WBC Game 2: Taiwan vs. Korea - Watch Out For Balls

If you've gone to baseball games in Japan, you might have noticed that any time a foul ball enters the stands during a game, tons of ushers blow whistles and an announcement comes over the speaker -- "ファウルボールにご注意下さい。" Which means, basically, "be careful of foul balls". For whatever reason, there's a history of fans getting hit by baseballs either during a game or during batting practice, and suing the team for damages, which is why most stadiums have those ridiculous fences up all over the place and these super-careful ushers. I just accept it as another part of the charm of going to Japanese baseball games.

But see, for international games, they feel it necessary to tell us this message in both Japanese AND English, just to make sure everyone knows the danger of being hit with foul balls. However, they have also traditionally translated it in a way that is rather amusing...


WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!

Ever since the Asia Series in 2007, this has actually been a running gag between me and Pau. When a pitcher is having control issues, we might even joke, "Watch out for balls!"

Which nicely leads me into talking about Game 2 of the WBC, which featured Korea's big lefty pitcher Hyunjin Ryu (and by big I literally mean big -- he's Okawari-kun sized at 98kg) from the Hanwha Eagles versus Taiwan's pitcher Chen-Chang Lee. Lee signed with the Cleveland Indians this past fall, but I don't know how much playing time he's gotten so far over in the US.

I was at this game with a few friends; Simon, who writes a fantastic Japanese hockey (and other sports) blog; Matt, who's just starting his own Japanese baseball blog, and Sakamoto, who is one of my friends from the Fighters cheering section who happened to have Friday off from work and nothing better to do than to watch the WBC. We sat on the Taiwan cheering side partially by dumb luck and partially on purpose -- we wanted Taiwan to win because we figure Japan would have an easier time beating them in the semi-finals.

As the lineups were announced, we were kind of like "Who?" for most of the players, although I certainly recognized a bunch of the Korean members from past Asia Series and other such events, as well as Shin-soo Choo, who I saw play many many times in Tacoma when he was in the Mariners minor league system. For the Taiwan side, they got up to "Batting 5th, the right fielder, Lin Wei-Tzu!" and we all cheered.

We'd gotten Taiwan flags from a cheering group around us, and our entire section was speaking Chinese and cheering for Taiwan, and when we cheered Lin, a lady turned around and asked in English, "You like Lin Wei-chu?"

"Yes, I'm a big Lin fan!" I said. This is true. Lin is probably my favorite Hanshin Tigers player that isn't Jeff Williams.

"You like Hanshin Tigers?" she asked.

"Well... no..." I had to admit.

"You cheer for Taiwan?"

"Yes!" we all said and waved our flags.

So we suddenly started chatting it up with all of the people around us, some of whom actually spoke pretty good English, some of whom spoke decent Japanese, and so on. That was pretty cool, but unfortunately the Taiwanese fans didn't bring their ouendan and instruments. The Korean fans, on the other side, had totally taken over the outfield stands on their side, had their cheer sticks and cheerleaders and everything. I guess this might be because there are probably more Koreans living in Japan, and especially ones who would come out for this series.


Crazy Korea fans.

So anyway, about watching out for balls...

The Taiwan team went down 1-2-3 in the top of the first inning, including the first double play of the night when Chih-Hsien Chiang lined a ball back to the pitcher and doubled Che-Hsuan Lin off first. Oops. But that was nothing compared to the devastation that was about to follow...

Chen-Chang Lee got up there and started throwing pitches. Or should I say, he started throwing balls -- he walked the first batter on 5 pitches.

Then he proceeded to hit Keun-woo Jeong in the back with the first pitch he threw to him.

Five pitches later, Hyun-soo Kim was also standing on first base. Bases loaded, and Tae-kyun Kim came up and hit a single to left field, which scored the first two runners. 2-0. In the first four batters, Lee threw 11 balls and 4 strikes. Seriously. WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!

Dae Ho Lee -- another huge batter -- walloped a gigantic pop fly to left, but at least it was caught. One out! Wow! But then... Shin-soo Choo came up to bat, and while it was a bigger struggle against him, it took 7 pitches for HIM to also end up walking to first, loading the bases yet again.

Jin Young Lee came up and got up to a 1-1 count before hitting one of the biggest home runs I've ever seen at the Tokyo Dome. It seriously sailed all the way to the back of the right-field bleachers, landing in the aisle next to the jersey for Nagashima's retired #3. It was measured as being 135 meters, which is about 443 feet, but this ball was hit so hard and so high that you knew it was gone before it had even sailed over the infield. 6-0.

You could definitely call that a different flavor of "Watch out for Balls", I suppose.

Anyway, Lee was off the mound, replaced by Kai-wen Cheng, and things kind of settled down after that.

On the other hand, when you're down 6-0 in the first inning, it's not exactly all that much fun to play or cheer for a game like that. We cheered anyway, though, especially for, of course, Lin Wei-Tzu, who went 0-for-3 and wasn't even the best defensive player out there; the Taiwanese centerfielder Che-Hsuan Lin had a CANNON for an arm and totally Ichiro'ed Kyung-Oan Park off of second at one point. It was great.

The rest of the game really was kind of just sailing along, as Korea eventually won 9-0. Taiwan managed to hit into a grand total of FIVE double plays, leading Garrett from the Tsubamegun Yakult blog to dub the game the "World Double Play Classic". Korea's Keun-woo Jeong also hit a home run in the 6th inning, which is funny because he's a little infielder dude -- he's about as tall and heavy as *I* am, which should tell you something.

I feel bad for Taiwan, though. They had two major issues coming into this tournament:
1) Two of their teams folded and many of their star players were banned from baseball following a series of gambling and fixing scandals during last year's season, and
2) Most of the remaining teams didn't want to let any of their players come to the WBC.

Thus, they're kind of playing at a fairly weakened state, which sucks for the honest players. As I write this, they've just gotten beaten by China, which has GOT to be embarrassing.

Anyway, the most exciting part of the evening was actually AFTER the game!

I mentioned that Garrett had dubbed it the WDPC, right? Well, Simon had been texting with him for the game, so afterwards we actually met up with Garrett and Christopher Pelligrini from the blog. Christopher turns out to not only be a crazy Yakult fan, but he's also an actor of sorts... and one of HIS friends, another actor, just happened to be the guy who was doing the English announcing for the WBC and the exhibition games earlier in the week!

The story here is that this guy's stage name is Ricky Roma, and he sang Take Me Out To the Ballgame for the games as well and has also announced other international games as well as when the MLB visited here. He also happens to be in a modelling competition and he wants you to vote for him. I normally wouldn't totally pimp out random people on my blog, but you have to understand:

1) He was totally willing to chat about things like being forced to say "Please watch out for foul balls" every time a foul ball is hit. Yes, I got to meet the actual guy who announces "WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!"
2) He also actually spent a while playing ball for Kin-chan's Ibaraki Golden Golds at one point! How cool is THAT? (He also answered one of my main questions about that team, namely whether people get paid, the answer being "mostly, no.")
3) He had tons of entertaining stories. And if you know me, I like good stories more than just about anything else except possibly age-sembei crackers.


Oh my god! It's that guy!

Right, so five of us (Garrett, Christopher, me, Simon, and Ricky Roma!) adjourned to a nearby izakaya -- Simon somehow has a sixth sense for always being able to find a nearby bar no matter where we were -- and ate monjayaki and drank beer and talked about baseball and acting and just tons of random crap. It was a really good time and it was really fantastic to finally meet the Tsubamegun guys as well as the WBC announcer.

So yeah -- lame game, but exciting night. Taiwanese people are really nice, though.

I'm off in a bit to hopefully go see Japan vs. Korea tonight -- talk about a charged-up game.

WBC Game 1: China vs. Japan - Otoko Murata Strikes Again!

Baseball season has officially started for me once again, and I hope with it the writer's block I've felt all winter goes away. I went to the first game of the WBC last night with my friend Pau and his friend Alfredo. I brought a brand-new fresh scorecard book with me and kept score, and that's what really signifies the start of a new season, I think.

Pau is from Spain (and a Hanshin fan) and Alfredo is from Panama (and a nominal Gomiuri fan, apparently) and I'm from America (and a total die-hard Nippon Ham Fighters fan, but you probably knew that already). Which is, of course, why the guys showed up with Japan and China flags. We took some photos outside the Tokyo Dome, and a random Chinese guy even came up and wanted a photo with the guys and the China flag.


Now who do you think we're rooting for?

We walked around the Tokyo Dome towards gate 41, and while we were trying to peek into the goods tents, a lady walked up to us like "Hi, where are you guys from? Are you here for the WBC?"

We all look at each other like "Umm... we live here..."

Anyway, it turns out she was from CBS (I think) and was looking for fans who spoke English to get some quotes from, so she interviewed us. I was first, and our conversation went something like:

"What's your name and where are you from?"
"I'm Deanna Rubin, from the United States."
"...what part of the US?"
"[pauses] Uhh... most recently Seattle."
"Oh, so you must see a lot of Ichiro."
"Well, I used to have Mariners season tickets a couple of years ago, yeah..."
"Who do you think will win tonight?"
"Oh, Japan. No doubt."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because we've seen China in international competition several times now, and they just aren't that good. Plus, see the t-shirt I'm wearing? I'm cheering for this guy Darvish. He's really great."
"Oh, of course I've heard of Darvish, he's a great young pitcher. Do you think we'll be seeing him in the majors soon?"
"I certainly HOPE NOT."
"... .. .. ... What?"
"I'm a huge Fighters fan, you better not steal him from us!!"
"...?"
"Plus he always says he's not interested in going."
"Um, okay..."

...and then she turned to Alfredo to interview him. I thought it was funny because Pau's from Spain and Alfredo's from Panama, I don't think she expected that. Either way, she got our names, so if CBS quotes some random chick in Japan as saying "DON'T STEAL OUR DARVISH YOU FASCIST PIGS", that actually was me and I'm not being misquoted.


"Point spread? I'm going with 10 to 2..."

We went in and had a really difficult time finding seats. Even at a bit past 5pm for a 6:30 game, I swear the upper deck was practically full! It was unreserved seating, so... yeah. Eventually we found three seats, up behind first base, about 4 rows from the top of the freaking Tokyo Dome. Sheesh. At least we weren't sitting under the Giants sign.


"You guys are going to get us in trouble with that flag, aren't you..."

We spent an hour and a half basically waiting for the game to start. I went and investigated possible goods and whatnot, but all you could actually get inside the dome was WBC Tokyo Round programs (I bought one for 1500 yen so I'd at least know who the players were), plus cigarette lighters, and some T-shirts that had tiny letters/numbers for select players like Ichiro and Matsuzaka, and cost around 3300 yen. No thanks. I also got my traditional overpriced Tokyo Dome bento box for dinner, which was at least somewhat reassuring in a weird way.

Eventually the opening ceremonies started, and they were... interesting, to say the least. They had people dancing on the field with all 16 flags of the countries in the WBC, plus a weird tower with an inflatable baseball, and the colors of the WBC below it.


I have no clue what the heck the dancing tower under a baseball within the flags is supposed to signify, but whatever.

Eventually they introduced both teams, there were lineups, and the US Army Band played the national anthems of both teams. And to add a nice touch, Sadaharu Oh threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Munenori Kawasaki, who played for him on the Hawks for several years, caught it. Oh might be 68 years old, but to his credit, he can still throw just fine from the mound to the plate.

Something we discovered is that apparently McDonald's has a promotion where you buy a certain value meal and you get these folders with WBC cheering things on them -- a LOT of people had those. There were also plenty of homemade banners, as well as a ton of people wearing either Team Japan jerseys, or a remarkably high number of Fighters Darvish jerseys (I was wearing a specific Darvish t-shirt that I bought at the Sapporo Dome).

I'm not sure there's any point in me saying much about what happened during the game itself. You can see box scores of it on mlb.com, but essentially Japan won 4-0, which is a SUPER low margin to be beating the perennial doormat China team. We joked that it was because Terry Collins -- formerly the Orix Buffaloes manager -- was managing China and obviously had the entire scouting report on Japan -- but REALLY, I'm a bit disappointed in Japan, having expected them to totally slam the Chinese team down.

I mean, it's true the Chinese team only managed like six or seven guys on base all night, but... the only real Japanese offense happened in the 3rd inning, and most of it was due to Chinese team gaffs. Hiroyuki Nakajima walked, "stole" second or something on a dropped pitch, and Aoki then hit a single to center, only the ball went through the centerfielder's legs and so Nakajima scored to make the game 1-0, with Aoki making it all the way to third by the time anyone recovered the ball out there. Inaba managed to ground into a fielder's choice so Aoki was out at the plate, and then Shuichi Murata -- THE MAN -- came up and swung away as he had been all night, and BLAM he deposited a home run 105 meters into the left-field bleachers, making it 3-0.

The only other run of the game happened in the 6th inning, when Sun Guoqiang faked a pickoff throw at Ichiro and was called on a balk; Kosuke Fukudome was at third at the time and scored on the play.

Kenji Johjima, bless his heart, managed to ground into double plays or almost always ground into double plays every chance he got. It was really nostalgic. And flashbulbs went off every time Ichiro tugged his sleeve.

There were cheering groups in the outfield and they played cheer songs for every player regardless of what team they were on, and that included old cheers for Fukudome, Johjima, Iwamura, even Ichiro. They even did the Inaba Jump! That was great.

Unfortunately, some idiot also started The Wave before the 7th inning and it went around the stadium twice or so as well. I really don't think I've seen the Wave in Japan, though Pau tells me he has, so who knows. Maybe it's just not a Pacific League thing.

Oh, and as if it wasn't bad enough that we were in the Tokyo Dome being managed by the Giants manager, with a host of Giants players on the team, guess what they did for Japan's "Lucky 7" break?


I guess they just replaced the Giants banner for a few days or something.

Kyuji Fujikawa closed out the 9th, and Pau got out his Fujikawa jersey and we both sang Lindberg's "Every Little Thing Every Precious Thing" as Kyuji took the mound... and he seemed to be totally unable to throw a strike for a while, but eventually he got his act together and the game finished. Hara gave a manager's speech, and then the game hero was... Darvish??



I know I'm biased, and should totally be in favor of a Fighters player getting it and all, but I thought the true game hero was Murata. Not only did he hit that monster home run, but his fielding was AMAZING, he snagged two line drives out of nowhere and just played really well out there. Darvish did pitch 4 no-hit innings, but to be fair, the Chinese team didn't score against any of the other pitchers either, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'm off to go see tonight's Korea-Taiwan game. Not sure how much I'll end up writing about it, we'll see. I also went to the Fighters-Marines game at Lotte Urawa yesterday afternoon before the WBC, so I'll try to put up some pictures of the new guys I saw. Very exciting.

CD Review - Sounds of the Tokyo Big 6 League

I was looking through the sports CDs at Book-Off a few weeks ago and came across this amazing one...

TOKYO BIG6 ~Sounds of 神宮球場 東京六大学野球編~
(Tokyo Big 6 ~Sounds of Jingu Stadium Tokyo Big Six Baseball League~ link to amazon.co.jp in Japanese)

Basically, this is a CD of the marching band music from the colleges in the Tokyo Big 6 League. The league is kind of like the Japanese equivalent of the Ivy League; they play baseball at Meiji Jingu Stadium, which is now home of the Yakult Swallows, but college ball predates it there by almost 40 years.

Despite the competitive level probably being lower than several other college leagues, even ones around the Tokyo area, Big 6 is by far the most popular of the college leagues, actually managing to sell out Jingu and its 37000 seats from time to time, especially when Waseda and Keio play against each other in their biannual Soukeisen series. Most of the schools in the league are known for being excellent academically and being very difficult to get into, with the University of Tokyo being THE number-one college in the country, insofar as having an impossible entrance exam and a stellar reputation for all of its students being really smart. (How much schoolwork they actually do during their college years after passing said entrance exam is another story, but these kids definitely have brains, money, or in most cases, both. The school also has a historically abysmally terrible baseball team, which has never won a league championship in the past century, and these days are lucky when they win two games in one season.)

Many current and former stars played their college days in the Big 6 league, from Hosei's Atsunori Inaba to Waseda's Norichika Aoki to Meiji's Kenshin Kawakami. Satoru Komiyama made his start at Waseda, and legend says he even passed the real entrance exam.

There are 13 tracks on the CD. The first track is a medley of the fight songs from all six colleges -- Waseda, Meiji, Keio, Hosei, Rikkio, and Tokyo, in that order. Then the next 12 tracks are partitioned out, 2 tracks to each university, with each having a minute-long version of their fight song, and then a medley of their cheer songs:

2-3. Keio
4-5. Tokyo
6-7. Hosei
8-9. Meiji
10-11. Rikkio
12-13. Waseda

The cheer songs aren't per player, but just the songs that the particular school often plays. Some are of course to well-known tunes like Popeye the Sailor Man or Tetsuwan Atomu (aka Astro Boy), and others are songs that I actually don't know the exact names or origins of, but have heard a bazillion times either with these marching bands or at the Industrial League games, and so on.

The entire CD is instrumental, so while the fight songs do have lyrics printed in the case, there's nobody singing them here.

This CD is totally perfect for someone who either attended a Big 6 school and several sporting events, or for someone who's gone to a ton of Big 6 games and loves the cheer music and has tried to record it with their digital camera and randomly starts humming Konpeki no Sora and so on -- i.e., me. I don't know if it'd make sense for someone to just buy for the heck of it, unless you really like marching band music and want to hear what some of the common sports band melodies are in Japan.

Now I've just got to figure out if there's a "best of the industrial league marching bands" CD out there -- because those bands are phenomenal. Seriously. It's almost worth going to the tournaments just to listen to the bands.

WBC Tickets @ Tokyo Dome

I went down to the Tokyo Dome today and as it is, there are still tickets available for a few of the WBC games. You can walk right up to the ticket window and buy them there, every day from 10am to 5pm.

March 5 18:30, Game 1: China vs. Japan: Sold out
March 6 18:30, Game 2: Korea vs. Taiwan: Tickets available
March 7 12:30, Game 3: Losers: Sold Out
March 7 19:00, Game 4: Winners: Sold Out
March 8 18:30, Game 5: Game 3 winner vs. Game 4 loser: Tickets available
March 9 18:30, Game 6: Game 4 winner vs. Game 5 winner: SOME tickets available on the 3rd base side

I was told that if Japan IS in Game 5, they will be on the first base side.

Games 3 and 4 were actually sold together, so basically, even though it's unlikely many people will go to game 3, the game is sold out. Bummer.

Price scale:
Games 1/2:
S - 10000 yen / A - 7000 yen / B - 5000 yen / OF - 3500 yen / 2F unres - 2000 yen, 1000 for children

Games 3/4/5/6:
S - 16000 yen / A - 12000 yen / B - 6500 yen / C - 4500 yen / OF - 5000 yen
(no unreserved -- B and C are the second floor)

You can also see prices and seat charts here, though it's in Japanese.

I'm really interested to see how Japan and Korea fare against each other this year. After the Olympics and the last WBC, there's got to be some pretty high friction between those teams going on.

On another note, if you want a Chunichi Dragons 2009 team calendar, you can get one at the Tokyo Dome store for 1230 yen. If you want a Doala 2009 calendar, you can get one for 1575 yen. In other words, the Chunichi Dragons are, infact, less marketable than their mascot.

My Family is the Phillies Anti-Curse

In 1980, the Phillies won their first World Series. My grandfather died of cancer three weeks before they achieved it.

In 2008, the Phillies won their second World Series. My father just died of cancer this weekend, about three months after they achieved it.

Much as I hate to say it, if this is what the Phillies winning the World Series does to my family, I hope they never do it again.


I'm heading back to Philly this weekend for the funeral. At this rate, I'm going to have enough frequent flyer miles to go to Jupiter soon.

Mariners Fan Fest 2009

Hey, I'm still alive, I've even been doing some baseball stuff over the last month or two and taking photos of things, it's just that I'm also... busy with more important things while back in the US. Last time I managed to get a blog entry in, I was still in Philadelphia spending time with my father for what might be the last time ever, and after that I managed to end up in NYC, Pittsburgh, and Chicago for a few days at a time until finding my way back here to Seattle; on Feb 3rd I'll be heading back to Japan. In the meantime, I'm trying to see a bazillion people and take care of a bazillion things, so baseblogging hasn't really been a priority.

However, today I went to Mariners Fan Fest, and took some photos, so I figured I'd put a few up here for fun. They're at the end of the post. I really don't entirely know who's on the team anymore, and I've already been to enough Fan Fests that I've done most of the activities around the stadium already, so I pretty much had four goals for today:

1) See someone I knew from the blogosphere
2) Listen to new GM Jack Zduriencik talk
3) Get Aaron Heilman's autograph
4) Get my photo with the Mariner Moose

And I managed to accomplish all four.

Goals 1 and 2 were achieved at the same time -- I woke up fairly late and didn't manage to get to Safeco until 12:30pm, which was just in time for Zduriencik's dugout panel. I made my way down to the dugout, and immediately spotted PositivePaul and his brother-in-law (and their cameras) there, so that was goal #1. And when I arrived, Rick Rizzs was interviewing Zduriencik, so that was goal #2.

As for GM-Z, or Z-man, or whatever -- Paul even asked him, "We have trouble spelling your name in the blogosphere, do you have a nickname?" -- he was very entertaining and candid with the crowd. He told some funny stories about how guys like Scott Boras will sell you old players or young players and go on about how great their age is, and also about player evaluation. It was also great to hear him say outright, "We work for you guys -- the fans are the ones paying our salaries, if you don't like the product on the field, then we're not doing our jobs." But at the same time he said that he's still sticking it to the players to get out there and get it done; all the front office can do is provide the talent to hopefully make it work.

After the Z-man was Lee Tinsley. I kind of wandered off after about 10 minutes of him, since the questions were getting kind of boring ("What do you do as a first base coach?" "How do you tell guys to steal second?" "Was Edgar the greatest player ever?").

Got some food, wandered around a bit, and came back in time for the panel with Gutierrez and Heilman, which was bookended by Dave Sims and Mike Blowers. It was overall pretty entertaining, although I'm not sure I learned much aside from that Heilman has a subtle sense of humor. Gutierrez got asked a lot of questions about being an outfielder and how he feels about the Mariners outfield ("it's great! I'll be between Ichiro and Endy Chavez, how cool is that?") and mentioned that Andres Galarraga was his baseball hero, and so on. Heilman said that he's a huge rock fan and loves Pearl Jam and so hopes that he'll fit in well with Seattle. Someone also had to ask him, "You look like such a nice boy-next-door type of guy. How can you make yourself be menacing on the mound?"

After that, since despite being super-late I'd managed to get autograph session vouchers when I came in, I wandered up to the Suite Level and waited in line for about 15 minutes for Heilman's autograph. I hadn't brought anything to get signed, but they actually provided photo cards, so that was pretty cool! I thought I'd end up being the super-lame person bugging him to sign my ticket. So, that was good. It was about 2:56 at that point, so I ran back around the stadium to the Terrace Club and also managed to get through the line for Gutierrez's signature, and they also had photo cards there. Cool.

I did wish both guys good luck and welcome to Seattle. Back when I was still living in the US and playing fantasy baseball, I often had Heilman on my rosters. He had the right combination of talent and a killer smile that fit into several of my teams, you see.

So, while waiting in line to achieve Goal #3, I asked one of the staff members where I could find the Mariner Moose, and it just so happened this lady was like the Moose Boss or something, so she radioed a few people and told me to head down to Section 103 when I got out of the autograph session and I could surely get my photo with the Moose. I did, and it wasn't a joke, the Moose had come back to the Moose Den. I felt kind of lame waiting in line along with families with kids and all (by this point I was going around alone), but I seriously had never gotten a photo with the Moose in all the years I lived here, so it seemed like something I really needed to do.

Having achieved all of my goals, and having no desire to sit around in the Last Fan Standing trivia room getting frustrated that I never get called up to the stage and yet always know more crap than the people up there, I headed to the Mariners Team Store and then home.

I think I'm glad I went, though I really wish they'd had Jeff Clement there, dammit.

Here are a few of the photos I took:



Announcer Rick Rizzs shares a laugh with general manager Jack Zduriencik. Or maybe they're sharing some Z's.


Lee Tinsley... I think he was reacting to a question like "Would you tell Ken Griffey Jr. to steal if you were coaching him?"


Dave Sims.




Franklin Gutierrez.


Aaron Heilman had his sunglasses on for most of the panel.


Then he woke up.


Mike Blowers was standing off to the side making weird faces for most of it, I swear.


Fanfest view from centerfield. You can see the onfield activities and the colored tags in the seats for people interested in season tickets.


Me and the Moose, in the Moose Den. Yay.


These were the photo cards I got autographed. Mostly because I want to make Metsgrrl jealous.


I will tell you one thing, after thinking about it today quite a bit: I don't hate the Putz trade anywhere near as much as I despise the Bedard trade. Sorry, but it still hasn't really sunk in with me that George Sherrill is really gone. Sigh.

Apology to Jason Botts and other Fighters stuff

Nikkan Sports reported today that the Fighters ouendan have been officially asked not to sing the Jason Botts 'Ponyo' song, even using the "hits a big big homerun" ending.

Despite that I'm probably just being paranoid, I feel like I may be partially responsible for this, since I happened to be at the game where they invented it, and I blogged about it and put videos on Youtube of the song explaining the lyrics in English. I felt pretty bad about it, but at the same time, it was just such surreal, silly, unexpected behaviour from the fan group -- like Phillies fans booing Mike Schmidt when I was a kid.

At the time, Botts was batting .120 and was swinging big and not hitting big. The fans were frustrated, and I'm sure Jason was frustrated too.

However, that was the low point, and around then was when Botts started really adjusting to Japan, it seemed. A few days later, after being benched for the week, Botts made a start in Osaka on August 15, and for the remaining month and a half of the season he put up a BIG BIG line of .379/.467/.632, with 4 homers and 8 doubles; I got to see when he and Ryan Glynn were the game heroes at the Fighters' "home game" in the Tokyo Dome on August 19, even.

In the postseason he continued to hit well, if streaky, going .400/.470/.866 in 5 games, including a shot in the Osaka Dome that never actually landed, but hit the right-field stands while still rising.

So in that sense, you could say that the Ponyo ouenka actually sparked his ascent!

I guess the problem is that too many people saw the batting average in the low 200's and didn't realize how much he'd really been bashing in the last couple of weeks. I was certainly one of those people guilty of it as well.

So, if Jason wants to put the Ponyo theme, and the first month of his career in Japan behind him, and continue beating the tar out of the ball next year, I will be more than happy to not only never ever sing the Ponyo song again, but to yell at anyone in the stands who does. And if I caused any problems in this entire thing, I'm sorry. I tend to write about everything I see, whether it's good, bad, funny, or all of the above. GO FIGHTERS!

---

I suppose this might be a good time to mention that Ryan Glynn signed with the Baystars, which is a good move on both parts; I think he can improve Yokohama and I think having some big bats like the Mura Monsters supporting him will help him, as long as he can keep the ball in the park. I wish he'd be able to stay with the Fighters, of course, but they're always looking at things like OMG 14 LOSSES instead of OMG 17 QUALITY STARTS (thanks to Michael Westbay).

The foreign players on the Fighters roster for next year will be Brian Sweeney, Ryan Wing, Jason Botts, and Terrmel Sledge (signed a 2-year contract last year). I don't think they have any plans to add anyone else, though who knows. The team did hire Al Hargesheimer to be a foreign scout, which indicates they expect to want to add another foreign player mid-season like they have the last few years. We'll see.

In the wake of The Nioka Trade, it does appear that Hisashi Takeda is poised to become the World's Smallest Closer (he's seriously the same height/weight as me) in the wake of Micheal Nakamura leaving (which, by the way, still sucks). Hisashi actually successfully used an agent to get a higher salary, which is fairly uncommon in Japan.

All of the Fighters draftees actually signed this year, finishing with Shota Ono, after he got back from some big tournament in Taiwan (which is why he had to miss the original New Face party). If you are in the Kanto area and want to see the new kids, they'll be working out at Fighters Stadium Kamagaya most days in January, and there's actually a meet the new guys welcome ceremony on January 18th. I'd go if I was in Japan, but I'm not going to be back in the country until Feb 4th. Have no fear, Kamagaya Ojisan will certainly have photos up of the new kids (he already has some of 3rd-round pick Toshiyuki Yanuki warming up; I already foresee Ono and Yanuki being my Kamagaya stalkees next year, so that's cool with me)

Awesome.

So anyway, I'm looking forward to blogging the Fighters again this year, and I'm especially looking forward to seeing how our lineup shakes down. I'm kind of seeing it as:

CF Hichori
2B Kensuke
RF Inaba
DH Botts (Which was the whole point of this post! :)
3B Nioka
1B Takahashi/Sledge
LF Sledge/Koyano
C Imanari/Tsuruoka
SS Kaneko

but there are a lot of things that could change that, especially what happens with Sho Nakata, OR with Shota Ono, OR with Tsuruoka. Plus I keep thinking Suguru Ichikawa can't go on bashing the heck out of the Eastern League forever.

Either way, things look bright!

...we're gonna finish fifth.

I say that every year, and we keep making it to the playoffs, so why stop?

The Asahi Shinbun Nails It

You rarely see me do a post here that is just a link to an article elsewhere, but this one had to be done:

From Your Friendly Neighborhood Sports Desk: 2009 as we'd like to see it

Seriously, this article completely and totally nails the silliness of the Japanese sports scene and media. Go read it. A few highlights:

"A much-heralded Japanese high school baseball phenom effectively states, "It's been a dream of mine to play for the Rakuten Eagles--I really hope the Yomiuri Giants don't draft me."

The next sports phenom in Japan does not get hung with the "Prince" moniker. We've had the "Handkerchief Prince" (pitcher Yuki Saito) and the "Shy Prince" (golfer Ryo Ishikawa). Time to come up with a new silly obsession.

Speaking of Buffed sluggers, we'd like to see the recently retired Kazuhiro Kiyohara stay retired. Athletes these days seem to be a little confused on the whole concept of retirement, with the likes of NFL quarterback Brett Favre announcing they are quitting, only to "un-retire" when overcome by the urge to strap on the pads again. Anyway, we think Kiyohara is well past his sell-by date and should have retired four or five years ago--those that read the daily box scores probably think he did.

I have to say, as an aside, that I've been really delighted with the way the English newspapers in Japan covered Japanese baseball this past year. The writers are a really nice group of guys, too.