamamoto pitched a no-hitter against the Tigers at the Nagoya Dome. Yamamoto's been around absolutely forever; he just turned 41 last month, has been with the Dragons for something like 23 years, and this was his first ever no-hitter. You could say he's sort of like Jamie Moyer in that he's old and left-handed and pretty good at changing speeds and control, but that'd probably be about where the similarities end. This game was one batter away from being a perfect game, too, when Norihiro Akahoshi reached base on an error by third baseman Masahiko Morino. Yamamoto also broke the record for being the oldest pitcher to pitch a no-hitter in the NPB; the former record was held by Yoshinori Sato of the Orix BlueWave on August 26, 1995.
Okay, now I should talk about the game I went to.
First off, let me tell you something funny about Yokohama Stadium. Unlike every other park I've been to in Japan, Yokohama does NOT have those goddamn fences up all around the infield and outfield. Ironically, however, I still ended up with a seat behind a fence. I was a little bit to the first base side of home plate, and as it turns out, their netting behind home plate is not only an upright one, but it also has diagonal nets extending off of it. So, basically, if you want to take pictures, don't sit anywhere in the S seats or in the B seats behind them. You want seats in either FA or in A. They're pricy at 4500 or 4000 yen per seat, but well worth it on a bright day. B seats actually have a great view for the 3500 yen, but they're just lousy for taking pictures is all. (chart here)
Secondly, now that I think about it, I'm not sure what to tell you offhand about the game. There weren't all that many big exciting hits or big exciting plays or even big exciting innings, really. The Giants just sort of kept chipping away at the lousy Bay Stars pitchers and the holes in their defense, and it mostly worked. The scorers at Yokohama are really generous, and several things that could have been called errors were actually called hits, so it looks like a high-hitting game on paper -- 5 runs on 13 hits for the Giants and 2 runs on 10 hits for the Bay Stars -- but eh.
The only Giants player I still really like, Yoshinobu Takahashi, had a pretty lousy day, striking out twice, only getting on base once in 5 at-bats, and then ended up getting himself tagged out in a really stupid rundown between third and home when he did get on base. He also made one of those "non-error" plays of the game when he caught a ball at the back wall and it bounced out of his glove, hit the wall, and the runner was credited with a double by the time he recovered it.
Takuro Ishii uses the Orange Range song "Isshin Denshin" for his at-bat theme (which was pretty funny when I realized it), Hitoshi Taneda uses the song that the Mariners always play when taking the field at Safeco that I don't know the name of, and Masaaki Koike uses "Hey Mickey", though I'm not sure what version. The Giants' Takayuki Shimizu has the same cheer song he did two years ago, and I still can't place what song it's to the tune of. Takahiro Suzuki's cheer sounds like "Train Train" by the Blue Hearts.
After the game I asked a guy to take my picture at the stadium like I have been doing, and one of his buddies was wearing a Softbank Hawks shirt -- Wada #21 -- and I was wearing a Mariners t-shirt, so we got into a conversation for a bit about Kenji Johjima. He asked me who I liked on the Hawks and of course I replied Kazumi Saitoh, and he was like "Well, Saitoh is good, but I cheer for Wada!" Of course, I like Wada too, but in general I want the Hawks to lose, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to say that, so I didn't.
Speaking of which, the Fighters actually have more wins than any other team in the PL, but due to rainouts and ties, they're still a few percentage points behind Seibu and a few up on Softbank currently (.606 to .600 to .597 as I write this). Softbank, oddly enough, had a rainout today -- even though they have a domed stadium. I don't really have time to investigate more details, except I saw this on the Yahoo front page, which basically says "The Softbank-Rakuten game today was cancelled due to typhoon". Eeeeeeek.
See you all on the other side of the globe!
I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures, even though most of these entries have been typed up haphazardly while I've been on internet cafe 100-yen-per-15-minutes time limits.
Anyway, before I talk about the game I went to yesterday afternoon, let me briefly mention that I went to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame today, which apparently has lifted the ban on pictures that they had when I was there three years ago, so I took a whole bunch. There's a WBC exhibit with trophies and uniforms and pictures and signed baseballs now, and they've got the 2005 Japan Series highlights playing on video in a room. My favorite thing was this gigantic baseball -- I mean, like 8 feet tall -- with stuff written on it from tons of NPB players in the 2005 season, most of which is pretty funny to read. The English stuff is all like "I want to help my team", or "Come watch me hit home runs!" from Alex Cabrera, and so on. Japanese players wrote things like "Watch my guts pose after our victory" from Kenshin Kawakami, or "We exist only for the fans!" from a signature I couldn't read, and of course a certain Fighters outfielder wrote simply "SHIN-JOY". The second most interesting thing to me was a base sent to Yutaka Fukumoto from Rickey Henderson, back when Fukumoto broke Lou Brock's career stolen base record (which of course Henderson later passed). I think my least favorite thing, though, is that they seemed to have a lot more non-baseball-players in their hall of fame than we do -- business people, architects, college players, etc. It's a little weird.
The upshot is, I know a lot more about Japanese baseball history now than I did a few years ago, so I appreciated the museum a lot more. I think last time I was just going around saying things like "My god, did ANY of these teams keep their names the same for more than ten years?"
Anyway, I went to a game yesterday, where the Yomiuri Giants pounded the Yokohama Bay Stars 5-2, but I'm not sure anyone actually noticed who wasn't at the game themselves, because the big news yesterday was that Chunichi's Masahiro Yamamoto pitched a no-hitter against the Tigers at the Nagoya Dome. Yamamoto's been around absolutely forever; he just turned 41 last month, has been with the Dragons for something like 23 years, and this was his first ever no-hitter. You could say he's sort of like Jamie Moyer in that he's old and left-handed and pretty good at changing speeds and control, but that'd probably be about where the similarities end. This game was one batter away from being a perfect game, too, when Norihiro Akahoshi reached base on an error by third baseman Masahiko Morino. Yamamoto also broke the record for being the oldest pitcher to pitch a no-hitter in the NPB; the former record was held by Yoshinori Sato of the Orix BlueWave on August 26, 1995.
Okay, now I should talk about the game I went to.
First off, let me tell you something funny about Yokohama Stadium. Unlike every other park I've been to in Japan, Yokohama does NOT have those goddamn fences up all around the infield and outfield. Ironically, however, I still ended up with a seat behind a fence. I was a little bit to the first base side of home plate, and as it turns out, their netting behind home plate is not only an upright one, but it also has diagonal nets extending off of it. So, basically, if you want to take pictures, don't sit anywhere in the S seats or in the B seats behind them. You want seats in either FA or in A. They're pricy at 4500 or 4000 yen per seat, but well worth it on a bright day. B seats actually have a great view for the 3500 yen, but they're just lousy for taking pictures is all. (chart here)
Secondly, now that I think about it, I'm not sure what to tell you offhand about the game. There weren't all that many big exciting hits or big exciting plays or even big exciting innings, really. The Giants just sort of kept chipping away at the lousy Bay Stars pitchers and the holes in their defense, and it mostly worked. The scorers at Yokohama are really generous, and several things that could have been called errors were actually called hits, so it looks like a high-hitting game on paper -- 5 runs on 13 hits for the Giants and 2 runs on 10 hits for the Bay Stars -- but eh.
The only Giants player I still really like, Yoshinobu Takahashi, had a pretty lousy day, striking out twice, only getting on base once in 5 at-bats, and then ended up getting himself tagged out in a really stupid rundown between third and home when he did get on base. He also made one of those "non-error" plays of the game when he caught a ball at the back wall and it bounced out of his glove, hit the wall, and the runner was credited with a double by the time he recovered it.
Takuro Ishii uses the Orange Range song "Isshin Denshin" for his at-bat theme (which was pretty funny when I realized it), Hitoshi Taneda uses the song that the Mariners always play when taking the field at Safeco that I don't know the name of, and Masaaki Koike uses "Hey Mickey", though I'm not sure what version. The Giants' Takayuki Shimizu has the same cheer song he did two years ago, and I still can't place what song it's to the tune of. Takahiro Suzuki's cheer sounds like "Train Train" by the Blue Hearts.
After the game I asked a guy to take my picture at the stadium like I have been doing, and one of his buddies was wearing a Softbank Hawks shirt -- Wada #21 -- and I was wearing a Mariners t-shirt, so we got into a conversation for a bit about Kenji Johjima. He asked me who I liked on the Hawks and of course I replied Kazumi Saitoh, and he was like "Well, Saitoh is good, but I cheer for Wada!" Of course, I like Wada too, but in general I want the Hawks to lose, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to say that, so I didn't.
Speaking of which, the Fighters actually have more wins than any other team in the PL, but due to rainouts and ties, they're still a few percentage points behind Seibu and a few up on Softbank currently (.606 to .600 to .597 as I write this). Softbank, oddly enough, had a rainout today -- even though they have a domed stadium. I don't really have time to investigate more details, except I saw this on the Yahoo front page, which basically says "The Softbank-Rakuten game today was cancelled due to typhoon". Eeeeeeek.
See you all on the other side of the globe!
Friday, September 15, 2006
Game Report: Lions vs. Buffaloes - Leave it to Liefer
I dunno what I was thinking, but I ended up going back to the Seibu Invoice Dome tonight to see the Orix Buffaloes lose 5-3 to the Seibu Lions. I'm going to Yokohama tomorrow afternoon to see the Bay Stars take on the Giants, assuming a typhoon doesn't hit between now and then. Not sure if I'll go back to Jingu for the Swallows-Carp game on Sunday, since I have a bunch of stuff to get done before I head back to Seattle on Monday.
Anyway, this time I got infield reserved seating, rather than outfield unreserved, and sat pretty close in on the third base side. I actually originally got a seat in row 2, which looked cool and was very close up, but there was no way in hell I could take pictures from there, since they have a freaking fence surrounding the infield as usual, so I moved back to row 22 instead, which actually had a great angle on just about everything. Fortunately, the game was sparsely attended enough that nobody noticed or cared.
I've decided that sometime I'll have to write up a ranking of which fans I think are the coolest, or maybe more like, which team I think it'd be the most fun to be a fan of, but not right now. I think the Lions would rank second on my list, only behind the Fighters. Their team songs and cheers and all just looked like a whole lot of fun, as they dance, sing, run around, wave flags, bang sticks, etc. (I didn't notice last time, of course, because I was in the other cheering section.)
Anyway, there was a game. Most of the scoring was done via home runs. It was sort of weird. The Buffaloes' three runs all came on solo home runs -- from Tetsuya Matoyama, Makoto Shiozaki, and Karim Garcia. The Lions, on the other hand, had it so that almost all of their runs were either home runs or batted in by Jeff Liefer or home runs by Jeff Liefer. Alex Cabrera also hit a home run, and Yasuyuki Kataoka singled in a run, but the other three were batted in by Liefer, and he was, accordingly, the game hero for Seibu.
An amusing part about the home runs in the Seibu field is that the outfield wall is short enough that every time, the outfielders would basically jump on the wall, cling to the fence, and try to catch the ball futilely anyway. I'm not really sure what part of the wall the ball has to clear, and Karim Garcia actually thought his home run was a ground rule double at first, but was then waved around by the umpires.
Speaking of the umpires and scorers, I saw two of the stupidest calls ever tonight -- one was a double not called an error, when Jeff Liefer hit a high fly ball to left field, and Shimoyama, Gotoh, and Shiozaki all converged on it, then none of them waved off any of the others, and it fell for a double and a run scored, and it wasn't called an error. On the other hand, later in the game, Hisashi Takayama hit a bouncing grounder towards the middle, and shortstop Mitsutaka Gotoh made a great charge to the side, got the ball near second, and threw it to first, but the throw was slightly low and bounced, but it got there in time and didn't draw Mizuguchi off the bag as far as I could tell, but it was called a throwing error anyway.
Hironori Matsunaga got the start for Seibu but didn't even last through four innings, for some reason. He was taken out after giving up two of the home runs, and at the time Seibu was down 2-1, but they soon tied it up with Liefer's home run in the fourth. Yoshihisa Hirano got the start for Orix, and he was in for six innings, taken out right after he gave up the lead from a 3-3 tie.
Seibu has the most amazingly cheered bunts I've ever seen. Catcher Toru Hosokawa pretty much stuck his bat out to bunt every time he was up (he was following Shogo Akada, who singled three times), and people would be cheering things like "Timely!" or "Home run!" or whatnot for Hosokawa, which made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE when he had his bat sticking out to bunt. After each sac bunt they'd put up "Mission Complete!!" on the scoreboard. It was odd.
Does anyone else get really nervous when a player makes a headfirst slide/dive into a base? Does anyone else get really annoyed when they do it running to FIRST BASE? Well, that's just what Arihito Muramatsu did in the 7th inning, although it's true that if he had been safe, a run would have scored, and he was just out by a hair... but still. That's just dumb, IMO. For a fifth-place team, this late in the season, you don't risk stuff like that -- unless you're Japanese, I suppose.
Sometime in the 7th inning two things occurred: 1) they showed the opposing team scores and I saw that the Fighters were winning their game, and 2) two extremely obnoxious and chatty young women came down and sat right behind me. Now, just them talking nonstop for three innings might not have been so bad, but here's the funny part: at one point they started talking about me and my scorecard, and trying to figure out what I was writing down (and I'm pretty sure one of the girls didn't know anything about baseball to begin with), and saying how weird it all was. Anyway, since I've been writing down all the players' names in kanji, and the team names and stadium and all other details on my page in Japanese, did they somehow see my white white skin and just decide I didn't understand Japanese? Or did they just not care? The mind boggles. As usual, I just didn't think it was worth turning around and saying anything. I think my spirit's been broken from two weeks here.
Anyway, uh, the game was 5-3 heading into the 8th inning, and that's where it stayed, as six Buffaloes batters in a row struck out for the last two innings. Chikara Onodera, who seems to be a holy-crap-awesome closer every time I see him, came in and struck out the side by himself for the ninth inning and the save, after Minoru Yamagishi, Tomoki Hoshino, and Takashi Ishii took care of it in the 8th.
You know, even the Eagles are only 3.5 games behind Orix at this point. That's plain sad.
After the game, since I was just wearing my Johjima shirt and posing as an innocent gaijin, rather than a Fighters-fan-Matsuzaka-hater, I went and got a Matsuzaka Lions uchiwa fan, and some pins from the gatchapon machines they had since I was curious to see them, and some photobooks -- a Matsuzaka one just because I didn't actually get to see him while I was here, and a Hiroyuki Nakajima one because I still think he's completely adorable.
I think I'm going to duck out now -- this keyboard is actually making my shoulders hurt. No joke.
EDIT 2/6/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Anyway, this time I got infield reserved seating, rather than outfield unreserved, and sat pretty close in on the third base side. I actually originally got a seat in row 2, which looked cool and was very close up, but there was no way in hell I could take pictures from there, since they have a freaking fence surrounding the infield as usual, so I moved back to row 22 instead, which actually had a great angle on just about everything. Fortunately, the game was sparsely attended enough that nobody noticed or cared.
I've decided that sometime I'll have to write up a ranking of which fans I think are the coolest, or maybe more like, which team I think it'd be the most fun to be a fan of, but not right now. I think the Lions would rank second on my list, only behind the Fighters. Their team songs and cheers and all just looked like a whole lot of fun, as they dance, sing, run around, wave flags, bang sticks, etc. (I didn't notice last time, of course, because I was in the other cheering section.)
Anyway, there was a game. Most of the scoring was done via home runs. It was sort of weird. The Buffaloes' three runs all came on solo home runs -- from Tetsuya Matoyama, Makoto Shiozaki, and Karim Garcia. The Lions, on the other hand, had it so that almost all of their runs were either home runs or batted in by Jeff Liefer or home runs by Jeff Liefer. Alex Cabrera also hit a home run, and Yasuyuki Kataoka singled in a run, but the other three were batted in by Liefer, and he was, accordingly, the game hero for Seibu.
An amusing part about the home runs in the Seibu field is that the outfield wall is short enough that every time, the outfielders would basically jump on the wall, cling to the fence, and try to catch the ball futilely anyway. I'm not really sure what part of the wall the ball has to clear, and Karim Garcia actually thought his home run was a ground rule double at first, but was then waved around by the umpires.
Speaking of the umpires and scorers, I saw two of the stupidest calls ever tonight -- one was a double not called an error, when Jeff Liefer hit a high fly ball to left field, and Shimoyama, Gotoh, and Shiozaki all converged on it, then none of them waved off any of the others, and it fell for a double and a run scored, and it wasn't called an error. On the other hand, later in the game, Hisashi Takayama hit a bouncing grounder towards the middle, and shortstop Mitsutaka Gotoh made a great charge to the side, got the ball near second, and threw it to first, but the throw was slightly low and bounced, but it got there in time and didn't draw Mizuguchi off the bag as far as I could tell, but it was called a throwing error anyway.
Hironori Matsunaga got the start for Seibu but didn't even last through four innings, for some reason. He was taken out after giving up two of the home runs, and at the time Seibu was down 2-1, but they soon tied it up with Liefer's home run in the fourth. Yoshihisa Hirano got the start for Orix, and he was in for six innings, taken out right after he gave up the lead from a 3-3 tie.
Seibu has the most amazingly cheered bunts I've ever seen. Catcher Toru Hosokawa pretty much stuck his bat out to bunt every time he was up (he was following Shogo Akada, who singled three times), and people would be cheering things like "Timely!" or "Home run!" or whatnot for Hosokawa, which made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE when he had his bat sticking out to bunt. After each sac bunt they'd put up "Mission Complete!!" on the scoreboard. It was odd.
Does anyone else get really nervous when a player makes a headfirst slide/dive into a base? Does anyone else get really annoyed when they do it running to FIRST BASE? Well, that's just what Arihito Muramatsu did in the 7th inning, although it's true that if he had been safe, a run would have scored, and he was just out by a hair... but still. That's just dumb, IMO. For a fifth-place team, this late in the season, you don't risk stuff like that -- unless you're Japanese, I suppose.
Sometime in the 7th inning two things occurred: 1) they showed the opposing team scores and I saw that the Fighters were winning their game, and 2) two extremely obnoxious and chatty young women came down and sat right behind me. Now, just them talking nonstop for three innings might not have been so bad, but here's the funny part: at one point they started talking about me and my scorecard, and trying to figure out what I was writing down (and I'm pretty sure one of the girls didn't know anything about baseball to begin with), and saying how weird it all was. Anyway, since I've been writing down all the players' names in kanji, and the team names and stadium and all other details on my page in Japanese, did they somehow see my white white skin and just decide I didn't understand Japanese? Or did they just not care? The mind boggles. As usual, I just didn't think it was worth turning around and saying anything. I think my spirit's been broken from two weeks here.
Anyway, uh, the game was 5-3 heading into the 8th inning, and that's where it stayed, as six Buffaloes batters in a row struck out for the last two innings. Chikara Onodera, who seems to be a holy-crap-awesome closer every time I see him, came in and struck out the side by himself for the ninth inning and the save, after Minoru Yamagishi, Tomoki Hoshino, and Takashi Ishii took care of it in the 8th.
You know, even the Eagles are only 3.5 games behind Orix at this point. That's plain sad.
After the game, since I was just wearing my Johjima shirt and posing as an innocent gaijin, rather than a Fighters-fan-Matsuzaka-hater, I went and got a Matsuzaka Lions uchiwa fan, and some pins from the gatchapon machines they had since I was curious to see them, and some photobooks -- a Matsuzaka one just because I didn't actually get to see him while I was here, and a Hiroyuki Nakajima one because I still think he's completely adorable.
I think I'm going to duck out now -- this keyboard is actually making my shoulders hurt. No joke.
EDIT 2/6/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Game Report: Swallows vs. Bay Stars - A Comedy of Errors
Tonight I went to Meiji Jingu Stadium to see the Yakult Swallows take on the Yokohama Bay Stars. With my luck, it just so happened that Daisuke Miura was starting for Yokohama, and Kazuhisa Ishii was starting for Yakult. Miura is unquestionably the best starter on the Yokohama staff, and Ishii's a former MLBer, so this looked to be pretty exciting.
First, let me say that I'm sort of ambivalent about Jingu Stadium. We got outfield unreserved seats, and while outfield unreserved actually stretches all the way past the foul poles into what's usually considered outer infield in MLB parks, there's this huge obnoxious THICK fence around the entire field. Second, there's no upper deck, being as the stadium was built in 1926. So basically, if you want to be able to see the field and/or take pictures without the fence in your way, you either need to sit in the very very front row, or sit in the very very last row. We weren't there early enough for the former, so last row it was! The funny thing is, if not for the fences, Jingu would actually have a pretty impressively laid out set of seats, all things considered. Sigh.
Um, my eyes are tearing up because there's someone SERIOUSLY smoking at the computer next to mine, so I'm going to just write a bit and get out of here before I can't see OR breathe.
The most annoying thing at Jingu to me right now is this cheesy-sounding English announcer they have. He reads all the players' names and positions and numbers in Engrish, so it's like, "And now - battingu sahdo, sahdo besuman, Akinori Iwamura, numbaaaah wan!" On a swinging strikeout, the announcer goes "Swing and a miss, strikeout!" or on a double play, he's like "What a nice double play!" or when Aoki got a double, it was like "It's aaaaa stand-up double!" or with a stolen base it'd be "That's a nice steal!" It was just really really weird.
The Swallows' cheering section holds up a Venezuela flag for Alex Ramirez. Also, they don't do the balloons thing or the fight song in the seventh inning thing, which is okay with me. Instead, they do their crazy umbrella dance. I went and bought one of the Jingu umbrellas after the game, because I figured that was really the thing that represented it best.
Today's game was weird in that it was high-hitting, low-scoring, and a comedy of errors, at that. The scorer at Jingu is almost as generous with making things hits instead of errors as the scorer at Safeco is. Sometimes someone would get the ball but not hold onto it and it'd be ruled a hit, or once, the second baseman actually dropped the ball, but the runner was still called out at second, and things like that. It was a little weird.
Yokohama started the scoring in the second inning off one of the aforementioned errors, when Hitoshi Taneda singled to right with a runner on, and right fielder Ryuji Miyade sort of got the ball, but didn't, and by the time he recovered it, Uchikawa had scored and Taneda was on third. Hiroyasu Tanaka made an amazing dive to get the grounder after that, but Taneda scored anyway, and then Miura struck out.
I think something must have just been wrong with Miyade today, because he seriously had the worst day ever, with that error and being 0-for-5 at the plate, striking out three times. On the other side, Akinori Iwamura was 3-for-3 and walked twice, made a ton of great plays, and even almost hit a home run except it went over the wall but not over the yellow line of the FENCE, another weird feature of Jingu. Since he got a single, double, and triple, all he would have needed was a home run for the cycle. (His triple was pretty funny. Both the center and right fielder were just sort of jogging after the ball as it rolled to the back wall, trying to figure out how and who was going to field it.)
Yokohama almost put ahead another run in the third, after Swallows catcher Yoneno chucked the ball into centerfield rather than throwing out Masaaki Koike at second on a steal attempt. Fortunately, when Murata grounded to third, Koike got caught in a rundown and didn't score.
The Swallows finally put a run on the board in the 5th after Norichika Aoki walked, following Ishii's second really high popout to centerfield of the day. Aoki stole second, and then scored on Iwamura's aforementioned WTF-triple. Unfortunately, Ramirez lined out to second after that to end the inning.
Yoneno chucked the ball into the outfield yet AGAIN when Yuuki Yoshimura stole following a single, though this time they kept him at second. Uchikawa singled after that too -- well, he hit the ball up the left-field line and Iwamura recovered it, not realizing it wasn't foul, and so Uchikawa was safe. Taneda hit into a double play after that, where Uchikawa was tagged out on the basepath and then the throw to first caught Taneda, and fortunately after an intentional walk, the pitcher Miura grounded out.
Yakult scored two runs in the seventh to bring them ahead 3-2 off some singles and a sac fly, but then Youhei Tateyama came in to pitch for Ishii and gave up something like ninety singles in a row and Yokohama got another run in the 8th, bringing it to 3-3.
Masao Kida, ex-Mariner farmhand, came in to pitch the 9th for Yakult. In his true fashion, he struck out a guy, got a groundout, then gave up a HUGE home run to Shuichi Murata which went all the way past the reserved seats into the unreserved cheering section seats in left field. Then he struck out another guy to end the side, but the damage was done.
With the score 4-3, Takeo Kawamura came in to pitch, and he hasn't had a successful save yet this year. So he immediately gives up a double to Aoki and a single to Adam Riggs. They walk Iwamura intentionally to load the bases, and... and... you're not going to believe this, but Kawamura struck out Ramirez, Miyade, and Tanaka in succession, to end the game and get the save. How insane is that?
I really have to leave now, so um, yeah, maybe I'll edit/add to this tomorrow, maybe not. I may even go back to Jingu. We'll see.
EDIT 1/24/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
First, let me say that I'm sort of ambivalent about Jingu Stadium. We got outfield unreserved seats, and while outfield unreserved actually stretches all the way past the foul poles into what's usually considered outer infield in MLB parks, there's this huge obnoxious THICK fence around the entire field. Second, there's no upper deck, being as the stadium was built in 1926. So basically, if you want to be able to see the field and/or take pictures without the fence in your way, you either need to sit in the very very front row, or sit in the very very last row. We weren't there early enough for the former, so last row it was! The funny thing is, if not for the fences, Jingu would actually have a pretty impressively laid out set of seats, all things considered. Sigh.
Um, my eyes are tearing up because there's someone SERIOUSLY smoking at the computer next to mine, so I'm going to just write a bit and get out of here before I can't see OR breathe.
The most annoying thing at Jingu to me right now is this cheesy-sounding English announcer they have. He reads all the players' names and positions and numbers in Engrish, so it's like, "And now - battingu sahdo, sahdo besuman, Akinori Iwamura, numbaaaah wan!" On a swinging strikeout, the announcer goes "Swing and a miss, strikeout!" or on a double play, he's like "What a nice double play!" or when Aoki got a double, it was like "It's aaaaa stand-up double!" or with a stolen base it'd be "That's a nice steal!" It was just really really weird.
The Swallows' cheering section holds up a Venezuela flag for Alex Ramirez. Also, they don't do the balloons thing or the fight song in the seventh inning thing, which is okay with me. Instead, they do their crazy umbrella dance. I went and bought one of the Jingu umbrellas after the game, because I figured that was really the thing that represented it best.
Today's game was weird in that it was high-hitting, low-scoring, and a comedy of errors, at that. The scorer at Jingu is almost as generous with making things hits instead of errors as the scorer at Safeco is. Sometimes someone would get the ball but not hold onto it and it'd be ruled a hit, or once, the second baseman actually dropped the ball, but the runner was still called out at second, and things like that. It was a little weird.
Yokohama started the scoring in the second inning off one of the aforementioned errors, when Hitoshi Taneda singled to right with a runner on, and right fielder Ryuji Miyade sort of got the ball, but didn't, and by the time he recovered it, Uchikawa had scored and Taneda was on third. Hiroyasu Tanaka made an amazing dive to get the grounder after that, but Taneda scored anyway, and then Miura struck out.
I think something must have just been wrong with Miyade today, because he seriously had the worst day ever, with that error and being 0-for-5 at the plate, striking out three times. On the other side, Akinori Iwamura was 3-for-3 and walked twice, made a ton of great plays, and even almost hit a home run except it went over the wall but not over the yellow line of the FENCE, another weird feature of Jingu. Since he got a single, double, and triple, all he would have needed was a home run for the cycle. (His triple was pretty funny. Both the center and right fielder were just sort of jogging after the ball as it rolled to the back wall, trying to figure out how and who was going to field it.)
Yokohama almost put ahead another run in the third, after Swallows catcher Yoneno chucked the ball into centerfield rather than throwing out Masaaki Koike at second on a steal attempt. Fortunately, when Murata grounded to third, Koike got caught in a rundown and didn't score.
The Swallows finally put a run on the board in the 5th after Norichika Aoki walked, following Ishii's second really high popout to centerfield of the day. Aoki stole second, and then scored on Iwamura's aforementioned WTF-triple. Unfortunately, Ramirez lined out to second after that to end the inning.
Yoneno chucked the ball into the outfield yet AGAIN when Yuuki Yoshimura stole following a single, though this time they kept him at second. Uchikawa singled after that too -- well, he hit the ball up the left-field line and Iwamura recovered it, not realizing it wasn't foul, and so Uchikawa was safe. Taneda hit into a double play after that, where Uchikawa was tagged out on the basepath and then the throw to first caught Taneda, and fortunately after an intentional walk, the pitcher Miura grounded out.
Yakult scored two runs in the seventh to bring them ahead 3-2 off some singles and a sac fly, but then Youhei Tateyama came in to pitch for Ishii and gave up something like ninety singles in a row and Yokohama got another run in the 8th, bringing it to 3-3.
Masao Kida, ex-Mariner farmhand, came in to pitch the 9th for Yakult. In his true fashion, he struck out a guy, got a groundout, then gave up a HUGE home run to Shuichi Murata which went all the way past the reserved seats into the unreserved cheering section seats in left field. Then he struck out another guy to end the side, but the damage was done.
With the score 4-3, Takeo Kawamura came in to pitch, and he hasn't had a successful save yet this year. So he immediately gives up a double to Aoki and a single to Adam Riggs. They walk Iwamura intentionally to load the bases, and... and... you're not going to believe this, but Kawamura struck out Ramirez, Miyade, and Tanaka in succession, to end the game and get the save. How insane is that?
I really have to leave now, so um, yeah, maybe I'll edit/add to this tomorrow, maybe not. I may even go back to Jingu. We'll see.
EDIT 1/24/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Game Report: Marines vs. Eagles - You Can Be My Shingo Ono
Today I got to meet up with Tokyo Sam, a guy who posts around various Mariners blogs and forums, and who has the wacky outlook of being a Japanese guy in Tokyo who'd rather follow the MLB, as opposed to me, an American girl in Seattle who'd rather follow the NPB. The cool thing is that we both know a lot of baseball stuff that's interesting to the other party just by osmosis, I think.
Anyway, we went off to Makuhari, the area near the Chiba Marine Stadium, and hung out there for the afternoon, which included me finally getting to play Baseball Heroes, this Konami arcade game where you use actual cards to make and manage your baseball team, and can win more cards. Sam helped me by translating stuff that would take me way too long to read on the fly, and we played a game, me as the Nippon Ham Fighters, and apparently I was playing against a guy in Hiroshima who was calling his team the Lotte Marines, but his team featured players like Kosuke Fukudome and Kenji Johjima, so he obviously had some pretty good cards to work with there! My team had Carlos Mirabal pitching (so it's obvious they were using 2005 data), and he ended up going a complete game and winning, which was pretty funny. The players in the game really look scarily like their real-life counterparts -- they had Shinjo down to every last detail, and it was pretty frightening.
I won my game and got two cards -- Ohmura from the Hawks, who's pretty good, and Kimura from the Carp, who isn't. And now I feel like I need to go play again to try to get more cards, and I bet that's EXACTLY what I'm supposed to feel like. Stupid companies with their money-extorting strategies!
After that, Sam and I went to the stadium, and it was drizzling out. We checked out the Marines Museum, which is pretty silly, but a good place to go if you like taking pictures of yourself with funny baseball things. You have the option of getting yourself in a picture as the manager on top of a doage (when they throw you in the air), or sitting in a replica dugout, or sitting in a replica of Satozaki's WBC locker, or being at bat behind a replica home plate, or pitching in a fake bullpen, or sitting in a bullpen car, or standing out by a fake outfield fence, or you can be a scoreboard operator and tally balls/strikes/outs. There's also some actual historical team stuff upstairs in the museum, though it's all in Japanese, so I basically read about half of it, getting Sam to help me with some of it as well, and we admired how ugly the old Lotte uniforms were.
Well, by the time we got out of there, and through the big team store in that building, there were lines of people waiting to buy tickets and/or get into the stadium, so we decided to go ahead and get tickets, and we got pretty good ones, and then got in line to get into the stadium, and all the while, it was drizzling rain.
But, the game happened. I watched fielding practice, and watched them take off the tarps and fix up the field. Toshiaki Imae (that punk!) was out signing autographs over the Marines dugout, but we were sadly on the other side of the infield, though it's just as well, I dunno what I would get him to sign anyway.
The game started, and the rain continued. I kept score despite being in the rain, and after about three innings, we moved up to the last row of the infield seats, which was covered by a tiny overhang from the upper deck, so that was good. I'm sure if I write a long game summary nobody's really going to bother reading it, so I'm not going to bother. You can go look at the game info here. The Marines won 7-0.
In short, Shingo Ono pitched a complete game shutout in 108 pitches, but because he did so against the Rakuten Golden Eagles in a nonstop drizzling rain, I'm not sure whether it's that great a feat or not. Kanehisa Arime, the left-hander best known for going the whole way in a 17-strikeout, 12-inning tie against Lotte a few weeks ago, started the game for Rakuten, but was chased after two innings since the Marines batted around the order in the second inning and scored four runs off him. To be fair, some of Arime's trouble was with his fielders being unable to deal with the wet baseball and turf, especially when Saburo Ohmura hit the ball to third baseman Hisanori Nishitani -- whose first big-league game was just last week -- and Nishitani not only fumbled the ball once, but twice, and thus Saburo was safe at first and Benny Agbayani also scored a run on the play.
The Eagles also made another spectacular error later on, in the 8th inning, when Val Pascucci hit a fly ball way out to left field, near the line, and the leftfielder, third baseman, and shortstop all ran out there. Standing in a triangle where any one of the three could have and should have caught it, the ball pretty much just fell right in front of the left fielder, and Pascucci found himself on second base instead of back in the dugout.
Though to be fair, early on, a ball was hit foul towards the Marines' dugout by Eagles' DH Yuuji Yoshioka, and both first baseman Kazuya Fukuura and catcher Tomoya Satozaki made a run to catch it -- and they did get there in time, but unfortunately, they also both slipped and fell on the wet turf. I was more concerned about someone getting hurt than them not getting the ball, in all honesty.
Aside from the fielding mishaps on both sides, the Marines hitting was pretty good. Tomoya Satozaki, who may be the only catcher in the NPB currently batting cleanup, went 3-for-4 with a double, 2 RBI, and 2 runs scored. He also seemed to have a penchant for breaking bats, as he broke two and threw another one onto the field when he swung. (I'm betting that it was hard to get a grip on the bats in the rain, honestly.) I was wearing a Satozaki #22 t-shirt, so it was good to see it bring good luck! Everyone in the lineup got a hit except Saburo, and he's excused because of the above error. Even Masato Watanabe, who's sort of like a Japanese Willie Bloomquist, got two hits, scoring a run, and that's saying something.
Also, Katsunori Nomura sucks ass. I realize it's got to be pretty difficult being the son of one of the greatest players in Japanese baseball history, and even worse, following your dad around as he moves from managing one club to another, but still, he's simply not a good catcher or a good player. At least Kazushige Nagashima had the sense to quit baseball and go into acting and other media personality stuff, which I think he's actually respectably good at (heck, I saw him star in the movie "Mr. Rookie" before actually realizing he was Shigeo Nagashima's son!).
So, yeah. Rain sucks. It never DID stop raining the entire time, but the game was played out in full, and Shingo Ono did get the complete-game shutout, which I think is only the third one in his entire career, so good for him. I had fun hanging out with Sam, and he knows a lot about the things I tend to geek out about lately, namely baseball and digital SLR cameras, so that was good. Also, I got to experience the craziness of Tokyo highways, and that was new and different.
I should probably venture back out into the rain now. If it ever stops, I'll be going to a game at Jingu on Thursday or Friday. Unfortunately, freaking Daisuke Goddamn Matsuzaka had to go and shut out the Fighters tonight up in Sapporo, so he won't be pitching in Tokorozawa this weekend, so I doubt I'm going to bother going back to a Lions game unless this stupid rain continues, since my only stadiums left to visit are Yokohama and Jingu, both outdoors.
(Oh, one last note: outside Marines Stadium before the game they were playing a ton of American oldies/classic rock, all rain-themed, like CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" and the Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays" and so on. The funny part to me is that they were all in English, so I'm not even sure whether most people there got the theme. I appreciated it, at least.)
EDIT 1/9/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Anyway, we went off to Makuhari, the area near the Chiba Marine Stadium, and hung out there for the afternoon, which included me finally getting to play Baseball Heroes, this Konami arcade game where you use actual cards to make and manage your baseball team, and can win more cards. Sam helped me by translating stuff that would take me way too long to read on the fly, and we played a game, me as the Nippon Ham Fighters, and apparently I was playing against a guy in Hiroshima who was calling his team the Lotte Marines, but his team featured players like Kosuke Fukudome and Kenji Johjima, so he obviously had some pretty good cards to work with there! My team had Carlos Mirabal pitching (so it's obvious they were using 2005 data), and he ended up going a complete game and winning, which was pretty funny. The players in the game really look scarily like their real-life counterparts -- they had Shinjo down to every last detail, and it was pretty frightening.
I won my game and got two cards -- Ohmura from the Hawks, who's pretty good, and Kimura from the Carp, who isn't. And now I feel like I need to go play again to try to get more cards, and I bet that's EXACTLY what I'm supposed to feel like. Stupid companies with their money-extorting strategies!
After that, Sam and I went to the stadium, and it was drizzling out. We checked out the Marines Museum, which is pretty silly, but a good place to go if you like taking pictures of yourself with funny baseball things. You have the option of getting yourself in a picture as the manager on top of a doage (when they throw you in the air), or sitting in a replica dugout, or sitting in a replica of Satozaki's WBC locker, or being at bat behind a replica home plate, or pitching in a fake bullpen, or sitting in a bullpen car, or standing out by a fake outfield fence, or you can be a scoreboard operator and tally balls/strikes/outs. There's also some actual historical team stuff upstairs in the museum, though it's all in Japanese, so I basically read about half of it, getting Sam to help me with some of it as well, and we admired how ugly the old Lotte uniforms were.
Well, by the time we got out of there, and through the big team store in that building, there were lines of people waiting to buy tickets and/or get into the stadium, so we decided to go ahead and get tickets, and we got pretty good ones, and then got in line to get into the stadium, and all the while, it was drizzling rain.
But, the game happened. I watched fielding practice, and watched them take off the tarps and fix up the field. Toshiaki Imae (that punk!) was out signing autographs over the Marines dugout, but we were sadly on the other side of the infield, though it's just as well, I dunno what I would get him to sign anyway.
The game started, and the rain continued. I kept score despite being in the rain, and after about three innings, we moved up to the last row of the infield seats, which was covered by a tiny overhang from the upper deck, so that was good. I'm sure if I write a long game summary nobody's really going to bother reading it, so I'm not going to bother. You can go look at the game info here. The Marines won 7-0.
In short, Shingo Ono pitched a complete game shutout in 108 pitches, but because he did so against the Rakuten Golden Eagles in a nonstop drizzling rain, I'm not sure whether it's that great a feat or not. Kanehisa Arime, the left-hander best known for going the whole way in a 17-strikeout, 12-inning tie against Lotte a few weeks ago, started the game for Rakuten, but was chased after two innings since the Marines batted around the order in the second inning and scored four runs off him. To be fair, some of Arime's trouble was with his fielders being unable to deal with the wet baseball and turf, especially when Saburo Ohmura hit the ball to third baseman Hisanori Nishitani -- whose first big-league game was just last week -- and Nishitani not only fumbled the ball once, but twice, and thus Saburo was safe at first and Benny Agbayani also scored a run on the play.
The Eagles also made another spectacular error later on, in the 8th inning, when Val Pascucci hit a fly ball way out to left field, near the line, and the leftfielder, third baseman, and shortstop all ran out there. Standing in a triangle where any one of the three could have and should have caught it, the ball pretty much just fell right in front of the left fielder, and Pascucci found himself on second base instead of back in the dugout.
Though to be fair, early on, a ball was hit foul towards the Marines' dugout by Eagles' DH Yuuji Yoshioka, and both first baseman Kazuya Fukuura and catcher Tomoya Satozaki made a run to catch it -- and they did get there in time, but unfortunately, they also both slipped and fell on the wet turf. I was more concerned about someone getting hurt than them not getting the ball, in all honesty.
Aside from the fielding mishaps on both sides, the Marines hitting was pretty good. Tomoya Satozaki, who may be the only catcher in the NPB currently batting cleanup, went 3-for-4 with a double, 2 RBI, and 2 runs scored. He also seemed to have a penchant for breaking bats, as he broke two and threw another one onto the field when he swung. (I'm betting that it was hard to get a grip on the bats in the rain, honestly.) I was wearing a Satozaki #22 t-shirt, so it was good to see it bring good luck! Everyone in the lineup got a hit except Saburo, and he's excused because of the above error. Even Masato Watanabe, who's sort of like a Japanese Willie Bloomquist, got two hits, scoring a run, and that's saying something.
Also, Katsunori Nomura sucks ass. I realize it's got to be pretty difficult being the son of one of the greatest players in Japanese baseball history, and even worse, following your dad around as he moves from managing one club to another, but still, he's simply not a good catcher or a good player. At least Kazushige Nagashima had the sense to quit baseball and go into acting and other media personality stuff, which I think he's actually respectably good at (heck, I saw him star in the movie "Mr. Rookie" before actually realizing he was Shigeo Nagashima's son!).
So, yeah. Rain sucks. It never DID stop raining the entire time, but the game was played out in full, and Shingo Ono did get the complete-game shutout, which I think is only the third one in his entire career, so good for him. I had fun hanging out with Sam, and he knows a lot about the things I tend to geek out about lately, namely baseball and digital SLR cameras, so that was good. Also, I got to experience the craziness of Tokyo highways, and that was new and different.
I should probably venture back out into the rain now. If it ever stops, I'll be going to a game at Jingu on Thursday or Friday. Unfortunately, freaking Daisuke Goddamn Matsuzaka had to go and shut out the Fighters tonight up in Sapporo, so he won't be pitching in Tokorozawa this weekend, so I doubt I'm going to bother going back to a Lions game unless this stupid rain continues, since my only stadiums left to visit are Yokohama and Jingu, both outdoors.
(Oh, one last note: outside Marines Stadium before the game they were playing a ton of American oldies/classic rock, all rain-themed, like CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" and the Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays" and so on. The funny part to me is that they were all in English, so I'm not even sure whether most people there got the theme. I appreciated it, at least.)
EDIT 1/9/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Monday, September 11, 2006
Game Report: Marines vs. Eagles - Too many Yamazakis
Today I took the train back up to Tokyo in the early afternoon. Because my friends weren't getting to town until later in the evening, and because I'm totally into young left-handed pitchers, I decided to go to Chiba and see Yoshihisa Naruse start for the Marines against the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.
Unfortunately, the Eagles have a whole lot of guys named Yamazaki who seemed to be pretty good at getting on base and scoring against Naruse, culminating in designated hitter Takeshi Yamazaki hitting a home run into the left-center stands, and the Eagles eventually won the game 6-2.
Chiba Marine Stadium is a lot more annoying to get to than I remembered -- coming from Ikebukuro, at least, I don't see a good way to make it take less than two hours, because no matter what, you have to take two trains. I think I took the Yurakucho to Shin-Kiba when I was there two years ago, and this time I took the Marunouchi to Tokyo, which involved a ten-minute walk between platforms when changing to the Keiyo line. Yow. At least when I got to Kaihin-Makuhari, I pretty much stepped out of the station and there was a big "Club 26" bus that I rode to the stadium, rather than trying to remember how to walk there.
On the other hand, the weather was AWESOME. It looked grey and almost-rainy for the entire ride there, but it never actually rained, and because the stadium is on Chiba Bay, it was in the low 70's and not humid at all the entire time I was there. It basically felt like Seattle, and I was really happy about it.
Because this game was actually a make-up game on the schedule -- teams don't usually play on Mondays here -- the only tickets available were either outfield unreserved or infield unreserved, and the infield unreserved were basically the equivalent of Field seats at Safeco -- seats on the first level but beyond first base or third. I'm guessing you needed to be a season ticket holder or in the fan club to sit in the infield infield seats. I picked up an infield seat because it was only Y2300, and the outfield were Y1500, so what the heck.
I dunno, though, maybe I should have sat in the outfield cheering section, because the infield unreserved seats were pretty spread out and I didn't end up talking to anyone at all during the game, which sort of sucked. Also, I feel stupid for having brought a Marines noisemaker, because I swear, except for maybe one or two situations, nobody actually used them. They were just clapping or waving their hands a lot. I vaguely remembered a few of the player songs, but it just felt awkward to really stand up and cheer, so I just sang/cheered along while sitting.
The Marines not only have female cheerleaders like most other teams here, but their cheerleaders actually were going around in the stands selling the "match card program" for the Eagles-Marines series, and I swear the guy down the row from me bought one just so he could chat up the cheerleader selling it. It was kind of funny, actually.
I'm not sure whether there's a requirement that every team has at least one guy who uses a song by Def Tech as their at-bat music (sort of like how I joke in the MLB every team has someone using a 50 Cent song), but on the Marines it's Kouji Hirashita, using the song "My Way". I'm not sure whether it's pathetic that I actually realized that.
For the Matt Watson fans in the audience -- that is, the gang from Athletics Nation -- "Watty", as they call him here, not to be confused with Matt "Matty" Franco, had a so-so night, going 1-for-3 with a double, though he also made an error in the 6th inning that allowed two runs to score, when he dropped a fly ball. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it should have been a pretty good feat to reach the ball at all, so eh.
The game started off pretty well for Marines fans -- Naruse walked two guys and struck out two guys in the first but allowed no runs, and then the Marines scored two runs in the first three batters when Hirashita ran out an infield single and Kazuya Fukuuuuuura hit a home run into the Marines cheering section. Unfortunately, those would be the only runs the Marines would score all night, as they pulled a Mariners and got 9 more hits and no more runs for a total of 11 hits. Oi.
It really was just that they couldn't string any together, as they'd get a few guys on base and then somehow find a way to get out (though they nearly took out the Eagles shortstop Tatsuya Shiokawa when he managed to turn a double play, and later on Imae struck out really hard and chucked his bat at pitcher Toyohiko Yoshida, who was removed from the game immediately after (though I think it was just a coincidence).)
What really hurt Naruse in the long run was walks, as he walked 4 and two of them came around to score (and both of those were named Yamazaki). The Eagles tied it up at 2-2 in the second as Takahiro Yamazaki singled ahead Takeshi Yamazaki. Takahiro was out on a fielder's choice by the aforementioned Shiokawa, but then a Tsuchiya Teppei double scored both baserunners. Teppei himself was thrown out at the plate for the third out while trying to score from second on Akihisa Makida's single after that.
Naruse just probably got tired by the 6th, around 100 pitches, as he gave up that home run to Takeshi Yamazaki, and then got out the next batter, but walked Takahiro Yamazaki. With two outs, Shiokawa hit a long fly ball to right, and Matt Watson got there, but the ball bounced out of his glove, and it was a funny little shuffle on the bases as Yamazaki and Shiokawa both ran as far as they could, one getting to second and one getting to third. Naruse was pulled and Takagi came in to pitch, but Teppei yet again singled them both in.
That made it 5-2, and in the 9th inning, with Satoru Komiyama on the mound (gah, why do I keep typing Kanemura instead of Komiyama when I talk about him?), Yousuke Takasu hit what I scored as a triple but they scored as a double and advancing on an error. Basically, he hit the ball into the left-center gap and both Benny and Otsuka took a weird route to it and it took a while to recover the ball. Then Jose Fernandez hit a legitimate double and scored Takasu. Yoshioka followed that up by hitting the ball such that Benny dropped it and Otsuka recovered it, but due to poor baserunning, nobody advanced, and then a popout and a strikeout later, the inning ended.
Hmm.
I guess other neat things were getting to see Val Pascucci pinch-hit a single, and also getting to see Justin Miller come in to pitch (I think it's hilarious that they make him wear long sleeves because of all his tattoos). And of course, seeing most of the Marines is always fun; I mean, for the most part this is still the team I was cheering for last year, and I still like a lot of the players.
I've got to get going for now. My next game should be another Marines one on Wednesday, and hopefully I'll get to actually check out the Marines museum thingy and some other stuff around the area this time. There's the chance I'll go to Meiji Jingu for a Swallows game tomorrow if I'm bored, but it's unlikely.
EDIT 1/7/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
Unfortunately, the Eagles have a whole lot of guys named Yamazaki who seemed to be pretty good at getting on base and scoring against Naruse, culminating in designated hitter Takeshi Yamazaki hitting a home run into the left-center stands, and the Eagles eventually won the game 6-2.
Chiba Marine Stadium is a lot more annoying to get to than I remembered -- coming from Ikebukuro, at least, I don't see a good way to make it take less than two hours, because no matter what, you have to take two trains. I think I took the Yurakucho to Shin-Kiba when I was there two years ago, and this time I took the Marunouchi to Tokyo, which involved a ten-minute walk between platforms when changing to the Keiyo line. Yow. At least when I got to Kaihin-Makuhari, I pretty much stepped out of the station and there was a big "Club 26" bus that I rode to the stadium, rather than trying to remember how to walk there.
On the other hand, the weather was AWESOME. It looked grey and almost-rainy for the entire ride there, but it never actually rained, and because the stadium is on Chiba Bay, it was in the low 70's and not humid at all the entire time I was there. It basically felt like Seattle, and I was really happy about it.
Because this game was actually a make-up game on the schedule -- teams don't usually play on Mondays here -- the only tickets available were either outfield unreserved or infield unreserved, and the infield unreserved were basically the equivalent of Field seats at Safeco -- seats on the first level but beyond first base or third. I'm guessing you needed to be a season ticket holder or in the fan club to sit in the infield infield seats. I picked up an infield seat because it was only Y2300, and the outfield were Y1500, so what the heck.
I dunno, though, maybe I should have sat in the outfield cheering section, because the infield unreserved seats were pretty spread out and I didn't end up talking to anyone at all during the game, which sort of sucked. Also, I feel stupid for having brought a Marines noisemaker, because I swear, except for maybe one or two situations, nobody actually used them. They were just clapping or waving their hands a lot. I vaguely remembered a few of the player songs, but it just felt awkward to really stand up and cheer, so I just sang/cheered along while sitting.
The Marines not only have female cheerleaders like most other teams here, but their cheerleaders actually were going around in the stands selling the "match card program" for the Eagles-Marines series, and I swear the guy down the row from me bought one just so he could chat up the cheerleader selling it. It was kind of funny, actually.
I'm not sure whether there's a requirement that every team has at least one guy who uses a song by Def Tech as their at-bat music (sort of like how I joke in the MLB every team has someone using a 50 Cent song), but on the Marines it's Kouji Hirashita, using the song "My Way". I'm not sure whether it's pathetic that I actually realized that.
For the Matt Watson fans in the audience -- that is, the gang from Athletics Nation -- "Watty", as they call him here, not to be confused with Matt "Matty" Franco, had a so-so night, going 1-for-3 with a double, though he also made an error in the 6th inning that allowed two runs to score, when he dropped a fly ball. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it should have been a pretty good feat to reach the ball at all, so eh.
The game started off pretty well for Marines fans -- Naruse walked two guys and struck out two guys in the first but allowed no runs, and then the Marines scored two runs in the first three batters when Hirashita ran out an infield single and Kazuya Fukuuuuuura hit a home run into the Marines cheering section. Unfortunately, those would be the only runs the Marines would score all night, as they pulled a Mariners and got 9 more hits and no more runs for a total of 11 hits. Oi.
It really was just that they couldn't string any together, as they'd get a few guys on base and then somehow find a way to get out (though they nearly took out the Eagles shortstop Tatsuya Shiokawa when he managed to turn a double play, and later on Imae struck out really hard and chucked his bat at pitcher Toyohiko Yoshida, who was removed from the game immediately after (though I think it was just a coincidence).)
What really hurt Naruse in the long run was walks, as he walked 4 and two of them came around to score (and both of those were named Yamazaki). The Eagles tied it up at 2-2 in the second as Takahiro Yamazaki singled ahead Takeshi Yamazaki. Takahiro was out on a fielder's choice by the aforementioned Shiokawa, but then a Tsuchiya Teppei double scored both baserunners. Teppei himself was thrown out at the plate for the third out while trying to score from second on Akihisa Makida's single after that.
Naruse just probably got tired by the 6th, around 100 pitches, as he gave up that home run to Takeshi Yamazaki, and then got out the next batter, but walked Takahiro Yamazaki. With two outs, Shiokawa hit a long fly ball to right, and Matt Watson got there, but the ball bounced out of his glove, and it was a funny little shuffle on the bases as Yamazaki and Shiokawa both ran as far as they could, one getting to second and one getting to third. Naruse was pulled and Takagi came in to pitch, but Teppei yet again singled them both in.
That made it 5-2, and in the 9th inning, with Satoru Komiyama on the mound (gah, why do I keep typing Kanemura instead of Komiyama when I talk about him?), Yousuke Takasu hit what I scored as a triple but they scored as a double and advancing on an error. Basically, he hit the ball into the left-center gap and both Benny and Otsuka took a weird route to it and it took a while to recover the ball. Then Jose Fernandez hit a legitimate double and scored Takasu. Yoshioka followed that up by hitting the ball such that Benny dropped it and Otsuka recovered it, but due to poor baserunning, nobody advanced, and then a popout and a strikeout later, the inning ended.
Hmm.
I guess other neat things were getting to see Val Pascucci pinch-hit a single, and also getting to see Justin Miller come in to pitch (I think it's hilarious that they make him wear long sleeves because of all his tattoos). And of course, seeing most of the Marines is always fun; I mean, for the most part this is still the team I was cheering for last year, and I still like a lot of the players.
I've got to get going for now. My next game should be another Marines one on Wednesday, and hopefully I'll get to actually check out the Marines museum thingy and some other stuff around the area this time. There's the chance I'll go to Meiji Jingu for a Swallows game tomorrow if I'm bored, but it's unlikely.
EDIT 1/7/2007> Pictures from this day are now up here!
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