Tuesday Night at Jingu - Gomiuri vs. Yakult - GO HOME HISAYOSHI!

Thankfully, there was no rain. Went to the Giants-Swallows game with Mac and Kozo and Pellegrini and Australian Chris, and the Japanese friends of the Tsubamegun guys. It was my first game in the Yakult outfield this year, so everyone was like "long time no see!" and "oh, of course you came to cheer against the Giants!"

The good:
- Still haven't reached my quota of free tickets on my fan club membership.
- KFC right by the Gate 1 entrance, so I could quickly grab food and run out to section D.
- Hadn't met Kozo before, he seems like a cool guy, he knows most of the words to the Swallows ouenka
- I remember enough Swallows ouenka to be effective
- Spent a while talking to Crazy Carp Dude, who told me that he wants Shinya Tsuruoka to play for Yakult "because his face is interesting".
- Swallows scored a run, so I could sing "Kutabare Yomiuri"
- The crazy clarinet dude who yells heckling stuff into a megaphone spent a good 5 minutes yelling obscenities at Hisayoshi Freaking Chono in right field

The bad:
- Hisayoshi Freaking Chono hit a 2-run home run as well as an RBI single and was game hero
- The Giants won
- The Swallows ONLY scored 1 run, so I didn't get to sing nearly enough "Kutabare Yomiuri"
- The Swallows ouendan has changed some of their songs since last year so I got a little bit confused (more on that in a sec)
- Forgot my cheer sticks, Mac lent me his since he was too busy drinking beer
- Mikinori Katoh is back in ni-gun :(


GO HOME HISAYOSHI!


The "Gomiuri" t-shirt was designed by Crazy Carp Dude, I think -- it shows someone throwing a Giants G logo into a trash can.
I forget who pulled the Shinnosuke Abe card from the Calbee pack, but I believe one of the Japanese guys in the back taped the, uh, F-word on it before taping it on Zombie Pellegrini, who wasn't too happy about this game.


I don't have a lot to say about the game itself. You can read summaries here or here.

As for the ouenka, fortunately I checked the official Yakult ouendan site to remind myself of the words... only to find that a whole bunch of them had changed. Notably I remembered Shinya Miyamoto as being "Shinya is the best shortstop in Japan" which changed to 慎也よ導け日本一 or "Shinya's GUIDANCE is the best in Japan". Aoki's cheer also changed a little, it changed from "leadoff man" to "number one" as well as I think it was "shouri no tobira wo hirake", or "opening the door to victory" and is now "asu he no tobira wo hirake", or "opening the door to tomorrow". There are also obviously a few new players that I don't know the songs for yet, like Atsushi Fujimoto, and there is a new Lupin the 3rd chance theme that was pretty fun.

They haven't changed Yasushi Iihara's song though, which is all that matters :)

Game Report: Swallows vs. Fighters @ Jingu - My Umbrella Is Your Umbrella

I went to Jingu on Tuesday night yet again and all I got was another lousy rainstorm. Oh, and the Fighters won. They clobbered the Swallows 10-2.

But first, in vaguely related Fighters news, I wanted to congratulate Brian Sweeney for making it back to the big leagues! (Thanks to Edwin for the pointer.) Apparently the Seattle Mariners DFA'ed Ian Snell and put Brian on the roster in his place. Now I just have to hope he sticks in the bigs long enough for me to say hi when I'm back in Seattle for a bit next month!

I sent email to a couple of the Japanese friends I cheer for the Fighters with, saying "OMG SWEENEY-PITCHER IS BACK IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES WITH THE MARINERS!" basically, and unanimously got back emails of "That's awesome! I hope he does well! Yell a good 'Ganbare Sweeney!' on my behalf when you're back in Seattle!"

And on another other-game-related note, thanks to Tony Blanco hitting a gyakuten 3-run homer off Takeharu Katoh in tonight's Dragons-Fighters game, Dragons closer Hitoki Iwase got his 250th career save by shutting down the Fighters. Being as I moonlight as a Dragons fan, at least when they are here playing against Gomiuri, I feel a bit of a swell of pride with this news too.

Anyway, Jingu. The weather was actually pretty nice when I first got there; not hot, not cold, not raining, just kind of average:



But by the fourth inning, this is what it looked like in the stands:





Hirotoshi Masui started for the Fighters and came out after only pitching one inning. Apparently he had shoulder troubles before the game. Ryo Sakakibara replaced him and ended up getting the win.

Shohei Tateyama started for Yakult, which seemed completely and totally unpromising from the left-field stands; I was expecting to have another one of those "Why can't we steal THEIR Tateyama, please?" evenings, but instead, their Tateyama found himself being roughed up pretty fierce by the Fighters. By the time I had to stop keeping my scorecard in the 5th inning due to rain, the Fighters were already up 3-0 on the Swallows due to two Atsunori Inaba solo home runs in two consecutive at-bats, and then an RBI single by Dai-Kan Yoh after Yoshio Itoi hit his first double of the evening.

The rain started and never let up. I don't know if maybe the Fighters learned their lesson from the day before or what, but just as all the luck seemed to be on the Swallows' side on Monday, everything went right for the Fighters on Tuesday. They had a rain-filled rally in the 5th inning, scoring 5 more runs on a Yoshio Itoi RBI double, a Makoto Kaneko 3-run home run that landed literally 10 feet away from me, and an RBI single by Shinya Tsuruoka to make it 8-0. (And in the middle of it all, Tateyama balked, supposedly at least; I think the ball might have just slipped in the rain, but what can you do?)

Atsushi Fujimoto hit a homer off Masanori Hayashi (what else is new?) to make it 8-1.

Eulo De la Cruz made his Swallows ichi-gun debut and hit 158 on the gun at Jingu (that's the fastest one I saw at least). He didn't strike anyone out but he did pitch two scoreless innings.

I wasn't all that excited to see Takeharu Katoh pitching for the Fighters, but when I spotted Mikinori Katoh warming up in the bullpen for the Swallows, I nearly fell out of my seat (not too difficult given how flooded the bleachers were anyway). I was a fan of his when he was at Keio University, still am a big fan, and I think this might have actually been the first time I ever saw him pitch at ichi-gun, not counting preseason games!

And it turned out he hadn't given up any runs yet this year in 5 appearances so far, either...





So naturally Mikinori goes out there and gives up a home run to Takayuki Takaguchi to make it 9-1 :)

Yoshio Itoi hit a double off him -- his fourth of the game and fourth in four consecutive at-bats, making him 5-for-5 on the evening -- and Yoh singled Itoi in to make it 10-1.

Something really stupid though: the Fighters ouendan leader actually FORGOT that Takaguchi hit a home run. When the Fighters came out to the field in the bottom of the 9th, he led a Yoh call and an Ohno call, and no Takaguchi call. My friends and I called out "OI, OUENDAN, DID YOU FORGET TAKAGUCHI'S HOMERUN??" and ourselves were holding up Takaguchi signs and yelling "NICE HOMERUN TAKAGUCHI!!!!" but to no avail. One of the women in our group loves Takaguchi, and she had actually come up to Tokyo from Kobe on a business trip and came to the game with us, so she was particularly put out by the omission.

(I forget if I've mentioned it, but basically, when the Fighters take the field, we call out the names of each player who had RBI hits in the previous inning and yell their name and clap until they acknowledge us with a bow or a wave or something. Some guys just take off their hat, or wave, but Inaba is adorable, he pauses, faces the stands, and does a really deep bow for a full 2-3 seconds. Hichori always does crazy things like pumping his fist or turning a cartwheel or something.)

The Swallows took back a run in their half of the 9th off our Tateyama, so I put my towel over my face so I couldn't see anything -- I wasn't keeping score anyway -- and it worked and he struck out the last guy to end the game at 10-2.



Sakakibara was the game hero for some reason. I fail to understand this; sure he was the winning pitcher, but he only threw 2 innings. Why not Inaba who hit 2 home runs, or Itoi who hit 4 doubles?



The ouendan apologized in the postgame cheering for forgetting about Takaguchi's home run, at least.

Also amusing is that the rain pretty much stopped exactly when the game stopped, so our postgame cheering was pretty free, but I never was able to resume my scorecard during the game itself.

There were three white dudes sitting in the top of the stands in the ouendan leader area for the first half of the game, not wearing any Fighters stuff at all and not doing any of the cheers. Several people asked me if I knew them, but I had no clue. It was odd because I would never dare sit where they were sitting; I know my place in the cheering ranks. (I almost worried that someone on the ouendan was going to come ask me to explain things.) But then the rain started. Everyone else got out their rain gear, since we prepare for the event of having to sit out and cheer in the rain for several hours. The white guys were not prepared, and disappeared shortly thereafter and were not seen again.

It made me both thankful for the connection I've built up with the Fighters fans, and yet at the same time I couldn't help but think how there are a lot of things I can't do specifically *because* I stick out and everyone knows me.

Anyway, on the way walking to Shinanomachi with my friends, I spent a while chatting with one of the guys in our gang who also moonlights as a Baystars fan, mostly talking about Toshihisa Nishi, who retired last week after spending some time in the Atlantic League. I was trying to explain how the Atlantic League relates to the MLB system, which is kind of difficult -- the variations in independent leagues and industrial leagues and so on in Japan isn't quite the same, especially since the Atlantic League tends to have ex-MLB guys trying to make it back, and the indie leagues here tend to have guys hoping to make it to the NPB, and not so much on the ex-NPB types.

So on a different note, I think I'm going to go up to Niigata on the 26th to see the new stadium there and catch some indie ball. Woohoo!

(And for the record, yes, the title of this post is supposed to be a pun between Spanish, English, and Japanese...)

Calbee Series 2

Is in stores now. I was just at the grocery to pick up ordinary things like bread and orange juice and ended up coming home with 4 bags of potato chips. Damn you, Calbee!

I have a lot more cards than I really care to admit, given how many potato chips you need to eat to get them. And of course now I'm like "Argh! Must find remaining bags of Series 1 chips so I can try to get some more of those cards!"

Anyway, I figured I'd post the bags and a few of the cards just for fun.


Series 1 and Series 2 bags side by side.


The cards are actually attached to the back of the bags in separate little packs -- someone once asked me if the cards were inside the bags or not. See, this is Japan, so they don't seem to have problems with people stealing the card packs off the bags, at least not as far as I know. Crazy, huh?


Some cards I got from Series 1 and Series 2. My best 3 Series 1 cards are probably my parallel signed Top Player cards of Shohei Tateyama and Chihiro Kaneko, and then the fact that I have two Yusei Kikuchi cards. I guess my best 2 cards so far in Series 2 is that I got a Darvish, and also a Star card for Tomotaka Sakaguchi.

Game Report: Swallows vs. Fighters @ Jingu - Singin' in the Rain

Well, so despite the rain never actually stopping at all today in Tokyo, the Fighters and Swallows played a game at Meiji Jingu Stadium tonight, and I went, and didn't even remotely bother trying to keep a scorecard like I usually do.

Infact, I consider it a testament to how long I've been in Japan that this morning I looked at the weather forecast and packed my messenger bag with necessities for this exact sort of game:

- Fighters jersey (my Hokkaido one since I don't want to get my signed one wet)
- Fighters neck towel (the one that's falling apart, so no big deal to use it to wipe off seats or anything else)
- Fighters cap (which I rarely ever wear)
- plastic poncho raincoat
- umbrella
- extra jacket
- big plastic garbage bag to put my messenger bag in
- smaller plastic bags to put my scorecard book and meikan and all in so they stay dry even if my outside bag does get wet
- snacks to share with people (individually wrapped in plastic of course)

The only thing I forgot was cheer sticks, which isn't such a big deal, although my hands got awfully cold and tired by the end of the evening from clapping so much.

Only thing is, since I didn't keep a scorecard, I don't really remember a lot of the exact things that happened in the game. I even got bored during the Yakult innings a few times and did something I rarely do, which is to just go for a walk around the outfield and watch the game from several different vantage points.

See, in the first inning the Swallows got up like 4-0 right from the get-go as Jamie D'Antona hit a 3-run homer and then a whole bunch more guys walked and/or singled, so after the top of the 2nd I went to get food and watched the next half inning from the bowels of Jingu, which are so much nicer now than they used to be:



And then I spent a bit of time up at the top of the centerfield bleachers admiring the mist patterns in the big lights:



And I came in for an inning and cheered from above the raincoat-clad masses:



And then I sat in my seat for a while with my normal group of friends, although since we were all either wearing raincoats or huddled under umbrellas, it was a really weird mood during the Yakult inning halves. Half the time if you wanted to talk to someone you had to make sure you really had their attention, because people either had raincoat hoods up over their ears or were kind of zoned out under the umbrella and not really listening to others, or whatever.



Jamie D'Antona hit another freaking home run in the 4th inning to make it 6-0.

The lone Fighters run of the game came in after Atsushi Ugumori (Uguuuuu!!!) pinch-hit a triple to right -- that really looked like it shoulda been a home run, but maybe I don't understand what the rules are for where over the wall a ball has to hit in order to be a home run at Jingu. Kensuke singled him in after that to make it 6-1.

It pissed me off greatly that the Fighters had bases loaded with nobody out in the 7th and the ouendan didn't bother to play a freaking chance theme at all. Seriously, everyone was wondering what the hell was going on. I know nobody wants to do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the rain because it might be dangerous, but we have like 5 chance themes, why haven't we done ANY of them recently? Sheesh. That is one thing that has kind of bugged me about the Fighters ouendan this year, that with the exception of one or two leaders, we don't tend to do all that much that is INTERESTING anymore while cheering. I mean, certainly we all still enjoy the camaraderie of being at the game with our friends and supporting the team and all, but it would be nice to have some variety and some new songs; we shouldn't have games where half the lineup uses the "We don't have a song for this guy" song. While I've often said I'm a little intimidated by some groups like the Seibu ouendan who literally have songs for everyone including the minor-leaguers, and several chance themes, and a lot of stuff involving hand motions or walking or dancing, so it's a bit of a ramp-up to learn the entire repertoire, at least there's a lot more variety in what they do.

(And "We suck this year" is not an excuse either. I thought it was awesome when the Yokohama ouendan made up the "Behind" chance theme in 2008, which was basically sung "in the 8th inning if we're behind, which we usually are", and consisted of lyrics like "Let's go Bay, even though we suck")

On that note, though, we did get to do the new cheer song for Yuji Iiyama once, although I still think it's retarded. Takahiro Imanami had an at-bat and singled before we could do his song (which is apparently recycled from Shigeyuki Furuki; I wouldn't have even noticed if Firearm hadn't pointed out the Earthbound tune).

One of my friends and I started singing Naoto Inada's song for Dai-Kan Yoh as a joke, just because it's also so simple: "La la la la la la, Yoh Dai-Kan home run..."

Don't get me wrong, I love my time in the cheering section and wouldn't give it up for anything. (Yet.) It's just that I feel like a few years ago the cheers were so much more interesting for the Fighters, when we had the Yukio Jump and the Seguignol Wave and such.

Uh, anyway, eventually the Swallows won 8-3. Takehiko Oshimoto pitched the top of the 9th and made us all very sad, despite that the 3-by-3 trade that gave Yakult Kawashima and Oshimoto and Hashimoto and left us with basically nothing at this point was now over 2 years ago, so Oshi hasn't been a Fighters pitcher since the 2007 season, but whatever, we still miss him.





You know what's weird? Kyohei Muranaka started for the Swallows and Masaru Takeda started for the Fighters, and I could have sworn Muranaka struck out way more Fighters than Masaru struck out Swallows, but looking at the box score now it seems Masaru struck out 6 in 4 innings and Muranaka struck out 5 in 6 innings. I guess Muranaka just seemed more effective since Masaru was giving up lots of hits and home runs and whatnot; also of course I'd notice Fighters striking out more than Swallows.

(Plus one guy and I kept yelling at each other, mimicking the loudspeaker, "STRIKEOUT!" "JUST PLAY TO WIN!" every time a Fighters batter struck out.)

Another crazy thing is that Inaba was starting at first base tonight (I guess we're playing around with the lineup since Shinji's out for a bit). He made an error, although that could be partially attributed to the weather and partially to him taking a silly route to first base. Still, I'm not even sure half of us even noticed he was AT first until that error. I barely got to my seat in time for the first pitch, and wasn't keeping score, so I certainly didn't look THAT closely at the lineup.

What else is weird is that this was my 16th game at Jingu this year, but only my first actual pro game, not counting the preseason. I've begun to joke that I pretty much live at Jingu, given how much college ball I watch there.

Yahoo reports the attendance for this game at being 6202, which seems about right -- I actually thought there were less people than that there.

Anyway, I suppose now we know which last-place team is truly last-place, as the Swallows have now taken 3 out of 4 games from the Fighters. I'll be back at Jingu tomorrow night, which means we'll probably lose again. Hooray!

Liveblogging: Toyo vs. Tokai, All-Japan College Finals

I didn't think I could deal with another afternoon in the sun -- not feeling so great after watching the semi-finals yesterday -- so instead I'm watching the final game on TV and liveblogging it.

Toyodai                    Tokaidai
-------                    --------
Sakai rf                   Ishimine cf
Uehara 2b                  Tanaka ss
Kimura lf                  S. Suzuki dh
D. Suzuki 3b               Fushimi c
Satoh c                    Yoshikawa 2b
Horikoshi dh               Matsukuma lf
Hayashizaki ss             Takeuchi rf
Ogata cf                   Sakaguchi 3b
Samejima 1b                Ohno 1b
   
Fujioka (6-1, 1.07)        Sugano (5-0, 0.44)

And so it starts. Except that BS1 isn't showing it yet and I am on pins and needles waiting!

Top of the first (Toyo 0, Tokai 0)
Sakai grounds out to second on the third pitch.
Uehara hits a fly that lands in right for a single. One on, 1st.
Kimura hits a low pop fly out to left. Two out, 1st.
Suzuki grounds out to second. Three out.

No strikeouts for Sugano -- kinda odd. Wonder if he's tired after throwing 142 pitches yesterday.

Bottom of the first (Toyo 0, Tokai 0)
Ishimine walks (Fujioka's control seems a bit off, maybe he's nervous).
Tanaka comes up bunting and does infact bunt, pitcher to first. One out, 2nd.
Suzuki hits a pop fly out to right, Ishimine can't move up on it. Two out, 2nd.
Fushimi strikes out swinging, three down! First strikeout of the game.

BTW, Shota Ishimine is Tokai's captain this year, and has also been on the national collegiate team for a while. Also, Ishimine and Sho Suzuki were the two guys who hit home runs in yesterday's game against Keio.

Also, Jingu looks relatively empty! I thought it'd be full today, though maybe it'd help if the FINAL had been Keio-Tokai...

Top of the second (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Satoh singles to center on the first pitch.
Horikoshi bunts to the pitcher, advancing Satoh. One out, 2nd.
Hayashizaki grounds out to third; Two out, 2nd.
Ogata hits a long fly ball into the right-field corner that goes for a double! That scores Satoh -- 1-0 Toyo.
Samejima fouls off a bunch for a pretty long at-bat, eventually grounding to first where Ohno dives for the ball and throws to Sugano covering first in time -- three out.

Satoh and Hayashizaki are also on the national collegiate team. Sugano seems to be warming up a bit, he hit 150 km/h on the gun a few times and is throwing that obnoxious slider of his, so we'll see. Doesn't look as sharp as he did yesterday, though he could just be pacing himself. Still, he gave up one run in 24 innings of this tournament so far before today. Toyo has the slight advantage here in having a bunch of decent pitchers even if none of them are as good as Sugano at his best.

Bottom of the second (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Yoshikawa of the funky kick swing grounds out to the mound.
Matsukuma strikes out swinging -- that's two for Fujioka.
Takeuchi grounds out to third, three down.

Tokai's ouendan is still doing the funky sequence they did yesterday -- Pirates of the Caribbean, Popeye, Space Battleship Yamato, and then a variety of other typical Koshien type songs (like that Bakufu Slump one I can't remember the name of)

Top of the third (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Sakai hits a pop fly out to center.
Uehara singles to center. One out, 1st.
Kimura singles to left, that'll move Uehara to 2nd. One out, 1st and 2nd.
Suzuki hits a pop fly out to center. Two out, 1st and 2nd.
Satoh lines back to the mound and Sugano catches the ball for the third out.

Takayama is warming up in the bullpen for Tokai. Sugano hasn't struck anyone out yet, but he seems pretty unfazed by this all.

Bottom of the third (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Sakaguchi strikes out swinging.
Ohno hits a pop fly foul, caught by the second baseman.
Ishimine hits a single to center (of course it'd be Ishimine, he's probably the best player on the team.)
Ishimine steals second and also reaches third on the errant throw during Tanaka's at-bat. Two out, 3rd.
Tanaka grounds out to second -- three out.

Top of the fourth (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Horikoshi grounds back to the mound.
Hayashizaki strikes out swinging and that is Sugano's first one of the day.
Ogata grounds back to the mound, that's three.

Bottom of the fourth (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Suzuki hits a pop fly out to right.
Fushimi hits a pop fly out to center.
Yoshikawa grounds out to short -- the throw to first is high but Samejima makes the tag as he comes down jumping. Cute.

Top of the fifth (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Sugano is still out there on the mound, for the record. He's up to 70 pitches through 4.

Samejima grounds out to first, unassisted.
Sakai grounds out to second, Sugano covering first as the 1st and 2nd baseman went for the grounder. Two out.
Uehara grounds out to short.

This game has suddenly started going REALLY fast, it's only 2:09pm right now.

Bottom of the fifth (Toyo 1, Tokai 0)
Matsukuma strikes out swinging.
Takeuchi grounded out to first.
Sakaguchi singles to left. Two out, 1st.
Ohno strikes out looking -- wow.

Top of the sixth (Toyo 3, Tokai 0)
Kimura grounds to third but Sakaguchi fumbles the ball and Kimura reaches first on the error.
Suzuki... oh wow. Suzuki doubles to right -- a ball back to the wall in center-right -- and Kimura runs all the way around to home, slides in the same time the ball gets there, and it looks like Kimura missed the plate on his way in and is tagged out. Lucky for Tokai. One out, 2nd.
Satoh grounds out and Suzuki moves to third -- Two out, 3rd.
Horikoshi doubles to left and Suzuki scores. 2-0. Two out, 2nd.

Looks like this may be nearing the end for Sugano, two guys are warming up for Tokai... but not yet apparently.

Hayashizaki also singles to left -- and Horikoshi dives easily around the throw at home to score, 3-0. And THAT is it for Sugano. Poor kid.

Lefty Ryota Takayama comes in to pitch for Tokai.

Hashimoto pinch-hits for Ogata and grounds to the mound, three down.

That's pretty huge though -- not sure if Tokai will be able to turn this game around the way they're going.

Bottom of the sixth (Toyo 3, Tokai 0)
Toyo fielding changes: Takimoto enters the game playing CF, batting 8th.

Ishimine grounds out to second.
Tanaka singles to center.
Suzuki strikes out swinging and Tanaka steals second -- so that's two out, 2nd.
Fushimi strikes out swinging too -- that's seven for Fujioka.

Also I love Tokai's ouendan -- it's nothing like Big 6, just a bunch of guys, maybe 5 of them, wearing baseball outfits instead of gakuran, dancing on the platform and sometimes holding up "T O K A I" signs and whatnot.

If Toyodai is 120 years old, I have to wonder why it didn't end up in Tokyo Big 6 instead of Tohto?

Top of the seventh (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Samejima strikes out looking.
Sakai walks (but two of those balls in a row were slow curves, funny stuff)
Uehara bunts and is barely out, moving Sakai to second. Two out, 2nd.
Kimura SLAMS ONE OUT OF THE PARK IN LEFT! Man, you could tell that was gone the second it left his bat -- so that's a 2-run homer for the Tohto League batting champ. 5-0.
Suzuki pops one foul and Ohno makes the catch at first. Three down.

Bottom of the seventh (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Yoshikawa hit a pop fly out to center while BS1 was showing the news.
Matsukuma grounds out to third.
Takeuchi singles to right.
Sakaguchi hits a pop fly to shallow right and the second baseman makes the catch.

Top of the eighth (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Tokai changes pitchers from Takayama to Akama. I think they also just said Matsukuma was switched out for Iwamoto in left field.

Satoh grounds out to third.
Horikoshi grounds out to short.
Hayashizaki singles to left.
Takimoto ... doesn't get an at-bat as Hayashizaki gets caught stealing second on the first pitch. Three out.

Bottom of the eighth (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Ohno singles to left.
Ishimine hits a pop fly out to right.
Tanaka hits a pop fly foul between third and home.
Suzuki strikes out swinging -- that's eight for Fujioka.

Top of the ninth (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Takimoto grounds up the middle and is barely out, nice play there by Tanaka.
Samejima hits a liner to second.
Sakai grounds out to second.

Well, this is it -- last three outs of the game to see what Tokai can do. Fujioka is still on the mound for Toyo, he's up to 105 pitches through eight.

Bottom of the ninth (Toyo 5, Tokai 0)
Fushimi hits the first pitch he sees out to centerfield... and it's caught.
Yoshikawa walks.
(Mound conference ensues. But Fujioka stays.)
Yamane pinch-hits for Iwamoto and strikes out swinging on a slider. Down to the last out...
Takeuchi grounds out to second and that's the game!

(I should note that the final two at-bats took forever, these guys fouled off a ton, and there was a pitchout or two. But...)

Toyo is the champion!

Cheers of "Akio! Akio!" go up for a doage for the Toyo manager, 63-year-old Akio Takahashi... and they end up dropping him, heh. (He blames it in his interview on them spending all their energy winning the tournament.)

Next is an interview with team captain Keisuke Kanuma, who was yesterday's game hero as well.

Next, an interview with Takahiro Fujioka, today's game-winning shutout-pitching guy, who is just like "Dude, my pitches all worked today. I'm really happy."

I took a few photos of my TV at the end:

All-Japan College Tourney Semi-Finals Placeholder: Tomoyuki Sugano is AWESOME

I went to Jingu today to cheer for Keio and to see Tokai's Tomoyuki Sugano up close for once (as opposed to from far away in the Tokyo Dome during things like the NPB-U26 game or the USA-Japan college games). He didn't disappoint, as he struck out 17 Keio batters, hit 155 on the Jingu radar guns, and threw some pretty amazing stuff. I'm going to be in love with this kid until the Giants draft him next year because he's Tatsunori Hara's nephew.

Tokai beat Keio 5-0 and Toyo beat Hachinohe 5-1, so the finals are going to be Tokai vs. Toyo. I will write up a little more about the games in the morning, maybe -- I took 1100 photos today though, so no idea when I will have more of them cropped. Also, since I feel kinda sick after sitting out in the sun for 7 hours today, I think I'm going to watch the final game in the tourney from my air-conditioned room, as BS1 is broadcasting it and none of my friends are going since Keio lost today. Look out here for a liveblog post.

So here is some Sugano in the meantime. Oh, is he awesome.








(This is not the final score, btw -- the point of this photo is that I caught the 155 km/h on the Jingu scoreboard. That's 96-97mph for those playing the home game.)

Game Report: Keio vs. Toin Yokohama - All-Japan College Tournament, Day 2

On Wednesday morning, I had two ideas for what I was going to do after work:

If the Keio vs. Toin Yokohama game in the All-Japan College Tournament was going to start at 5:30pm or later, I would go to Jingu and watch it.

If it wasn't, I would go up to Saitama and watch a movie since Wednesdays are cheap movie days.

Given that I'm writing this post, you can guess which one happened.

The Keio game was scheduled to start at 4:30pm originally, but that depended on the first 3 games of the day actually starting and ending on time. College ball takes less time than pro ball on average, but scheduling 2 hours per game is always a little optimistic.

Well, the 3rd game of the day was Chuo Gakuin vs. Kanazawa Gakuin. It was supposed to start at 2pm, but thanks to the first two games running long, it didn't start until 2:40pm or so. And then it went into extra innings! It was tied 3-3 in the 8th inning when I left work, and was tied 4-4 in the 10th inning when I arrived at Jingu, so I even saw the end of that game. I sat with some other college baseball fans I know from attending the Big 6 games. We thought it was funny that in our group of 5 people, cheering for Keio, we had one Keio HS fan, one Keio University fan, one Meiji fan, one Waseda alum, and one Hosei fan.

Actually, when I first walked into the stadium, half of the Keio team was gathered by one of the TV screens in the concourse, watching the 3rd game to see when it would end. A couple of them looked up at me like "OMG a gaijin," and I looked back like "OMG the Keio team" and even said out loud, "おー、竹内だ," because Daisuke Freaking Takeuchi was standing right there with them. I didn't recognize most of the other guys by face; with Keio I know a few of their faces quite well and most of them not at all.

I also got totally gaijinned while hunting down a tournament program book, but that's neither here nor there.

I caught the last inning of the Chuo-Kanazawa game. I only brought my little camera, since I wasn't even sure I'd be going until the last minute.


Chuo Gakuin pitcher Akiyoshi, who got the win.


Final score. Chuo won on a sayonara squeeze bunt, IIRC.

So, after a bit of warmup time, the Keio-Toin game got underway around 6:30pm. Taiki Tomei started for Toin Yokohama -- he also threw a complete-game 110-pitch 1-0 win against Aichi Gakuin on Tuesday. I noticed that Tomei also threw like 69 innings this year and was personally 7-0 with one save as his team was 10-3, and thought that was pretty nuts until I looked at the stats for the Kanagawa League and saw that Kanagawa University's team captain Keigo Kimura threw 86 innings and was personally 4-5 with 1 save for a team that went 6-7-1. That's seriously like 8 or 9 complete games there -- including starting 3 days in a row including 2 complete games during the weekend of April 24-26 against Toin. WTF.

Don't get me wrong, though, I really liked Tomei as a pitcher. I think the highest I saw him throw was 146, but he threw some good stuff, it looked like he was hitting the corners really well, and he managed to strike out 11 Keio batters over the course of the game.

But I was there to cheer for Keio. Keio's starter was Koji Fukutani, who I have become inordinately fond of this year. He is really tall and throws very fast and has a funny head twitch in his delivery (kinda like this), although his hat doesn't come off. He tops out at 151-152 and was sort of overpowering the Toin batters more than anything. A lot of Keio batters were fouling off Tomei's pitches and striking out looking and/or checking, but with Fukutani he got a lot of swinging strikeouts. Fukutani, like Tomei, ALSO struck out 11 batters over the course of the evening.

It was like a normal evening game at Jingu, that meaning, since it was past 6pm, drums weren't allowed in the cheering section. So the Keio marching band sounded a LITTLE weird without the drums, but it worked out okay. The reported attendance was only 3000, but they made plenty of noise.

Anyway, it was a classic pitcher's duel for the first 6 innings or so -- it was 0-0 then, and Tomei even had a no-hitter up to that point with two walks.

Toin scored a run in the top of the 7th as Ryo Sasaki walked with two outs, advanced to second on a single by Junichi Shiozaki, and then during Yuki Saitoh's at-bat (no, really not making that up, this kid is named 斎藤優樹, unfortunate), Sasaki stole third. THEN a few pitches later, Shiozaki took off for second. Keio catcher Nagasaki threw to second, and as he did, throwing high, Sasaki took off for home and completed a double steal, stealing home to make it 1-0.

But Keio scored an equally improbable run in their half of the 7th: Naoki Yamaguchi singled with one out, moved up on a single by Hayata Itoh, and then Takao walked to load the bases. Ren Yamasaki struck out, and then Tomei hit Kazuma Takeuchi in the leg with a pitch. With the bases loaded. So Keio scored a run to make it 1-1.

Toin got a runner all the way to third in their half of the 9th but couldn't bring him in, the inning ending as Sasaki hit a foul pop fly back to the screen and Masahiro Nagasaki made the catch.

Having already thrown over 130 pitches, and 240 in two days, Tomei came out to pitch the 9th, and his velocity was pretty down, and Hayata Itoh led off with a single to second, a hard-driven ball that the second baseman dropped. Takao bunted him up. Yamasaki grounded out to short such that Itoh couldn't advance, and then Kazuma Takeuchi came up again, and hit a definitive double to left. Itoh was off on the crack of the bat and was pretty much home before someone could even recover the ball, and Keio won 2-1.

As always, if someone is going to make something happen in the 9th, it's going to be Hayata Itoh. He's so clutch that he's always in 5th gear. Or something like that.

However, Jingu sucks and so I don't have a shot of the final score. They literally made it go away less than 2 minutes after the game ended. This is all I have:



Koji Fukutani was the game hero:



And uh, a bonus picture. I actually am not positive who this is, but I think it is Ryo Sasaki:



My friends wanted to wait for the Keio players to come out after the game, so we did. I was too nervous to ask any of them for a photo, although I did say "Daisuke! Ashita ganbatte yo!" to Daisuke Takeuchi when he came by. I saw Yumoto, and Fuchigami, and Itoh, and a bunch of other players I didn't entirely recognize. And then my friends wanted to go talk to Masahiro Nagasaki, so I went along for that and chatted for a bit. He seems like a nice guy.

Well, we ended up following Nagasaki and another guy in a gakuran back to Gaienmae by random chance (they were still outside the gates when we left a few minutes later), and Hayata Itoh was also walking with a group of cheerleader girls until he veered off to walk with Nagasaki and the other guy.

One of the two women I was walking with had been asking me about who my favorite players were on various teams as we walked. "I like Ohishi on Waseda... I like Ikenaga on Meiji..." "Ikenaga?! Shibui! Who's your favorite player on Keio?" and I pointed at Itoh's back a few feet ahead of us and said, "it used to be Urushibata but actually now, it's him..." So she's like "OMG why don't you say something to him?!?" and I'm like "I CAN'T say anything to him!" My other friend breaks in, "She's so shy around these guys that she might as well be Japanese. It took her forever to get up the guts to say hello to Kagami."

We ended up standing next to the three guys on the subway though, so the other two women were still talking to Nagasaki. I listened, nodded, laughed, and asked one or two things like which team were they playing tomorrow, etc. Though even until the end, I never managed to say anything directly to Itoh. Alas. He seemed uninterested in talking to us anyway, he spent the subway ride fiddling with his phone. I said goodbye and good luck to the players when we split from them at Shibuya station.

Nagasaki is really sweet though, he bowed and thanked me when I said otsukaresama and all.

Anyway, as I finish writing this, Thursday's games are about over and the Best 8 have been decided: Tokai, Doshisha, Chuo, Keio, Hachinohe, Hokkaido, Toyo, and Soka. AND two of the Best 4 have been decided as well -- Saturday morning's game will be Tokai vs. Keio. You can bet I am going to be there. I just hope I actually get to see Tomoyuki Sugano pitch in person again, although of course I will be cheering for Keio.

Game Report: Fighters vs. Baystars @ Sagamihara -- Finally!

Only took me like, 2 or 3 months, but I finally experienced a Fighters ichi-gun win for the first time in 2010. They never lost a preseason game I went to, nor did they lose a single minor-league game I went to, but they lost EVERY BLOODY NORMAL GAME I WENT TO this year so far, all 10 of them.

After spending Sunday helping to make sure 200 teenagers survived our school's Sports Day event, I had Monday off and decided to trek down to Sagamihara for the Fighters-Baystars game. Sagamihara itself as a township is kind of in the middle of nowhere to begin with, and the stadium is about a 30-minute walk or 20-minute bus ride from Fuchinobe station on the JR Yokohama line. I was there last year for a minor-league game; it's kind of lacking in amenities for hosting a major-league game, really. For the minor-league game the outfield stands were closed, but for this game they were open... and just like Omiya Stadium, the entire outfield is grass seating:





If you are in the outfield, as far as I could tell, you had exactly one choice for acquiring food, which was a stand behind the centerfield scoreboard selling KFC nuggets and drumsticks and stuff, and bottles of soda, and cans of beer. There was a huge line for it, of course:



Not that you really WANT to eat food if you are sitting in the outfield -- it is COVERED with bugs. COVERED. We put down plastic sheets and blankets and whatnot, and they were shortly covered with bugs as well. Although, bizarrely, the bugs all disappeared about half an hour after sundown.

A bit after I arrived, I saw Terrmel Sledge doing fielding practice with Shingo Nonaka. I went down to the field fence, ran into two friends of mine there, and since there were a ton of little boys yelling "SUREJJI! SIGN KUDASAI!!!" I yelled, "TERRMEL SLEDGE! COME BACK TO THE FIGHTERS KUDASAI!!"

On the third time I yelled it, he turned and saw me and waved hello.

"No, really!" I yelled. "Come back, we miss you!"

"I miss you guys too! The Fighters fans were great!" he yelled back.

"We're still cheering for you to do well!" I said. "But not today!"

He laughed and went back to fielding practice.

Around 5:40pm, a few more of our friends showed up to the stadium to find out that the OUTFIELD TICKETS HAD ACTUALLY SOLD OUT. How crazy is THAT? I mean, a Monday night, Baystars vs. Fighters game, in the middle of nowhere, in an outfield covered in bugs, and it SELLS OUT? Worse, there was absolutely no re-entry, no handstamping or ticket stubs, so we couldn't even try to sneak people in. And since the infield and outfield are actually separate structures, you can't go from one to the other at all. So our friends bought infield unreserved tickets and sat as close to the outfield as they could.

Bobby Keppel started for the Fighters and Naoyuki Shimizu started for the Marines Baystars. And in the first inning, the Baystars took a quick 1-0 lead on some smallballing and I was already starting to think that maybe coming out there was a bad idea, that I shouldn't have jinxed the team.

But then the Fighters launched an onslaught in the top of the 2nd. Koyano hit, and Itoi hit, and Kaneko hit, and Tsuruoka hit, and Kensuke hit, and when the dust cleared (literally -- Kensuke's hit was a liner to left field that Sledge dived for and missed by inches) the Fighters were up 4-1.

Tatsuya Shimozono hit a 2-run homer for the Baystars in their half of the second to make it 4-3, but that was the last thing they would accomplish at all for the evening. Period.

Whereas the Fighters were just getting started...

Kaneko hit again in the 4th, and Tsuruoka hit again, and even Bobby Keppel got a single which scored Kaneko to make it 5-3 before Kensuke grounded into a double play.

Former Fighter Shintaro Ejiri took the mound for Yokohama in the top of the 6th... and the first thing that happened was Jose Castillo dropped a grounder, allowing Tomohiro Nioka to reach base safely. Kaneko bunted him up, and then Tsuruoka got ANOTHER HIT to score Nioka, 6-3. Keppel bunted, and Tsuruoka slid in at second ahead of the tag, so both runners were safe. Kensuke followed that up with another hit to load the bases, so ammidst the strains of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Hichori came to the plate, and... grounded to short. Kensuke was out at second but Hichori beat the throw for the DP, and Tsuruoka scored, 7-3. Inaba doubled to center, and made it to third on a bad throw as Keppel and Hichori scored, 9-3.

My friends were like "Seems you'll finally see your first win, huh?" but I said "It's only the 6th inning, I'm not going to celebrate until the very last out."

We were also joined by some Kamagaya friends who have a 2-year-old kid named Shintaro who wears an Ejiri jersey, and by "wears" I mean "swims in". The general consensus was "I'm glad we scored runs off him but I'm also glad there was an error so it doesn't affect his ERA."

The next Yokohama pitcher was Atori Ohta, who I've been a fan of since Koshien 2006, including the craziest Koshien game EVER, where Chiben Wakayama beat Teikyo 13-12, with 13 runs being scored in the 9th inning between both teams. Man, 5 kids from that game are now in the pros and another I've seen playing regularly for the last few years too (Kameda) at Hosei. Pretty nuts. And I saw Atori play last time I was in Sagamihara too. Either way, this was Atori's first ichi-gun appearance this year, which was also exciting!

Atori is, at the ripe old age of 20, still a little inconsistent -- when he's on, he's ON, and when he's off... case in point, he struck out Nioka and Kaneko, and had a quick 7th inning.

But then, umm... you know how I said seeing Shinya Tsuruoka hit a home run is a once-per-year experience? Apparently I was wrong, because Tsuruoka hit ANOTHER home run to lead off the 8th inning. Given, the homerun barely cleared the right-field wall, and infact we didn't know for sure it was a home run until we saw the umpire signalling. But that made it 10-3, and just started another avalanche. Atsushi Ugumori had just been called up today and got to pinch-hit after that, and he singled to center. Kensuke hit into a fielder's choice, Hichori walked, and Inaba Yoh lined out...

...and then Eiichi Koyano ALSO hit a home run, this one to center. Ugu, Hichori, and Koyano all scored. 13-3. Atori then struck out Itoi to end that inning.

All's well that ends well, and my worries that the Baystars would suddenly score 10 runs in the bottom of the 9th were unfounded:



And so the cops made us all round up by the ouendan for post-game cheering, which we did for about 15 minutes before being evicted from the stadium.



In addition to doing normal cheers, I also learned the new ones for Yuji Iiyama and Takahiro Imanami.

I scribbled "first win, sagamihara, june 7th" on a paper in Japanese and had a friend take the photo that's at the top of this post, right before we had to leave the stadium. Woohoo!

Then on the way to the bus stop, we walked by the players' parking lot and saw Inaba get into a super-nice car and drive off.

Exciting.

Here are a few videos from the game:


Terrmel Sledge's dual ouenka. The Baystars were playing both his new song and his old song (from the Fighters ouendan). I've never heard that before so I had to assume it was just for Fighters games.


Cheering for Kaneko. This was amusing because the ouendan lady was like "Okay everyone... PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND UP! NOW PUT YOUR LEFT HAND UP! NOW WAVE THEM AND YELL 'HOME RUN HOME RUN KANEKO!'"


Yuji Iiyama's new cheer song for 2010. I think this is basically the new Naoto song since Naoto is on the Baystars (we saw him in the pregame too). That is, it's a fairly simple song for a player that has been around a while and barely ever plays but that is inordinately popular anyway. The main thing being that the call changed from "Kattobase Iiyama" to "Kattobase Yuji". But wow, are these dumb lyrics. You'd almost think this was a Lotte cheer:

裕志　裕志　かっ飛ばせ裕志　
ラッララーラララ ラーラーラー　かっ飛ばせ裕志
Yuji, Yuji, Kattobase Yuji
La la la la la la, Kattobase Yuji!
(Kattobase, Yuji!)

(Naoto's old song was "La la la la la la la la, Naoto home run", basically.)


This is the new cheer song for infielder Takahiro Imanami, which we were practicing even though he is currently at ni-gun. It's pretty complicated and kind of annoying to fit all the syllables in, I haven't gotten the hang of it yet... then again, after 5 years I still haven't gotten the pitcher's cheer song down yet either, to be honest.

飛ばせ今浪グランド　狭し走り回れ　
今、お前の力で　チャンスを呼び込め
Tobase Imanami gurando semashi hashiri maware
Ima omae no chikara de chansu o yobikome
(Kattobase, Imanami!)