Friday was a very surreal day for me. Let's just say that at 5pm I was in the health room at the junior high school I work at, after throwing up most of whatever the hell I ate for lunch. See, one of the benefits of working in a school in Japan is that you can opt to eat school lunch, which is a wide variety of Japanese food, some of which is good, some of which is bad, and some of which is completely unidentifiable. Friday's lunch fell in the latter category, though I was later told it was some kind of fried squid.
And at 5:30pm I was drinking cola and sitting on a train heading towards the Tokyo Dome, feeling still a little dizzy but kind of okay.
At 6:15pm or so I finally got to my seat in the outfield, just in time to see Michihiro "Clean-shaven Doppleganger" Ogasawara hit a 3-run homerun for the Giants and put them up 3-0.
I was sitting right smack dab in what would normally be the Chunichi ouendan, if they actually HAD an ouendan. The guy sitting next to me turned out to be a stealth ouendan leader and had even attached a trumpet mouthpiece to a kazoo to play music for some of the chance themes, which was really awesome, so I asked him what was going on, and he basically said that in Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Osaka, the ouendan have regathered and applied for official status at the stadiums, which is why I was hearing trumpets and drums on TV, but in Kanto they apparently have not gotten their act together, which is why at the Tokyo Dome it was a lot of semi-organized shouting and clapping.
This guy was sitting three rows ahead of us:
And at first I thought he was just a crazy fan, but it turned out he was one of the actual leaders, so he was getting signals from some people above us and then leading chants. The police came over to talk to him several times, probably to say "You know you're not an official ouendan, so don't cheer against the Giants TOO loudly, okay?"
The only thing that really seemed to be in sync well was the Ibata fanfare...
As for the game, Daisuke Yamai started for Chunichi and didn't even make it to having an at-bat of his own, as Kei Nomoto pinch-hit for him in the second inning. Seth Greisinger started for the Giants and was in for 6 innings, and got the win.
Seung-Yeop Lee also hit a 2-run homerun and the Giants were up 5-0, but at least Henry Blanco hit a homerun to put the Dragons on the board at 5-1. Blanco's homerun was measured as being 150 meters -- almost 500 feet. It hit the advertisements next to the scoreboard in center field, and would have gone straight out of several stadiums in Japan.
But one big homerun does not an offense make, and the Giants runs kept piling up whereas the only Dragons player willing to actually bat anything in was, of all people... Keiji Oyama. The catcher. The catcher who I saw at a ton of Fighters ni-gun games last year. He got released by the Fighters at the end of last season and picked up by the Dragons, and he hasn't really done much of anything this year... but I guess because I showed up he chose to reach base 4 out of 4 plate appearances, although 2 were hits, one was a walk and one was on an error. And he had 3 RBIs. Crazy.
We yelled and screamed all of the traditional Dragons-at-the-Tokyo-Dome cheers such as adding "Yomiuri taose wo" after every batter, and a new one I hadn't heard before of doing an "outo!" cheer after each Giants out, along with "kutabare yomiuri -- outo!". But it didn't really help, and the Dragons lost 10-4 to the Giants.
I was particularly heartbroken because Morino went further into his slump and still didn't get a hit. I came to the game wearing a Tatsunami t-shirt and my Morino jersey over it, with my Morino towel and pin and all, and though he traditionally does well when I see him, I guess Oyama stole the magic instead.
Oh, and there was no Tatsunami appearance, either, which was also sad. He just got a walkoff hit in Thursday's game, which was really great for him -- he was game hero and looked so happy I can't even begin to describe it.
Also, this game was apparently Hayato Sakamoto Cheering Day, and they gave out Sakamoto player cards at the gate. I can't decide whether to keep mine or sell it.
Before the game, by the way, Tom Hanks threw out the ceremonial first pitch. I was still on the train to the stadium at that point, thanks to getting sick at school, but they showed him and Ron Howard and some other guy on the screen in the middle of the game:
He's in Japan promoting his new movie Angels and Demons.
"I've been reading about the Tokyo Dome ever since I was a little kid," Hanks said. "Home of the Yomiuri Giants and the team of Sadaharu Oh for crying out loud. There is a lot of baseball history out there."
Slight problem here, Tom -- the Tokyo Dome was built in 1988. You were 32 at that point, hardly a little kid. Now, I realize the movie "Big" came out in 1988, and your role was to play a kid and all, but that can't POSSIBLY be what you meant...
So instead, I went to Meiji Jingu Stadium with my friend Pau, for another rainy day of baseball as the Hanshin Tigers took on the Yakult Swallows. They were rained out on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I guess they wanted to get at least one game of this series in, despite that the skies were looking pretty wet yet again.
Pau is a huge Hanshin Tigers fan, so we were sitting in reserved seating on the third base side. And because it was raining, I didn't keep a scorecard. Besides, there isn't a lot to say about the game anyway. Masanori Ishikawa is good, and he kept the Tigers in check for a very long time, aside from a home run by Kodai Sakurai.
Yasutomo Kubo had a really rocky first inning, and the first run of the game actually came in on his second hit batter. Takeuchi doubled and was bunted to third, and then Kubo hit Aoki with a pitch and walked D'Antona, loading the bases, and then he also hit Guiel with a pitch. Oops. The Swallows added a go-ahead run in the 6th inning as D'Antona hit a fly ball to left that Kanemoto caught up with but then dropped in a somersault, and then Guiel doubled to right. That one run lead was all they needed to win with Chang-yong Lim closing out the game for his 9th save and still keeping his perfect ERA.
On the other hand, Pau was really excited because Shinjiro Hiyama pinch-hit and got a single off Lim.
I blew up jet fuusen, a rare occasion for me, because the teams I cheer for don't do them in general. They're neat, but annoying, IMO.
I even sang along to Rokko Oroshi and tried to sing ouenka, though in general all I really did is cheer for Kentaro Sekimoto. I also sang along to Tokyo Ondo, of course ("kutabare Yomiuri!").
And here we are. I was wearing #7 on the 7th. After the game we even went to get birthday cake, and it cost 777 yen.
I feel indebted to explain this one in Japanese briefly in case some of my Fighters friends come across this entry and wonder about it.
Oh, whatever. I wanted to be at a baseball game for my birthday. That is all. Tomorrow (really today now) I am heading to the Tokyo Dome to support Chunichi and yell a lot of stuff about how much I hate the Giants.
Thanks to Mother Nature, the Fighters got to balance out one of those extra-innings games with a rain-shortened one, as the skies started pouring water on Chiba right as the game started, and the rain never let up. It's a wonder that they could even play 5 innings in that condition, to be honest.
There was a ceremony to honor Tadahito Iguchi's 150th career home run (which was on April 7th at the Tokyo Dome), and because today was Children's Day, there was a child announcer, and a child ceremonial first pitch, and a whole bunch of children dancing from the Marines Dance Academy on the field before the game.
And there was rain. Lots of it. I was sitting out in the Fighters cheering section in the leftfield bleachers for this game because there was no way I was lugging my big camera to Chiba in such weather. Fortunately, a bunch of my friends saved me a seat in the 3rd row from the back, where it was mostly dry. The outfield in Chiba is such that the back half is covered and the front half is not covered, which results in things like this drenched ouendan leader, surrounded by raincoats and umbrellas:
Hiroyuki Kobayashi started for Chiba and Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters. Oddly, I think the last time I was at Chiba for a called rainy game, it was also a KobaHiro start. Maybe he's just a Rain Man of sorts.
It was really obvious the rain was giving the players trouble out there from the beginning. Kensuke Tanaka had a legitimate single to lead off the game, and then Hichori Morimoto grounded into what would have been a double play on any other day of the year, but with second base already turning into quicksand at that point, there was no relay back to first on the 3-6 play. And in the bottom of the first, Koyano made what would have usually been a routine play on an Iguchi grounder to third, but in the rain, he got the ball, slipped and fell, then threw the ball to first base from his knees, and amazingly, it beat Iguchi there by a split second.
Terrmel Sledge led off the second inning with a home run to left field. We were all watching it come out, and were sure it was either foul or was going to be blown foul by the wind and rain, but it landed JUST fair and JUST in the first few rows of seats in the left-field corner. 1-0. Yoshio Itoi singled a bit later, somehow stole second base without falling into the mud pit, advanced on a grounder, and then Makoto Kaneko hit a single to right to bring him home. 2-0.
Control was a problem on both sides, and both pitchers issued a few walks, plus there was a passed ball on the Marines side when one just slipped away from Satozaki. Yagi managed to get himself into and out of a jam in every inning; in the 3rd he had the bases loaded on two walks, but then struck out Satozaki to end it; in the 4th he had runners on 2nd and 3rd from two hits but then struck out Lambin and Benny to end it, and in the 5th he had bases loaded yet again but then Takehara hit a fly ball out to left that Hichori fortunately actually CAUGHT by the wall. Whew.
There had been a short pause before the fourth inning started, but after the fifth inning ended, there was a looooong pause, as people worked on making the field less wet...
And eventually they announced that they were going into a rain delay for 30 minutes.
The Fighters ouendan decided that this was a good time to do all kinds of crazy stuff. After a while of just clapping and yelling a lot of "絶対勝つぞファイターズ！" for a while, they taught us the new ouenka that they'd been tossing around to use for Darvish during the upcoming interleague games. This may change before then, but for now, this is how it goes...
７＋４ は お前の背番号 １４－３ は 日本のエース
Meaning roughly "7+4 is your uniform number, 14-3 is Japan's ace".
I'll admit it, I don't get it. I asked a few people and they didn't get it either, but thought it was funny.
It was pretty wet by that point so I'd put away my scorebook and stopped taking notes, but among other things that I remember being yelled...
- "中止をするなら早くしろ！" meaning "If you're going to cancel the game, HURRY UP AND DO IT ALREADY!"
- "誰でもいいから、出て来いよ！", which basically means "We don't care who, someone come out!" We were yelling names at the dugout to see if we could get any Fighters players to come out. Including Nashida, and a lot of Jason Botts.
- BB was running around saying hi to people in the stands and we yelled at him to put away his umbrella.
- One of the ouendan went off on a rant about how he grew up in Fukuoka, and went to the same high school as Kensuke Tanaka, but is he a Hawks fan? No! He's a Fighters fan and darn proud of it! And apparently the Yahoo Dome took away some of the visitor's cheering area, or made it reserved, I dunno, so he got us to all yell a cheer of something to the effect of "GIVE BACK THE VISITOR'S UNRESERVED SEATING, YAHOO DOME!!"
And then one of the older ouendan leaders came down and said "Okay, it's time for the Old Ouenka Game! Let's do the time travel back to 1998! Who was wearing #0 in 1998?" and everyone yells "Furuki!!" and so we did Furuki's cheer song, and after that they did a 1-9 from 1998. I knew... like... 4 of the cheers. Yukio, Kaneko, and Tatsuya Ide, plus that Jerry Brooks's cheer then is Jimenez's cheer now. The rest of the lineup included things like Atsushi Kataoka, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Katsuhiro Nishiura... yeah. So, that was fun, and they decided to fastforward to 2004. "Who wore #1 in 2004?" "Shinjo!!!" so we did a Shinjo cheer, and then... just as we were about to do a lineup that I actually KNEW all the songs for...
...an umpire came out to home plate, put up his fist, and announced that the game was officially called after 5 innings, with the Fighters winning 2-0.
So instead, we all did a bunch of victory songs and cheers.
After that, BB and the Marines mascot Cool did a bunch of head-sliding on the infield tarp-covered bases. (Here's a video.) BB did okay but only did his major slide into home plate. Cool did the entire Morozumi routine, sliding into every base, pretending to steal second, etc, but it would have been cooler if we'd actually had coach Morozumi or someone else out there as well.
Oh, and I forget what point during the game it was, but BB actually came to the outfield stands and was taking photos with fans and just generally hanging around and harrassing the ouendan and all. I was all like "look! BB! yay!" when he came out, and the lady sitting next to me said, "let's go get our photo with him!" So we ran down and cornered him too.
I'm not really sure why she was so psyched for it, because she's from Hokkaido and probably sees BB a lot more than I do. But now she has proof she got to meet that freaky foreign Fighters fan that's always on TV...
In Japanese, a phrase that often gets used just as a way of saying hello or goodbye is "otsukaresama desu", which literally means "you must be exhausted", but is used more for a connotation of "thank you for your hard work" or "good job!" or "let's work hard!" or something to that effect. At my first job in Japan, if I answered the phone and it was somebody calling from another one of our offices, the requisite greeting was "otsukaresama desu", which seemed weird at first -- why would you GREET someone by saying they must be exhausted? Especially sometimes at, say, 10 or 11am?
But well, in the case of the Nippon Ham Fighters, it would have been something appropriate to say to pretty much anyone on the team at pretty much any time in the last 3-4 days.
They managed to play four games' worth of baseball in three games, and then flew across the country to play another game down here in Chiba today (Monday).
So it should be no surprise that when I asked some of the Fighters' players today what they were thinking going into today's game, the sentiment was mainly, "I just hope we can win it in 9."
I did manage to talk to most of the Fighters' foreign players today, which was pretty interesting. First I chatted with Luis Jimenez for a while. A bunch of people were watching Shota Ohno and Shinya Tsuruoka run after high pop flies, as practice for chasing foul fliesdown behind the plate, so as a joke I went up to Jimenez and asked, "When are YOU going to go run after some of those?"
He seems like a pretty funny guy. We talked for a few minutes, mostly about how he's adjusting to Japan, especially how different it is culturally and weatherwise than Venezuela. Also, he and I have the same birthday (this Thursday, May 7th, though I'm a few years older). At least the Fighters finally have a day off then, though that's my first day back at work after Golden Week.
Quote of the day: Me: "You know the fans call you Hime-chan, right?" Him: "Yeah, I heard that." Me: "What do you think of it?" Him: "It's MESSED UP! Do I look like a princess to you?"
I told him that I'd try to convince people to give him a new name, even though people never believe me when I tell them it's messed up in the first place. He suggested "Papi-chan".
After that, I managed to catch Terrmel Sledge and interview him for about 10 minutes. He's a really nice guy, and I'll hopefully get around to transcribing that sometime this week.
Ryan Wing was also hanging out at the park, though out of uniform. He's apparently injured his shoulder while working out in ni-gun and is spending the next week or so trying to completely relax it, no throwing at all. That must be pretty frustrating.
And of course it wouldn't be a Fighters game without saying hi to Brian Sweeney, who fortunately seemed to be in a good mood about his future as a circus juggler. No, just joking. Actually, he told Luis to read my blog, so I probably totally shouldn't be mentioning any of this stuff...
I didn't get to talk to Jason Botts, though he was up at Chiba working out with the team before the game. He's not listed on the team page as being moved up to ichi-gun (today's registration just said that Tadano was activated and Sakakibara was deactivated), so I'm not sure what was up with that. I'm not sure where Botts would play right now even if he did come up, because there's sort of a logjam in the 1B/DH position right now anyway, between Sledge, Shinji, Nioka, and Jimenez.
Anyway, I spent most of today's game hiding in the camera well, rather than going out into the leftfield stands. It was just such a nice day and I figured I should take advantage of it, since tomorrow will be raining. I shot about 900 photos, though, and if I take the time to process them all, you won't get this entry for another week or so. I'll try to add a few as I go.
Kazuhito Tadano started for the Fighters,
and Okinawan native Yuta Ohmine started for the Marines.
And Ohmine pretty much ran into trouble from the start. He walked Hichori and Inaba, so when Sledge came to the plate with two outs and two on, he singled to right to score Hichori, making it 1-0. Shinji walked after that, loading the bases, and so Itoi singled to center and that scored Inaba and Sledge. 3-0. Shota Ohno struck out after that, but it was a decent start for the Fighters nonetheless.
Sledge slides in for the third run of the first inning.
The Marines went down quick in their half of the first and the Fighters added another run in the top of the second when Kaneko reached base on an infield single, and two outs later moved to second on an Inaba single. Eiichi Koyano also singled to center after that, and Kaneko scored on the play, but Inaba was out at third as centerfielder Daisuke Hayakawa managed to fire the ball to third base. 4-0.
Tadano walked Iguchi and Ohmatsu in the bottom of the 2nd, and then Imae launched a huge home run over the centerfield wall after that to bring the score to 4-3.
Things stayed at that state for an inning, and then the Fighters just blew open Ohmine in the top of the 4th. Just as before, the walks hurt him; Ohno and Kaneko walked to start off the inning. (To be fair, Kaneko was trying to sac bunt at first but Ohmine kept missing the zone.) Kensuke bunted them up to second and third, and Hichori hit a double to right which scored Ohno and Kaneko, 6-3. Inaba grounded out, which put Hichori on third, and he scored easily on a Koyano single, 7-3.
Hichori comes home! Note he has his name written on his collar in Korean. Cool, huh?
Ohmine was taken out of the game and replaced with a guy over twice his age, Satoru Komiyama. (Ohmine will be 21 in June, Komi-chan will be 44 in September.)
Koyano advanced to third on Sledge's single off Komi-chan, and scored on a Shinji Takahashi double into the leftfield corner. 8-3. But then Yoshio Itoi lined out to short to end the inning.
Tadano threw no eephus pitches in this game, sadly. Maybe he should have. The 5th inning got him into a bit of a pinch. Chase Lambin started off with a double, and advanced to third on a Hayakawa groundout. Gary Burnham singled to right to score Lambin, 8-4, and then Nishioka walked, and then Tadahito Iguchi singled to center, and it was only by some miracle that nobody scored on that single. With one out and the bases loaded, Tasuku Hashimoto came to the plate, and he hit a grounder to Kensuke Tanaka, who flipped the ball to Kaneko at second, and Kaneko fired it to first, but was apparently not in time to catch Hashimoto out. However, Hashimoto was out in another way -- when the play ended, he was lying on the ground several meters away from first base, and didn't look like he was going to move any time soon. I later heard that he pulled a muscle in his leg while trying to beat out the double play. Poor guy. Anyway, Burnham did score on the groundout, since there was no double play. 8-5.
Hashimoto was replaced at first base by an extremely fleet-footed pinch runner, Tomoya Satozaki. Saburo subsequently grounded out to finish the inning.
Atsunori Inaba hit a solo home run in the 6th inning off of Komi-chan, his 5th homer of the year. I think I've seen them all, being as 3 of them were in one game at the Tokyo Dome and one was a walkoff homer the other day in Sapporo, which I watched on TV. I need to watch more Fighters games, if Inaba can only hit home runs when I'm watching.
Inaba high-fives back at the dugout.
The bullpen car drivers got a lot of work in through the last 3-4 innings, as the Fighters shuffled to Masanori Hayashi, then Kazumasa Kikuchi, then Yataro Sakamoto, then Yoshinori Tateyama, and finally Hisashi Takeda as the closer. Meanwhile Chiba cycled through Yusuke Kawasaki, Koji Takagi and Tadahiro Ogino after Komi-chan gave up that homer.
Of all of those, the worst were Yataro Sakamoto, who gave up two runs to Lotte, and Koji Takagi, who managed to load the bases by walking Koyano, hitting Sledge with a pitch, and walking Shinji Takahashi; Koyano scored on a sacrifice fly by Itoi.
I should also mention that when Sledge was hit by a pitch, there was a bench-clearing brawl, by which I really mean, Takagi tipped his cap, Sledge looked angrily at Takagi and wasn't moving towards first, Satozaki stepped in to prevent anything from happening, and since Satozaki isn't a complete idiot like certain other catchers I could name, it just turned into some kind of shouting match which was impossible to see from my vantage point... it mostly looked like a few guys were arguing and everyone else came out to see what was going on:
But after a few minutes, everyone went back to the dugout, Sledge went to first (and was replaced by Tsuboi as a pinch-runner), and everything seemed to be okay.
Hisashi Takeda gave up two hits in the 9th but closed out the game in fine fashion and the Fighters won it 10-7.
I'd moved up to the seating area in the later innings to meet up with some friends, and their 10-year-old son wanted to run the bases after the game, so I got to do/see that for the first time. Only kids can run the bases themselves, but parents and families wait in line with them outside the leftfield gate, and you make your way to home plate, and then the kids get to run run run around the bases while the parents stand there yelling encouraging things and/or taking photos as their kids run.
After that we went over to the Marines dugout and waved hello to Frank Ramppen-coach, who was swamped with signing autographs for people. Then we left.
Long day, but good day (for Fighters fans, at least). And at least the game didn't go into extra innings.
I cropped a few more photos for this post but didn't quite fit them into the story flow, so here are the leftovers for now:
Shota Ohno goes flying into third base in the 4th inning.
And somehow Imae goes flying afterwards.
Makoto Kaneko comes back to the dugout all smiles after scoring a run in the 4th inning.
Masanori Hayashi, who I'm pretty sure I never saw pitch before. Crazy.
And on a final note, in the "what's with all of these extra inning games?" vein, in the Tokyo Big 6 University League, Waseda and Rikkio also spent Monday dueling it out for 14 innings. Waseda eventually prevailed, and my college baseball boyfriend Tatsuya Ohishi got the win, pitching 7 innings in relief (with 1 hit, 1 walk, and 8 strikeouts in that time). Obviously I should have been at Jingu instead -- in some alternate dimension where I can watch infinite baseball games happening at the same time, of course.
I've said it many times, but if there's one thing that can be counted on to be true among Chiba Lotte Marines fans, it's that they are 1) completely insane and 2) totally dedicated to their cause.
After Wednesday's game (and others as far as I know, but I was only there Wednesday), a new set of banners were being carried around in right field as a response to the front office referring to the bleacher fans as "useless 1000-yen fans" and so on...
(Click on the banner to see larger resolution)
我々はファンを侮辱した発言と数々の混乱を招いたフロントの本人による説明および謝罪を要求する We fans demand an apology and explanation FROM THE FRONT OFFICE THEMSELVES for all of the insults and confusion caused
くだらないファンと言うフロントより世界一のファンと言ってくれるボビーと共に戦いたい The front office says we're useless fans, but we want to fight with Bobby who says we're the best in the world
球史に残る迷フロントよ千葉を去れ！ Keep the team in Chiba and make the CLUELESS FRONT OFFICE go away!
That said, Wednesday was kind of the first day of Golden Week for a lot of people, the national holiday called "Showa Day". Unfortunately, Lotte didn't have much to show for it until the very last inning, but that's another story.
Before the game, I caught up with Jason Coskrey from the Japan Times, and watched him interview Tuffy Rhodes. You can read his article here. I just asked Tuffy whether he really needs his interpreter, since I saw him on Sunday doing his hero interview pretty much in Japanese, and he said that no, he doesn't need the interpreter, he's been here 14 years or so now, but it's kind of protocol and he'd be setting a bad example for other guys if he didn't go out there with an interpreter. He also said he loves doing hero interviews, except he usually has a crappy game the next day... but since it was Sunday, no big deal! Tuffy was a really nice guy, and I'm glad I got the chance to talk to him even for just a minute.
We also chatted with Jose Fernandez and Ryan Vogelsong a bit. Ryan was telling us horror stories of when he was being shuffled between the minors and majors back in 2003 and had the same kind of facial nerve problem that Colby Lewis has now, and it definitely doesn't sound like fun at all.
What can I say about the game? Well, the Marines starter was my boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe...
and he was plagued by some pretty bad luck and slightly slow fielding, as a LOT of balls fell for doubles in left and right field, usually seemingly just out of reach of Burnham or Ohmatsu. I kind of feel like both of those guys are in the game more for their bats than their defense anyway, although poor Ohmatsu's been having a really slow start even at the plate.
The Orix starter was this guy...
...and I don't know if it's that manager Daijiro Ohishi just doesn't trust his bullpen or was giving them a rest or what, but Chihiro Kaneko seriously almost went the entire game, until the bottom of the 9th when his 135th pitch was slammed over the right-field wall by Gary Burnham for a 3-run homer. Yeah, he had a shutout going until that point, but I thought it looked like he had nothing left by that point.
Shunsuke managed to keep Tuffy under control...
...but ended up giving up his tradition 7th-inning home runs to both this guy... Keiji Ohbiki, who also hit a home run on Tuesday night in Chiba, and
Greg LaRocca, who was having a pretty decent day.
Despite a 9th inning attempt at a comeback, the Marines lost the game 5-3. I guess Chihiro Kaneko seems to be alternating between having great games and awful games, and the Marines just came out on the wrong side of the seesaw.
I'm trying to keep this short, so I'll just throw in a few other photos I took (of Marines players to balance it out), and call it a wrap:
Kazuya Fukuura, first base
Frank Ramppen, batting coach
Shunichi Nemoto and his wacky balance
Chase Lambin at third base.
I'm heading down to Chiba again for the Fighters on the 4th and 5th, assuming it doesn't rain. Whee! I wonder what the crazy fans will do for Golden Week...
After sweeping the Marines in their first Kanto series and sweeping the Lions in their second Kanto series, the Fighters nearly got swept by the Hawks in their third Kanto series. I went to all three games, and by the end of it I was just totally exhausted. Thank god they didn't get swept, at any rate.
(I'm trying to catch up on stuff, see... it's Golden Week now!)
The Hawks got out to a pretty quick 7-2 lead after Nobuhiko Matsunaka hit 2-run homeruns in both the third AND fourth innings. Ouch. Both were off Fighters starter Kazuhito Tadano, and to his credit, during the 4th inning he threw an eephus pitch to Matsunaka with a 2-2 count, which was awesome. It didn't help as Matsunaka slammed the NEXT pitch over the wall.
The Fighters did manage to get to 7-5, chasing starter Kameron Loe in the 4th inning as well, but could never catch up. Amidst the Hawks fans screaming "3-run homerun Hidenori!", Hidenori Tanoue did infact hit a 3-run homerun in the 9th inning off Keisuke Tanimoto, which pretty much slammed the door on any chance the Fighters had of catching up.
The highlight for my friends was getting to see Hideki Sunaga pitch:
Except that Sunaga ended up walking two guys and then hitting Matsunaka with a pitch. Whoops. Not the best outing.
The highlight for the Hawks bullpen was undoubtedly monkey-like Masahiko Morifuku coming in for one inning and striking out Itoi, Inaba, and Sledge, down in order.
The highlight for everyone else was probably getting to see that groundskeeper go nuts during YMCA yet again...
(April 21 YMCA dance, complete with him getting carried off the field... thanks to Yoshizawa for the film clips!)
Right, the film clips. That's another story in the line of "crazy coincidences".
After the game I wandered around to Gate 22 to see if BB and Cubby were out there again causing mascot mayhem, and sure enough, they were. There was also a guy holding signs about not buying unofficial Fighters goods from the Fukuhachi shop in Sapporo. And well, despite some initial confusion in talking to him, and I thought he was saying something about having HIS Fighters blog, it turned out he was asking me about MY Fighters blog -- and it was the guy who filmed the YMCA groundskeeper on April 8th that I linked to in my entry then! He'd seen my blog thanks to the youtube trackback link, and recognized me from some of my photos on here. (Not that it's all THAT hard to figure out, given how many American females there are wandering around Fighters games in oldskool jerseys, but still.)
He's been a diehard Fighters fan for something like 25 years, and he even named his son Yukio. That's so awesome I can't even begin to describe it. And it turns out that, just as expected, him and my friend Sakamoto and some of my other ouendan acquaintances all go way back in their Fighters-cheering friendships, and so they spent a while telling me stories about the old days and about some not-so-old days, and whatnot. It was really interesting!
Yoshizawa was carrying a Fighty plushie with him and harrassing BB and Cubby with it (or as Sakamoto yelled, "Fighty's your SEMPAI, you have to RESPECT him!"), and since I didn't really want to push into the line of people getting photos with the current mascots, being as I already have a few, instead, I got my photo with the Fighty plushie. And just for fun, I put the photo together with the LAST time I got my photo with Fighty...
(Left: 2009, Right: 2003)
Man, I'm getting old.
Anyway, it was cool to meet new/old Fighters fans and talk about random stuff with them! Yay. So that was a nice ending to a crappy game.
So this game STARTED OUT a lot better than Tuesday's. The Fighters ouendan were mocking the Softbank ouendan by yelling a lot of "ボールをよく見ろ [player]" cheers and "選球眼!" The first one, "boru wo yoku miro" means "See the ball well", and "senkyuugan" means... er, it means batting eye, I suppose. This was really funny, especially when we yelled it a lot and then Luis Jimenez hit a home run to put the Fighters up 2-0, we were joking that he really saw the ball well.
But then the Hawks cut that lead in half on a throwing error -- Munerin tried to steal second, and was TOTALLY out, except that they got into a rundown, which I have written down as "CS, 2-4-3-6-3 E6-3", basically since either Kaneko missed or Jimenez missed, but SOMEONE didn't catch the ball and thus Munerin ended up on third and Morimoto scored. Grr.
Yagi pitched 6 great innings, and then in the 8th, my arch-nemesis Yoshinori Tateyama came in to pitch for the Fighters, and just like he is always wont to do at the Tokyo Dome, he gave up his traditional 2-run homer to Hiroki Kokubo, which put the Hawks up 3-2. The Fighters might have evened it up in their half of the 8th, except with Kensuke at second base, Inaba singled to center, and it wasn't even that far back, but third base coach Makishi sent Kensuke home, where he was out by a MILE. Grrr.
And the groundskeeper did another dance...
(April 22 YMCA dance, also thanks to Yoshizawa-san.)
...this time finishing off with a cartwheel and not getting dragged off the field.
Also, guess where I will be on May 6th...
...yup, Kamagaya! Since Yukio Tanaka will be a special guest for the pregame festivities that day. I want to see him again. I miss Yukio.
Anyway, Wednesday's game REALLY had me feeling grumpy, and I didn't even bother sticking around the Dome afterwards, but pretty much just came home and crashed.
Thursday, April 23: Fighters 7, Hawks 6
FINALLY.
So Pau came with me to this game. This actually wasn't the first time I dragged him to a Fighters game; he came with me last year in Interleague when the Fighters played the Giants and Nishimura broke Hichori's hand and MAN that still pisses me off. But this was the first time he sat in the outfield with us, and he got to meet my crazy friends, the Kamagaya Ojisan posse. We had a huge group, actually, though a funny thing is that I usually eat dinner and then tons of people offer me food, but this particular day I didn't eat dinner and nobody offered me anything. Weird. Call it Murphy's Law, I guess.
(Heck, on Wednesday, Ojisan's friend Sasaki-san who recently retired from working for Nippon Ham came up to visit us and brought "omiyage", or, well... ham. Bunches of pork products, which the rest of our group was like "Yum! Let's eat!" and I was like "Err... is that raw?")
Anyway, this game started off crappy, with Hawks starter Kenji Ohtonari striking out the first three Fighters he faced, but it got better. Or maybe I should say that both Ohtonari and the Fighters starter Masaru Takeda both ended up being similarly mediocre, so it worked out. Whatever karma had bitten Kensuke on Wednesday when Makishi sent him, apparently reversed for Shota Ohno as he scored the first run of the game running from first base on the most impossible RBI double ever (and he'd reached first on error in the first place). Makishi had no business sending him and he had no business scoring, but at least Hichori made a funny pose when we cheered for his double.
Matsunaka had to get another 2-run homer in, but then Luis Jimenez got in a 3-run homer to balance it out, making it 4-2. Then the Hawks had a rally in the 5th inning, which started with Hiroshi Freaking Shibahara hitting a pop fly to left that fell for a double between Sledge and Kaneko, and scoring on a subsequent single. I don't blame Nashida for walking Matsunaka when there were runners at 2nd and 3rd with two outs, but well, it WAS setting up for Hiroki Kokubo to hit a 2-RBI double to put the Hawks up 5-4. Hidenori Tanoue made it 6-4 in the 6th inning with a solo shot that bounced off the top of the wall in dead center.
The Fighters managed two runs in their half of the 7th though, after the Hawks staff suddenly stopped being able to find the strike zone. Even Morifuku couldn't throw a strike to save his life. So the Fighters fans got to sing the Kanto Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance music a whole lot (much to Pau's amusement), we got to see Kume-kun pitch for the Hawks (also to our amusement, since we saw Kume pitch back in college), and then Tomochika Tsuboi hit a 2-RBI single to tie up the game, much to EVERYONE'S amusement.
Oh, and speaking of everyone's amusement, in the 5th inning, the groundskeeper ended his routine with a headstand. Kind of.
(April 23rd crazy groundskeeper YMCA dance, again thanks to Yoshizawa-san.)
So yeah, the game was tied 6-6 during the 8th, and it was around that time that Pau mentioned he needed to go home around 9:30pm so he could make an international phone call, and Hiromi was also saying she wouldn't be able to stay if there was extra innings, and so on and so forth. So I was really, really hoping the Fighters could pull it out and win quickly.
As it is, Pau left at 9:30, in the top of the 9th.
At 9:42, Terrmel Sledge hit a home run that literally landed about 5 meters to my right! 7-6, Fighters win!
Naturally, he was the game hero.
And then a little bit later, the players came out to the stands to throw signed balls, and one of them ricocheted and pretty much landed on my foot, so I picked it up! And it was a Kensuke signed ball! WOW! I'd never even SEEN one of the balls that the players throw out after winning games, let alone gotten one! They're actually not hard baseballs, but soft slightly squishy ones, with the Fighters logo on one side and the signature on the other. Pretty neat.
Maybe Pau is just bad luck for the Fighters.
Most of my friends left fairly soon after the game ended, but I stuck around for the entire after-game cheering, because I really enjoy that. It's no fun winning if you don't get to celebrate afterwards, right?
So instead, I sang with the people to our left, since I'd seen them at almost every Tokyo Dome game this year. The teenage boy always brings signs and holds them up for every player, and we'd been cheering for Inaba and Sledge and Koyano and waving our signs together...
He's a nice kid, they're a nice group of people. Hopefully I'll run into them at some other Kanto games at some point.
I wandered out to the Gate 22 area for mascot mayhem again, hoping to run into some more of my friends, and I did see a few people I knew out there, but the craziest thing was this group of people...
See, apparently whoever wears the Cubby costume got in an accident and was in the hospital, which is why Cubby hadn't appeared at this game, nor was he out there with BB after the game. But a bunch of fans got together and made this huge "get well Cubby!!" board and were having as many people sign it as possible. It was really sweet of them.
Also, since I'm trying to track my Fighters pinbadges, I got 18 more over the three-day series...
Tuesday (6 more, 16 total): Asanuma #68, Takahiro Imanami #45, Ryan Wing #49, Kensuke Tanaka #3, Shinya Tsuruoka #64, Seiichi Ohira #54 (fan club present). Didn't trade at all, which meant I had doubles of Kensuke and Ohira. But...
Wednesday (6 more, 22 total): What came out: Kensuke (fanclub present), Yoh #24, Matsuyama #57, Takaguchi #58, Itoh #60, Fighters Girl rare pin. Yeah, that was my THIRD Kensuke pin. Traded Kensuke, Ohira, and Yoh to Hiromi for Sweeney #42, Ugumori #65, and Kaneko #8. Traded Kensuke to Chizaki for Ohno #28.
Thursday (6 more, 28 total): What came out: Naoto #5 (fanclub present), Takeda #21, Sledge #10, Kanamori #59, Inaba #41, Miyamoto #17. Traded my second Hisashi Takeda pin to Hiromi for Yanuki #33.
Now I just have Sledge doubles. I suppose it's appropriate given what he did that day.
Those who have read this blog for a while might remember that I was trying to complete an entire tour of seeing games in all the stadiums in Japan back in 2006 and failed to get to Sapporo and Fukuoka and Skymark that year. Last year I saw games in Sapporo and Fukuoka, but then only got to see Skymark when wandering around Kansai, didn't get to actually see a game there.
Well, I can now proudly say that I have completed the baseball tour of 2006. Unfortunately, Japan seems intent on thwarting my plan of actually seeing games at ALL the regular stadiums in Japan, since now I also have to go to the new one in Hiroshima in order to complete the baseball tour of 2009. Doh! (I'm planning to go there in June, by the way.)
Anyway, I took a night bus from Tokyo to Osaka, arriving in Osaka at 6am on Sunday. Let me tell you that there is absolutely nothing to do in Osaka at 6am on a Sunday, so I did the only thing I could think of: I wandered out to Koshien stadium to look at the renovations, at least from the outside, since I have no clue when I'll be back there.
It looks nice, and at least they've taken the coverings off a lot of the stadium, though it's missing the traditional ivy now and looks very different than it did a few years ago.
If you did miss the fake ivy, there's still plenty out past the outfield fences. This is where they say there will be a Koshien museum opening up in March 2010, by the way.
This is not a photo of trash cans so much as it is a photo of the Koshien logo, which I found interesting and hadn't seen before.
And even odder -- somehow I never knew there was a shrine right behind the back outfield wall! I guess it was always too crowded whenever I was there for a game, or maybe I am just oblivious.
So after a bit of wandering around Koshien, I stopped at the McDonald's there for breakfast (I generally don't go to McDonald's, but I knew they were likely to have a place I could charge my cellphone), and then figured, what the heck, I would just head out to Skymark Stadium.
I arrived at around 9am. The game was starting at 1pm. The gates were opening at 11:30 am. Hence, this is pretty much what I saw at the left field gates...
There were literally about 6 people standing around. Two were guys sitting by the actual gate itself, and then there were about 6 or 7 mats on the ground with about 3 or 4 people actually sitting on them. Nobody looked like Fighters fans that I recognized, though the two guys by the gate looked vaguely familiar, so I asked, "Are you guys Fighters ouendan?" and they said "Yeah." The younger one said "Oh! I saw you at the Seibu Dome, right?" and I'm like "Yeah, probably!" and explained, "I've never been here before, am I in the right place?" and they said "yeah, just go put your stuff in line with everyone else's over there", and I said okay and did that.
The guy sitting next to me had an Omiya Ardija chain on his bag, so I asked him if he also came down from Saitama, but no, he's just FROM Saitama, he's lived in Osaka for years. I talked to one or two other people, then mostly got bored waiting by myself and wandered off to look around. I went into the Sports Complex visitor center for a little bit, and walked around the goods tents, and also saw the Orix mascots, though I couldn't get them to take a photo with me (probably because first, I am foreign, and second, I was wearing my Fighters jersey).
Ripsea signs stuff for some kids.
It was, by the way, COLD out there, around 9-10 degrees Celsius, which is basically in the upper 40's, Fahrenheit-wise. I was wearing two layers of shirts, plus a winter jacket, plus my jersey over it, and gloves, and my Kamagaya towel as a scarf, and I was still really cold. There was also insanely strong wind blowing the entire time we were out there, so I could either sit still and be cold, or walk around and have my eyes tearing up from the wind blowing at them.
So from about 9am to around 10:30am I mostly just sat there by myself being cold and staring around at people. Then at least a few familiar faces showed up -- some folks from Tokyo, and even more surprising, some folks from Hokkaido! Seriously, a bunch of the people who I sat with at the Seibu Dome were also down in Kobe! I also ran into a Hichori fangirl who I met in Sendai last year and her friend who I know I met at another point (I forget when) who is a huge Itoi fangirl. So I ended up sitting with them and a few others.
We finally got into the stadium at 11:30! I immediately bugged one of the women in our group to take a photo of me so I'd have my 13th pro stadium out of the way:
And then we watched the Fighters take BP and stuff. I yelled down hello to Brian Sweeney, asked why he wasn't pitching, he said he'd be starting on Wednesday instead, and then we just talked about the weather and stuff. Apparently it was snowing in Hokkaido, so Kobe was't THAT bad... he was like "feels like East Coast weather, doesn't it?" Anyway, honestly, I know Brian's having a bit of a rough start, but the fans are behind him and want him to do well, and we believe in him. (And yeah, that's what other people said to me in Japanese.)
It was pretty cloudy and even started raining a little bit during BP, which was kind of terrifying. I took a few photos anyway:
Shota Ohno!
Darvish was walking around. A bunch of little boys tried to get his attention but to no avail.
And um, this is Brian Sweeney juggling some baseballs. I hope he doesn't get in trouble for this. :)
I went and wandered around Skymark for a while. Or well, I WANTED to go wander around Skymark for a while, except it turns out that you basically have a choice: are you in the outfield, or in the infield? There is no going between them, even if you have a ticket for the better section. I had an infield ticket, and was basically told that if I left the stadium, I would not be able to re-enter, and there was no way between the areas. I suppose you could buy two tickets in order to be in a different area, but that is really annoying. I suppose, actually, that it is pretty much exactly the same as Yokohama Stadium, though, plus that you can switch between right and left field.
So instead I just wandered the outfield, and will have to go back again someday to wander the infield, apparently.
View of the infield from behind dead centerfield.
There are basically three food stands on each side, and not a great variety of choices, though enough that you should be able to find SOMETHING that suits you.
View of the bullpen from the rightfield stands.
I think this is a picnic area over the third base exit.
Here is the Fighters ouendan as we cheer our starting lineup.
While the Buffaloes lineup is being announced, they show these cute cartoons of the players to go with the pictures. (This is Hiroyuki Oze. I may have mentioned once or twice last year that I think Oze is pretty cute, and he wears high socks, too.)
So it didn't bother me too much that this was my view for half the game in left field.
Yeah, so there was a game. And just as it was starting, the skies decided to open up and start sprinkling rain on us to go with the cold wind. Yay.
Mamoru Kishida started for Orix, and Ryo Sakakibara started for the Fighters. The first three innings passed mostly uneventfully, and then...
...Tuffy Rhodes cracked a home run in the 4th inning. It turned out to be his 450th career home run in Japan, and the game stopped for a few seconds so people could give him flowers and stuff.
By this point it was raining quite a bit more, and the Buffaloes added two more runs to Tuffy's run to bring them up 3-0. It was somewhat annoying because Takeshi Hidaka basically hit a ball out to right that normally should have rolled and bounced off the wall, but instead, this time it just stopped in the mud. Ugh. So I amused myself by taking movies of the Towel Dance, which is one of my favorite Orix cheer songs...
Fortunately it didn't work, and Hiroyuki Oze grounded out anyway.
Here you can see Hideki Sunaga warming up in the bullpen during the top of the 5th as the stands are full of people holding umbrellas...
Sunaga pitched the bottom of the 5th, and it wasn't pretty, even with the rain. Sakaguchi led off with a single, then Jose Fernandez walked, and then Tuffy Rhodes came up and hit his 451st career home run, a huge shot over the centerfield wall. 6-0. Takeshi Hidaka knocked in another run to make it 7-0 a bit later.
I took this photo in order to jinx Mamoru Kishida...
...because I found it very unlikely he would actually continue his perfect game.
Infact, my friend the Itoi fan even got out her Itoi signs and we suggested that he was going to get a hit and break the game... and he did! Ohno followed that up with a double, and then Makoto Kaneko finally batted in a Fighters run, singling to right to score Itoi. 7-1. Kensuke hit a pop fly out, and Hichori grounded to third, only the ball somehow got away at first, so Ohno scored on that play. 7-2. Shinji Takahashi hit the ball into the leftfield corner where Oze had a similar problem as the one Itoi had before with the ground, and Kaneko scored on the play. 7-3. Unfortunately, that's all the Fighters managed.
It was kind of funny though because a guy sitting across the aisle from me had these BB mascot paw gloves that squeaked when you clapped them together... or high-fived them. Shame the Fighters didn't score more runs so we could high-five more...
I went up to the top of the Buffaloes section to try to get a good shot of balloons, but I quickly learned that cold weather plus wind plus rain makes for lousy balloon-throwing:
The rain let up a bit in the 8th, but the Buffaloes didn't. Keisuke Tanimoto pitched the 8th, and with two outs he walked Ohmura, gave up a double to Sakaguchi, and then then Koji Yamasaki (who??) came up and ALSO singled, scoring Ohmura and Sakaguchi, 9-3. I guess he got the memo that people besides Rhodes and Hidaka were allowed to get some RBIs. Anyway, with Yamasaki on base, Tuffy Rhodes came up and hit career home run number 452, also a towering shot over centerfield that we didn't even bother yelling "ganbatte Hichori!" during. 11-3.
Whatever, the Fighters neded the game on a double play and the good part was that we could finally all stop sitting around in the cold.
Tuffy Rhodes was the game hero, and he even did the entire interview in Japanese and it didn't seem like he needed his translator much. Of course, most of what he said was "saikou desu!" and such, but it was still pretty good.
I rode the train back to Sannomiya with a bunch of other Fighters fans, then went to Shin-Kobe by myself, bought some omiyage for my coworkers, and got my train ticket moved up by an hour so I could get home a little earlier.
I should mention that I had a Gaijin Trap Bento, meaning a sukiyaki bento that had a heater inside it. Should you ever encounter one of these bento boxes that look way too big, and have a string, READ THE DIRECTIONS FIRST and just pull the string without opening the box. You will tear the heating part open and the chemicals will mix and form steam and cook your bento. Don't do what I did, which is to take apart everything and get really confused about this box with a string sticking out of it and THEN open it, because chances are good you will burn yourself.
Fortunately, the burns weren't that bad... I mostly kept my hand against a cold Coke for most of the trip, slept the entire way back, and the next day it's just a tiny bit red on two fingers. On the plus side the food was really good and I would totally buy one of them again next time I see one in a train station.
Not sure where my next road trip is. Maybe May 24th to Nagoya, or June 20th to Hiroshima. I really ought to make a "where is Deanna planning to go" post one of these days, but I haven't even had enough time to reflect on the fact that this blog passed its 4th birthday a few weeks ago...
All of the photos on this site are taken by me unless otherwise indicated. I would appreciate it if you at least email me before you steal them. Thanks.
