Fighters Spring Camp Day 3 - Bravo Fighters and Other Game Day Craziness

Today camp featured another game between the KBO Giants and the Fighters.  Same teams from Monday's game, although this time they switched which uniforms they were wearing, so I have a completely new set of pictures that I'm never going to finish going through.

I slept in slightly this morning, by which I mean I got to practice around 10:15, by which point they were already winding down to get ready for the game.  BUT, I did get to catch up with Fernando Seguignol for a while, which totally made my day.  This winter I spent a week in Costa Rica over the holidays, and there were bananas everywhere, and I kept telling my fiance about how we used to have this player on the Fighters who was from Panama and people would wave bananas during his at-bat -- and well, get this, when I mentioned it to Seggy, it turns out I was in the part of Costa Rica that is only a few miles away from his hometown in Panama!  How crazy is that?



After that Dave and I wandered over to the main field.  On the way we saw Kagiya running in the Field #3 outfield, and I was looking over at him, and he smiled and waved at me while I was debating if I should wave or not!  So I felt like slightly less of a big dork smiling and waving back at him.  That was good.

The posted "menu" for the day actually had the lineups for the game on it, so that meant I also knew that Ohtani would pitch two innings, then Arihara 2, then Yagi 2, then Segawa, Inui, and Kanehira each 1.  I feel kind of silly for not having looked at it on Monday, since I would have known Kagiya was pitching too.  Go figure.

We did enter the stadium at opening, although despite there being a lot more people for the game due to Ohtani starting, those people were mostly scouts and sat behind home plate, so we had no competition to sit behind the dugout.  So, I set up behind the dugout, behind the opening in the fence, and put up my Ohtani towel that I brought with me that day, with the idea that in theory he'd have to see it when he came back to the dugout.

Then I hung out for a while just taking photos and stuff.  Dani didn't come until around 11:40, so it was a little harder to go around as we only had two of us to watch stuff.  So like, at one point, Sho Nakata threw a ball far back into the stands and I was like "Oh, that was at Inaba," so Dave ran off to get Inaba's signature, for example.

I spent about ten minutes really wanting to say something to Kaneko and finally at some point when there was a lull in the pre-game stuff and he was just kind of standing around I called down to him,

金子さああああああん！  (Kaneko-saaaan!)
はい？  (Hmm?)
アメリカに来てくれてありがとうございます！  (Thank you for coming to the US!)
ああ、どうも。 (Oh, sure.)
来年も来てください！！  (Please come back next year!!)
（笑） (laughs)

I'm somewhat jealous since Dave managed to get Kaneko's autograph before I showed up this morning, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, I was able to run and get a hot dog and drink from concessions before the game started, which was good -- and they even had souvenir cups for Padres/Mariners spring training, so I got one of those, and asked them for as much ice as possible, and it ended up lasting me all game!

Let's see if I can sum up the game to mention the things people might actually care about that happened.  I mean, overall it ended up being a 1-1 game, so not a lot of scoring to speak of.  The Fighters run came in the 6th inning when Haruki Nishikawa led off with a double and scored on a single by Go Matsumoto.  The Giants run came in the 9th inning when Dong Su Kang led off with what ended up being a triple into left-center, and scored on a single by Yeung Sek Son.  I pretty much completely lost track of which Giants pitcher was on the mound when, so I don't know who gave up the Fighters run, but I do know that Masashi Kanehira gave up the Giants run.

Shohei Ohtani pitched the first two innings.  He faced 7 batters and it basically went: Fly out to center, ground out to short, single to right, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout.

I know this sounds lame, but I just don't know enough about the Lotte Giants to know what to say about them.  There was a somewhat funny moment when Jun Seok Choi, the Lotte DH who is around 6' and 235 pounds and thus looks utterly not Asian in build, hit what could have and maybe should have been a double, but since he was lumbering around the basepath he got tagged out on a 9-4 play before he actually got to second base.

Ryo Watanabe looked really good at second base, I have a bunch of stars next to plays he made for various reasons I can't remember now (although one I remember being him jumping to catch a line fly).

Speaking of Ryo, they had in a row in the lineup Ryo Ishikawa, Ryo Watanabe, and Ryosuke Kishisato, or as Dani was saying, the "Ryo Trio", because the announcer kept pronouncing their name like "Rio Ishikawa".  So I was singing "His name is Rio and he dances on the sand..."

Apart from game action, most of the wackiness of today arose from when I decided to go for a walk around the 5th-6th inning.  This was mostly because I realized that I wasn't really going to get to see the stadium if all I did was sit behind the Fighters dugout the whole time.  Also, it was really hot out, so I thought taking a break in the shade for a bit would be nice.

This turned out to be my downfall, as basically, I went to stand in the shade for a minute and I ended up getting approached from this guy with a big TV camera, and he was like (in English) "Hi, I'm with a TV show, can I ask you a question?" but I was looking at the board he was holding, which said "Who would you choose as your boyfriend?" which is a variation of a TV segment "恋人選び", which I know I've seen at least one version of.  Like, sometimes it's "which member of AKB48?" or "which guy on the national soccer team?" and so on, and they survey a bunch of people and try to figure out the most popular.

So, Bravo Fighters was going to do this in Arizona and ask random American women to look at a group of Fighters players and choose someone.

Except that I am the least random American woman you could possibly find there.  Which should have been obvious by my custom signed pinned pimped-up Fighters gear, but maybe not.

He shows me this board:



and I'm thinking, like, there are several Fighters players I find quite adorable and charming, except ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM ARE ON THIS BOARD.  I wonder if they put it together for "guys we think might be appealing to American women", because there's no way you'd do this for Japanese women without including Taniguchi.

So I answer, "Huh?  Kagiya's not on there?"

And he's like "Kagiya?"

I turn around to show him my uniform like "Yeah, he's my favorite player, the pitcher, number 30".

"Oh, sorry.  No, no Kagiya.  How about out of this list of guys?"

I pause for a bit.  "Huh, I don't know.  Maybe Sugiya?"

"Okay, Sugiya.  Why Sugiya?"

"Because he's really funny.  He's always laughing and makes me laugh a lot."

Anyway, I told him he should wait for my friend to get back since she's wearing a Nishikawa uniform, and sure enough Dani came by and I had him interview her too, and she didn't even know what happened during my exchange but also picked Sugiya.

He ended up talking to me for a while and filmed part of my scorebook as well, because I was keeping score after we talked, and I showed him how I had some games from the Sapporo Dome last fall, and stickers of guys like Kisanuki on the front, and so on.  I'm a big dork, these things happen.

When I first started writing this entry I just knew that the segment had aired, which was possibly one of the most mortifyingly embarrassing things to happen to me in a while, since a bunch of friends in Hokkaido emailed or tweeted at me saying they had seen me on TV, and a few even sent screencaps.

However!  Since I didn't finish this entry before falling asleep, in the morning, someone had found the episode of Bravo Fighters for me on Youtube!  So you can watch it all, in its glory.  My appearance is at about 12:35, though the entire segment starts at about 11:00 when Ikeda-san explains his idea to do the Koibito-Erabi schtick.



Or if you don't feel like watching that video, a few screencaps:


Me saying "Ehh?  No Kagiya?"

They subtitled me as a "Big Kagiya Fan"

Captioned as "Fighters fan since the Tokyo Dome era"

Me saying "Well, Sugiya is the funniest guy..."

Yeah.

Oh, also, if you watch the rest of the clip, you might notice the first half is all about Ohtani's start, and all the scouts who showed up to watch him, and Dani and I make a brief cameo at 2:47 or so with our cameras out behind my Ohtani towel hanging from the dugout:



So aside from telling the entire island of Hokkaido about my crush on Kagiya, the other funny thing that happened while walking around was that Dani and I ran into Minivish, the somewhat infamous Yu Darvish cosplayer who's been around for the last few years.  He's from Ibaraki but lives in LA; I met him a few times before, like in Oakland and also at Yankee Stadium for days Darvish was starting.

Before the game, actually, a bunch of Fighters players were pointing and laughing like "Hey, there's that crazy Darvish cosplayer", and someone else at the game even tweeted how WOW MINIVISH IS HERE by taking a photo of him talking to me.

So Dani and I went to chase down Minivish and next thing we know he's getting filmed for a segment on Bravo Fighters as well, although obviously not asking who he'd choose as his boyfriend.



After all of that excitement I just walked around the stands for an inning or so.  Made it all the way to the bullpens in right field, where we saw Hakumura walk by and said hi, and then Dani went back to the seats and I walked to the left field area.  There's a lounge there that looks really nice, but it wasn't open for the game.

I came back to our seats and mostly didn't move again for the rest of the game for fear I would manage to embarrass myself even more.

As mentioned, the game ended in a 1-1 tie.  Knowing this time that we'd get thrown out of the stadium pretty quickly afterwards, rather than dawdling behind the dugout until we got ejected, Dani and Dave and I went up to the area behind home plate and took some photos with the stadium in the background and stuff.  Then Dave left, since he had to pack up to head back east afterwards.  Dani and I went into the Peoria team store, which had a ton of awesome Mariners and Padres spring training gear that we totally didn't want to buy because it was all stupid expensive!  I found a cool t-shirt or two and they were all like $40.  I mean, I have a good job now and can afford whatever, really, but I have a LOT of t-shirts and these days I try hard not to buy things that I'm not going to use or wear if at all possible.

So, Dani and I both bought eco-friendly shopping bags, since they were both cheap and actually useful, plus they weren't branded Mariners or Padres -- just about every piece of merchandise was branded to one team or another.



I thought about maybe trying to get some of the Fighters to sign my bag, except that I think then I won't bother ever using it, so instead maybe I'll see about getting a postcard signed and I can put that on my desk at work or something and it might be nice.

Dani went back to meet players after the game and all, but I had bought a ticket to the Warriors-Suns game, so I couldn't really stay around all that long.  Oddly, most of the Fighters team had gone to the Coyotes-Canucks hockey game, which I even knew was happening, but I figured that rather than stalking the Fighters at the hockey arena, I'd be better off going to another Warriors game -- and I was able to get a lower-level seat for $70, which is pretty much impossible to do in Oakland.  Like, when the Suns come to Oakland in a few weeks, there ARE no tickets for under $100, not even in the upper deck.  So I thought I'd take my opportunity to see the best team in basketball a little closer up.  (We were at the Warriors-Thunder game on Sunday, and paid like $150ish to sit in the upper deck, and were lucky.)

I was originally going to bring a Warriors shirt with me, but my luggage space was a bit tight and I wasn't sure how well it would go over in an away city.  Turns out that probably half the arena or more were wearing Warriors gear and carrying Warriors signs; I completely didn't feel guilty cheering any of the many many times Stephen Curry made a 3-point shot or Klay Thompson pulled points out of thin air as well.  (They ended with 26 and 24 points each respectively.)

So instead I went in Fighters gear:



And then it turned out that Luis Mendoza was also at the game!  Alas, we were on opposite sides of the court, so I didn't see him.  Probably just as well, really.

Anyway, if you've read this far, you deserve to see some actual real, relevant photos:


Haruki Nishikawa


Team huddle while Shirai talks


Makoto Kaneko


Bit wider shot of the huddle for irony's sake -- you can see the other side of this in the Fighters PR tweet.  And Dave is at the left standing there over the dugout.


Sho Nakata


Whole pile of scouts sitting behind home plate for the first few innings.


Some guy throwing a 98 mph fastball


Our view of the whole thing!  (You could see the other side from that screencap earlier.)


Daikan Yoh


Sho with his "TB okay" bat donut


Seung-Taek Oh


Ryo Ishikawa's broken bat


Dani's favorite player Joon-suk Choi, with Shogo Yagi pitching


Yu-yeong Kim -- not sure why but several people came over to take photos of him from our side


Yuto Takahama


Masashi Kanehira


Final score


And here's me and Dave!  So now if you ever hate our blogs or want to argue about baseball cards you can go hunt us down in real life, or something.

Fighters Spring Camp in Arizona, Day 2

Today was just a practice day at the Fighters camp.  This was the posted "menu" for the day:



(It's funny how many Japanese-English words I've just gotten used to; while Dani and I were both like "Duh, it's the menu," Dave was like "The WHAT?  Can I order some Nakata or Ohtani?")

Basically, what that paper describes, if you haven't seen something like it before, there are several different groups of players, and several different kinds of activities, and several different fields they'll be happening on.  The left side is for position players and the right side is for pitchers.  I didn't get there until around 11am, to be honest, so I didn't have a ton of time to decipher what was going on with pitchers exactly.

When I showed up, I basically said good morning to a whole bunch of people on my way in, and then found Dani and Dave over by Field 5.  I was wearing my Tokyo Big 6 t-shirt, and Dani had her Kagiya jersey on, so for a while I put my Kagiya jersey on too, but in reality it was pretty hot and having two things on made it worse.  Though -- I ended up getting a photo with Brandon Laird, and then I saw Takayuki Katoh come out of the pitcher's practice area and I asked him if we could get a photo and then told him how I'd seen him pitch with Kazusa Magic a few years back and thought he was awesome and was so glad he'd come to the Fighters.  He still seems like a nice guy!

Kagiya came out of the pitcher's practice too and I was basically like "Hey, the photo we took together last night was really dark and awful, would you mind getting another photo with me?" and he was like "Sure, whatever" and we took two, because the sun was at a bad angle, and I apologized profusely for bothering him, and he was like "dude, it's okay, really!"  He's such a nice guy and I just feel lucky that he's been so nice to me all along because I'm such a big dork about him.

I got Dave to show his picture of Kunitomi from Keio to Hakumura, who was basically like "thanks, that's really cool to know he's doing well out here".

I also helped Dave get cards signed from a few people, mostly by just knowing who they were and knowing which cards Dave had with him, so it was like, "Oh, Dave, that's Masui, you have one of his cards," as Masui walked by.  Or calling over to Masato Yoshii who is like the nicest guy on the planet.  Things like that.  Like, it was a little weird since I wouldn't help the binders-of-cards-hey-wheres-ohtani guys waiting outside the day before, but I mean, I know Dave, he knows more about Japanese baseball than a lot of people, and he really does care about it, but since he hasn't spent a ton of time around the guys, he doesn't know most of them by sight, so having us around to point out who all the players were was helpful for him.

And, actually, something really funny happened -- Yuki Saitoh was coming out of the bullpen session where Yoshii had been coaching him, and so a few people managed to get him to sign things, including Dave, and I was like "Saitoh-kun, can we get a photo together?  please?" and he was kinda like "I don't really do photos..." and I'm like "BUT I BROUGHT MY TOKYO BIG SIX T-SHIRT WITH ME ALL THE WAY TO ARIZONA" and he was like "Oh wow you really do have a Tokyo Big Six shirt" and I'm like "Pleeeeeeeeeease?" and then Dave took a photo of us and it was like, dang, I just got a photo with one of the most famous and elusive Japanese baseball players ever.  Crazy.



I posted that to Twitter and a friend of mine in Hokkaido wrote back: "I saw that on TV!  He had just come out of the bullpen and you were talking to him and took a photo, it was on GAORA."

Yeah, that's how my life goes in general.  Oh well, at least now I'll have lots of conversation starters with my Fighters friends when I'm back in Japan, for sure.

(Infact, right before that all, I had been chatting with a guy named Yusuke out by the bullpens, who turned out to be from Obihiro, and he was like "I've seen you on TV cheering during games a ton over the years...")

Right around then Chris Martin and Anthony Bass also came out of the bullpen to ride the golf cart back to wherever, and a few people stopped them for autographs, so I was like "Hey you guys, I sound like the worst person ever but you are both super-tall dudes with beards and I want to be able to tell you apart -- do I have it right that you're Chris and you're Anthony?" and they were like "Yeah, you got it" and I said "Great, hope to see you do well with the team this year!" and then they drove off on their cart.

We waited around until the end of bullpens because I wanted to talk to Masashi Kanehira.  Well, not exactly.  More like, my friend Yuki, up in Sapporo, is a gigantic Kanehira fan.  Like, as in, she follows him around Japan as much as possible, sends him gifts, etc.  I think that's fairly normal for a NPB super-fan, although MLB people might not understand.  Anyway, she had sent me a message like "hey, if you run into him can you tell him for me that I saw him pitch at the intersquad game and he was so good and that I sent him some stuff to the team hotel?" and I was kinda like "okay that's a little weird but sure, I'll do my best" and asked her to type to me specifically what she wanted me to say, so she basically wrote a short letter to him in a message to me.  I owe Yuki a favor or two because she gave me a ton of Kagiya stuff during his rookie year, a few posters and a towel and pinbadges and whatnot.

So Kanehira comes out and I'm like "Hey, Kanehira-kun," and he's like "Hm?" and since I didn't obviously have anything to sign or anything like that he looked a little confused, and I was like, "This is going to sound really weird, but you know Yuki?  In Sapporo?  Your biggest fan?" and he's like "Yeah..." and I'm like "She wanted me to give you a message.  Please read this!" and I handed him my phone.  And he read it and laughed like "Ahhh, sugeeee...." which is kinda either "AWESOME!" or "CRAZY!" and honestly could go either way given the situation.  I was like "I know that was kinda weird, but she's such a big fan and she knew I was here and...was the message okay?" and he was like "No that's cool, thanks." and I was like "Thanks for reading it, it means a lot to her."



Anyway.  At that point we decided to take off for lunch, since it was already noon.  The players officially had a lunch break on the schedule from 11:30-12:20, though when we were walking to leave the park, we nearly got run over by a golf cart driven by Sho Nakata.  Seriously, I forget who he had on there, it was Haruki and Shingo and a few others, and they were all holding on for dear life, and I yelled "ABUNNAI ABUNNAI ABUNNAI" at them.  Laughing, but still.  I hope they realize I was joking, although I hope Sho doesn't kill anyone with his driving...

Dani and Dave and I went to say goodbye to Joe, who was catching a flight out in the afternoon, and then we got lunch at Red Robin, which was also funny since I kept apologizing to Dave like "We must sound like complete crazy people to you," and he was like "It's actually really cool to be around people talking about Japanese baseball."

We headed back to camp around 2pm, by which point they were doing the fielding/catching stuff listed on the schedule.  Honestly, while we knew the schedule, we mostly just hung out looking for interestingness, so to speak.  Like, for example, Ohtani was getting ready to take batting practice at Field 5, so... lots of people were there, of course, so we were too.

I sat down with Barden for a bit (he's a "friend of the Fighters" that I first met years and years ago on the field at Chiba when I used to get field passes from Bobby) and watched Kaneko throw batting practice to Taniguchi for a while, which was really cool in its own way, and then Kaneko switched out to watch Ohtani take batting practice, and of course all of the media also geared up to watch.  Yoshinori Tateyama came and stood right in front of us inside the fence, and Dani was like "OMG he's right in the way" and he turned around and said in English, "Oh, sorry.  Can you see?" and we were like "Yeah it's fine, thanks".  Tateyama is so funny, at some point he got a ball during the BP, and he threw it into the fence, then was like "OW!" and we cracked up and he said in English, "I can't throw!"

After Ohtani's BP was over, Shirai-coach yelled at the media something to the effect of, "OKAY HE'S DONE!  ALL YOU CAMERA GUYS CAN GO TO SOME OTHER FIELD NOW!"  So when he walked by us I was like "Shirai-san, omoshiroi!!" and he's like "Not omoshiroi.  I'm always serious.  Very serious."

Only a few minutes later Dave went to get his signature... and Shirai at the time had just dove headfirst into a golf cart, so his butt was sticking up in the air and I was laughing like "Shirai-san, Shirai-san, mite mite, you have got to see this, he has your card from a long time ago!" and so he signed the card for Dave.

I also called out to a few other people for Dave, like Nakajima, and Yoh, and whoever else, I forget.  We also lined up to try to catch Ohtani when he was coming out, but like, he obviously wasn't going to stop for anyone, and I don't really blame him.  Later I found out that apparently the team told him to "watch out for people just getting your autograph to sign on Ebay", so that probably makes him even more wary, which sucks for all the real fans.

The catchers came by with Shinji Takahashi and I asked him if I could get a photo with him and he was kinda like "...with me?  Why me?  Don't you want one of the players?" and I was like "Dude you were like my first favorite catcher with the Fighters ten years ago, come on" and he was like "Really?" and so we took some photos because the sun was bright and all but it worked out okay.  I swear that Shinji would have never posed and smiled and been so nice in photos when he was still a player -- so I guess that is one nice thing about all of my old favorite players being retired now... but still.  I asked him how things were in Shinano and he said they were good.

We watched the catchers do their stuff for a bit and eventually it was like... wow, there aren't really any other people hanging out here anymore and you can't even really see what's going on, so we decided to wander out.  I thought I had a meeting for work to call into at 4pm anyway, so I came back to my hotel, and while the meeting had been cancelled, I spent an hour or two answering work emails and doing some work stuff, and basking in the glorious airconditioning in my hotel room.

I came back to the field around 5-5:30 and hung out for a bit more with people there.  I was honestly mostly just there to help out Dave get a few more autographs.  Somehow it's easier for me to yell out to people for someone else than it is for myself, isn't that weird?

I got a photo with Takumi Ohshima because I'm wearing my Big 6 shirt, and I was like "I know it's not quite the same but you were from Waseda so... please?" and I also got a photo with Hiromi Oka (which is weird since he hates everyone but he even signed Dani's Meiji shirt for her), and I also got a photo with Kishisato and Naberyo, well, Dani took a picture of them and I was like "Can I do a... three-shot with you guys?" and they were like, okay, sure.  Ryo Ishikawa came out eventually and a bunch of girls swarmed him, and I was just like "hey -- hit another home run tomorrow, please?" and he laughed like "uh, okay".  Kagiya also came by and I called out otsukaresama but I wasn't going to bother him yet again after everything else.

A gaggle of coaches came out including Shirai and Kawana, and I knew Dave had a Kawana card from 1991 as well, like he did for Shirai, so I was like "wait!  Kawana-san!  this guy has one of your old cards, would you sign?" and he waited for us to find it and signed it, and I told him how I'd never seen him as a player since for the whole 14 years I've been a Fighters fan, he's basically always been a coach.  Weird, right?

Anyway, it got super-dark around 6:30, and of course that's when most of the players came out, and I wasn't about to bother people I couldn't even really see.  So I went back to my hotel at that point.

Although, I walked over to the nearby mall to get dinner around 8, and of course I saw two of the Fighters ANA bicycles parked outside when I was leaving.  It would have been incredibly stalkerish and weird to go back in and look for them, so I didn't.

Wow, this did end up being a longer entry than I thought.  It's not like there was much action today -- just a lot of hanging around camp watching guys practice and occasionally talking to them -- but it was still memorable and there were a lot of funny interactions.

Some (more) photos:


The media tower where the GAORA folks have been broadcasting from.  I think during normal spring training, the Padres front office guys can sit up there and watch all the practice fields.


Practice field 3, I think.


Takayuki Katoh!  When last we met him he looked like this.


Chris Martin and Anthony Bass about to get driven off on a golf cart.  Sho Nakata wasn't driving, so I assume they survived.


I wanted to take a photo of the big baseballs all over the place, but without a human being for scale, it wouldn't really look as impressive.


Who's got two thumbs and is having a blast in Arizona?  Me and Shinji Takahashi, that's who.


Satoh and Shiroishi failing to drive a golf cart through the opening in the fence.


Kaneko throwing batting practice!


Ohtani getting instruction from Kaneko, or something


Kazunori Yamamoto -- former pitcher with the team, now BP, it was nice to see him pitching again.


My "three-shot" with Ryo Watanabe and Ryosuke Kishisato


Takumi Ohshima was all smiles!


Hiromi Oka is never all smiles!

Fighters Spring Camp in Arizona!

Dunno how coherent this entry will be, but -- I'm in Peoria and just went through my first day of Fighters spring training ever. (I mean, unless you count open-sen, which most people don't, I've never been to spring training for any team.)  Some photos at the bottom of the post.

Work has been crazy busy for me so I knew that it would be hard to get a lot of time to come to Peoria at all; I'm managing this one week, and I'm going to have to do some work remotely while I'm here, honestly. I didn't know what the Fighters schedule would be like for such a long time, but around mid-November I called the Peoria Sports Complex like "Hey, I'm a huge Fighters fan and I want to come to spring training, but they haven't released ANY info, what can you tell me?" and they were like "we know nothing except that they've booked the big field on February 8th, 10th, and 13th." Not even like, what their opponents would be, or anything else, just those three days. Sometime early December I found out from Dani on Twitter that the Korean NC Dinos team would be playing the Fighters on the 13th. So I booked a trip here to arrive on Feb 7th and leave on Feb 13th.

Flying *out* of SFO on the morning of the Super Bowl was pretty awesome, actually. We saw a ton of buses heading southward from the city when driving up to the airport, so trying to figure out how important their passengers were based on how much of a police guard they had was pretty amusing. (We went to the Warriors game on Saturday night and it was just chock-full of celebrities; Jay-Z and Beyonce were even there sitting courtside.) My flight had a bunch of empty seats, even. I got to Phoenix airport around 3pm, and then had to go get my rental car, and drive to Peoria. I figured that Dani and Joe had said that practice went until 4pm each day and the players were still around until 6-7pm, so after I checked into my hotel I went over to the Peoria Sports Complex...

...and absolutely nobody was there. I found out later that they ended practice early because of the Super Bowl. Oops. But, I took the opportunity to drive around the grounds a little and figure out where things were, at least.

I must say, btw, that I'm really happy I rented a car. My hotel isn't THAT far -- about a mile walking -- but dang, it is really hot here, and carrying a ton of baseball stuff is not fun already, let alone with the crazy heat. This area has a ton of stuff in it but it's really not walking-friendly.

Case in point: I decided to go to the Target across the street from my hotel and get a few things I'd forgotten to bring. The street is so wide that you can't actually cross it in one walk signal unless you RUN. Which I did. But still. Also amusingly, when I went to pay for my stuff in line at the Target, the people ahead of me were Yoshihiro Satoh and one other guy I still haven't figured out who. They were wearing Fighters camp gear; I was wearing my 野球道 shirt so they were like "...do you like baseball?" and I was like (in Japanese) "I came here to see you guys -- I'm a huge Fighters fan! Game tomorrow, right?" and it was really weird. (I didn't actually realize it was Satoh, just that it was someone I recognized from the team who wasn't a current player, he's team staff. The next day at the field he was like "Hey, you're the girl from Target last night" and I was like "OMG Satoh-kun, right??")

And yeah, that was WEIRD. But cool.

So this morning I showed up at the Padres training fields at the PSC at around 9:30am; basically they had a game at noon and therefore practice from 9-11. Kazunori Yamamoto (former pitcher, also now staff) was playing catch with some people in the outfield but he was standing on the path so I walked past him like (in Japanese) "good morning! oh! yamamoto-kun!" and he was like "oh! hi! good morning! be careful for the balls leaving the field!" And then I came up to the actual field and wasn't sure what to do. People were taking batting practice. Others were throwing in the bullpen. I walked over there, I took a few photos, I got stopped by a security guard who was just like "You can stand here but you can't block anyone going in unless you have a media pass," and I was like "Well, I don't really write about the Fighters anymore so I doubt I can get a pass." I ran into my friend Yohei who works for the team as a translator and chatted with him for a bit, and I also saw Fernando Seguignol and waved hi and he gave me a big hug! But he was also being interviewed at the time so I said we'd catch up later. Various other Fighters celebrities like Yukihiro Nishizaki were wandering around... and eventually I found Dani and Joe over by the third-base side and so I ended up hanging out with them for a while watching batting practice. So crazy! Funny thing: when Shohei Ohtani came in, people were all like "holy shit it's Ohtani" and so I just said in Japanese to him, "good morning!" and he replied to me, "good morning!" and then went into the field. I guess it's all of my years of teaching Japanese junior high school, but I know that greeting people is always a good thing to do and that they'll always reply to you.

(When I greeted Ryo Ishikawa he was all like "ohayou! good morning!!")

Also for some reason Mark Prior was there in the bullpen coaching! How neat is that?

Anyway, after a little while of hanging around with Dani and Joe the team started getting ready to go over to the main field for the game. I did manage to stop Masao Kida and Yoshinori Tateyama and ask them for a photo, which was awesome cool. The players were mostly taking off on golf carts. I offered Dani and Joe a ride and so we got lunch at Subway and then stopped back at their hotel to grab some stuff for the game, and then we came back to the field!

As Dani pointed out, most of the people who were there on the official Fighters tours were already gone by today (oddly, they had scheduled tours like this one for Jan 31 to Feb 5, for example, and I think there was another one until the 6th). I thought that it was odd that the official tours were before the games they were playing, but shrug. Anyway, as a result there really weren't that many people at the game today, and probably half of them were scouts! We sat right behind the Fighters dugout, which was great for photos and terrible for HOLY CRAP IT IS REALLY HOT.

Also a little bit before the game started I saw Atsunori Inaba standing there talking to Nishizaki and I was like "OMG I MUST GO TALK TO HIM OR I WILL FOREVER REGRET IT" and so I went up and waited for their conversation to finish and asked Inaba politely if I could get a photo with him and he surprisingly said sure and Joe took it and I swear that at that point I could probably have gone home from this entire week pretty happy to have accomplished something nigh impossible. (I should have aimed for Takashi Saitoh who was also wandering around, but Dani said he only does fan service for kids, so I dunno.)

There weren't a ton of people in the stands around us; the other people behind the dugout were Japanese; there were a few guys who've been on the Japanball tour a few times sitting a few rows behind us; there was a white guy who spent most of the game hitting on Japanese women in the front row (he was super-annoying; I don't really want to go into details but he creeped me out the whole game).

We ended up getting interviewed by a journalist from the local NPR affiliate, who was basically like "Hi, you guys are all decked out in Fighters gear, what's your story?" and so Joe and I spent an inning or two telling her all about Japanese baseball. That was fun. I wonder whether anything I said will be useful.

Oh yeah, and of course I got an email in Japanese from a friend in Sapporo saying something like "HEY I JUST SAW YOU ON TV! IT'S REALLY EARLY IN THE MORNING HERE BUT WE GOT UP TO WATCH THE GAME! I WONDERED WHEN YOU'D SHOW UP IN PEORIA! HOW'S IT GOING?" which was, as always, surreal, but kind of funny, since this guy also tends to send me email when I'm in Japan like "I saw you on TV at the Tokyo Dome, are you coming to visit us in Sapporo this trip?". For lack of a better reply I sent him my photo with Inaba.

So yeah, there was a game. I did keep score, but it was REALLY hard, due to a combination of being distracted by the interview for a few innings, and them not actually having the lineup or players' names on the scoreboards. They actually did all of the announcements in Japanese and English -- and as usual the English pronunciations were TERRIBLE (like, "who the hell is Day-kee Asooma?") -- but so it means I could follow the Fighters changes fairly easily and utterly could not follow the Lotte Giants changes much at all. Lotte changed pitchers pretty much every inning from the 4th on, and half of their pitchers were submariners or sidearmers, which was interesting on its own, but uninteresting in that I don't remember who half of them were. I mean, I wrote down names, but now they're all kind of fuzzy in my head. I do feel kind of bad about that, but it was just super-hard to follow. I have the account of what happened, but when it comes to the Korean team I'm not actually sure WHO did what, is all.

Yuki Saitoh started for the Fighters, which of course went poorly when in the third inning he gave up like 4 straight hits to account for 3 runs. The Fighters evened it up in the bottom of the 4th, after Giants starter Se Woong Park came out and was replaced by sidearmer Jae Gon Lee, who gave up a double to Brandon Laird, followed by walking Asama and Sugiya, so when Ryo Ishikawa pinch-hit for Shota Ohno and came up to bat, it was the perfect bases-loaded opportunity for him to blast a grand slam to left field! (Due to the way the left field bullpen is, I actually didn't realize it was a home run at first until it became clear it had landed in the bullpen.) So that made it 4-3.

It stayed 4-3 for most of the rest of the game through a series of one-inning Giants pitchers and for the Fighters, Yodai Enoshita pitched the 4th and 5th, Masahiro Inui pitched the 6th, Yohei Kagiya (!!!) pitched the 7th, and Akihiro Hakumura pitched the 8th and 9th.

Unfortunately in the top of the 9th, Hakumura gave up a bloop single to Hun Do Park (I think; honestly not sure), who stole second, and then two batters later Min Ho Kang hit a monster double to left, scoring Park, and he stole third, and then scored on a wild pitch to make it 5-4, which was the final score.

I was so excited when Kagiya came out! Especially since the NPR interviewer, she had asked us our favorite players on the team, and I'm like "Yohei Kagiya" and she's like "Oh, what position is he?" and I said "Middle relief pitcher" and she's like "...I see. Do you think he'll pitch today?" "No, but that's ok." But then he did! I put my Kagiya towel over the dugout fence thingy, and Masato Yoshii even pointed and smiled at it like "Nice sign!" But I wasn't actually sure Kagiya himself saw it, which was odd.

(It's really a shame Kisanuki isn't around anymore because I would have so so so so so much loved to meet him here. Just saying.)

Around the 8th or 9th inning we also had a lady come up and start talking to us who was like, Uwasawa's great-aunt or something -- and then it turned out she works on Portland Sister City stuff with my JET friend that I used to always stay with in Sapporo back in the day. That was pretty random.

Anyway, we got kicked out of the stadium pretty quickly after the game, which was okay, because it was SO HOT OUT. We decided to go line up for autographs/etc, but since I wasn't sure how long it'd take I went back to my hotel to get my laptop and stuff, and dropped Dani and Joe off at their hotel. But then it turned out I didn't get a damn bit of work done, because between 4:30-6:30pm or so there was a fairly steady stream of players coming out of the building. I thought it was kind of odd, but people were just lined up by the building, and basically, players would either come out and stop for fans, or they'd come out elsewhere and avoid the line, and for the most part people abided by "if he's not coming to the line, he doesn't want to talk to us", although for example, we went and chased down Kenta Uehara by his car a bit further off.

I got photos with Takanashi, Uehara, Oshimoto (!!), Sho Nakata, and Masui, and I also got some of them to sign my new uniform (Uwasawa, Hakumura, Nakata, Masui). I also got Inaba to sign my uniform!! I wasn't planning on it but basically he came out to the media van and a few people were kinda like "...should we?" and ran over, and then he was surprisingly nice and accomodating for everyone, so I got him to sign my uniform, like "I've been such a big fan of yours forever", and he's like "Your Japanese is great," (that's always what people say and usually it annoys me but when someone like Inaba says it my reply is "oh thank you so much but") and I asked when he got to town, and he said "Oh, I arrived yesterday," and I was like "Me too!" and then I felt like the biggest idiot ever, and I thanked him and ran off before I could sound even dumber.

I also chatted with Hakumura for a while because thanks to Dave, I knew that Kunitomi from Keio is playing in the Arizona Winter League somewhat nearby so that was kind of cool to have something interesting to tell him.

And of course Kagiya came out eventually and I got him to sign my new uniform AND sign my towel ("I put this out when you were pitching but I don't think you saw it!") and we took a photo together but it was so dark out by then that yet again I have a photo with Kagiya and I'm not happy with it, which makes me feel sort of bad. But, I guess I have all week to bug him again, hopefully he won't kill me! I was definitely super excited to see him.

Oh, a funny thing happened also where Tateyama had come out, and Dani had brought her Rangers Tateyama shirt, but she couldn't find her marker, and I was like "DANI TAKE MY PEN AND GO GET TATEYAMA" and so she took my pen and ran off like "Tateyama-saaaaaaan!"

Anyway, like I said, it got dark, so dark we couldn't tell who was coming out anymore by 6:30pm, so I decided to leave. Joe is heading back to Boston but I guess I'll see Dani again whenever I get to the park tomorrow, and Dave is also supposed to show up, so it's nice to get to meet up with all of my online NPB friends.

This wouldn't be a Marinerds post if I didn't end with some photos, so even though I'm already super-tired, here you go:


With Tateyama and Kida


With Inaba.  I was so surprised and happy to see him!


Team pre-game meeting


Me and Joe and Dani (Dani did not want her face showing up in my blog but you have to give her mad Sanko props for the jersey)



Casey Kuhn was the reporter from NPR who interviewed us.  She wanted a photo of us, so I thought it was fair to get a photo with her.


Final score of the game


Oshimoto, who seemed surprised (but pleased) that I was like "OMG IT'S OSHIMOTO CAN I GET A PHOTO WITH YOU?"  Another woman tried to get him to sign something and he was like "...I'm not a player anymore, I don't really sign"


Same kinda story with Sho -- surprised he was patient enough to get me get a photo, now it's just a shame about the shadow.  Ah well, it was still nice of him :)


Hirotoshi Takanashi... I've just never met him before, oddly.


Kenta Uehara.  Funny thing here was that the two girls who got photos with him before I did, they both posed by saying "KENSHI NO SEBANGO WA NIIIIIIII" which I guess is like a "say cheese" sort of equivalent, only it's "Kenshi's uniform number is 2", about Sugiya's uniform number change.  So, as a joke when I went up to pose, I said "KENTA NO SEBANGO WA NIIIIIIIIIII JU!" meaning "Kenta's uniform number is 20!"  He cracked up and so did I.


Fighters closer Hirotoshi Masui


Kagiya!  I was so happy to see him and all but dang, it was dark.  Alas.

Draft 2015 Liveblogging!

EDIT: Liveblogging part has been moved to below the draft result table; pre-draft comments still at top.  As of 5:50pm Oct 23 PST, the entire draft result table is finished, including ikusei!

I was in Japan 2 weeks ago, so I did manage to buy a few of the draft magazines, so that should help with player backgrounds, although since they publish them before the deadline for guys submitting their draft-hopeful 志望届 intent letters, about half of the guys in the magazines aren't actually going into the draft.  Shrug.  I'll hopefully catch a stream online of the TV part, but otherwise I'll just be watching the picks come in on various news sources such as Nikkan Sports, Sponichi, Sanspo, etc as usual.

Not sure who I'm really emotionally invested in this year aside from the Sanko boys (please for the love of god do not let Takayama go to the Giants), maybe Ohshiro-kun (Koji that is, I've given up on Motoshi ever getting drafted now, sadly), and a bunch of the industrial league guys.  Well, and like everyone I wonder what'll happen to Rui Okoe, and another lesser-known half kid in the list named Julius Higuma.  (BTW, for the three of you who might wonder what ever happened to Teikyo's Naville Ariga, he apparently works at a Maruhan store in Sendai...)

Predraft update 8pm: Shun Takayama broke his wrist on Sunday, apparently, though it was only discovered and in the news today.  Specifically, he broke the hamate bone in his wrist; after reading about it on Wikipedia it doesn't sound that bad, apparently this just happens to golfers/baseball players and is often a hairline fracture that doesn't show up (infact they say he had an X-Ray after the game and it showed up normal but then an MRI later in the week showed the fracture).  However, Yakult at least has said they will still choose him in the first round.  That suits me just fine :)

Takayama is easily one of the best college batter/fielders in the draft this year, he broke the career hits record in Tokyo Big 6 by accumulating 131 hits over 4 years -- this is no small feat, the record was set at 127 hits by Shigeru Takada back in 1967 and stood for 48 years until now.  He was a member of the Nichidai Sanko team that won Koshien in 2011 and that I was a crazy enough fan of to dedicate an entire tag on here just to their team.  Even after his freshman year at Meiji I was already predicting him as the most likely guy from their team to go pro, so go figure.  I don't think this wrist injury will affect his career much.

Name                   Pos  HS/Univ/Company         T/B   DOB          Ht/Wt  
--------------------   ---  ---------------         ---   ----------   -------
Eagles
x Taiga Hirasawa
1 Rui Okoe              OF  Kanto Daiichi HS        R/R   07/21/1997   183/85
2 Ryota Yoshimochi      IF  Osaka Shogyo Univ       R/R   11/04/1993   174/64
3 Eigoro Mogi           IF  Waseda Univ             R/L   02/14/1994   171/75
4 Kengo Horiuchi        C   Shizuoka HS             R/L   04/15/1997   176/80
5 Ryota Ishibashi       P   Honda                   R/L   06/06/1991   175/77
6 Yuichi Adachi         C   Panasonic               R/R   09/22/1989   178/83
7 Itsuki Murabayashi    P   Otsuka HS               R/R   10/06/1997   180/70

i1 Takumi Deguchi       IF  Tsuda Gakuen HS         R/R   03/03/1998   175/91
i2 Hiroki Yamada        IF  Komono HS               R/L   10/04/1997   176/81

Buffaloes
1 Masataka Yoshida      OF  Aoyama Gakuin Univ      R/L   07/15/1993   172/80
2 Taisuke Kondoh        P   Panasonic               R/R   05/29/1991   178/74
3 Koji Ohshiro          IF  Rikkio Univ             R/R   06/14/1993   175/71
4 Daiki Aoyama          P   Toyota                  R/L   11/28/1994   183/84
5 Ryo Yoshida           P   Tokaidai Sagami HS      R/R   06/20/1997   181/72
6 Sena Satoh            P   Sendai Ikuei HS         R/R   06/02/1997   180/84
7 Kohei Suzuki          IF  Mitsubishi Juko Nagoya  R/R   06/20/1991   175/78
8 Ryuta Kadoya          P   J-Project               R/R   10/18/1990   175/71
9 Ken Akama             P   Saginomiya Seisakusho   R/R   11/14/1990   180/80
10 Yutaro Sugimoto      OF  JR Nishinihon           R/R   04/05/1991   190/92

i1 Takayuki Tsukada     P   Hakuoh Univ             L/L   09/26/1993   184/82
i2 Kosuke Akamatsu      C   Kagawa Olive Guyners    R/R   06/05/1992   188/113

Lions
1 Shinsaburo Tawata     P   Fuji Univ               R/R   04/13/1993   181/74
2 Seiji Kawagoe         P   Hokkai Gakuen Univ      L/L   06/30/1993   176/77
3 Shogo Noda            P   Seino Unyu              L/L   06/27/1993   167/70
4 Aito Ohtaki           OF  Hanasaki Tokuharu HS    R/R   04/06/1997   178/82
5 Tadasuke Minamikawa   P   JR Shikoku              R/R   01/13/1992   180/66
6 Keisuke Honda         P   Tohoku Gakuin Univ      R/R   04/24/1993   179/76
7 Wu Nienting           IF  Daichi Kogyo Univ       R/L   06/07/1993   178/75
8 Tsubasa Kokuba        P   Daichi Kogyo Univ       R/R   12/05/1993   181/81
9 Koki Fujita           P   Hirosaki Kogyo HS       L/L   12/11/1997   175/66
10 Naoaki Matsumoto     P   Kagawa Olive Guyners    R/R   11/14/1990   178/78

Marines
1 Taiga Hirasawa        IF  Sendai Ikuei HS         R/L   12/24/1997   176/76
2 Ryota Sekiya          P   JR Higashinihon         R/R   05/10/1991   180/82
3 Kakeru Narita         P   Akita Shogyo HS         L/L   02/03/1998   169/68
4 Taiki Tohjoh          P   JR Higashinihon         R/R   08/15/1991   176/80
5 Shu Hara              P   Senshudai Matsudo HS    R/R   12/06/1997   185/84
6 Akifumi Shigaraki     P   Miyazaki Umeda Gakuen   R/R   12/26/1991   180/83
7 Keisuke Takano        P   JR Nishinihon           R/R   12/28/1991   178/78

i1 Takamasa Ohki        IF  Kagawa Olive Guyners    R/L   11/22/1991   174/73
i2 Tomoya Kakinuma      C   Nihon Kokusai Univ      R/R   05/12/1993   180/82

Fighters
x Junpei Takahashi
x Shinnosuke Ogasawara
1 Kenta Uehara          P   Meiji Univ              L/L   03/29/1994   190/85
2 Takayuki Katoh        P   Kazusa Magic            L/L   06/03/1992   182/82
3 Kazutomo Iguchi       P   Nodai Okhotsk Univ      R/R   01/07/1994   177/80
4 Shota Hiranuma        P   Tsuruga Kehi HS         R/L   08/16/1997   178/75
5 Toyoki Tanaka         P   Nihon Bunri Univ        R/R   12/01/1993   180/88
6 Toshitake Yokoo       IF  Keio Univ               R/R   05/27/1993   175/86
7 Yuki Yoshida          P   Tokai Univ              R/R   02/16/1994   187/79
8 Yuya Himeno           P   Osaka Kaisei HS         R/R   04/02/1997   184/79

Hawks
1 Junpei Takahashi      P   Ken Gifu Shogyo HS      R/R   05/08/1997   183/76
2 Reiji Kozawa          P   Nichidai Mishima HS     R/L   03/09/1998   180/74
3 Kenta Tanigawara      C   Toyohashi Chuo HS       R/L   04/16/1997   173/79
4 Kenta Chatani         P   Teikyo #3 HS            R/R   01/16/1998   185/85
5 Kenta Kurose          C   Hatsushiba Hashimoto HS R/R   08/12/1997   180/94
6 Hikaru Kawase         OF  Oita Shogyo HS          R/L   09/15/1997   175/63

i1 Yuuto Nozawa         P   Tsukuba Shuei HS        R/L   11/06/1997
i2 Ryuya Kodama         P   Kanagawa Univ           L/L   10/09/1993
i3 Yuichi Higoshi       C   Nodai Okhotsk Univ      R/L   09/28/1993
i4 Shin Nakamura        P   Luther Gakuin HS        R/R   08/08/1997
i5 Takeshi Watanabe     P   Iizuka HS               L/L   09/09/1997

Baystars
1 Shota Imanaga         P   Komazawa Univ           L/L   09/01/1993   178/80
2 Kento Kumahara        P   Sendai Univ             R/L   10/19/1993   178/76
3 Tatsuhiro Shibata     IF  Kokugakuin Univ         R/L   12/16/1993   167/68
4 Yasutaka Tobashira    C   NTT Nishinihon          R/L   04/11/1990   178/83
5 Kakeru Ayabe          P   Kasumigaura HS          R/R   04/25/1997   189/86
6 Koki Aoyagi           OF  Osaka Toin HS           R/R   05/19/1997   183/83
7 Takuto Nogawa         P   Saginomiya Seisakusho   L/L   09/06/1991   172/75

i1 Keisho Amiya         C   Chiba Eiwa HS           R/R   10/03/1997   183/82
i2 Musashi Yamamoto     IF  Kyushu Kokusaidai HS    R/R   02/17/1998   188/90
i3 Jo Tamura            P   Kansai Gakuin Univ      R/R   11/20/1992   185/86


Dragons
x 1 Junpei Takahashi
1 Shinnosuke Ogasawara  P   Tokaidai Sagami HS      L/L   10/08/1997   180/83 
2 Yu Satoh              P   Tohoku Fukushi Univ     R/L   06/29/1993   187/85
3 Takuya Kinoshita      C   Toyota                  R/R   12/18/1991   183/92
4 Hiroto Fuku           P   JR Kyushu               L/L   06/16/1992   178/85
5 Toshiki Abe           IF  Honda                   R/R   12/03/1989   185/80
6 Ryota Ishioka         IF  JR Higashinihon         L/L   05/25/1992   187/90

i1 Seiya Nakagawa       P   Aichi Univ              L/L   12/03/1993   178/81
i2 Shu Yoshida          P   Tokushima Indigo Socks  R/R   07/08/1996   185/83
i3 Takuya Mitsuma       P   Musashi Heat Bears      R/R   07/22/1992   183/92
i4 Mikihiro Nishihama   P   Seijo Univ              R/R   08/04/1993   174/78
i5 Kaito Goya           P   Hachinohe Kosei HS      L/L   09/30/1997   180/75
i6 Masaru Watanabe      OF  Tokai Univ              R/L   10/14/1993   172/80

Carp
1 Akitake Okada         P   Osaka Shogyo Univ       R/L   10/18/1993   184/80
2 Hiroki Yokoyama       P   NTT Higashinihon        R/L   03/12/1992   187/85
3 Mikiya Takahashi      P   Hanamaki Higashi HS     L/L   06/21/1997   176/74
4 Ryota Funakoshi       C   Oji                     R/R   11/26/1993   177/79
5 Ryoma Nishikawa       IF  Oji                     R/L   12/10/1994   176/67
6 Oscar Nakaoshi        P   Honda                   L/L   03/28/1991   178/78
7 Riku Aoki             IF  Yamagata Chuo HS        R/R   11/11/1997   180/84

Tigers
1 Shun Takayama         OF  Meiji Univ              R/L   04/18/1993   181/84
2 Seishiro Sakamoto     C   Meiji Univ              R/R   11/10/1993   175/77
3 Taichi Takeyasu       P   Kumamoto Golden Larks   R/S   09/27/1994   183/70
4 Atsushi Mochizuki     P   Yokohama Sogakukan HS   R/R   08/02/1997   187/82
5 Kohyo Aoyagi          P   Teikyo Univ             R/R   12/11/1993   181/79
6 Yutaro Itayama        OF  Asia Univ               R/L   03/27/1994   180/76

Giants
1 Toshiki Sakurai       P   Ritsumeikan Univ        R/R   10/21/1993   181/73
2 Shinnosuke Shigenobu  OF  Waseda Univ             R/L   04/17/1993   173/67
3 Hirotaka Yonahara     P   Futenma HS              R/R   03/09/1998   190/88
4 Shingo Usami          C   Josai Kokusai Univ      R/L   06/04/1993   181/86
5 Yasuhiro Yamamoto     IF  Keio Univ               R/R   10/10/1993   175/75
6 Daisuke Tatsumi       P   Iwakura HS              L/L   04/26/1997   183/79
7 Kota Nakagawa         P   Tokai Univ              L/L   02/24/1994   182/81
8 Takuya Matsuzaki      IF  Nihon Seishi Ishinomaki R/R   01/20/1992   175/90

i1 Daiki Masuda         IF  Tokushima Indigo Socks  R/R   07/29/1993   172/65
i2 Daisei Kobayashi     C   Musashi Heat Bears      R/L   01/15/1994   180/82
i3 Yusuke Matsuzawa     OF  Kagawa Olive Guyners    L/L   07/01/1992   181/83
i4 Kosei Tajima         IF  Musashi Heat Bears      R/L   07/13/1996   175/78
i5 Hideyoshi Ohtake     P   Musashi Heat Bears      R/R   07/26/1988   180/87
i6 Atsuro Yamashita     P   Chinzei HS              L/L   02/24/1998   178/82
i7 Yohei Yajima         P   Musashi Heat Bears      R/R   06/16/1990   179/82
i8 Jun Hasegawa         P   Ishikawa Million Stars  R/R   06/15/1991   186/74

Swallows
x 1 Shun Takayama
1 Juri Hara             P   Toyo Univ               R/R   07/19/1993   178/70
2 Taishi Hirooka        IF  Chiben Gakuen HS        R/R   04/09/1997   181/76
3 Keiji Takahashi       P   Ryukyudai Heian HS      L/L   05/14/1997   178/71
4 Julius Higuma         P   Kochi Chuo HS           L/L   11/21/1997   184/74
5 Kotaro Yamasaki       OF  Nihon Univ              L/L   08/11/1993   173/67
6 Taiki Watanabe        IF  Senshudai Matsudo HS    R/R   06/07/1997   181/79

1am: and the feed is live! (Thanks Dani for the link!)
1:02am: watching all the old dudes in their suits filing in (whoa Nashida! Ramichan! Tanishige!)
1:05am: big cheer for new manager Kanemoto (Tigers) coming in, probably biggest yet.
1:06am: another huge cheer for Kimiyasu Kudoh (Hawks)

1:08am: Long explanation of the rules. If you don't know: first round is crazy free-for-all with ties broken by a lottery, then they go in waiver order and reverse waiver order for the next rounds (hence the actual order I have below). They're giving counts for all the student players eligible in the draft (it's about 160; there were 78 high school and 81 university letters submitted).

And a speech from the commissioner and a commercial break and THEN we will get the first round underway!

1:15am: The Eagles name Hirasawa and we're off!

First-round "picks":
Rakuten Eagles: Taiga Hirasawa, IF, Sendai Ikuei HS
Yokohama DeNA Baystars: Shota Imanaga, LHP, Komazawa Univ
Orix Buffaloes: Masataka Yoshida, OF, Aoyama Gakuin Univ
Chunichi Dragons: Junpei Takahashi, RHP, Ken Gifu Sho HS
Seibu Lions: Shinsaburo Tawata, RHP, Fuji Univ
Hiroshima Carp: Akitake Okada, RHP, Osaka Shogyo Univ
Chiba Lotte Marines: Taiga Hirasawa
Hanshin Tigers: Shun Takayama, OF, Meiji Univ
Nippon Ham Fighters: Junpei Takahashi
Yomiuri Giants: Toshiki Sakurai, P, Ritsumeikan Univ
Softbank Hawks: Junpei Takahashi
Yakult Swallows: Shun Takayama


Okay, looks like it'll be three lotteries: Eagles/Marines for Hirasawa, Tigers/Swallows for Takayama, Dragons/Fighters/Hawks for Takahashi...

Hirasawa goes to... Lotte
Takahashi goes to... Hawks (wow Kudoh looks overjoyed)
Takayama goes to... YAKULT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yay I can keep seeing him hit things at Jingu :)

Okay, going to work on the results grid now while they work out the next part of the first round.

BTW, can I mention that I'm super happy the Giants took someone I completely don't care about?

So the Eagles, Dragons, Tigers, and Fighters need to name new players since they lost lotteries...

1:32 WAIT what the hell is going on? Kanemoto wants to confirm that Hanshin actually won the Takayama lottery?!?!?!? oh no WAY. Hanshin you already have Hayata Itoh you don't need another one WTF.

I guess that means the SWALLOWS now need to name a new player and I need to be grumpy.

I feel like Kanemoto is getting an early start on learning how to challenge things as a manager. Jason points out that he's already winning at it :P

NEXT DAY EDIT for clarification: It seems, according to Kozo and to Sanspo, that what actually went down was this:

• Kanemoto and Manaka took their ballots
• Manaka opened his and having never seen one before, and seeing a stamp on it at all instead of a blank page, did a "guts pose" because he thought he had won
• In reality, Kanemoto's slip had the "交渉権獲得" on it, but he didn't even look at it after seeing Manaka go crazy
• When the NPB staffer came by to their tables to take their ballot slips back and confirm, they informed Kanemoto that HE infact had the slip saying he won the lottery
• Then Kanemoto got up and did an interview about how happy he was to get Takayama while the rest of us were like "WTF"

Poor Manaka.  I guess he has some more important things on his mind like beating down the Hawks in the Japan Series tomorrow.

First Round, Take 2:
Eagles: Rui Okoe, OF, Kanto Daiichi HS
Dragons: Shinnosuke Ogasawara, LHP, Tokaidai Sagami HS
Fighters: Shinnosuke Ogasawara
Swallows: Juri Hara, RHP, Toyo University

And of course the DRAGONS get Ogasawara which means I don't get to reuse my old Fighters Ogasawara jersey as I was vaguely hoping for a few seconds there.

1:50am: Well, now the Fighters get to choose a first-round pick and then we go in waiver order. Bleh.

First Round, Take 3:
Fighters: Kenta Uehara, P, Meiji University

I had a feeling that would happen. Why couldn't we have gotten Sachiya that way instead if we wanted a big lefty from Meiji? Unlucky year.

Okay, they're taking a break for a bit and the TV will probably cut out.

First round thoughts:

No guys were taken from the industrial leagues (or indie but that would be really weird).

It was awfully university-heavy: 8 out of 12.

While typing in info I just realized that Kenta Uehara is an even more statistical anomaly in some ways because he's so huge but he's also the youngest you can possibly be in your class (Japan starts school in April, so everyone in a year is the same age, the oldest in the class were born in April and the youngest born in March -- you often end up with a lot more athletes being born in April-May-June just because they tended to always be the biggest kids in their class).

2:10am and the draft is continuing with Rakuten taking Ryota Yoshimochi and Yokohama taking Kento Kumabara in the 2nd round (after a long interview with Rami explaining exactly why he's happy to get Imanaga). And first shakaijin guy is Taisuke Kondoh from Panasonic, going to Orix.

BTW, for the most part from now on I'm just going to go look up guys and fill in the table except for commentary when guys I care about get drafted.

I had joked that Yokohama had to take Funamoto or Azegami in the second round to continue their streak of taking my Hosei boys and running them into the ground but we'll have to see what actually happens there :)

2:18 nevermind here is the part where I go off about Ryota Sekiya going to Lotte and Seishiro Sakamoto going to Hanshin, I guess. Sekiya was a year ahead of Sachiya at Nichidai Sanko AND at Meiji and he's also a good pitcher. And then Seishiro Sakamoto -- Meiji captain this year, great guy, great catcher. He's from Kansai -- infact he was a year or two behind Tetsuto Yamada at Riseisha HS -- so I guess it's ok for him to go to Hanshin -- but I'm really worried he'll get stuck behind Umeno :(

2:19 OMG THE FIGHTERS TAKE TAKAYUKI KATOH IN THE SECOND ROUND!!!

Super excited about this one. He's a big tall pile of arms and legs but I've seen him pitch and he's good. Watched him throw a shutout against ENEOS last year -- I was there to cheer ENEOS but came out of it impressed by Katoh and even got a photo with him -- infact I've been slacking off on posting names because I went to dig up that photo :) (see photo tweet here)

2:33 excited that Takuya Kinoshita finally got drafted -- I remember him filling out a form for it back in 2013 but he didn't get picked then

2:37 Koji Ohshiro! To Orix! Now I guess that means my friend K is going to go watch a LOT of Orix games to see Sachiya AND Koji :)

2:50 in passing I wanted to note that Yakult took Julius Higuma that I'd mentioned earlier (yay!) and Kotaro Yamasaki from Nichidai (yay!)

3:27 I was just slogging away translating names into the table when suddenly i heard the FIGHTERS TAKE TOSHITAKE YOKOO FROM KEIO/SANKO/WHATEVER OMG! One of my Sanko boys is going to be a Fighter! holy CRAP!

5:43am: Hi! I've translated the main rounds but haven't gotten to the ikusei draft yet. It's basically summarized by saying "The Giants drafted a bunch of BCL guys and a few other semi-interesting names popped up". I'll do it sometime tomorrow.

Man, this was a pretty insane draft after all. Still feeling pretty awful about Takayama and on the Fighters missing both their lotteries but whatever. I think it'll all work out in the end. Now my goal for Arizona next year is clearly to get a photo between Arihara and Uehara since they're both so huge.

Next day 5:50pm: I'm done entering all the ikusei!

BTW, I still stand by my assertion that there are always going to be more athletes born near the start of the school year, and this draft class doesn't contradict that at all:

Time of Year      Players Born
------------      ------------
April - Jun         38 (33%)
Jul - Sep           25 (22%)
Oct - Dec           35 (30%)
Jan - Mar           18 (16%)