From the home office in Seattle, Washington

Top ten Reasons The Mariners Should Re-sign Jamie Moyer:

10. Moyer magic doesn’t work so well when other pitchers click their heels and say "There’s no place like home"

9. He’s fun to watch. Seeing guys strike out on a whopping 81 mph fastball is just funny.

8. Is the only guy on the staff who can tell Felix, “I’ve been pitching professionally since before you were born!”

7. They’d lose out on the big tear-jerker retirement party a la Edgar, Dan, etc.

6. It would really suck if he continued his crazy winning streak in Safeco… while playing for some other team.

5. "Ancient Mariner" title would fall to Eddie Guardado

4. Moyer banner at front of Safeco Field would have to be replaced with Richie Sexson, which would make Ichiro look even smaller

3. The Mariners would no longer have the novelty of having both the oldest and youngest player in the league

2. Mariners Wives charity organization would have to deal with the crushing loss of both Karen Moyer and Annie Wilson in the same year

1. Mariner Moose would have to find a new roomate


Top Ten Reasons the Phillies should re-sign Billy Wagner:

10. Phillies fans would have to boo someone else for throwing under 100 mph

9. He has a stronger farm system at home in rural Virginia than the entire Phillies minor league organization

8. Since he's really right-handed, he can sign stuff for kids all the time without using his throwing hand

7. Embraces "unlucky" number 13 on his uniform

6. If he doesn't get to play in a World Series soon, he's going to undoubtedly go insane in the bullpen one day and kill someone, which might take care of Rheal Cormier

5. Should the Mets snag him, the Phillies might be tempted to sign Braden Looper, and that would suck

4. Only guy besides Mariano Rivera who can *really* pull off using "Enter Sandman" as his song

3. With Larry Bowa gone, someone's got to shoot off their mouth all the time

2. He was responsible for getting Ezequiel Astacio's ugly mug out of the Phillies system

1. Alpacas are really, really cute

Friday Foto

Wherein I feature yet another baseball picture I took that I could never find a good context for, but which is burning a hole on my hard drive and yearns to see the world. This one is from the September 13th Angels-Mariners game.



I'm happily taking suggestions for captions, as the best one I could come up with was "The Mariner Moose goes through the stands scouting for possible first-round picks in the June 2023 draft."

That Ichiro article

So, if you aren't living on another planet, or apparently even if you are, you're probably aware that Ichiro vented his spleen to some Japanese press recently about how he's a little unhappy with how much the Mariners sucked this year. Sadly, nobody seems to actually have an online version of the interview. I happened to buy Sports Graphic Number 640 last week because it's the big "BOBBY MAGIC! LOTTE PWN3D HANSHIN!" issue, and since I stayed up for most of the playoffs and Japan Series, I wanted the articles about it. Plus, it has the coolest picture ever, of Imae fielding Yano's popped-up bunt for a double play in the ninth inning of Game 4. That was just plain spectacular.

Now, see, all Japanese baseball magazines pretty much will always have Ichiro and Matsui sections. Most of the time I already know the information within, so I rarely bother reading them. So it's no surprise that I didn't even notice the "Ichiro: My Aim" article except that it had a funny picture with Ichiro in front of Safeco Field with approximately a hundred Japanese schoolchildren. No, really.

Well, as it turns out, this is one of the articles where Ichiro vented his spleen. So as a service to mankind (or maybe that's Marinerkind) I scanned in the article so other people could read it. And here you go. Because it was 5 pages long, I also scanned in a bonus picture of poor Kenji Johjima grumpily slouching on his couch with his catcher's mitt and his crutches. (It's the start of an interview article with him as well.)

The files are still up, just not image linked directly here any more:

Go here for small and large versions of files

Go here for Tokyo Sam's translation

Fighting and Biting (short takes)

1) God knows why, but The Fighters are actually posting Iriki. [english] I suppose the pitching staff isn't screwed up enough already? The worst part is -- I think an MLB club would be nuts to actually put Iriki out there pitching, let alone pay the posting fee for him. He's like Masao Kida, only even more mediocre. 33 years old, spent most of 2003 and 2004 either on farm teams or out injured with hamstring problems. I'll be astounded if anyone actually bids for him, but he has stated that he would "regret not attempting to go to MLB". Sometimes I wonder whether "playing in AAA for a few years" really equates to "living out my dream to play in the MLB" for these guys?

(I did learn from the article that Tetsu Yofu, formerly of the then-Daiei Hawks, pitched a no-hitter at AAA Charlotte in 2004, though. That is pretty cool.)

EDIT> It is unclear whether Iriki is actually being posted or being released -- I'm under the impression that the media is still calling it "posting" because he had to go to the team to get them to grant him permission to come over here, but I don't think they're taking bids -- he can just negotiate with whoever he wants.

2) I went to try out Tat's Deli today, which is down on Occidental street, pretty much exactly halfway between where I work and Safeco Field. They supposedly have special hours and deals for Seahawks and Mariners game days. A review said something like "So authentic that Philly ex-pats weep at the first bite."

Let me tell you something. Philly ex-pats weep at the first bite because they can't believe they just spent 14 bucks for this pile of crap. The sandwich I got today would cost me about $5-6 tops in Philly, plus the bread would be real, the cheese would be on the inside instead of the outside, the sandwich wouldn't fucking fall apart, and most of all, I could get birch beer with it.

A friend of mine from Philly says, "Oh, yeah. Their cheesesteaks suck. The hoagies are good, though."

3) Colletti introduced as new GM of Dodgers. As you can guess, I thought it'd be pretty cool if Kim Ng got the job, but, ah well.

4) (edited in later) Mike Cameron to the Padres for Xavier Nady. AWESOME! We'll get to see Cameron play a lot more that way. In an unrelated note, Denny's restaurants all over San Diego are serving a new breakfast special called "Moon Over Mike Cammy".

Random Ichiro Sightings

Ha, fooled you.

A friend of mine went down to California this past weekend. While he was there, he stopped by the Best Place On Earth, Costa Mesa branch. He decided to randomly buy me first two issues of ドカベン(プロ野球編) for whatever unknown reason, and for whatever unknown reason, I'm actually reading them. (I studied Japanese for several years in college, but I'm really not into anime or manga. I'm making an exception for this, because it's baseball!)

Anyway, "Dokaben (Pro Yakyu Series)" is apparently the continuation of the original Dokaben manga, which dealt with these crazy kids on the Meikun High School baseball team. Now they're all being drafted to pro teams, and boy are their adventures strange. Yamada, the "main character" of sorts, is drafted to Seibu; the large and bizarre Iwaki plays for the Hawks; the adorable Satonaka pitches for Lotte, and the short roly-poly Tonoma plays for the Orix Blue Wave.

They actually use a lot of real baseball players in the manga, so what do I come across but a Lotte-Orix game... Tonoma's up to bat, and this is 1995, so Irabu is pitching... and Ichiro is standing on first. It's so CUTE!



You see, that was my random Ichiro sighting for the day!

Man, this series is weird. I really love a lot of the way they've drawn a lot of the players though. It appears that the series actually goes on for 50-something issues over a span of ten years, so I'm actually somewhat curious now about what the later issues look like with the newer teams and players. Maybe I'll hunt them down when I have time in a few weeks.

Book Review: The Annotated Casey at the Bat, by Martin Gardner

The Annotated Casey at the Bat, by Martin Gardner

The other day I hung out at the Elliott Bay Book Company with fellow blog citizen Ryan H, and he was very kind and let me geek out about baseball with him for several hours. (I hate the offseason. Everybody just wants to talk about that sport with the prolate spheroid and the Jacobsenesque guys slamdancing.) I wasn't intending to buy any books, but I found this book full of Casey at the Bat parodies and tributes, and well, I've kind of had that poem going through my head since a few weeks ago. So, I couldn't resist.

If you are a fan of Casey at all, you need this book. No, really, you do. I had no idea there were so many other parodies and versions and takes on Casey. It's all levels of awesome.

The book delves into the history of the poem itself and the various versions, as well as the actual characters surrounding Our Hero, including lineups for the Mudville Nine, assorted players for Centerville, Casey's family, the pitcher (James Riley "Fireball" Snedeker. I never even knew he had a name!) who fanned Casey, etc.

First, there are several versions by Thayer himself. Then there are several tributes by the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, which range from as simple as Casey actually hitting the ball, to a sad ballad about the desertion of Mudville, to a brilliant little ditty depicting Casey as "The Man Who Played With Anson on the Old Chicago Team", but culminating in the ultimate poetic snarkiness, as he writes a poem as a response to a letter he received saying "I enjoyed your Casey poem, but what is the original about?" called "He Never Heard of Casey!" An excerpt:

Ten million never heard of Keats, or Shelley, Burns, or Poe;
But they know "the air was shattered by the force of Casey's blow";
They never heard of Shakespeare, nor of Dickens, like as not,
But they know the somber drama from old Mudville's haunted lot.

He never heard of Casey! Am I dreaming? Is it true?
Is fame but wind-blown ashes when the summer day is through?
Does greatness fade so quickly and is grandeur doomed to die
That bloomed in early morning, ere the dusk rides down the sky?

Granny Rice's stuff is fabulous, but there's even more that follows. We have more "revenge of Casey" style poems where he actually gets the hit at the end. In some of these, Casey is in his forties, or even in his sixties. We have a few poems that try to pinpoint the blame for Casey's bad fortune -- a cross-eyed bat boy, a spitballing pitcher, what have you. We also have the rest of Casey's family come to the plate -- poems about his son, his daughter, his sister, even his wife's antics in the batter's box grace the pages of this tome. A couple of times, we actually have Casey as a pitcher, oftentimes getting his revenge on the Centerville team.

There's even, of course, the Mad Magazine "Get a teenager to translate it for you" version that was published in 1960. You don't even really need the explanatory paragraph to figure that out, honestly:

Ten thousand peepers piped him as he rubbed fuzz on his palms;
Five thousand choppers grooved it when he smeared some on his arms.
Then while the shook-up pitcher twirled the ball snagged in his clutch,
A hip look lit up Casey. Man, this cat was just too much!

And now the crazy mixed-up ball went flying out through space.
But Casey, he just eyed it with a cool look on his face.
Right at that charged-up sideman, the old ball really sailed--
"That's so far out," sang Casey. "Like, Strike One!" the umpire wailed.

The British writer J.A. Lindon contributes two pure gems as well - the first is Casey in outer space, aka Casey At The Cap, and the other is, of course, the Village Cricket Casey. They are both great, though I think the kicker is Lindon's excellent palindrome:

Won't I help? Miss it in mad stab? Yes, a Casey bats. Damn! It is simple -- hit now.

Anyway, there is a football version as well (boo!) called "O'Toole's Touchdown" which is immediately recognizeable as well ("And so when Cohen lost five yards, and Zipkin did the same / A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.")

But I must tell you that none of these are even remotely comparible to the very last entry in this anthology, which is "Ahab At The Helm" by none other than Ray Bradbury. I'm not sure it gets much better than this:

It looked extremely rocky for the Melville nine that day,
The score stood at two lowerings, with one lowering yet to play,
And when Fedallah died and rose, and others did the same
A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of this Game.

A straggling few downed-oars to go, leaving behind the rest,
With that hope that springs eternal from the blind dark human breast.
They prayed that Captain Ahab's rage would thrust, strike, overwhelm!
They'd wager "Death to Moby!" with old Ahab at the helm.

I think you've gotten the idea by now -- and in theory, if you enjoyed the few snippets I've included here, you'll enjoy the rest of the poems. It's a truly wonderful collection of literary, mostly-baseball-related delight. Hell, even the Amazon review I see (another Casey parody) is funny.

As an aside, though -- this is NOT a bus book by any means. This book is best enjoyed at home where you can read all of the poems aloud and enjoy the meter and imagery -- also, it's rather embarrassing when you burst out laughing on the bus, really. I think it'd be a lot of fun for a couple of baseball fans to read together, or perhaps for a parent to read to a child.

Konami Cup Finals - A Tale of Two Watanabes

Well, as predicted, Shunsuke Watanabe started the KC final game for the Marines, and the Marines won 5-3, sweeping the series. If you haven't been keeping track, and you count this as part of the postseason, the Marines are 13-2 between the playoffs, the Japan Series, and the Konami Cup. (They'd be 13-0 if Kobayashi hadn't imploded in the ninth inning of the third game of the PL Second Stage and given up that 4-0 lead, too.)


This Watanabe strikes from below.

The Samsung Lions actually got a reasonably high number of hits off Watanabe, but he managed to get them out at the necessary times to keep them off the board for the most part.

marines.co.jp game summary / konami cup box score

The Marines came on the board in the first inning, when Franco hit a sac fly with the bases loaded, scoring Nishioka. The Lions tied it up in the top of the third, on an RBI single by Han-soo Kim. Then the Marines brought things up to 3-1 in their half of the third, Benny hitting a 2-RBI hit after Imae singled and Franco doubled.

Imae was taken out between the third and fourth innings (Westbay-san says that Imae's arm might be broken after he was hit by a pitch in the first inning?) and Masato Watanabe came in to take his place at third, setting the stage for his fourth-inning 2-run homer. "The other" Watanabe, as it were, struck from above. It's sort of funny since I'm not sure Masato Watanabe has hit a home run in an actual NPB game since 2003. Think of him sort of like Scott Podsednik, if you will.

At this point it was 5-1 Marines, and there it stayed for the next few innings as both the Lions relievers and the Marines relievers held their respective grounds. Fujita, Yabuta, and Kobayashi pitched the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings for the Marines.

Kobayashi seemed in danger of repeating his implosion from the PL playoffs and the Japan Series for a bit there. He struck out Jin, but then Morozumi (subbed in for Benny) made a throwing error fielding Sok-min Park's hit to left, and Han-yi Park took advantage of it with an RBI single, scoring Sok-min Park and bringing it to 5-2. Kang got an infield single, and Yang struck out. Han-soo Kim hit another RBI single, scoring Han-yi Park and bringing the score to 5-3. Fortunately, Kobayashi managed to strike out Dai Kim, and that was it for the game.

It sounds like it was overall a pretty cool series of games, even if it was a bit of a landslide in the Marines' favor. I wouldn't expect it to be so easy for the Japanese teams in the future necessarily, and I do hope they continue this in future years!

Also, if Imae really is injured badly, this is also a damn good case for why you hold these events in the fall, after the season, not in the spring before the season.

The most interesting thought I have after this is: if the NPB is considered "AAAA" ball compared to MLB, does that mean the rest of Asia is considered "AAA" to their "AAAA"? Is the skill differential between NPB and KBO/CPBL comparable to the differential between MLB/NPB? If it's transitive, does that mean an average MLB team would just sweep the floor with a Korean or Taiwanese team?

More Konami Cup Babbling

While I was looking at the aftermath of the trampling that is the Chiba Lotte Marines taking over the rest of Asia, I found a part of their website I had never actually read before (don't ask why I've never before looked at the "English" section -- guess I figured there wasn't much there). Anyway, they've been having some of their gaijin players write a Diary From Abroad, and these entries are actually pretty damn awesome. Val Pascucci, Dan Serafini, Benny Agbayani, Matt Franco, and even Seung-Yeop Lee contribute to it. Very cool and worth a read in my opinion. (I didn't know Matt Franco was Kurt Russell's nephew, after all, or that Ralph Branca is Bobby Valentine's father-in-law...)

Anyway, the Konami Cup has pretty much been fairly one-sided:

Day 1, 11/10: CPBL 6, CBA 0 / NPB 6, KBO 3

Day 2, 11/11: KBO 8, CBA 3 / NPB 12*, CBPL 1

Day 3, 11/12: NPB 3, CBA 1 / KBO 4, CPBL 3

* game called after 7 innings

After the first two games, the Marines were guaranteed to advance to the finals no matter what, and it came down to the Lions/Bulls game to see who their finals opponent is. The result? Marines replay the Lions at 7pm Japan time tonight.

Hiroyuki Kobayashi won the first game for the Marines. Shimizu pitched the second game for the Marines and won a "complete game" of 7 innings -- the game was called due to the mercy rule. Benny hit homers to both fields, the second one a 3-run homer bringing the score to that mercy 12-1. They started Kuroki in the third game -- actually, the lineup in general was a little weak but I guess Bobby figured they didn't even have to win this game. Komiyama ended up pitching the 4th through 8th innings and got the win. Tomorrow, I bet they start Watanabe for the "real" championship game...


Bobby Valentine and Jim Lefebvre sharing some "Bobby Magic"
There are some great pictures up of the games here. In particular I really like that Jim-and-Bobby picture, and also this one of Komiyama with his sunglasses, this one of Shimizu since it reminds me of Shiggy's windup, this awesome one of Air Nishioka!, and some of the team high-fives so you can really see the uniforms: China, Taipei, and Korea.

I know people are saying the Konami Cup is sort of a joke, given what an all-around strong team the Marines are, but it's still really cool that they're doing it, I think. Sort of like a prequel to the baseball world cup and all.