I didn't go to a baseball game today, though we did spend a while listening to the game on the radio while driving through the Nagoya area, as the Chunichi Dragons obliterated the Hiroshima Carp. Good times. The big thing of the game was that Ryota Arai, a Chunichi rookie who happens to be the little brother of the Carp's cleanup hitter Takahiro Arai, got his first big-league hit. They wouldn't shut up on the radio about that for a while, which makes sense, as there's only so many ways you can reiterate that wow, the Carp are getting the Crap beaten out of them. Another neat thing I noticed while watching the baseball daily review on the TV here a little while ago was that little brother Arai wears #25, the same as big brother Arai. Isn't that cute?
Anyway, after getting off the computer last night I realized I forgot a whole bunch of details, but fell asleep watching the replay of the Tigers game instead of coming back downstairs. Besides, there was a Taiwanese guy who had taken the computer after me, and it turned out he was at the game too to see Wei-Tzu Lin, who pinch-hit a home run, and he was using the computer to move the ninety billion pictures and movies he'd taken of the game off his iPod or whatever.
So, some things I forgot:
- I forgot to mention WHY I didn't keep score at the Osaka Dome -- it's because the outfield reserved cheering section seats are under the outfield upper deck seats, which means you can't actually SEE the outfield scoreboard which has the lineup on it. I'm not particularly familiar with the Orix lineup at all these days, so I didn't want to chance it. Japanese stadiums are not big on supplying a ton of information like Safeco Field and such are -- infact, I was surprised Hiroshima actually showed the length of the home runs.
- Also with the weird topography of the Osaka Dome, it was possible for a home run to be hit and still fall back on the field -- if it hit the outfield wall above the lowest deck of seating, which is hard to describe. I think most of the home runs I saw that way were like that.
- After the game at the Osaka Dome, people started putting down mats to show their place in line to get into the game the next day. No joke. They put them down in the entrance line and also in the ticket lines. I guess this is in lieu of camping out or whatever... I wonder how much people respect the line-saving though.
- I realized that my first ever Fighters game was also a Nippon Ham vs. Orix game, on September 8th, 2003, so this Fighters-Orix game was pretty much almost a dead anniversary of my first one ever. Only back then, Orix was the Blue Wave and the Fighters played in the Tokyo Dome instead of in Sapporo.
- Yukio Tanaka pinch-hit, and as I said, this means that pretty much EVERY Fighters game I have ever gone to, Yukio Tanaka has pinch-hit.
- Both games I saw during the day had a catcher named Tsuruoka -- the Fighters' Shinya Tsuruoka and the Baystars' Kazunari Tsuruoka.
- The guy in front of me had an oldskool Fighters t-shirt of Tsuboi #7. I used to have the exact same t-shirt until I lost it when I moved in early 2004, sadly.
- The Fighters are the ONLY team in Pro Yakyu who have not had a tie game yet this year. Unfortunately, in the insane pennant race in the Pacific League, this will actually hurt them rather than help them, as their 74-51-0 record is worse percentage-wise than, say, Softbank's 73-50-4 record.
- There was almost more Tigers stuff in the Buffaloes team store than Buffaloes stuff.
- The uchiwa fan I got before the Tigers game had the lyrics to the Hanshin Tigers song of some sort on the back, which was really convenient for singing at the end of the game. The funny part was coming home and being like, "I bought a Tigers fan", and then realizing that in English that sounds really stupid.
- Getting a non-alcoholic drink at Koshien, from your seat, is actually pretty damn difficult. I was in the second row behind the walkway, and so vendors kept coming by and blocking my vision, but all the drinks they had were either beer or chuuhai (which is apparently a winecooler of sorts... think shochiku with lemon in it). I saw exactly two people with soda all night, and it took me until the third pass to flag one of them down to get a Coke.
- The Tigers fans did the balloons thing both in the 7th inning and at the end of the game when they won. After the game, they lingered around Koshien until they were kicked out, and then I saw a huge gathering of people underneath the highway that runs by the stadium, with 4 people in front leading everyone in Tigers cheers and songs... this is AFTER everyone already did the songs and cheers at the end of the game in the stadium and AFTER the hero interview and AFTER everything else. I guess it makes sense, I wouldn't be in a rush to get crushed in the subway station after the game either, but still. Insane.
I'm going back up to Tokyo tomorrow for a week. It's been fun being in Osaka, and I sort of wish I could stay a bit longer, especially since I just discovered an absolutely amazing and cheap kaitensushi place two blocks from the place I'm staying, but alas. I may actually head to the Marines-Eagles game tomorrow if the weather's nice... we'll see. I'm definitely planning to go on Wednesday. Hopefully Shunsuke Watanabe will pitch then -- that'd just be awesome.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Game Reports: Buffaloes vs. Fighters and Tigers vs. Bay Stars - Osaka Baseball Adventure!
Yeah, so I'm writing this entry without game notes because I didn't take ANY at the Osaka Dome and didn't take many at Koshien (though I kept score at the latter).
My day started off around 11am, as I went to find my way to the Osaka Dome via the subways. I got off the JR Osaka Loop at Taisho and realized I had no clue how to get to the dome from there, so I ended up being a dumbass and took the light green subway line for one stop to get to the Dome. Of course, that stop lets you off in front of the home plate seats, so I had to walk around the entire place to get outfield seats.
Osaka Dome outfield is unreserved seating, so I showed up in the outfield around noon for the 1pm game, and walked up the stairs in my Ogasawara jersey, looking slightly confused, and a lady said, "Hitori desu ka?" ("Are you by yourself?") and I said yeah, and so she said that they had exactly one seat left in their row for the group they were saving, so I should sit there. So I did. I ended up spending most of the game talking to the two people in that row -- an older lady from Osaka with a thick Osaka-ben accent, and a guy from Tokyo sitting in front of me. There was also a couple from Nagoya next to me as well.
I had brought my inflatable dolphin that the people had given me at Seibu last weekend, which I read about in the Japanese "Baseball" magazine later on -- there's an advertisement for Ogasawara island or village or whatever, that Michihiro Ogasawara did, and in the advertisement it says something like "In my village, there are dolphins!" (which sounds like "iruka iru", it's supposed to be funny), so now people have been using the blue inflatable dolphins to cheer for Ogasawara. Neat, huh? Fortunately, other people in Osaka had the dolphins as well, and I also had the magazine article with me so I showed it to the older lady to explain since she was confused too :)
Oh, and there was a game, too. The Fighters were ahead 7-1 after the first two innings. I'm not kidding. They eventually won 10-2 in an absolute massacre of the Buffaloes -- no, really, they got 20 hits, 3 of which were home runs, two of which were by Fernando Seguignol, from both sides of the plate. All in all, I spent most of the game on my feet cheering for the Fighters, since they spent most of the game at-bat. The Buffaloes spent most of their innings going up and sitting back down. It really was a massacre.
Shinjo played in this game, and it's good that I got to see him before he retires. Looking at the box score though, he may have been the only person to get several at-bats that only got one hit though :) Kensuke Tanaka went 4-for-4 with a walk (and I do remember singing his song a LOT), the aforementioned Seguignol was also 4-for-4 with a whopping 6 RBI, and Hichori Morimoto scored 2 runs. Yu Darvish got the win, which wasn't hard with the lead he was given, as he walked 5 and struck out 4 in 7 innings. Notoh and Tateyama finished out the game for the Fighters.
Because the Fighters won the game, everyone was in a great mood, there was a lot of high-fiving, and I ended up talking to people around me a fair amount (and of course, none of them spoke any English, which was both good and bad). It turns out the guy from Tokyo is also a Marines fan, and he had a picture on his cellphone of him hanging out with Bobby Valentine at some Marines fan party, which I'm pretty jealous of. He gave me some stickers of various players, including Ogasawara, and Fujikawa and Kanemoto of the Tigers, since I told him I was going to the Tigers game that evening. He said to keep an eye out for him at the Swallows-Carp game next weekend. That'd be bizarre if I ran into him again.
The older lady sitting next to me went on for a while about what a big Johjima fan she is, once I told her I live in Seattle, and she also likes the Dragons, so I showed her (and the other guy, too) my pictures from Carp-Dragons batting practice, and they were telling me stories about Marty Brown (the Carp manager) and how everyone thinks he's crazy. Heh. She also said to be careful at the Tigers game because Hanshin fans are insane. I thought she was kidding, but no. More on that in a second.
I ended up staying about 20 minutes after the Fighters game because we all had to stay there and listen to the hero interview (Seguignol of course) and then go through all the player cheers again, and sing "Oi Hokkaido", and the Fighters fight song, and some other songs, and so on. It's pretty fun, but by the time it was all over it was around 4:45pm and I needed to be at Koshien by 6pm. Ack!
So I ran off and took what may have been an inefficient route on the subway, going all the way back to Osaka/Umeda station to get the Hanshin rail to Koshien. I dunno, I was worried about transfering at Nishikujo or whatever it was, so eh. There were several people dressed up entirely in Tigers gear on the train with me -- jersey, Tigers pants, towel around the neck, Hanshin hat, noisemakers around the neck, etc, etc. And that was only a mild taste of the insanity that is Tigers fandom.
I got to Koshien at 5:55pm and then had to go find my seat. Koshien is a REALLY old stadium -- 1924 -- and it just is plain inefficient in a lot of ways. I did find my seat, and... it was horrendously crunched. There was NO leg room. I lucked out that the two seats to my right, the people never showed up, and I could keep my bag there.
I didn't take a lot of pictures at Koshien even though I had a clear view of the field, because it was fairly uncomfortable to move around at all. At one point later in the game I actually did take out my camera to take a shot of Kyuji Fujikawa and I lost my lenscap and had to get the people in front of me to find it. That was pretty embarrassing.
As an aside, in case you're wondering, there is no such thing as the "Tigers cheering area" at Koshien. The entire stadium IS the Tigers cheering section, with the exception of the last few rows of two outfield sections. EVERYONE in the stadium is a Tigers fan pretty much, and it's just one gigantic sea of yellow and black outfits with a few teal retro-jersey-wearing weirdoes mixed in.
The people sitting around me were almost all families with small kids. There was a boy sitting next to me who looked to be around 5 years old. I was keeping score, and he kept looking at my scorecard, then looking at me, then looking at my scorecard, then looking confused, especially once I stopped being annoyed at my surroundings and cheering for the Tigers (I had bought an uchiwa fan outside the park since it was so damn hot out, and was using that in lieu of having an actual Tigers noisemaker). So about halfway through the game I started explaining in Japanese to the little kid about keeping score, and his mom heard me and asked me why I was doing it, so I explained how I write down everything and then I can remember these games forever. I showed her some others in my book, and of course, once I said "Mariners", she went "Mariners?? Ichiro wo mita?" as expected. She complimented me on my kanji writing, since I have been writing all the Japanese player names in kanji on my cards... so I guess my handwriting isn't nearly as bad as I thought it is. Or, maybe she was just being Japanese and polite. Either way, the people around me all seemed impressed by my scorecard... I'm not sure I've seen anyone else with one at the games here in Japan, come to think of it.
Either way, I hope I didn't freak out the little kid. He was a huge Tomoaki Kanemoto fan and went absolutely nuts when Kanemoto hit a 3-run homer in the 5th inning which put the Tigers ahead, where they'd stay for the rest of the game, eventually winning it 5-3. Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi, who I've referred to as the Japanese Jamie Moyer, got the win after going 7 innings on his lefty-junkballing-125km/h stuff. Lin Wei-Tzu also hit a home run when he pinch-hit for Shimoyanagi, which was pretty cool.
I have to say, though, that the Tigers fans are sort of crazy, and I'm not sure I ever want to go to a game at Koshien again. Not only are the seats ridiculous, and the stadium does NOT appear to be non-smoking, but getting home was sort of a nightmare -- imagine what happens when 50,000 people all need to get into the same subway stop at once. I guess that might happen at Yankee Stadium too, but this just seemed worse because of the 95 degree weather, I guess. Either way, eh. I'm thinking that comparing Tigers fans to Red Sox fans was pretty damn accurate, now that I think about it.
Anyway, I've promised that I'd be off this computer in the next ten minutes, so I really ought to make good on that promise. Maybe I'll add more to this later, maybe not. In all, it was a pretty good day and a pretty good 10 hours or so of baseball adventuring, and I did have a good time in general, but I'm definitely happier to be a Fighters fan than any other team in Japan! Their cheering section is just so much fun to be around.
EDIT 12/10/2006> Osaka Dome pictures are now up here!
EDIT 12/17/2006> Koshien pictures are now up here!
My day started off around 11am, as I went to find my way to the Osaka Dome via the subways. I got off the JR Osaka Loop at Taisho and realized I had no clue how to get to the dome from there, so I ended up being a dumbass and took the light green subway line for one stop to get to the Dome. Of course, that stop lets you off in front of the home plate seats, so I had to walk around the entire place to get outfield seats.
Osaka Dome outfield is unreserved seating, so I showed up in the outfield around noon for the 1pm game, and walked up the stairs in my Ogasawara jersey, looking slightly confused, and a lady said, "Hitori desu ka?" ("Are you by yourself?") and I said yeah, and so she said that they had exactly one seat left in their row for the group they were saving, so I should sit there. So I did. I ended up spending most of the game talking to the two people in that row -- an older lady from Osaka with a thick Osaka-ben accent, and a guy from Tokyo sitting in front of me. There was also a couple from Nagoya next to me as well.
I had brought my inflatable dolphin that the people had given me at Seibu last weekend, which I read about in the Japanese "Baseball" magazine later on -- there's an advertisement for Ogasawara island or village or whatever, that Michihiro Ogasawara did, and in the advertisement it says something like "In my village, there are dolphins!" (which sounds like "iruka iru", it's supposed to be funny), so now people have been using the blue inflatable dolphins to cheer for Ogasawara. Neat, huh? Fortunately, other people in Osaka had the dolphins as well, and I also had the magazine article with me so I showed it to the older lady to explain since she was confused too :)
Oh, and there was a game, too. The Fighters were ahead 7-1 after the first two innings. I'm not kidding. They eventually won 10-2 in an absolute massacre of the Buffaloes -- no, really, they got 20 hits, 3 of which were home runs, two of which were by Fernando Seguignol, from both sides of the plate. All in all, I spent most of the game on my feet cheering for the Fighters, since they spent most of the game at-bat. The Buffaloes spent most of their innings going up and sitting back down. It really was a massacre.
Shinjo played in this game, and it's good that I got to see him before he retires. Looking at the box score though, he may have been the only person to get several at-bats that only got one hit though :) Kensuke Tanaka went 4-for-4 with a walk (and I do remember singing his song a LOT), the aforementioned Seguignol was also 4-for-4 with a whopping 6 RBI, and Hichori Morimoto scored 2 runs. Yu Darvish got the win, which wasn't hard with the lead he was given, as he walked 5 and struck out 4 in 7 innings. Notoh and Tateyama finished out the game for the Fighters.
Because the Fighters won the game, everyone was in a great mood, there was a lot of high-fiving, and I ended up talking to people around me a fair amount (and of course, none of them spoke any English, which was both good and bad). It turns out the guy from Tokyo is also a Marines fan, and he had a picture on his cellphone of him hanging out with Bobby Valentine at some Marines fan party, which I'm pretty jealous of. He gave me some stickers of various players, including Ogasawara, and Fujikawa and Kanemoto of the Tigers, since I told him I was going to the Tigers game that evening. He said to keep an eye out for him at the Swallows-Carp game next weekend. That'd be bizarre if I ran into him again.
The older lady sitting next to me went on for a while about what a big Johjima fan she is, once I told her I live in Seattle, and she also likes the Dragons, so I showed her (and the other guy, too) my pictures from Carp-Dragons batting practice, and they were telling me stories about Marty Brown (the Carp manager) and how everyone thinks he's crazy. Heh. She also said to be careful at the Tigers game because Hanshin fans are insane. I thought she was kidding, but no. More on that in a second.
I ended up staying about 20 minutes after the Fighters game because we all had to stay there and listen to the hero interview (Seguignol of course) and then go through all the player cheers again, and sing "Oi Hokkaido", and the Fighters fight song, and some other songs, and so on. It's pretty fun, but by the time it was all over it was around 4:45pm and I needed to be at Koshien by 6pm. Ack!
So I ran off and took what may have been an inefficient route on the subway, going all the way back to Osaka/Umeda station to get the Hanshin rail to Koshien. I dunno, I was worried about transfering at Nishikujo or whatever it was, so eh. There were several people dressed up entirely in Tigers gear on the train with me -- jersey, Tigers pants, towel around the neck, Hanshin hat, noisemakers around the neck, etc, etc. And that was only a mild taste of the insanity that is Tigers fandom.
I got to Koshien at 5:55pm and then had to go find my seat. Koshien is a REALLY old stadium -- 1924 -- and it just is plain inefficient in a lot of ways. I did find my seat, and... it was horrendously crunched. There was NO leg room. I lucked out that the two seats to my right, the people never showed up, and I could keep my bag there.
I didn't take a lot of pictures at Koshien even though I had a clear view of the field, because it was fairly uncomfortable to move around at all. At one point later in the game I actually did take out my camera to take a shot of Kyuji Fujikawa and I lost my lenscap and had to get the people in front of me to find it. That was pretty embarrassing.
As an aside, in case you're wondering, there is no such thing as the "Tigers cheering area" at Koshien. The entire stadium IS the Tigers cheering section, with the exception of the last few rows of two outfield sections. EVERYONE in the stadium is a Tigers fan pretty much, and it's just one gigantic sea of yellow and black outfits with a few teal retro-jersey-wearing weirdoes mixed in.
The people sitting around me were almost all families with small kids. There was a boy sitting next to me who looked to be around 5 years old. I was keeping score, and he kept looking at my scorecard, then looking at me, then looking at my scorecard, then looking confused, especially once I stopped being annoyed at my surroundings and cheering for the Tigers (I had bought an uchiwa fan outside the park since it was so damn hot out, and was using that in lieu of having an actual Tigers noisemaker). So about halfway through the game I started explaining in Japanese to the little kid about keeping score, and his mom heard me and asked me why I was doing it, so I explained how I write down everything and then I can remember these games forever. I showed her some others in my book, and of course, once I said "Mariners", she went "Mariners?? Ichiro wo mita?" as expected. She complimented me on my kanji writing, since I have been writing all the Japanese player names in kanji on my cards... so I guess my handwriting isn't nearly as bad as I thought it is. Or, maybe she was just being Japanese and polite. Either way, the people around me all seemed impressed by my scorecard... I'm not sure I've seen anyone else with one at the games here in Japan, come to think of it.
Either way, I hope I didn't freak out the little kid. He was a huge Tomoaki Kanemoto fan and went absolutely nuts when Kanemoto hit a 3-run homer in the 5th inning which put the Tigers ahead, where they'd stay for the rest of the game, eventually winning it 5-3. Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi, who I've referred to as the Japanese Jamie Moyer, got the win after going 7 innings on his lefty-junkballing-125km/h stuff. Lin Wei-Tzu also hit a home run when he pinch-hit for Shimoyanagi, which was pretty cool.
I have to say, though, that the Tigers fans are sort of crazy, and I'm not sure I ever want to go to a game at Koshien again. Not only are the seats ridiculous, and the stadium does NOT appear to be non-smoking, but getting home was sort of a nightmare -- imagine what happens when 50,000 people all need to get into the same subway stop at once. I guess that might happen at Yankee Stadium too, but this just seemed worse because of the 95 degree weather, I guess. Either way, eh. I'm thinking that comparing Tigers fans to Red Sox fans was pretty damn accurate, now that I think about it.
Anyway, I've promised that I'd be off this computer in the next ten minutes, so I really ought to make good on that promise. Maybe I'll add more to this later, maybe not. In all, it was a pretty good day and a pretty good 10 hours or so of baseball adventuring, and I did have a good time in general, but I'm definitely happier to be a Fighters fan than any other team in Japan! Their cheering section is just so much fun to be around.
EDIT 12/10/2006> Osaka Dome pictures are now up here!
EDIT 12/17/2006> Koshien pictures are now up here!
Game Report: Carp vs. Dragons - Fish Dig The Long Ball
Today we went down to Hiroshima for the day. I'd never been there before, and when we took the streetcar to the stop for the Peace Park and A-Bomb memorial, we stepped off the car, and looked across the street, and... there's Hiroshima Shimin Kyujo, the Carp stadium. Whee. So we bought tickets for infield seating, talked to one of the media guys who was at the gate at noon to find out where to get Carp stuff (the answer: a little bit everywhere, no big store near the stadium), and then headed over to the touristy stuff.
It was a really hot day out, not raining at all like the forecasts had said. And to make a long story short, the museums and memorials of the bombing of Hiroshima are really interesting, but at the same time, after about two hours of going through it all, it's just really, really depressing, and after a while I couldn't stand seeing all the remnants of tons of people who died, and I made my friend leave the museum and head to Hiroshima Castle instead, which is just up the road from the stadium. Unfortunately, that castle has no elevator, and I was (though I didn't realize it at the time) suffering from heat exhaustion, and so we ended up just taking pictures, and turning around and going to the stadium, as it was almost 5pm by then.
Of course, once I got into the shade and the stadium and drank some water and ate some food I was totally fine. Go figure.
Anyway, I got to watch batting/fielding practice for both the Carp and Dragons and it was really neat, and I took a bazillion pictures, and maybe some of them will even come out. I even got a shot or two of the one guy wearing one of the "WANTED" shirts about the Marty Brown fining incident a month or two ago. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of me with Slyly, and I couldn't actually GET one of the cool shirts, but that's okay.
I should stop and explain a few things about Hiroshima Stadium before going on with the game report, come to think of it.
Firstly, the stadium's something like the third oldest stadium in pro yakyu right now (maybe fourth... Wikipedia tells me that Fullcast Miyagi opened in 1950, and Hiroshima opened in 1957, so eh, and both are much newer than Koshien and Jingu), and it IS literally right across the street from the peace park, and if you didn't know it was there it'd actually be pretty easy to miss, as it's somewhat hidden by a bunch of taller buildings around it.
It has an all-dirt infield, much like Koshien. The pitcher's mound is raised up slightly and a lighter color dirt than the rest of it.
I think it's one of the smallest, if not THE smallest, stadiums in Japan, in terms of how far away the outfield walls are, and being a hitter's park. At least, in Power Pro Yakyuu on the PS2, we used to always use Hiroshima when playing the home run derby mode.
There's seating all around the stadium, but it's not particularly huge. Most of the seats are on the first floor and there's a really small upper deck in the infield. The most expensive seats are 3200 yen (about $27) and the least are 1500 yen (about $12). As far as I can tell, there are two media/press areas, both next to the dugouts, and they aren't connected in back in any way -- I actually saw the media guy I'd chatted with that morning as he was coming out of the third-base media box wielding two huge cameras, and he saw me and smiled and waved, as he was crossing to the first-base press box.
There's no concourse in back. If you want to look for different concessions than the stand or two at your gate, you need to go out in front and then go back in another doorway. It's a bit odd.
The Hiroshima Carp mascot, Slyly, if you don't already know, looks like a big blue version of the Philly Phanatic. Since the Carp are also a team in red pinstripes and they kind of suck, the metaphor runs deep. Anyway, Slyly also ACTS like the Phanatic, which is cool. Another cool feature of the Carp (well, to me, anyway) is that they don't have cheerleaders in skimpy outfits who come out and dance every other inning or so. They did have the Carp Ladies in the left field stands wielding pompoms and doing some sort of coordinated thing, but they weren't on the field and they were in decent clothes (looked like happi coats, I couldn't tell from my seat) and all.
Anyway, uh, I went to a game. Annoyingly, the game pace slowed as the game went on -- the first four innings took an hour, and the last five innings took over two hours, and as a result we had to leave halfway through the ninth inning to catch the last shinkansen back to Osaka. When we left, the Dragons were still up 7-6 on the Carp. I got back here to Osaka, turned on the TV, and on the sports highlight show they happened to be showing baseball and there was the Carp game, and sure enough they staged a comeback and ended up winning 8-7 in extra innings! Aaaaaack.
You know, almost every run scored while I was there was batted in from a home run. No joke:
First inning, Dragons, Kosuke Fukudome hits a 106-meter (347ft) solo homer into the left-field stands, 0-1.
Second inning, Carp, Takahiro Arai hits a solo home run into the left-field stands, 1-1.
Fourth inning, Carp, Takahiro Arai hits ANOTHER solo home run, 116 meters (380ft) into the left-field stands, 2-1.
Fifth inning, Dragons, Kazuki Inoue hits an absolute BOMB into the stands near center, listed as 140 meters (approximately 459 feet!). 2-2. After another run scores off a single by Masahiro Araki, Masahiko Morino hits a 3-run homer 110 meters (360ft) into the left-field stands as well, bringing the score to 7-2, and bringing Juan Feliciano, the Carp starter, out of the game. Yow.
Eighth inning, Carp, after Shigenobu Shima singled, Tomonori Maeda hit a 100-meter (328ft) home run just over the wall in right field. 7-4. Shigeru Morikasa followed that with a single, and Dragons starter Kenta Asakura was finally pulled from the game, but his replacement, Masafumi Hirai, gave up a 112-meter (367ft) home run to Jun Hirose. That brought it to 7-6 Dragons, which is where it was when we left the game.
(It appears that Kazunori Okagami hit a triple in the Carp half of the ninth and Akihiro Higashide batted him in, and then in the Carp half of the tenth, Maeda, who was ultimately 4-for-5 on the night, led off with a double and was bunted over by Morikasa, and sacrificed in by catcher Kura, but I'm just skimming quickly so if I'm wrong don't kill me.)
One of the wacky things about Hiroshima as well is that when a Carp player hits a home run, he's greeted at home plate not only by teammates to high-five, but by a girl in a Carp jersey who presents him with a Slyly stuffed animal. I was wondering exactly what the players would do with such stuffed animals, especially after Arai got two of them, and then on Maeda's I finally noticed -- he pretty much just chucked the doll at a batboy and ran into the dugout. Pretty funny. I bet they could recycle the same doll to present the players with and they wouldn't even notice.
There was a super-intense umpire behind the plate tonight. He'd make these really exaggerated motions for everything. It was sort of funny after a while. I was really digging his strike calls; he looked more like he was doing the Manny Ramirez thumbs-up thing from after the 2004 World Series rather than calling strikes.
Juan Feliciano used "Gasolina" as his at-bat music, which was funny to me since I remembered various Mariners using that as their song for a while.
Morino threw several balls to Dragons fans during the game; fouls, inning-enders, etc. Besides that, the infield was pretty deserted, especially at the outer edges. I swear, Zack Hample would have a great day in Hiroshima Stadium gathering baseballs; several times I saw a foul ball hit into the empty seats and some people go chase after it.
Despite that the Carp were charged with three errors, they really did make a lot of great defensive plays as well. I've never seen a team be so schitzophrenic between awesome fielding and lousy fielding. The Dragons were pretty good in general, though.
Also, we noted that there seemed to be a lot of one-kanji names on the Carp, what with Shima, Kura, and Soyogi. Hmm.
I had a really weird realization about the fact that every game in Japan seems to have a reasonably large away team cheering section, and that's that when there are only six teams in your league, if you decide you don't like your home team for some reason, and you choose a different team to follow, well, your team will play against that other team approximately 22 times in the year anyway, 11 of which will be home games (and it used to be more like 28/14 before interleague started). So rather than you only getting to see "your" team at like one or maybe two homestands per year, you'll get to see them four times per year, or more if you're in Tokyo -- heck, a Hanshin fan in Tokyo has about 30-40 games a year they can go to between the three CL teams in the area. So it's not that hard for them to get a decent cheering section together, in theory.
Or not. I dunno. It's also a proximity thing -- I mean, after all, I just went to two Dragons games in a row, in two cities that are something like 300 miles apart from each other, but due to the miracle of the shinkansen, that really wasn't all that difficult a task.
Anyway, I need to get off the computer as usual, so, um -- tomorrow, Saturday, should be an AWESOME BASEBALL DAY for me, in theory -- I'm going to the Fighters-Buffaloes game at the Osaka Dome in the afternoon and then the Tigers-BayStars game in the evening. My best friend, who I dragged to the last two games, is wisely staying far away from me tomorrow. His loss, right? :)
EDIT 12/05/2006> Picture set for this game is now online here!
It was a really hot day out, not raining at all like the forecasts had said. And to make a long story short, the museums and memorials of the bombing of Hiroshima are really interesting, but at the same time, after about two hours of going through it all, it's just really, really depressing, and after a while I couldn't stand seeing all the remnants of tons of people who died, and I made my friend leave the museum and head to Hiroshima Castle instead, which is just up the road from the stadium. Unfortunately, that castle has no elevator, and I was (though I didn't realize it at the time) suffering from heat exhaustion, and so we ended up just taking pictures, and turning around and going to the stadium, as it was almost 5pm by then.
Of course, once I got into the shade and the stadium and drank some water and ate some food I was totally fine. Go figure.
Anyway, I got to watch batting/fielding practice for both the Carp and Dragons and it was really neat, and I took a bazillion pictures, and maybe some of them will even come out. I even got a shot or two of the one guy wearing one of the "WANTED" shirts about the Marty Brown fining incident a month or two ago. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of me with Slyly, and I couldn't actually GET one of the cool shirts, but that's okay.
I should stop and explain a few things about Hiroshima Stadium before going on with the game report, come to think of it.
Firstly, the stadium's something like the third oldest stadium in pro yakyu right now (maybe fourth... Wikipedia tells me that Fullcast Miyagi opened in 1950, and Hiroshima opened in 1957, so eh, and both are much newer than Koshien and Jingu), and it IS literally right across the street from the peace park, and if you didn't know it was there it'd actually be pretty easy to miss, as it's somewhat hidden by a bunch of taller buildings around it.
It has an all-dirt infield, much like Koshien. The pitcher's mound is raised up slightly and a lighter color dirt than the rest of it.
I think it's one of the smallest, if not THE smallest, stadiums in Japan, in terms of how far away the outfield walls are, and being a hitter's park. At least, in Power Pro Yakyuu on the PS2, we used to always use Hiroshima when playing the home run derby mode.
There's seating all around the stadium, but it's not particularly huge. Most of the seats are on the first floor and there's a really small upper deck in the infield. The most expensive seats are 3200 yen (about $27) and the least are 1500 yen (about $12). As far as I can tell, there are two media/press areas, both next to the dugouts, and they aren't connected in back in any way -- I actually saw the media guy I'd chatted with that morning as he was coming out of the third-base media box wielding two huge cameras, and he saw me and smiled and waved, as he was crossing to the first-base press box.
There's no concourse in back. If you want to look for different concessions than the stand or two at your gate, you need to go out in front and then go back in another doorway. It's a bit odd.
The Hiroshima Carp mascot, Slyly, if you don't already know, looks like a big blue version of the Philly Phanatic. Since the Carp are also a team in red pinstripes and they kind of suck, the metaphor runs deep. Anyway, Slyly also ACTS like the Phanatic, which is cool. Another cool feature of the Carp (well, to me, anyway) is that they don't have cheerleaders in skimpy outfits who come out and dance every other inning or so. They did have the Carp Ladies in the left field stands wielding pompoms and doing some sort of coordinated thing, but they weren't on the field and they were in decent clothes (looked like happi coats, I couldn't tell from my seat) and all.
Anyway, uh, I went to a game. Annoyingly, the game pace slowed as the game went on -- the first four innings took an hour, and the last five innings took over two hours, and as a result we had to leave halfway through the ninth inning to catch the last shinkansen back to Osaka. When we left, the Dragons were still up 7-6 on the Carp. I got back here to Osaka, turned on the TV, and on the sports highlight show they happened to be showing baseball and there was the Carp game, and sure enough they staged a comeback and ended up winning 8-7 in extra innings! Aaaaaack.
You know, almost every run scored while I was there was batted in from a home run. No joke:
First inning, Dragons, Kosuke Fukudome hits a 106-meter (347ft) solo homer into the left-field stands, 0-1.
Second inning, Carp, Takahiro Arai hits a solo home run into the left-field stands, 1-1.
Fourth inning, Carp, Takahiro Arai hits ANOTHER solo home run, 116 meters (380ft) into the left-field stands, 2-1.
Fifth inning, Dragons, Kazuki Inoue hits an absolute BOMB into the stands near center, listed as 140 meters (approximately 459 feet!). 2-2. After another run scores off a single by Masahiro Araki, Masahiko Morino hits a 3-run homer 110 meters (360ft) into the left-field stands as well, bringing the score to 7-2, and bringing Juan Feliciano, the Carp starter, out of the game. Yow.
Eighth inning, Carp, after Shigenobu Shima singled, Tomonori Maeda hit a 100-meter (328ft) home run just over the wall in right field. 7-4. Shigeru Morikasa followed that with a single, and Dragons starter Kenta Asakura was finally pulled from the game, but his replacement, Masafumi Hirai, gave up a 112-meter (367ft) home run to Jun Hirose. That brought it to 7-6 Dragons, which is where it was when we left the game.
(It appears that Kazunori Okagami hit a triple in the Carp half of the ninth and Akihiro Higashide batted him in, and then in the Carp half of the tenth, Maeda, who was ultimately 4-for-5 on the night, led off with a double and was bunted over by Morikasa, and sacrificed in by catcher Kura, but I'm just skimming quickly so if I'm wrong don't kill me.)
One of the wacky things about Hiroshima as well is that when a Carp player hits a home run, he's greeted at home plate not only by teammates to high-five, but by a girl in a Carp jersey who presents him with a Slyly stuffed animal. I was wondering exactly what the players would do with such stuffed animals, especially after Arai got two of them, and then on Maeda's I finally noticed -- he pretty much just chucked the doll at a batboy and ran into the dugout. Pretty funny. I bet they could recycle the same doll to present the players with and they wouldn't even notice.
There was a super-intense umpire behind the plate tonight. He'd make these really exaggerated motions for everything. It was sort of funny after a while. I was really digging his strike calls; he looked more like he was doing the Manny Ramirez thumbs-up thing from after the 2004 World Series rather than calling strikes.
Juan Feliciano used "Gasolina" as his at-bat music, which was funny to me since I remembered various Mariners using that as their song for a while.
Morino threw several balls to Dragons fans during the game; fouls, inning-enders, etc. Besides that, the infield was pretty deserted, especially at the outer edges. I swear, Zack Hample would have a great day in Hiroshima Stadium gathering baseballs; several times I saw a foul ball hit into the empty seats and some people go chase after it.
Despite that the Carp were charged with three errors, they really did make a lot of great defensive plays as well. I've never seen a team be so schitzophrenic between awesome fielding and lousy fielding. The Dragons were pretty good in general, though.
Also, we noted that there seemed to be a lot of one-kanji names on the Carp, what with Shima, Kura, and Soyogi. Hmm.
I had a really weird realization about the fact that every game in Japan seems to have a reasonably large away team cheering section, and that's that when there are only six teams in your league, if you decide you don't like your home team for some reason, and you choose a different team to follow, well, your team will play against that other team approximately 22 times in the year anyway, 11 of which will be home games (and it used to be more like 28/14 before interleague started). So rather than you only getting to see "your" team at like one or maybe two homestands per year, you'll get to see them four times per year, or more if you're in Tokyo -- heck, a Hanshin fan in Tokyo has about 30-40 games a year they can go to between the three CL teams in the area. So it's not that hard for them to get a decent cheering section together, in theory.
Or not. I dunno. It's also a proximity thing -- I mean, after all, I just went to two Dragons games in a row, in two cities that are something like 300 miles apart from each other, but due to the miracle of the shinkansen, that really wasn't all that difficult a task.
Anyway, I need to get off the computer as usual, so, um -- tomorrow, Saturday, should be an AWESOME BASEBALL DAY for me, in theory -- I'm going to the Fighters-Buffaloes game at the Osaka Dome in the afternoon and then the Tigers-BayStars game in the evening. My best friend, who I dragged to the last two games, is wisely staying far away from me tomorrow. His loss, right? :)
EDIT 12/05/2006> Picture set for this game is now online here!
Friday, September 08, 2006
Game Report: Dragons vs. Swallows - Kawakami hates Salami
Hey, don't forget that there's book club on Saturday even though I won't even be aware that it's actually Saturday at the time. Talk to Gomez though, not me, sorry.
Today I went to Nagoya, where it rained a lot. We did see Nagoya Castle, which was pretty cool, or at least cooler than Osaka Castle. Afterwards, we went to the Nagoya Dome, which was pretty cool as well, and I won't know for another two days whether or not it's cooler than the Osaka Dome.
We got tickets in the upper deck, front row, sort of out in right field but still technically not in outfield seating. It was a great view for watching but not for taking pictures -- on the other hand I'm not sure there's anywhere IN the dome that's good for pictures since they have a gigantic fence up all around the infield, and it's indoors so it's not particularly great light for far shots, either.
After a stop in the Dragons shop where I picked up a Kawakami #11 t-shirt (god, I really LOVE this shirt actually -- I can totally see myself wearing it often when I get back, if I don't gain any weight), we went into the stadium, and saw the Chunichi Dragons take on the Yakult Swallows, in what was a pretty slow and somewhat depressing game.
Since I like the Dragons and the Swallows equally, I figured I'd follow the words of a wise man who once said, "Let us root, root root for the home team," and cheered for the Dragons, and as a result, for my second straight game, the team I was cheering for lost by a score of 6 to something, due to a grand slam by the opposing team, as the Swallows won the game 6-3. Gaaahhhh.
Kenshin Kawakami was pitching for Chunichi, and he's actually a rather good pitcher -- probably one of the best in the Central League -- but he really wasn't all that good tonight. The first inning, he got himself into trouble with the bases loaded after Akinori Iwamura doubled, and he walked Ramirez and Miyade, but fortunately Tanaka popped out to end that threat.
The Dragons had one good offensive inning, really -- the first. Araki and Ibata singled, Fukudome moved along Araki with a fielder's choice, and then Tyrone Woods batted him in. Unfortunately Alex Ochoa and Masahiko Morino both ended the inning with runners on first and third.
Kawakami handled the Swallows okay in the second, but then the third... ugh. Norichika Aoki -- who I generally like a lot as well -- hit a solo home run to right field, bringing it to 1-1, which would have been okay if not for Adam Riggs following it up with a double, and then Iwamura walked. Alex Ramirez struck out, and during Ryuji Miyade's at-bat, Riggs and Iwamura pulled off a double steal (Tanishige threw to second; maybe he should have thrown to third). Miyade walked after all -- there were a lot of full counts in this game. Tanaka struck out, but with two outs and the bases loaded, Masakazu Fukukawa, who may have hit about five home runs in his entire lifetime, came up to bat, and... hit a grand slam to left field. Yeah.
I should stop and explain that the Swallows fans do this crazy ritual where they break out umbrellas, mostly green or Yakult-embossed, and do this bizarre umbrella dance, whenever a run is scored or a home run is hit or whatnot. And in the third inning, they had a lot of umbrella dancing to do.
Shiroishi grounded out after that, but the score was 5-1 when the dust settled at the end of the third inning.
The Swallows pushed ahead another run off Kawakami in the fifth, though at least it wasn't earned -- Tanaka singled, and then Fukukawa singled again, and unfortunately I didn't write down exactly what happened, but Tanaka scored off a throwing error by the left fielder during Fukukawa's single. I think. I was mostly good at keeping score, but occasionally got distracted by random things, and there's no real replay or relisting of the game events at these places.
The Dragons, who had been set down 1-2-3 in every inning after the first, finally did some stuff again in their half of the 6th. Araki led off with a single, and Ibata singled again -- good stuff always follows that sequence. Kosuke Fukudome flew out to right, and then Tyrone Woods hit into a double play, except that rather than throwing to shortstop Shiroishi covering second, Tanaka chucked the ball into left field, allowing Araki to score easily and Ibata and Woods to take an extra base (to be fair, Woods was nearly caught at third once Riggs retrieved the ball and fired it there). Ibata scored while Alex Ochoa was busy grounding out, and unfortunately Morino grounded out as well to end the inning.
No other scoring occurred in this game. Heck, aside from a Kosuke Fukudome triple in the 8th, and a sweet play by Adam Riggs which involved him stopping a grounder and then sliding into first base to make the out, and a pretty decent snag-and-spin by Tyrone Woods as well... I'm not sure anything else really happened.
(Sorry this is so incoherent, there's a guy behind me waiting to use the computer and so I'm sort of rushing through my scorecard and game notes)
Some random stuff:
They have ball girls at the Nagoya Dome, only they don't sit out by the foul lines and get stray balls -- that's handled by guys -- what the ball girls do is, they seem to serve the umpires, so to speak, bringing out new baseballs and also bringing them cups of water and whatnot, sort of like the bat boy would in most American baseball parks.
Akinori Iwamura is a really good third baseman and a really good hitter and stuff.
Masato Kobayashi is a lefty sidearmer and was thus pretty fun to watch, but unfortunately wasn't left in particularly long.
Oh, get this! I got to see Masao Kida, ex-Mariner, pitch the 7th inning for Yakult, and I got to see Shingo Takatsu, ex-WhiteSox, pitch the 9th! How neat is that? They both did really well, which would have been a lot happier for me if I had been rooting for Yakult, I'm sure. I'll have to switch sides when I'm at Meiji Jingu next week ;)
There were a lot of oldskool DDR-related songs playing at the dome for whatever reason. Offhand we noticed "Dancing All Alone", and "1.2.3.4.007", and others I forgot to write down, and the kicker was that Hirokazu Ibata uses the Japanese cover of the song "Run To You", one of the oldskool Korean songs from Pump It Up (it's the one that goes "bounce with me, bounce with me!", if you play/played the game) as his at-bat intro music. The fans clap their thundersticks appropriately to the beat of it, too.
Yeah, so I had a lot of fun yelling and screaming and clapping at this game even though I didn't know any of the songs this time. I sat next to a girl who seemed pretty into baseball and she knew all of them, and so I just followed along with what she was singing a lot of the time.
For dinner, I ended up getting a burger and fries and a soft drink and it all cost 700 yen, which is actually probably much cheaper than it would at Safeco, oddly enough.
Scoring this game was a pain in the ass sort of like scoring a National League game is, because the Dragons kept putting in the pitchers and pinch hitters between the 7th and 9th spot. Also, I suck at writing certain kanji, especially names like Iwase and Tanishige.
Okay, I better go before I get kicked off here. I should be heading to Hiroshima tomorrow. Bye!
EDIT 12/1/2006> Photo set for this day is now up here!
Today I went to Nagoya, where it rained a lot. We did see Nagoya Castle, which was pretty cool, or at least cooler than Osaka Castle. Afterwards, we went to the Nagoya Dome, which was pretty cool as well, and I won't know for another two days whether or not it's cooler than the Osaka Dome.
We got tickets in the upper deck, front row, sort of out in right field but still technically not in outfield seating. It was a great view for watching but not for taking pictures -- on the other hand I'm not sure there's anywhere IN the dome that's good for pictures since they have a gigantic fence up all around the infield, and it's indoors so it's not particularly great light for far shots, either.
After a stop in the Dragons shop where I picked up a Kawakami #11 t-shirt (god, I really LOVE this shirt actually -- I can totally see myself wearing it often when I get back, if I don't gain any weight), we went into the stadium, and saw the Chunichi Dragons take on the Yakult Swallows, in what was a pretty slow and somewhat depressing game.
Since I like the Dragons and the Swallows equally, I figured I'd follow the words of a wise man who once said, "Let us root, root root for the home team," and cheered for the Dragons, and as a result, for my second straight game, the team I was cheering for lost by a score of 6 to something, due to a grand slam by the opposing team, as the Swallows won the game 6-3. Gaaahhhh.
Kenshin Kawakami was pitching for Chunichi, and he's actually a rather good pitcher -- probably one of the best in the Central League -- but he really wasn't all that good tonight. The first inning, he got himself into trouble with the bases loaded after Akinori Iwamura doubled, and he walked Ramirez and Miyade, but fortunately Tanaka popped out to end that threat.
The Dragons had one good offensive inning, really -- the first. Araki and Ibata singled, Fukudome moved along Araki with a fielder's choice, and then Tyrone Woods batted him in. Unfortunately Alex Ochoa and Masahiko Morino both ended the inning with runners on first and third.
Kawakami handled the Swallows okay in the second, but then the third... ugh. Norichika Aoki -- who I generally like a lot as well -- hit a solo home run to right field, bringing it to 1-1, which would have been okay if not for Adam Riggs following it up with a double, and then Iwamura walked. Alex Ramirez struck out, and during Ryuji Miyade's at-bat, Riggs and Iwamura pulled off a double steal (Tanishige threw to second; maybe he should have thrown to third). Miyade walked after all -- there were a lot of full counts in this game. Tanaka struck out, but with two outs and the bases loaded, Masakazu Fukukawa, who may have hit about five home runs in his entire lifetime, came up to bat, and... hit a grand slam to left field. Yeah.
I should stop and explain that the Swallows fans do this crazy ritual where they break out umbrellas, mostly green or Yakult-embossed, and do this bizarre umbrella dance, whenever a run is scored or a home run is hit or whatnot. And in the third inning, they had a lot of umbrella dancing to do.
Shiroishi grounded out after that, but the score was 5-1 when the dust settled at the end of the third inning.
The Swallows pushed ahead another run off Kawakami in the fifth, though at least it wasn't earned -- Tanaka singled, and then Fukukawa singled again, and unfortunately I didn't write down exactly what happened, but Tanaka scored off a throwing error by the left fielder during Fukukawa's single. I think. I was mostly good at keeping score, but occasionally got distracted by random things, and there's no real replay or relisting of the game events at these places.
The Dragons, who had been set down 1-2-3 in every inning after the first, finally did some stuff again in their half of the 6th. Araki led off with a single, and Ibata singled again -- good stuff always follows that sequence. Kosuke Fukudome flew out to right, and then Tyrone Woods hit into a double play, except that rather than throwing to shortstop Shiroishi covering second, Tanaka chucked the ball into left field, allowing Araki to score easily and Ibata and Woods to take an extra base (to be fair, Woods was nearly caught at third once Riggs retrieved the ball and fired it there). Ibata scored while Alex Ochoa was busy grounding out, and unfortunately Morino grounded out as well to end the inning.
No other scoring occurred in this game. Heck, aside from a Kosuke Fukudome triple in the 8th, and a sweet play by Adam Riggs which involved him stopping a grounder and then sliding into first base to make the out, and a pretty decent snag-and-spin by Tyrone Woods as well... I'm not sure anything else really happened.
(Sorry this is so incoherent, there's a guy behind me waiting to use the computer and so I'm sort of rushing through my scorecard and game notes)
Some random stuff:
They have ball girls at the Nagoya Dome, only they don't sit out by the foul lines and get stray balls -- that's handled by guys -- what the ball girls do is, they seem to serve the umpires, so to speak, bringing out new baseballs and also bringing them cups of water and whatnot, sort of like the bat boy would in most American baseball parks.
Akinori Iwamura is a really good third baseman and a really good hitter and stuff.
Masato Kobayashi is a lefty sidearmer and was thus pretty fun to watch, but unfortunately wasn't left in particularly long.
Oh, get this! I got to see Masao Kida, ex-Mariner, pitch the 7th inning for Yakult, and I got to see Shingo Takatsu, ex-WhiteSox, pitch the 9th! How neat is that? They both did really well, which would have been a lot happier for me if I had been rooting for Yakult, I'm sure. I'll have to switch sides when I'm at Meiji Jingu next week ;)
There were a lot of oldskool DDR-related songs playing at the dome for whatever reason. Offhand we noticed "Dancing All Alone", and "1.2.3.4.007", and others I forgot to write down, and the kicker was that Hirokazu Ibata uses the Japanese cover of the song "Run To You", one of the oldskool Korean songs from Pump It Up (it's the one that goes "bounce with me, bounce with me!", if you play/played the game) as his at-bat intro music. The fans clap their thundersticks appropriately to the beat of it, too.
Yeah, so I had a lot of fun yelling and screaming and clapping at this game even though I didn't know any of the songs this time. I sat next to a girl who seemed pretty into baseball and she knew all of them, and so I just followed along with what she was singing a lot of the time.
For dinner, I ended up getting a burger and fries and a soft drink and it all cost 700 yen, which is actually probably much cheaper than it would at Safeco, oddly enough.
Scoring this game was a pain in the ass sort of like scoring a National League game is, because the Dragons kept putting in the pitchers and pinch hitters between the 7th and 9th spot. Also, I suck at writing certain kanji, especially names like Iwase and Tanishige.
Okay, I better go before I get kicked off here. I should be heading to Hiroshima tomorrow. Bye!
EDIT 12/1/2006> Photo set for this day is now up here!
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I Hate Rain
I would have a game report, except the Tigers-Giants game tonight got rained out.
Goddamnit.
Thanks to this stupid typhoon, pretty much all of Japan has a weather forecast of thunderstorms for most of the rest of my trip. This sucks.
We heard the game was cancelled around 4:15 and ended up heading out to Koshien anyway, where I got my tickets refunded, but they were sold out for the weekend. Came back to Umeda and... bought a ticket for Saturday's Tigers game from the tickets-to-everything non-Hanshin stand in the station. So if it doesn't rain out, Saturday I'll go to two games -- Fighters-Buffaloes and Tigers-BayStars. Still, GODDAMNIT. I'm pretty unhappy about this.
Tomorrow I go to Nagoya, where they have a domed stadium so this rain won't matter. Friday I go to Hiroshima, where it'll probably rain out and I'll probably kill something.
I guess my only funny baseball story for today is that I was walking back to the hotel through the covered shopping area near here, and wearing a Hanshin Tigers t-shirt (Kanemoto #6) and a bunch of guys suddenly see me and come up and want to shake my hand, and I can't figure out why until they're like "Tigers fan! Tigers fan, deshou?" and suddenly I remember what shirt I'm wearing and just say "Hai!" and tell them how I had tickets to today's game and it was cancelled and boy was that a shame, and they agreed and showed me things like the Tigers necklaces they were wearing and the icons on their phones of things like the Tiger mascot crushing the Giabbit and whatnot. And that was pretty cool... I think.
Great, getting kicked off the computer again.
Goddamnit.
Thanks to this stupid typhoon, pretty much all of Japan has a weather forecast of thunderstorms for most of the rest of my trip. This sucks.
We heard the game was cancelled around 4:15 and ended up heading out to Koshien anyway, where I got my tickets refunded, but they were sold out for the weekend. Came back to Umeda and... bought a ticket for Saturday's Tigers game from the tickets-to-everything non-Hanshin stand in the station. So if it doesn't rain out, Saturday I'll go to two games -- Fighters-Buffaloes and Tigers-BayStars. Still, GODDAMNIT. I'm pretty unhappy about this.
Tomorrow I go to Nagoya, where they have a domed stadium so this rain won't matter. Friday I go to Hiroshima, where it'll probably rain out and I'll probably kill something.
I guess my only funny baseball story for today is that I was walking back to the hotel through the covered shopping area near here, and wearing a Hanshin Tigers t-shirt (Kanemoto #6) and a bunch of guys suddenly see me and come up and want to shake my hand, and I can't figure out why until they're like "Tigers fan! Tigers fan, deshou?" and suddenly I remember what shirt I'm wearing and just say "Hai!" and tell them how I had tickets to today's game and it was cancelled and boy was that a shame, and they agreed and showed me things like the Tigers necklaces they were wearing and the icons on their phones of things like the Tiger mascot crushing the Giabbit and whatnot. And that was pretty cool... I think.
Great, getting kicked off the computer again.
Monday, September 04, 2006
The Hanshin Adventures of Marinerd Deanna
I just like the way that sounds.
So, today I took the train down to Osaka. I get out of the Osaka JR station and the first thing I see is an Ichiro ad. No joke.
After checking in and just resting my feet and watching some TV and enjoying the airconditioning for a while -- after all, carrying a 30-35 pound backpack suitcase is sort of annoying after walking a few miles with it in the heat -- I wandered around the Umeda area of Osaka, since that's where I'm staying. I had a goal of "I'm going to go around until I find a place where it's possible to buy Hanshin Tigers tickets", figuring I'd find a Lawton's or something like that, but no. After going in circles around the main JR station a bit, I found it.
It? you ask.
Yes, IT. The motherlode of Tigers stuff. The Hanshin department store. Holy crap.
The 8th floor of the department store has a Hanshin Tigers shop and it's AMAZING. I mean, EVERYTHING Tigers you could ever possibly want or not want... shirts, goods, keychains, noisemakers, posters, pictures, notebooks, bags, soap dispensers, hats, stuffed animals, pens, etc etc etc etc. I wandered around it for about a half hour just looking at all the stuff in amazement, and eventually settled on a Kanemoto number t-shirt and a noisemaker, after talking to some store clerks about "gaijin sizes", heh.
Unfortunately, though, they couldn't sell me game tickets up there.
So I went down to the first floor to the information booth and asked them about buying Tigers tickets... but they seemed unwilling to try to explain it to me in Japanese, so they called up some dude who spoke English and he talked to me on the phone like "Come to the info booth downstairs and I'll direct you to the ticket sellers".
Okay, great. But I go downstairs and it's... the basement of a Japanese department store.
Which normally is awesome. I LOVE the basements, which are the food levels. It smells so great, and there are a ton of people yelling that you should come buy the food they are preparing, and it's all really yummy looking except possibly some of the weirder seafood stands. So here I am, swimming in stands selling gyoza, sushi, baked goods, tempura, okonomiyaki and yakisoba, omurice, ebifry, and just a ton of random stuff... and I'm hungry since it's 6pm... but I've got a mission, goddamnit! So I finally find the Info booth and the guy sees me -- I'm the only gaijin I've seen in the store so far -- and he's like "Ahhh, you want the baseball tickets! Yes?" and then points me down ANOTHER aisle, says to go to the end, turn right, and exit the store.
I'm confused, but I comply.
I get to that location and sure enough, there's a "Hanshin Playguide" which means "place to buy tickets to a ton of random stuff". Great! I go up to the counter and ask if I can buy Hanshin Tigers tickets, and am told to go to the OTHER window in the ticket booth. GEEZ :)
Finally, I talk to a lady who can sell me Hanshin Tigers tickets! Joy! Except at first it looks like they're all sold out this week, only it turns out the chart means this weekend, not this week, and they can't sell me Tuesday tickets but they can sell me Wednesday or Thursday, if I want to sit towards the back of the infield on the third-base side, since that's about all they have left.
Goddamnit, I just want to see a game at Koshien. So I buy the tickets for Wednesday. Hopefully my best friend will get here to Osaka in a few hours and won't already have something else planned for Wednesday... because we are GOING to Koshien OR ELSE.
I'm going to a Tigers-Giants game!!!! I'm going to a Tigers-Giants game!!!!
This is like the Japanese equivalent of going to a RedSox-Yankees game at Fenway Park. I'm dead serious. These are the two biggest teams in Japan in terms of fanbase, the Giants have always been like the Yankees of Japan, the Tigers have always had just as huge and devout a following, and also, they've been in the Japan Series twice in the last three years, after not being good for quite a while. And Koshien is one of the oldest stadiums in Japan, built in 1924. So yeah. I'm psyched.
And, after getting the tickets, I went back to that tasty-looking okonomiyaki stand and bought some, and it was, indeed, quite tasty. I love this place.
So, today I took the train down to Osaka. I get out of the Osaka JR station and the first thing I see is an Ichiro ad. No joke.
After checking in and just resting my feet and watching some TV and enjoying the airconditioning for a while -- after all, carrying a 30-35 pound backpack suitcase is sort of annoying after walking a few miles with it in the heat -- I wandered around the Umeda area of Osaka, since that's where I'm staying. I had a goal of "I'm going to go around until I find a place where it's possible to buy Hanshin Tigers tickets", figuring I'd find a Lawton's or something like that, but no. After going in circles around the main JR station a bit, I found it.
It? you ask.
Yes, IT. The motherlode of Tigers stuff. The Hanshin department store. Holy crap.
The 8th floor of the department store has a Hanshin Tigers shop and it's AMAZING. I mean, EVERYTHING Tigers you could ever possibly want or not want... shirts, goods, keychains, noisemakers, posters, pictures, notebooks, bags, soap dispensers, hats, stuffed animals, pens, etc etc etc etc. I wandered around it for about a half hour just looking at all the stuff in amazement, and eventually settled on a Kanemoto number t-shirt and a noisemaker, after talking to some store clerks about "gaijin sizes", heh.
Unfortunately, though, they couldn't sell me game tickets up there.
So I went down to the first floor to the information booth and asked them about buying Tigers tickets... but they seemed unwilling to try to explain it to me in Japanese, so they called up some dude who spoke English and he talked to me on the phone like "Come to the info booth downstairs and I'll direct you to the ticket sellers".
Okay, great. But I go downstairs and it's... the basement of a Japanese department store.
Which normally is awesome. I LOVE the basements, which are the food levels. It smells so great, and there are a ton of people yelling that you should come buy the food they are preparing, and it's all really yummy looking except possibly some of the weirder seafood stands. So here I am, swimming in stands selling gyoza, sushi, baked goods, tempura, okonomiyaki and yakisoba, omurice, ebifry, and just a ton of random stuff... and I'm hungry since it's 6pm... but I've got a mission, goddamnit! So I finally find the Info booth and the guy sees me -- I'm the only gaijin I've seen in the store so far -- and he's like "Ahhh, you want the baseball tickets! Yes?" and then points me down ANOTHER aisle, says to go to the end, turn right, and exit the store.
I'm confused, but I comply.
I get to that location and sure enough, there's a "Hanshin Playguide" which means "place to buy tickets to a ton of random stuff". Great! I go up to the counter and ask if I can buy Hanshin Tigers tickets, and am told to go to the OTHER window in the ticket booth. GEEZ :)
Finally, I talk to a lady who can sell me Hanshin Tigers tickets! Joy! Except at first it looks like they're all sold out this week, only it turns out the chart means this weekend, not this week, and they can't sell me Tuesday tickets but they can sell me Wednesday or Thursday, if I want to sit towards the back of the infield on the third-base side, since that's about all they have left.
Goddamnit, I just want to see a game at Koshien. So I buy the tickets for Wednesday. Hopefully my best friend will get here to Osaka in a few hours and won't already have something else planned for Wednesday... because we are GOING to Koshien OR ELSE.
I'm going to a Tigers-Giants game!!!! I'm going to a Tigers-Giants game!!!!
This is like the Japanese equivalent of going to a RedSox-Yankees game at Fenway Park. I'm dead serious. These are the two biggest teams in Japan in terms of fanbase, the Giants have always been like the Yankees of Japan, the Tigers have always had just as huge and devout a following, and also, they've been in the Japan Series twice in the last three years, after not being good for quite a while. And Koshien is one of the oldest stadiums in Japan, built in 1924. So yeah. I'm psyched.
And, after getting the tickets, I went back to that tasty-looking okonomiyaki stand and bought some, and it was, indeed, quite tasty. I love this place.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Game Report: Lions vs. Fighters - Kanemoron
So, for those who were curious about it, today I was both at the Tokyo Dome and the Seibu Dome and didn't see a Matsuzaka jersey at either one (and I even asked the salesclerks at the Seibu Dome). Hrm. Did some other baka gaijin come to Tokyo and buy up all the Matsuzaka gear or something? They did have t-shirts from when he got his 100th win, but I wasn't sure anyone would want one of those.
Yeah, so I saw Mariners number t-shirts at a store in the Tokyo Dome for like 4500 yen (about $40) each. That's insane, considering you can get them for $20 at Safeco. You wonder why Japanese tourists seem to drop so much money at Safeco... well, because it's seriously so much cheaper.
I digress. After spending some time making myself NOT spend money at the Tokyo Dome shop, I met up with a friend and we took the train out to Tokorozawa for the Seibu Lions vs. Nippon Ham Fighters game at the Seibu Invoice Dome.
I've been a Fighters fan for several years now -- ever since a fateful day when I was in a subway station in Tokyo with a friend of mine and we saw coupons for discounted outfield seating to Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome. We accidentally sat in the middle of the Fighters cheering section; they taught us the ropes, and from then on, the Fighters were my team -- but of course, then they had to go move to Sapporo in the 2003-2004 offseason. (In terms of geography, this is almost like if the Mariners went and moved to Alaska.) So now, every time I go see them, I sit in the visiting section, and it's usually not that crowded.
But today, oh, today, oh man! The outfield unreserved seats are... well, they're not seats, to begin with. There are a few benches at the back, but for the most part it's just this huge slanted turf floor. So I guess it's like lawn seats, kind of, but weirder. Also, we got there an hour early and the turf was FULL of people -- as my friend said, "Wow, there are a ton of people as crazy as you here!" It was almost like being at an outdoor concert or something. So we found a small patch of turf and sat down on it. The people around us were pretty nice -- they got over the "whoa, a gaijin" factor pretty quickly, especially once I started singing along to the songs and all. One set of people behind us had a bunch of inflatable dolphins they were using to cheer with, and they gave me one! So I blew mine up and wrote "がんばれファイターズ" on it with a sharpie and they all thought that was pretty funny.
Yeah, so um, the game. Unfortunately, Satoru Kanemura, who's been one of the few keystones of the Fighters pitching staff these last few years, well, he has his good days, and he has his bad days, and this was really one of his bad days, culminating in him giving up a grand slam to Toru Hosokawa which pretty much sealed things as the Lions eventually won the game 6-2.
The Lions started off their half of the first by Shogo Akada singling to center, and then Kataoka bunted him ahead; Ishii popped out, but Alex Cabrera walked and then Kazuhiro Wada singled. Akada beat the throw home and scored, but Cabrera actually got himself thrown out trying to get from first to third on a 9-2-5 play.
Things were calm for a few innings, and then in the 4th, Kanemura just sort of imploded. Ishii led off with a single, Cabrera followed it with a single, and this time Wada popped out, but then Jeff Liefer walked the bases loaded, and you could tell things were just bad. Kanemura actually got up to a 3-1 count on third baseman Takeya Nakamura before he generously popped out to right field. Then, with two outs and the bases still loaded... Hosokawa cranked the ball back, back, back, past a running Toshimasa Konta, into the Fighters cheering section in left field. Grand slam. Grumble grumble mumble. That made it 5-0, as Fumiya Nishiguchi was having very little trouble dispatching the Fighters batters in general.
Takeda The Older (Masaru, that is; Hisashi is three months younger) came out and pitched a few innings for the Fighters. The bottom of the 5th was almost as big a disaster, as he hit Kataoka with a pitch, then walked Ishii, and they had been trying like hell for a hit-and-run with Cabrera up and eventually settled for a double steal before Cabrera struck out. With two outs they intentionally walked Wada to get to Liefer, who fortunately was accomodating in grounding out.
The Fighters finally tagged Nishiguchi for a run in the 7th, when Jose Macias doubled to right -- well, really, he singled, and just kept running and barely beat the throw to second -- and Konta struck out, but then Tsuruoka singled Macias to third, and Kaneko sacrificed him home. Hichori Morimoto singled after that too, but Kensuke Tanaka struck out, ending the threat, sadly.
Brad Thomas came out to pitch the 7th for the Fighters and promptly struck out Akada, Kataoka, and a pinch-hitting Akira Etoh, in order. That was cool.
Atsunori Inaba hit a solo home run off Tomoki Hoshino into the Lions' cheering section in the 8th, but that was it for the Fighters scoring. After the Lions pushed ahead another run in their half of the 8th, on a ground rule double by Jeff Liefer which was caught by the guy LITERALLY sitting next to me -- I mean, the ball bounced over the wall towards us, bounced again, and the guy stood up and BOOM, the ball landed in his hand. It was nuts. That's two days in a row now. Errrr, anyway, so Lions closer Chikara Onodera came out to finish off the 8th inning (after Yukio Tanaka came to pinch-hit for Konta, Onodera came in to pitch for Hoshino. I swear, EVERY Fighters game I've ever been at has had Yukio Tanaka come in to pinch-hit) and then also struck out a pinch-hitting Naoto Inada and Tomoyuki Oda, and got Hichori to ground out to short, and that was the game.
I don't really have a lot of game notes because quite frankly, for the entire time the Fighters were at bat, I was standing up and cheering and singing my lungs out with the rest of the people in my part of the stadium. I swear, there's nothing like seriously following a Japanese team and being part of the cheering section. It's just so goddamn much fun I can't even begin to describe it. And this was for the AWAY team! Our whole section was just filled with people in Fighters gear, tons of people, whole families, etc. It's so loud and so awesome. Anyway, I figured that I could do two out out of three things -- where the three were 1) cheer 2) take pictures 3) keep score -- and so I ended up cheering and keeping score, and didn't take many pictures because it had terrible lighting in the dome anyway, as it's more of an outside stadium that happens to have a domed roof on it. But, like, I'd be standing up singing something about "Kensuke, guts, go go go! We're waiting for your shining moment!" (no joke, that's really about what Kensuke Tanaka's cheer translates to) one second, and then have to quickly grab my scorecard, write what happened after the play... and then get up to immediately start singing the Ogasawara cheer song. And so on. At one point I completely failed to note that Inaba walked, and ended up off-by-one on my scorecard for an inning or so.
(in the past, I've never tried to keep score at Japanese games, but I thought it would be a fun experiment this trip. What I've learned is that it's quite possible to do... provided you aren't in a cheering section.)
Oh yeah, and a bunch of the Lions come out to somewhat wacky choices of songs. Offhand I noticed Kazuki Fukuchi came out to Long Train Runnin', and Yasuyuki Kataoka comes out to "Catch The Wave" by Def Tech, among others.
And for my own reference... they didn't do the normal Yukio Tanaka cheer when he was up due to the "chance" situation, apparently. It was still loud and cheery, but I wanted to do the song I remembered.
Right, so I just noticed I've spent over an hour in the internet cafe now, so I should probably leave. I'm heading down to Kansai for a week, and don't know what my internet situation will be like there... not sure what my next game will be either -- I intend to go to a Tigers-Giants game in Osaka and a Dragons-Swallows game in Nagoya during the week, and then a Carp-Dragons game in Hiroshima and a Buffaloes-Fighters game in Osaka during the weekend, interspersed with sightseeing with my best friend, who's dragging me to Nara and some other places. Fun fun!
EDIT 11/29/06> Photo set for this game is now available here!
Yeah, so I saw Mariners number t-shirts at a store in the Tokyo Dome for like 4500 yen (about $40) each. That's insane, considering you can get them for $20 at Safeco. You wonder why Japanese tourists seem to drop so much money at Safeco... well, because it's seriously so much cheaper.
I digress. After spending some time making myself NOT spend money at the Tokyo Dome shop, I met up with a friend and we took the train out to Tokorozawa for the Seibu Lions vs. Nippon Ham Fighters game at the Seibu Invoice Dome.
I've been a Fighters fan for several years now -- ever since a fateful day when I was in a subway station in Tokyo with a friend of mine and we saw coupons for discounted outfield seating to Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome. We accidentally sat in the middle of the Fighters cheering section; they taught us the ropes, and from then on, the Fighters were my team -- but of course, then they had to go move to Sapporo in the 2003-2004 offseason. (In terms of geography, this is almost like if the Mariners went and moved to Alaska.) So now, every time I go see them, I sit in the visiting section, and it's usually not that crowded.
But today, oh, today, oh man! The outfield unreserved seats are... well, they're not seats, to begin with. There are a few benches at the back, but for the most part it's just this huge slanted turf floor. So I guess it's like lawn seats, kind of, but weirder. Also, we got there an hour early and the turf was FULL of people -- as my friend said, "Wow, there are a ton of people as crazy as you here!" It was almost like being at an outdoor concert or something. So we found a small patch of turf and sat down on it. The people around us were pretty nice -- they got over the "whoa, a gaijin" factor pretty quickly, especially once I started singing along to the songs and all. One set of people behind us had a bunch of inflatable dolphins they were using to cheer with, and they gave me one! So I blew mine up and wrote "がんばれファイターズ" on it with a sharpie and they all thought that was pretty funny.
Yeah, so um, the game. Unfortunately, Satoru Kanemura, who's been one of the few keystones of the Fighters pitching staff these last few years, well, he has his good days, and he has his bad days, and this was really one of his bad days, culminating in him giving up a grand slam to Toru Hosokawa which pretty much sealed things as the Lions eventually won the game 6-2.
The Lions started off their half of the first by Shogo Akada singling to center, and then Kataoka bunted him ahead; Ishii popped out, but Alex Cabrera walked and then Kazuhiro Wada singled. Akada beat the throw home and scored, but Cabrera actually got himself thrown out trying to get from first to third on a 9-2-5 play.
Things were calm for a few innings, and then in the 4th, Kanemura just sort of imploded. Ishii led off with a single, Cabrera followed it with a single, and this time Wada popped out, but then Jeff Liefer walked the bases loaded, and you could tell things were just bad. Kanemura actually got up to a 3-1 count on third baseman Takeya Nakamura before he generously popped out to right field. Then, with two outs and the bases still loaded... Hosokawa cranked the ball back, back, back, past a running Toshimasa Konta, into the Fighters cheering section in left field. Grand slam. Grumble grumble mumble. That made it 5-0, as Fumiya Nishiguchi was having very little trouble dispatching the Fighters batters in general.
Takeda The Older (Masaru, that is; Hisashi is three months younger) came out and pitched a few innings for the Fighters. The bottom of the 5th was almost as big a disaster, as he hit Kataoka with a pitch, then walked Ishii, and they had been trying like hell for a hit-and-run with Cabrera up and eventually settled for a double steal before Cabrera struck out. With two outs they intentionally walked Wada to get to Liefer, who fortunately was accomodating in grounding out.
The Fighters finally tagged Nishiguchi for a run in the 7th, when Jose Macias doubled to right -- well, really, he singled, and just kept running and barely beat the throw to second -- and Konta struck out, but then Tsuruoka singled Macias to third, and Kaneko sacrificed him home. Hichori Morimoto singled after that too, but Kensuke Tanaka struck out, ending the threat, sadly.
Brad Thomas came out to pitch the 7th for the Fighters and promptly struck out Akada, Kataoka, and a pinch-hitting Akira Etoh, in order. That was cool.
Atsunori Inaba hit a solo home run off Tomoki Hoshino into the Lions' cheering section in the 8th, but that was it for the Fighters scoring. After the Lions pushed ahead another run in their half of the 8th, on a ground rule double by Jeff Liefer which was caught by the guy LITERALLY sitting next to me -- I mean, the ball bounced over the wall towards us, bounced again, and the guy stood up and BOOM, the ball landed in his hand. It was nuts. That's two days in a row now. Errrr, anyway, so Lions closer Chikara Onodera came out to finish off the 8th inning (after Yukio Tanaka came to pinch-hit for Konta, Onodera came in to pitch for Hoshino. I swear, EVERY Fighters game I've ever been at has had Yukio Tanaka come in to pinch-hit) and then also struck out a pinch-hitting Naoto Inada and Tomoyuki Oda, and got Hichori to ground out to short, and that was the game.
I don't really have a lot of game notes because quite frankly, for the entire time the Fighters were at bat, I was standing up and cheering and singing my lungs out with the rest of the people in my part of the stadium. I swear, there's nothing like seriously following a Japanese team and being part of the cheering section. It's just so goddamn much fun I can't even begin to describe it. And this was for the AWAY team! Our whole section was just filled with people in Fighters gear, tons of people, whole families, etc. It's so loud and so awesome. Anyway, I figured that I could do two out out of three things -- where the three were 1) cheer 2) take pictures 3) keep score -- and so I ended up cheering and keeping score, and didn't take many pictures because it had terrible lighting in the dome anyway, as it's more of an outside stadium that happens to have a domed roof on it. But, like, I'd be standing up singing something about "Kensuke, guts, go go go! We're waiting for your shining moment!" (no joke, that's really about what Kensuke Tanaka's cheer translates to) one second, and then have to quickly grab my scorecard, write what happened after the play... and then get up to immediately start singing the Ogasawara cheer song. And so on. At one point I completely failed to note that Inaba walked, and ended up off-by-one on my scorecard for an inning or so.
(in the past, I've never tried to keep score at Japanese games, but I thought it would be a fun experiment this trip. What I've learned is that it's quite possible to do... provided you aren't in a cheering section.)
Oh yeah, and a bunch of the Lions come out to somewhat wacky choices of songs. Offhand I noticed Kazuki Fukuchi came out to Long Train Runnin', and Yasuyuki Kataoka comes out to "Catch The Wave" by Def Tech, among others.
And for my own reference... they didn't do the normal Yukio Tanaka cheer when he was up due to the "chance" situation, apparently. It was still loud and cheery, but I wanted to do the song I remembered.
Right, so I just noticed I've spent over an hour in the internet cafe now, so I should probably leave. I'm heading down to Kansai for a week, and don't know what my internet situation will be like there... not sure what my next game will be either -- I intend to go to a Tigers-Giants game in Osaka and a Dragons-Swallows game in Nagoya during the week, and then a Carp-Dragons game in Hiroshima and a Buffaloes-Fighters game in Osaka during the weekend, interspersed with sightseeing with my best friend, who's dragging me to Nara and some other places. Fun fun!
EDIT 11/29/06> Photo set for this game is now available here!
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Game Report: Eagles vs. Hawks - Fun in Sendai
I have about ten minutes to write this, so forgive me if it is a little incoherent.
Today I went to see the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles play the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks at Miyagi Fullcast Stadium in Sendai.
I looked at the pitching matchups last night and saw that today was Rakuten's Ichiba against Softbank's Saitoh, and since I think Saitoh is the best pitcher in Japan right now, I just HAD to go up. So we got shinkansen tickets and headed up to Sendai. This is sort of like deciding on a whim to go from Seattle to Portland, only you have a train that goes 100mph or more, so it only takes an hour and a half to make the trip. Fun.
We got off at Miyaginohara, which is actually the Rakuten Golden Eagles "Baseball Station" and it even had the Eagles fight song playing as we exited the place. Went to the stadium, got tickets. It was sunny as all hell, and people looked at me weird for putting on sunscreen. Then they looked at me weird because I was wearing a Johjima jersey. Also, I swear there are NO gaijin in Sendai -- I was seriously the only white person I saw at all on my entire trip there (the friend I went with is Chinese). It was pretty cool, though. Sendai seems like a nice city.
The game itself... well, I feel really bad that I was rooting for the Hawks -- I really don't want them to win in general -- but I really, really, really like Kazumi Saitoh. He's magnificent. Went 8 innings, no walks, struck out 5, gave up no runs, therefore lowering his ERA to something like 1.71 in 178 innings. Insane. Mahara closed and would have kept the shutout if Jose Fernandez hadn't launched a home run in the middle of Mahara striking out the side in the 9th.
The scoring started with the awesome Nobuhiko Matsunaka hitting a home run in the 5th inning, and it happened to be when I conveniently had stood up and walked in towards the infield to take pictures -- there's a gigantic net up all over the infield, so its really annoying to take pictures. Unfortunately, that was around when my friend got a call from his office in Tokyo, and they wanted him back there to work on stuff -- right then. "But I'm in Sendai!" "Come back!" Bleh. So he left, and I stayed for the rest of the game.
In the sixth inning, Honda led off with a single to center, and then Matoba -- the backup catcher who didn't pan out as Johjima's replacement -- bunted, and Ichiba threw it to second but didn't beat Honda there. Ohmura bunted them both over, and then Munenori Kawasaki hit a ball into the left-field corner which Rick Short had some trouble recovering, so Kawasaki got a triple and the Hawks were up 3-0. Tanoue sacrificed Kawasaki home after that, and while Matsunaka hit a double, that was it for the scoring. The Hawks won 4-1, with that Fernandez home run I mentioned.
I finally realized how many Hawks fans were there when they let loose yellow balloons before the top of the 7th inning. While the red and white balloons in the middle of the 7th inning greatly outnumbered them, it was still cool.
In the 9th, Takasu fouled a ball off that landed literally 8 feet from me -- I was 3 seats in from the aisle and a guy across the aisle caught it. Not only did he catch it barehanded but he didn't seem to care -- an officer or attendant or something came over to check to make sure he was okay, and he actually OFFERED THE BALL BACK TO THE ATTENDANT! Wowie. That was bizarre.
The Eagles really suck. I feel bad for them. Its also funny how they have three gaijin in their lineup, so that means you get people yelling "E-RI-KU!!" for Eric Valent, or "RI-KU SHO-TO!" for Rick Short, or "Home run home run Jose!" for Fernandez. Still, the funniest Rakuten cheer is for Tsuchiya Teppei -- before his song, they just yell "TEPPEI!!!!!!" about ten times, then start singing. It's pretty funny.
On the shinkansen back to Tokyo they actually had the Mariners-Rays score and mentioned Johjima's home run. Cool, huh?
I'm going to the Lions-Fighters game tomorrow evening. I can't wait. I picked up Ogasawara's biography at Book 1st in Shibuya tonight, along with Shinjo's book "Shinjo no Shinjo" (the first is his name, the second means "principles"), subtitled "baka kakkoii", which means "cool dumbass", essentially.
I gotta go or I'll be locked out of the place I'm staying, so... more tomorrow!
EDIT 11/26/06: Photo set for this day is now up here!
Today I went to see the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles play the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks at Miyagi Fullcast Stadium in Sendai.
I looked at the pitching matchups last night and saw that today was Rakuten's Ichiba against Softbank's Saitoh, and since I think Saitoh is the best pitcher in Japan right now, I just HAD to go up. So we got shinkansen tickets and headed up to Sendai. This is sort of like deciding on a whim to go from Seattle to Portland, only you have a train that goes 100mph or more, so it only takes an hour and a half to make the trip. Fun.
We got off at Miyaginohara, which is actually the Rakuten Golden Eagles "Baseball Station" and it even had the Eagles fight song playing as we exited the place. Went to the stadium, got tickets. It was sunny as all hell, and people looked at me weird for putting on sunscreen. Then they looked at me weird because I was wearing a Johjima jersey. Also, I swear there are NO gaijin in Sendai -- I was seriously the only white person I saw at all on my entire trip there (the friend I went with is Chinese). It was pretty cool, though. Sendai seems like a nice city.
The game itself... well, I feel really bad that I was rooting for the Hawks -- I really don't want them to win in general -- but I really, really, really like Kazumi Saitoh. He's magnificent. Went 8 innings, no walks, struck out 5, gave up no runs, therefore lowering his ERA to something like 1.71 in 178 innings. Insane. Mahara closed and would have kept the shutout if Jose Fernandez hadn't launched a home run in the middle of Mahara striking out the side in the 9th.
The scoring started with the awesome Nobuhiko Matsunaka hitting a home run in the 5th inning, and it happened to be when I conveniently had stood up and walked in towards the infield to take pictures -- there's a gigantic net up all over the infield, so its really annoying to take pictures. Unfortunately, that was around when my friend got a call from his office in Tokyo, and they wanted him back there to work on stuff -- right then. "But I'm in Sendai!" "Come back!" Bleh. So he left, and I stayed for the rest of the game.
In the sixth inning, Honda led off with a single to center, and then Matoba -- the backup catcher who didn't pan out as Johjima's replacement -- bunted, and Ichiba threw it to second but didn't beat Honda there. Ohmura bunted them both over, and then Munenori Kawasaki hit a ball into the left-field corner which Rick Short had some trouble recovering, so Kawasaki got a triple and the Hawks were up 3-0. Tanoue sacrificed Kawasaki home after that, and while Matsunaka hit a double, that was it for the scoring. The Hawks won 4-1, with that Fernandez home run I mentioned.
I finally realized how many Hawks fans were there when they let loose yellow balloons before the top of the 7th inning. While the red and white balloons in the middle of the 7th inning greatly outnumbered them, it was still cool.
In the 9th, Takasu fouled a ball off that landed literally 8 feet from me -- I was 3 seats in from the aisle and a guy across the aisle caught it. Not only did he catch it barehanded but he didn't seem to care -- an officer or attendant or something came over to check to make sure he was okay, and he actually OFFERED THE BALL BACK TO THE ATTENDANT! Wowie. That was bizarre.
The Eagles really suck. I feel bad for them. Its also funny how they have three gaijin in their lineup, so that means you get people yelling "E-RI-KU!!" for Eric Valent, or "RI-KU SHO-TO!" for Rick Short, or "Home run home run Jose!" for Fernandez. Still, the funniest Rakuten cheer is for Tsuchiya Teppei -- before his song, they just yell "TEPPEI!!!!!!" about ten times, then start singing. It's pretty funny.
On the shinkansen back to Tokyo they actually had the Mariners-Rays score and mentioned Johjima's home run. Cool, huh?
I'm going to the Lions-Fighters game tomorrow evening. I can't wait. I picked up Ogasawara's biography at Book 1st in Shibuya tonight, along with Shinjo's book "Shinjo no Shinjo" (the first is his name, the second means "principles"), subtitled "baka kakkoii", which means "cool dumbass", essentially.
I gotta go or I'll be locked out of the place I'm staying, so... more tomorrow!
EDIT 11/26/06: Photo set for this day is now up here!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)