Tokyo Big 6 Opening Weekend, Day 2: Photopost

Game 1: Waseda vs. Hosei

After losing the home opener, and after getting lit up in his hometown of Ehime at the Matsuyama All-Star Game, Yuya Fukui manages to throw a complete-game win against Hosei, striking out 11.



I thought it was rather appropriate as both starters were wearing #11 that he got 11 strikeouts. It would only have been better had the game been on the 11th instead of the 12th, but what can you do.


Waseda starter Yuya Fukui.


Hosei starter Tomoya Mikami.

This game started off kind of slow; it was hot and both starters seemed to be taking their time out there. Both teams scattered a few runners in the first two innings, and in the 3rd inning, Waseda pushed ahead a run. Yuya Watanabe walked to lead off, and Daisuke Ichimaru bunted, with the force throw to second failing and both runners being safe. Hiroki Matsunaga grounded into a double play, moving Watanabe to 3rd, and Shohei Habu's single to center brought him in. 1-0.

They added another run in the 4th inning, Toshiki Yamada leading off with a single to short. Keisuke Kawanishi bunted him up, and two batters later Yuya Watanabe came through with a single to left to bring Yamada home, 2-0.

Tomoya Mikami came out of the game and was replaced by Ryoto Yoshikoshi, a 3rd-year lefty pitcher making his second-ever appearance at Jingu. Yoshikoshi got out of the 4th inning but then hit Matsunaga to start off the next inning, and was the victim of another failed attempt to get the leader on a bunt, so he came out in the next inning and freshman Kazuki Funamoto came in to get a 4-3-2 double play out of Yamada to end the inning.

Hosei finally added a run of their own in the bottom of the 5th when Kento Tatebe singled to lead off, moved up on a bunt and moved up on a wild pitch to captain Ohyagi. Kyosuke Narita came in to pinch-hit in the 9-spot and singled to right to bring Tatebe home and make it a closer game, 2-1.

Kazuki Mishima took the mound for Hosei after that. Mishima was the Big 6 ERA title winner last semester; he's a little guy (5'9") who throws a big fastball (95mph or so). His control is only so-so though, and so he ended up walking Ichimaru, and then Shohei Habu hit a 2-run homer to left to make it 4-1. Bizarrely, that means that Mishima gave up more earned runs in this game (2) than he did all last semester (1).

Fumiya Kitayama and Shoya Yamamoto pitched the last two innings for Hosei, and Yuya Fukui finished out his complete game on 152 pitches, and that brought the series to an equal 1 game each Waseda won 4-1.

The ouendan implored everybody to please take off work or skip classes on Monday and come to Jingu and cheer for the third game of the series. I, naturally, did not take off work, but I did follow the game between classes and whatnot. Kagami and Saitoh had a rematch. Once more, Saitoh only went 5 innings, but this time Kagami was knocked out after 4. Tatsuya Ohishi also gave up his first earned runs of the year. While Waseda took a lead early and Hosei slowly clawed their way in, they never QUITE caught up, and so Waseda won the third game 6-5 and took the Series Point. Bleh.

Anyway, here are a bunch of photos from Sunday's Hosei-Waseda game:






Some more Tomoya Mikami. Dear god he's tall.


Ayuki "Keijiro's little brother" Matsumoto trying to bunt.


Hosei second baseman Masashi Nanba.


Hosei catcher Shohei Doi.


One of the Hosei ouendan leaders, Takahashi. I met him in Matsuyama.




Ryoto Yoshikoshi.


Kyosuke Narita bats in the only Hosei run.


And the reaction back in the dugout.




Kazuki Mishima.


High-fives at the Waseda side after Habu's homerun.




Sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama.


4th-year lefty Shoya Yamamoto.


Hiroshi Taki playing first base for a change (he usually plays shortstop).

Game 2: Keio vs. Todai

Keio beat Todai 4-0 in the second game with Fukutani pitching a complete-game shutout. However, this game was closer than the normal Todai bloodlettings are, mostly due to reasonably strong pitching from Todai freshmen Shota Suzuki and Shunsuke Kimura.



It was really hot out this weekend and I'd picked up a pretty nasty sunburn during Saturday's games, so I was hiding in the concourse between the two games on Sunday, putting on more sunscreen and deodorant, buying the Big 6 baseball card set, getting another Coke, and basically avoiding the sun for the 20 minutes or so. As a result I had no clue who would be starting the game until I came out and saw the lineup.

Yes, somehow I managed to be sitting on the 1st-base side for 4 righty starters. Go figure. Keio's starter was the ever-solid sophomore Koji Fukutani, and Tokyo's starter was a freshman making his first ever appearance at Jingu named Shota Suzuki. Suzuki is majoring in Spanish, bizarrely, and says that his dream is to go back to his high school, Jishukan, and be the baseball club manager and take them to Koshien. (For the record, Jishukan hasn't gone to Koshien since 1953, and that was Senbatsu anyway, and being in Aichi they would have to go through a ton of powerhouses to get there.)


Keio starter Koji Fukutani.


Todai starter Shota Suzuki.

I am, of course, partial to Todai starters named Suzuki, after my former favorite player on the team, a tall lefty guy named Yuichi Suzuki who was a really good pitcher until he blew his arm out pretty much throwing EVERY day.

This Suzuki did not start off particularly well; he walked the Keio leadoff man Hitoshi Fuchigami, and then captain Tatsushi Yumoto singled to right. A fielder's choice by Hayata Itoh two batters later put runners at the corners with two outs; Itoh stole scond and Takao walked to load the bases for Takayuki Matsuo, who hit a bases-clearing triple to right to make it 3-0. To be fair, that "triple" would have been a single or maybe even an out with a competent right fielder, and Aoyama hit a pop fly out to end the inning.

Bizarrely, that was all Keio scored for quite a while, as Suzuki settled down. They had two runners on base in both of the 2nd and 3rd innings but didn't bring them in, and then the bottoms of the 4th and 5th innings were both 1-2-3, with Shuhei Iwasaki making some fine plays at shortstop.

In the 6th inning, Keio brought in another run on an RBI double by Masahiro Nagasaki to make it 4-0. Nagasaki was thrown out at home two batters later on a somewhat ridiculous play where first baseman Yohei Tachi booted a grounder and it went off him into right field. Understandably, Nagasaki took off from second base and was running on the play, and you can't blame anyone for running home on the Todai arms, but for once Hiromasa Horiguchi managed to actually fire the ball home in time to get Nagasaki at the plate and end the inning.

What was funny about this is that one inning later, Keio found themselves victims yet again of an unexpectedly good play by a Todai outfielder; with runners at first and second and one out, Yasuhiro Takao hit a pop fly to left, and Hisanari Takayama not only caught the ball but managed to throw it to second in time to double off the runner coming back, who had clearly not even expected a Todai fielder to be able to catch a fly ball in the first place.

So sidearming Shunsuke Kimura not only prevented two inherited runners from scoring in the 7th, but also pitched a scoreless 8th.

Of course, this is all somewhat irrelevant as you might notice I haven't mentioned the Todai offense at all. The reason for this is that there was none; they had exactly two baserunners the entire game, both on singles, and Horiguchi even got himself picked off first, so Keio's pitcher Fukutani faced only 28 batters total, one over the minimum, throwing his complete game on 103 pitches. The game lasted just under two hours.

Still, I have to wonder if maybe this semester we'll actually see Todai win a game? It's been two years, surely they must be due for one again sometime.

More photos from Game 2:






Some more of freshman Shota Suzuki.


Koji Fukutani, a little closer up.


Fukutani at bat, for a change. Although he didn't get a hit in this game, he actually looks like a pretty reasonable batter at the plate -- and he even hit a home run last semester off Rikkio's Okabe.


Takayuki Matsuo batting in the first few Keio runs.


Keio ouendan 2nd-in-command Kitada. I met him in Matsuyama too. But he didn't have this weirdo hairstyle then.


Masahiro Nagasaki reacting to striking out. (He wasn't happy about it!)




Nagasaki getting thrown out at the plate in the 6th inning.






Todai freshman pitcher Shunsuke Kimura.

Day 2: The after-game antics...

I went outside Jingu with two of my friends to wait for the players to come out. My friend Kobayashi wanted to get her Big 6 box set baseball cards signed, though I decided I would rather get photos of mine signed since they're bigger (and quite frankly, the photography isn't so great in this semester's card set, IMO). I was really shy about bugging the Keio guys at first so eventually Kobayashi was like "Let's go over there. I'm going to kick you into asking Fuchi for his signature." So we did. In the end I managed to get signatures from Hitoshi Fuchigami, Hayata Itoh, Kazuma Takeuchi, Daisuke Takeuchi, Masahiro Nagasaki, and Koji Fukutani, and got photos with a few players too. I'm actually astounded that I managed to get a signature and photo with Itoh. I love Itoh, he's an amazing ballplayer, easily the best pure hitter in the Big 6 league right now and also a solid outfielder as well with great range and a great arm. I'm kind of afraid of him because I don't think he seems like a particularly nice guy, but I think he's just really, really good at baseball and love watching him play.

I did not, however, get photos with Nagasaki or Daisuke, which is a little sad, maybe I will try to get the courage to bug them some other time. Daisuke is one of my favorite players these days even if I think he thinks I'm stalking him. I gave Nagasaki a photo of him that I took at Botchan Stadium, but couldn't tell if he liked it or not.

Oh, a funny thing, too. When I went to ask Koji Fukutani for his autograph, it went sort of like this, him first being surprised that I even knew who the hell he was, I think:

Me: Umm, Fukutani-kun...
Him: Err, yes?
Me: Would you sign something for me, please? (I'm not sure how to properly translate the polite way of asking for an autograph, which is really more like "Would it be okay for me to receive your signing this?")
Him: Whaaa? Me? Really?
Me: Yes, you.
Him: Are you sure you want MY signature?
Me: Please! You pitched a good game today.
Him: Thanks. [signs the photo]

You have to understand something about Fukutani. He is a freaking GOOD pitcher. The kid is like 6' tall, can hit 94-95mph on the Jingu gun, is a sophomore... he pitched a great game in the All-Japan tournament this summer and in Soukeisen last semester as well. I don't talk about him nearly enough, but that is not because he doesn't rock, trust me.

Well, maybe he will get an ego by the time he's a senior :) Daisuke's also a sophomore and already has a bit of an ego, but he's allowed.


With two of the tallest guys on the Keio team, Hitoshi Fuchigami and Kazumasa Matsumoto.


Keio's Hayata Itoh, aka Mister Clutchy McClutchitude. His arms are HUGE.


Tokyo University 3rd-year infielder Shuhei Iwasaki, who was hanging out with the Keio guys. He's probably one of the better players on their team, I'm betting he'll be the team captain next year; I remember seeing him play in the rookie tournament as a freshman.


This guy is Yoshihiro Maeda. He's the Tokyo University team captain and theoretical ace pitcher, by which I mean he's kind of okay at pitching but he wouldn't be starting games if he went to any OTHER university in Big 6. I think we're about the same height.


Now THIS older guy is Shozo Etoh. He's the Keio manager. And unlike the other current Big 6 managers, he actually played in the NPB for several years, for both the Yomiuri Giants and the Chunichi Dragons, before being a coach various places. He just came to Keio to manage this year and they won the spring championship, so I wasn't sure what to expect from him -- like would he be a "I am this great former big leaguer and championship manager" type, or what? But when I asked him for a photo together he basically said something to the effect of "Certainly, if you're willing to be seen in a photo with a crazy old man like me!" So the consensus was that he also seems like a nice guy.

(Honestly, I should probably find out sometime why Hosei's manager Koji Kanemitsu turned down Kintetsu when they drafted him out of college in the 1st round, besides just "they're not the Carp"...)

And one last story from Jingu...

On the train in the morning on my way there, I saw this guy on the same train as me and I could have SWORN he was Kitada, the Keio ouendan leader that I met in Matsuyama. But he had this CRAZY-ass hairstyle, like shaved on the side and wavy/permed on top, which he didn't have there. So I was like "hmm... maybe that's not him..."

Well, after Etoh-kantoku left, the Keio ouendan dude walked by us, and one of my friends says "otsukaresama!" to him, since she was in the Keio ouenseki. And he stops and chats with us a bit. My friends were joking about how funny his hair looked, like "WTF ouendan style is this, you can't dump water on your head and keep THAT style..." and he started going on about something like how he did his hair different ways for different ouendan occasions, like spiked hair during the All-Japan tournament.

And I'm like "Okay, dude... you WERE in Matsuyama, right? And we got a photo together in front of the castle?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Were you on the same train as me this morning?"

"I was. I noticed you too but didn't say anything. Then I saw you in the stands during the game today."

"So it WAS you! But your hair was different and I was tired so I thought 'nah... that can't be the same guy...'"

"It's me. Will you come cheer with us in two weeks?"

"Uhh... sure!"

Well, at least it's nice to be remembered.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend at Jingu. I'll probably only be going to one day next weekend, but this semester is looking to be interesing, to be sure.

Hatakeyama haunts me

I went to Jingu last night for a pro game, for a change; it was the Yomiuri Giants playing against the Yakult Swallows, which is a matchup I go to fairly often, mostly for the sake of singing "kutabare Yomiuri" during the umbrella dance. I sat with Kozo and Mac at the top of section D where the Tsubamegun guys usually sit. Watkins wasn't there but he already summarized the game.

I'm just going to add that, see, Kazuhiro Hatakeyama is probably one of my least favorite players on the team. I can't really explain exactly why, other than that he's big and kind of slow and that he pretty much sucks it up every time I see him play in person. It might just be that everyone kind of needs to have a favorite player and least favorite player in a lineup at any given time, and now that I have Iihara as my new favorite, Hatake is getting the short straw.

What's funny, though, is that after slamming Hatake the entire game, around the 7th or 8th inning I stopped by a pinbadge machine and guess which player I got? Hatakeyama, of course. I came back to the seats and foisted it off on Mac, who immediately attached it to his hat... and in the 9th inning Hatakeyama managed to ground out but push ahead one run. Which wasn't enough, and the Swallows lost 3-2.

After the game, walking to the train station with Kozo, I ran into my friend Jim Allen, who writes for the Daily Yomiuri, and he said his deadline was actually at 7pm, before the game, so I'm like "What did you write about?"

"Oh," he says, "I wrote an article about Kazuhiro Hatakeyama."

Kozo, fortunately, doesn't chime in about how much I hate Hatakeyama as I politely ask what the article's about. Seems that Hatake is no longer afraid of striking out and can get more meaningful swings when he's got two strikes against him. (It's kind of neat to talk to Jim in the evening and then see the article on the site the next day, certainly.)

I was mostly grumpy since Yasushi Iihara seems to be in a slump and he struck out three times in a row during the game. The high point of the evening was probably that Shingo Kawabata went 2-for-3 with a walk and a run scored; I liked Kawabata a lot at ni-gun and it would be nice to see him succeed even though I know it's at the cost of opportunities for other players I like such as Onizaki, Araki, and Keizo Kawashima.

Big 6 Opening Weekend, Day 1

Game 1: Reigning champion Keio University COMPLETELY CRUSHES Tokyo University and nobody is surprised:



Actually, Todai was holding its own for the first 3 innings behind the reasonable-but-not-spectacular pitching of their captain Yoshihiro Maeda. Then he came out of the game and BLAM the floodgates opened. But they even loaded the bases against Keio's starter Daisuke Takeuchi, in the 3rd inning... but once they were losing, they stopped trying to fight at all, it seemed.

The highlight of this game was that I got to see the college debut of Akihiro Hakumura!





Hakumura, if you haven't heard of him, is a freshman at Keio currently. When he was in high school he was clocked throwing 147 km/h, which is around 91-92 mph, and he's HUGE, like 187cm tall, which is around 6'3". A ton of teams were scouting him in high school, but he said "Nah, not now, I'm going to Keio University", which was a pretty big deal when he announced it.

Well, he hit the 150's on the Jingu radar gun, which is notoriously a few km/h fast... and he also struck out 5 of the 6 batters he faced. Though, they're all Todai batters, so it will be interesting to see what he can do against a real team later on in the semester.

Still, that was pretty exciting.

Game 2: Kisho Kagami, Hosei's ace pitcher, and noted Waseda-killer, pitches a complete-game win against Waseda.

Of course, the news display on the subway later just says "Yuki Saitoh loses his first game of the semester". Thank you, Japanese mass media.



I was sitting in the front row of the Hosei side, so of course this game was pretty awesome for me. And of course, HE was pitching right in front of me between innings...



Also, something I noticed in this game was that Kagami TOTALLY had his changeup working. He's had some games in the past where he tries to fool batters and instead ends up walking them, so here's a photo of our hero throwing a changeup:



As for what happened, most of the offense was led by our OTHER hero, sophomore shortstop Hiroshi Taki, who is also a pile of awesome. (I've noticed that a lot of my Hosei win stories involve Kagami and Taki, come to think of it.)



Taki hit the first Big 6 home run of the year in the second inning off Yuki Saitoh. 1-0. It was also Taki's first home run during college! So that was very exciting to see, and when I saw him after the game I said "congrats on your first college home run! It's even better that you got it off Saitoh!" and he burst into a huge grin, which is pretty rare for Taki, he's a fairly reserved guy.

Hosei got 3 more runs off Saitoh in the 4th inning, starting with Kanji Kawai walking, Taki singling again to move Kawai to 3rd, and Shohei Doi singling to bring in Kawai, 2-0. Tatebe sac bunted Taki and Doi to second and third, and then Kota Imamura hit a grounder to second. Waseda's Koji Udaka charged the ball and threw home, but Taki had a great jump on the play and managed to score to make it 3-0, and Imamura was also safe. Captain Seiya Ohyagi then singled to right, and that brought in Doi to make it 4-0.


Taki running home around the tag from Waseda's Daisuke Ichimaru. Actually, you may remember Ichimaru if you watched Koshien 2007, as he was the catcher for the championship Saga Kita miracle team.

In the bottom of the 4th, Waseda's first baseman Shota Sugiyama slammed a 2-run homerun to dead center. It barely barely cleared the wall and didn't even clear the yellow fence, but that made it 4-2.

Fortunately that's all they'd get. Kagami threw a complete game, striking out 9. He's awesome. Can we just draft him now and get it over with?

Saitoh lost the game and only threw 5 innings at that; lefty Kensuke Ohno threw two innings and then Tatsuya Ohishi finished out the last 2 innings, striking out 2, but only hitting 149ish on the Jingu gun. There were a ridiculous number of people in the camera well on the 3rd-base side, and every time Saitoh or Ohishi threw a pitch you could hear the click-click-click-click-clicks. It was actually somewhat frightening.

I still like Ohishi but being that I'm kind of anti-Waseda these days, I'm not quite outwardly as big a fangirl as I used to be. ESPECIALLY not when he's pitching against Hosei.

After the game I went and talked to a bunch of the Hosei guys; got Mikami and Imamura to sign photos, chatted with Mishima for a while, and congratulated Taki. Naturally, Kagami was completely and totally swamped with fans and reporters so I couldn't really get near him, but on his way out I shouted an otsukaresama at him and said he pitched a great game and good luck this semester, and he was in a hurry but stopped for a second to bow and smile and say thanks. He's a pretty nice guy. And a damned good pitcher.

And then in the evening, two of my friends had invited two Meiji University players out to dinner, Kumabe and Ueda, and also invited me along. Ueda's birthday was Thursday so this was apparently a birthday dinner for him. It was really interesting to talk to those guys; I learned a lot of things I can't really repeat here. Though one thing I can tell you is... remember a few months ago I mentioned that the Meiji team has a cat named Tama? In their blog they wrote that Tama is technically a 3rd-year member of the team, so the underclassmen are supposed to speak to the cat using formal speech. Well, Ueda confirmed to me that it was a total joke, and infact the cat doesn't like guys much and is a lot nicer to girls. And that being mean to the cat is considered tantamount to "bullying" a team member.

It was a pretty bizarre day all around.

And hopefully I'll repeat it on Sunday! Whee!

Tohto League Opening Weekend: Aoyama Gakuin vs. Chuo

I took this picture almost by accident today:



The two guys are Chuo University's righty ace pitcher Hirokazu Sawamura, and Toyo University's lefty ace Takahiro Fujioka. Fujioka had just pitched a complete-game 11-inning 13-strikeout 150-pitch shutout against Kokushikan University, and Sawamura was warming up for the Chuo-Aogaku match... but wasn't actually scheduled to start today's game. However, these two are two of the best-known college guys in the country. Sawamura is widely considered to be the #2 or #3 prospect in this year's draft; he has hit 98 mph on the radar gun at Jingu (notoriously fast, but still) and has generally been Chuo's ace almost his entire time there. Fujioka is going to be the #2 or #3 guy in the draft NEXT year; he just pitched Toyo University to the All-Japan Championship title, defeating Tokaidai's ace Tomoyuki Sugano in the finals (and Sugano is almost definitely going to be the #1 guy next year). I'm not sure what they're laughing about but when I saw Sawamura go over to Fujioka I was like "OMG MUST SHOOT THAT".

Anyway, in a few years when those two are starting against each other in the NPB All-Star game, I will have to dig this photo out again and smile.

As for the day... yeah, I skipped going to Chiba and cheering in the heat. Instead I went to Jingu because the Tohto League opening week was on a weekend for once; usually they play weekdays, and I can never go anymore now that I work normal hours. I was worried it might be crowded and I might not be able to just go to the front row and take photos, but... no, even with it on a weekend, and even with these guys being some of the best college ballplayers in the country, still nobody comes to Tohto games. Although the heat might have hurt them; the covered areas behind home plate were actually pretty full, but I basically could go sit behind the dugout in the very front row and it was pretty much empty around there.

I showed up at 1pm, so most of the way through the Toyo-Kokushi game -- which was tied 0-0 at the time. But then Takafumi Sakai hit a 2-run homer and that pretty much won the game for Toyo. Still, I got to see Fujioka pitch a few innings, which I wasn't expecting since I was so late.

The Chuo-Aogaku game... I was on the Chuo side, but Sawamura wasn't pitching, and so Aoyama Gakuin University basically clobbered them. Infact... Aogaku's starting pitcher was a kid named Yuto Fukushima. If that name sounds familiar to you, then you also watched Koshien in 2008, because he basically pitched Osaka Toin to the championships. Well, or more like, he was their pitcher when they stomped their way to victory. Anyway, he still rocks; 9 innings, 145 pitches, 12 strikeouts, and he had a shutout going into the 9th, when Chuo scored 2 unearned runs, BOTH on errors (one was the second baseman taking a liner to the stomach and falling down and losing the ball, and the other was the right fielder simply dropping the ball).

Aoyama won the game 5-2. They scored their runs on a 2-RBI single by Shota Koike in the 3rd inning, an RBI ground-rule double by Manabu Kino in the 5th inning, a solo homer by Koh Shimozuru, and then Hiroaki Masano scored on a wild pitch by Chuo's Yohei Kagiya.

Kagiya also gave up the home run to Shimozuru, which is amusing to me because the last time I saw Kagiya pitch, he was a senior at Hokkai HS, pitching at Koshien 2008 against Toho HS. I was almost late for work because I was watching that game; but the most memorable thing was that Yusuke Yamada launched a homer off of Kagiya on the very FIRST PITCH of the game, and Toho eventually won 15-10. Yamada is now at Rikkio and another Toho boy from that game, Shogo Wada, is now at Hosei. This is what makes HS and college baseball so interesting; these guys always seem to resurface.

What I love about Aoyama Gakuin is that they got relegated into the 2nd-level league after finishing in last place in the fall of 09, which was the first time they'd been relegated in like THIRTY YEARS, so in the spring of this year they basically said "Screw that" and DEVOURED the rest of the 2nd league. Fukushima himself was 6-1 and the team was 10-1 and then went through Rissho to get themselves back up to 1st League.

As such, though, they literally had absolutely no ouendan, which was kind of pathetic; there were a bunch of guys from the baseball club there, and a small group of Aoyama alumni, and that was IT. No cheer girls, no guys in black gakuran suits yelling, no brass band. Chuo had its ouendan in full force, so it was kind of sad how Aoyama was beating the crap out of Chuo and yet all the cheering was coming from the Chuo side. Even in the 7th inning, the Chuo ouendan played their school song and sang it solemnly, and on the Aoyama side, one of the baseball club guys got up and led everyone to sing their school song, but you could barely hear it from the other side of the stadium. At the end of the game, too, the losing team Chuo had a big "fure fure Chuo" thing going on, and Aoyama had no answer for them, like "What do you want? We have 50 people sitting here. We can't match your 1000 people and brass band, sorry."

One other interesting thing about this day is that I saw the three top college catching prospects in the country in Aoyama's Koike, Chuo's Sameshima, and Toyo's Satoh. Koike and Satoh have been on the national collegiate team for a while and Sameshima is a solid guy and also Chuo captain this year. I look forward to seeing who gets drafted out of Tohto this year; there are always a bunch of intriguing prospects floating around there.

Game Report: JR East vs. Toshiba - At Least The Ouendan Won

Oh man, where to start with this one.

I think there are two major things I took out of this game:
1) JR East's ouendan is freaking awesome!
2) Toshitaiko tie-breaking rules are freaking retarded!

If you don't already know, JR Higashinihon, or JR East, is the Japan Railways arm that runs all the passenger trains in the Tokyo area and up through Tohoku. (Wikipedia actually has a reasonable explanation of the JR evolution.)

I think that in order to properly talk about this game I have to start at the end and work back to the start.

So I went to the Tokyo Dome on Thursday night for a game in the Intercity Baseball Tournament, and saw Toshiba beat JR East 8-6 in 11 innings.

If you don't really know Japanese, you'd look at that box score like "What's the big deal? Toshiba scored 2 runs in the top of the 11th and won. So what."

Well, there is a line there that says 連盟規定によりタイブレーク, or "League regulation tie break".

I don't know whose brilliant idea this is, and it wasn't the first game in the series to have it happen -- the 11-inning 3-2 walkoff win by Mitsubishi Yokohama that moved back Tuesday night's game was also on a "tie break".

But basically, after 10 innings, the game effectively enters sudden death mode. Each team starts their offense with the bases loaded and 1 out.

So in this game, Toshiba led off the 11th with Katoh, Igawa, and Ichikawa on base already; Ryoichi Adachi hit a double to right and that scored 2 runs right there. JR switched pitchers from Katayama to Takumi Kon, who struck out the next batter, walked another and then got a groundout to end the inning.

JR came up in their half of the 11th with the same thing, Keiji Fujita leading off with Tsukuura, Matsumoto, and Genki Satoh on base and one out. Unlike Adachi, Fujita leads off by hitting a grounder up the middle, which shortstop Adachi promptly grabs, steps on second base, and throws to first to complete the double play. Game over.

It just felt like a really anticlimactic end to what really was a very exciting game.

Basically, I sat on the JR East side for this one, for a few reasons. First, I had already seen Toshiba's ouendan and wanted to get a good look at JR's, which I heard was top notch. Second, JR East has several players that I saw play in college or followed through college, and I was especially hoping to see Shuhei Ishikawa and Takuya Tsukuura play again.

This game was also moved back from 6pm to 6:45pm after the earlier games in the day went long, so by getting there around 5:30pm, I was actually downright early; some nice JR employees gave me a big green JR uchiwa fan and a player's list on my way in, despite that I wasn't in employee/team seating, and I actually got to watch the ouendan setting up from the beginning! Like, several groups of people in green happi coats got together to do vocal warmups and then set up their piles of signboards, while others were raising the JR banner, and others were setting up stage and the brass band and so on, and more interesting props as well. Infact, I wandered downstairs to get something to eat, and saw this in the basement concourse behind the JR area:



This is the JR East huge inflatable train that comes out a few times during their performances. It is QUITE a sight to behold when it does:



That is not just a train sitting there on a whole bunch of people's shoulders, either, that is a fully mobile train unit that goes running through the stands. I took two movies of it, one while their brass band is performing YMCA and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You":



And the other is later in the game and an actual train-themed song, "Galaxy Express 999":



Truly a sight to behold.

I also watched the ouendan get all of their groups together, and they had some greetings, during which they explained a little about their group, introduced the leaders of the various factions (the dance group, the brass band, the men's ouendan, etc) thanked everyone for participating so far, and begged us all to please yell and scream as loud as possible to support the team with our cheering.

Then they sang the company song with everyone present, and even got out their flags and set off the steam engines on the stage (these things were cool, every time they scored a run they set them off):



And then a representative from the Toshitaiko organization came out to present them with an award! Apparently they had gotten some sort of honors from the "ouendan competition", for filling their side of the stadium with people, getting them all to cheer, and especially for the JR Logo wave in the outfield (more on that in a second):





By the time the game got underway around 6:45pm, the entire 3rd base side was filled with JR employees. Looking down from the balcony, it was just a huge sea of green:



There were several places where a bunch of ouendan gathered in front with signs to coordinate the crowd yelling to the music; there were groups on either side of the stage, and then another group out by the outfield as well. The signs largely said things like "Ganbare Takashi" (for starter Takashi Saitoh) or "Kattobase [player's name]" for the batters, or a lot of "GO! GO! JR!"

These, for example, say "Katsuzo Tokyo", which means "Win, Tokyo!"



And then, something else that rocked, but there was a big group of JR people who had filled up two full sections in the outfield way before the game started, and I assumed they had something to do with the ouendan but I wasn't sure what.

It became clear in the 3rd or 4th inning when they all whipped out ponchos to wear and suddenly the left field cheering area had a JR logo showing:



Of course, the Chiben Wakayama Big Red C has nothing on this JR Logo.

Why? Because this logo could also DO THE WAVE when the team scored a run!



And I present two more videos of the JR East ouendan just for the heck of it:


This video, starting about 20 seconds in, is the song "Train Train" by The Blue Hearts. I just thought it was so appropriate that the Japan Railways ouendan was playing "Train Train". Though the reason I started filming at the moment I did was because it was Shuhei Ishikawa's at-bat; while at Hosei we cheered for him as "Ishikawa", they cheer for him as "Shuhei" with JR, so that's what they're yelling as one of the cheers.


This is during the first inning; a pretty generic cheer, I was just filming for the heck of it, and then Takuya Tsukuura launched a home run into the left-field bleachers! (That moment is about 2:10 in this video.) So everybody went totally crazy afterwards.

Wheee.

For the record, Toshiba's ouendan did pretty much the exact same routine they did on Tuesday night, so it wasn't nearly as impressive the second time. It's true that JR's might not be as impressive a second time either, but they had catchier tunes and that train riding through the stands is pretty amazing, I'd totally like to see that up close sometime.

So ouendan aside, I guess there was some baseball going on too. Infact, it was just exciting all around, gamewise.

Righty Hayato Arakaki started for Toshiba, and aforementioned lefty Takashi Saitoh started for JR. And things got off to a very good start for our train heroes when Tsukuura slammed that two-run homer to left to make it 2-0 in the first. Tsukuura also took a diving leap into the field seats in the top of the 2nd to catch a foul ball for the 3rd out.

JR added another run to their total in the bottom of the 4th when Keiji Fujita doubled to right, and Tatsunori Saitoh hit this fly ball that went to shallow left... and managed to land right between the left fielder and the shortstop, whose hat had gone flying. Still, neither of them managed to get the ball in until Fujita had crossed the plate and Saitoh found himself on second. 3-0.

Takahiro Kudoh led off the top of the 5th for Toshiba with a home run to left that landed in almost the exact place as Tsukuura's to make it 3-1. Jun Yoshida hit an infield single that I'm still not sure wasn't really an error, but whatever. Ryoichi Adachi followed that with a clean single to right, moving Yoshida to second. Masaya Iseki hit a grounder to second, and it almost ended up being a double play, but the throw to first went wide, and so Iseki was safe and Yoshida scored, making it 3-2, before Shota Fujiwara lined out to short to end the inning.

Toshiba's Ryuta Matsunaga singled with one out in the top of the 6th, and Masato Ohkawara followed it with another single to put Matsunaga on 3rd base, and that's when JR pulled starter Saitoh for Taku Sakaue (or Sakagami if you look at some sites, but he had "Sakaue" on his jersey so I'm sticking to that)... who promptly gave up another one of these "it might have been a DP if we were slightly faster" grounders, and so Matsunaga scored to tie the game at 3-3.

Hiroshi Satoh took the mound for JR in the top of the 7th, and got a groundout and then got taken yard, as Ryoichi Adachi hit a ball to left that actually looked foul from my perspective, but was apparently a home run, making it 4-3 in favor of Toshiba. Satoh came out of the game and was replaced by lefty Yoshio Karasawa, who gave up a single to Iseki and walked Fujiwara, and also earned himself a trip back to the bench, with lefty Junichi Katayama replacing him. Katayama got a grounder to third out of Keiji Ikebe, but Kazuya Takeuchi bobbled the ball and it got to first base a split-second late, so the bases were loaded.

This is what they call a "dai pinch", in Japanese baseball language.

Katayama struck out Matsunaga to make it 2 outs and bases loaded, but then Ohkawara slammed a ball to left, and everyone was off running, and by the time the dust cleared, he was on second, Ikebe was on third, and the other two guys scored. 6-3. Ouch.

It didn't look promising for JR, especially since at that point Toshiba starter Arakaki had managed 10 strikeouts in the first 6 innings without a single walk (and was about to notch his 11th), but Tatsunori Saitoh managed to lead off with a single to left, and catcher Shoji Tanaka (he replaced Shuhei Ishikawa behind the plate in the top of the 7th) followed that up with a double to right, moving Saitoh to third.

So, Toshiba took out Arakaki and put in Kazuo Kido.

And Fumiaki Sawa came to the plate as a pinch-hitter...

...and hit a 3-run home run to left field, almost right to the JR logo! 6-6!

But Kido stayed in anyway, got the next two outs, and then the two teams and two pitchers (Katayama and Kido) stayed in a deadlock for the next several innings. JR got runners at 2nd and 3rd in their half of the 8th but couldn't bring them in. Toshiba had two runners in the top of the 9th (there was a really bizarre play where Ikebe grounded to the mound, and rather than throw to first or third, Katayama just RAN to the runner, Sudoh, who was stuck between 2nd and 3rd... and yet somehow Sudoh got back to the bag without getting tagged, and Ikebe was also safe!) and also couldn't bring them in. Kido struck out the JR side in order in the bottom of the 9th. And so we went into extra innings.

Katayama pitched a 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 10th, and then Genki Satoh led off the bottom of the 10th with a single! Daisuke Ikushima went to bunt him up... and hit a really poor bunt that Toshiba's catcher fielded and fired to second base to get Satoh on the force. Tsukuura hit a big fly ball to right, but it wasn't out of the park, and then, for all the stupid ways for the 10th inning to end, Ikushima got himself caught stealing second for the third out.

And then the *%$#@$!!ing tiebreaker thing happened, and well, you know what happened there. 8-6 Toshiba.



Game hero was, unsurprisingly, Adachi, for his go-ahead homer and then for his go-ahead double later on, AND he executed the double play that ended the game as well. Not a bad night for him, really.

(If you want to see game action photos from this game, actually, take a look at JR's team site.)

Also, incase you've never been in the Tokyo Dome balcony seating... this year they have the WEIRDEST thing I've ever seen up there:





I mean, I think the idea is that you're supposed to feel like you can shake hands with Wonder Boy himself, but to me, the hand just looks CREEPY. Seriously.

There were some very, very sad penguins outside the Tokyo Dome...



And I was actually so bummed out about the game that I took the subway most of the way home instead of JR. Of course, there's a Toshiba memory card in my digital camera that took all of the photos and videos for this entry, but that's beside the point.

By the way, at this point, Toshiba has made it to the finals; the final match is Tuesday night, Sept 7th, at 6:30pm at the Tokyo Dome, Toshiba vs. JR Kyushu. I don't think I'm going to go, as the Fighters are in the Seibu Dome for their last Kanto series of the year.

Band Report: Toshiba vs. Tokai Rika, Intercity Baseball Tournament

Now that Koshien for kids is over, Koshien for adults, aka the Intercity Baseball Tournament, has started! 32 corporate teams from all over Japan get together at the Tokyo Dome for almost 2 weeks of a big single-elimination baseball tournament! Just like Koshien, the teams bring all of their students employees to come cheer for them, and their brass bands and ouendan and dancing cheer girls and all, just that everyone is 10-15 years older than the Koshien kids, and rather than school uniforms, all the people in the stands are wearing suits and bright colored towels from their company. Also, it is played indoors at the Tokyo Dome rather than outdoors under the sweltering heat. But other than that, it's about the same.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I went to the bracket drawings for this, though at the time I was already vaguely planning to be out of town for the first weekend of it, so even at that time my thought was "The first game I can get to is Toshiba's. At least maybe I can see Waizumi and Urushibata play again."

So with that in mind, I headed down to the Tokyo Dome on Tuesday night, first stopping at the McDonald's by the dome to get a Tsukimi Burger combo. (Tsukimi Burger is a seasonal thing every September, basically a bacon-egg-and-cheese burger. It is fantastic and the only reason I will go to McDonald's voluntarily rather than "it's the only choice at this time and place" or "I want WBC folders".)



The home plate entrance was relatively empty, but you should have seen the ridiculous line snaking around the stadium for the Toshiba employees and fans. Toshiba is located in Kawasaki City, a half an hour or so from the Tokyo Dome, so they basically get their entire company to "work overtime" for the evening, by which I mean "come to the Tokyo Dome and cheer for the baseball team". Toshiba has also sent a ridiculous number of players to the pros (right now the Fighters have Hirotoshi Masui and Tomochika Tsuboi from there, but you've likely also at least heard of Naoyuki Shimizu and Hisanori Takahashi and Hiromitsu Ochiai as well as probably Kiyoshi Hatsushiba) so it stands to reason that they also have a reasonable number of fans beyond just the employees who come.

Whereas their opponent, Tokai Rika, is from Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, a few hours away even by Shinkansen. And where Toshiba has been in the Toshitaiko 32 times and is one of the best-known teams, Torika has been in it 4 times ever, and 3 of those times were the last 3 tournaments.

So first, I was inadvertantly 40 minutes early for the game; due to the 2nd game of the day going into extra innings (with Mitsubishi Yokohama winning 3-2 in the 11th over Oji Seimei), the Toshiba-Torika game was moved to a 6:30pm start to give the bazillion Toshiba employees time to get into the stadium. I bought a balcony seat for 700 yen, since this is my only opportunity to sit in the cushy balcony seats at the Tokyo Dome usually... and the Toshiba side was PACKED, no empty seats to be had short of the outfield. I gave up and went to the Torika side and got a seat in the front row right behind the ouendan, behind 3rd base. I like watching the ouendan to begin with, which is half of the reason I wanted to sit in the front row.

But well, the Torika ouendan was way outmatched by Toshiba. Torika had 6 cheer girls and 5 male ouendan, and then an assortment of about 10 other dancers who came out occasionally, and one guy and one girl who were in charge of yelling/singing into a microphone. They didn't have a particularly huge brass band, and I didn't see many cheer guys in the audience trying to get the crowd fired up, though at least they DID have inflatable cheer sticks for people to bang together.

Toshiba, on the other hand, had a BASE unit of 8 cheer girls whose main job was to hold up letter signs that spelled out "TOSHIBA" on one side and "KAWASAKI" on the other. Then they had another 20-person dance group of men and women, with varying costumes, another 5 men who seemed to be the "ouendan" types, then MORE dance women who were only in the stands, and then a troop of around 40 guys whose job was to run around in the stands and get the crowd fired up, waving uchiwa fans and yelling a lot. Their brass band was huge, they had several mascots, and they also had a bunch of people on "yelling/singing" duty as well.

Seriously, you could have gone to this game just to watch Toshiba's ouendan and probably not come out disappointed. Unless, of course, you were sitting on the Torika side.

Let me show you what I mean, anyway. For example, these two photos were taken in the 5th inning:


Tokai Rika side, seen from behind Toshiba ouendan. Note all the empty space.


Toshiba side, seen from behind Tokai Rika ouendan. Note that even the OUTFIELD and SECOND FLOOR are PACKED. Toshiba employees continued filing into the stadium well into the middle of the game.

So beyond the obvious geographical constraints in rousing up a huge audience, let's talk about these bands for a minute.

Torika had three main problems IMO:
1) Lack of people. Perhaps due to the size of the company more than anything, but there is only so much you can do when your ouendan is that small, and the ouendan does depend on how many people at the company exist to join it in the first place.
2) Lack of variety. Seriously, everything their brass band played is something you will hear being played by every high school band as well.
3) Lack of brass band repertoire even so. Almost half the time they didn't even have the brass band play, but instead played music over a tape for their cheer girls or dancers to dance to.

For example, this is one of their early innings. If you are familiar with high school baseball here, you will recognize all of these songs:



And when the band wasn't playing, they had two other dance groups; one was girls in black leotards and tutus who seemed to be hopping around and baton-twirling to pop stuff like Arashi, and then there was a more traditional Japanese group of dancers:



Here's a video of them doing Soran Bushi, which is a very very old Japanese fishing-related dance:



To be fair, they are at least as good at the Soran Bushi dance as my junior high school students who dance it every year for our Sports Day...

Anyway, for what they have, they do okay, I suppose. But they can't compare to the ouendan kickass of Toshiba, who come out in full force for this event.

One main thing is that Toshiba actually has a sort of standby "Toshiba" cheer, distinctive and with an actual tune to it, where girls hold up TOSHIBA signs that spell something else on the back. I saw a version on YouTube that were "VICTORY" on the other sides, but this is what they had for us:






And here, after the brass band does a riff of Footloose, they are actually doing that TOSHIBA cheer:



I feel a little bad for the girl holding the A, who kept getting confused about where she was supposed to be facing at any given time.

Here are two other videos I took of the Toshiba ouendan:


Dance routine.


Flag routine. Ryuta Matsunaga hit a double during this, which is why all the cheering suddenly.

Anyway...

The Toshiba band solidly defeated the Torika band, and well, the Toshiba baseball team also defeated the Torika baseball team.

Lefty Teruo Kawawaki started for Tokai Rika, and righty Takashi Fujita for Toshiba. It was actually a pretty close game for the first 5 innings, scoreless, although that was mostly due to Toshiba's guys batting into two double plays in the 2nd and 3rd innings, and then running themselves into a failed sac bunt in the 5th.

But then the floodgates opened in the 6th; with one out Ryoichi Adachi singled to center, and Masaya Iseki followed it with a single to right -- the throw came to third but Adachi slid in JUST safe there. Shota Fujiwara hit a sac fly to right and that scored Adachi to make it 1-0. Keiji Ikebe, a loan player from ENEOS, singled to right as well to advance Iseki, and Tokai Rika changed pitchers to Yuta Murai... and Ryuta Matsunaga singled again to drive in Iseki, making it 2-0.

And that was pretty much the game, aside from a Torika fireballer named Masaya Kanemaru who walked two guys in the bottom of the 8th before Ikebe lined into an unassisted double play (shortstop catches the ball and steps on 2nd base for the force).

Toshiba won 2-0, and Torika got two hits the entire game, both by right-fielder Tomoyuki Ishikawa, who I was actually pretty impressed by, even if he's no Ichiro. Toshiba's Fujita got a CG shutout with 5 strikeouts, no walks, 2 hits, facing 29 batters, throwing 84 pitches. Not bad at all.

Official score here.



Only sad thing is that the college players I was hoping to see didn't play. I'd actually seen Matsunaga before when he was in college at Toyo, but it was a little different. I am heading back to the Dome though for Toshiba vs. JR East, so we'll see.