I'm in Seattle and I went to a Mariners Game

Three weeks of glorious vacation in Seattle, where it's 72 degrees every day and not humid, and I have no set schedule of things to take up my time. Sounds great, right?

I had delusions of grandeur that I was going to spend my weekdays while Mike's at work just working on my backlog of baseball stuff to do, like going through and writing about all the high school games I attended before I came here, cropping tons of pictures, and planning out the trip I'm taking when I do go back to Japan next week.

Obviously, that didn't happen. I got pulled back into working on some stuff for a completely non-baseball-related event some friends are holding, and then also spent a lot of time going off and meeting friends for lunch, or doing some shopping for things I can't buy in Japan, such as clothes not intended for toothpick midget women. I find it amusing how I'm average here, but a huge tall pile of Amerikajin when I'm over there.

I have been watching bits and pieces of Koshien when I have time; I really wanted to see Kanto Daiichi and Waseda Jitsugyo (aka Soujitsu) since I actually saw them in the regional qualifiers, but so far only managed to see KD1. They crushed Sano Nichidai 9-2. Bizarrely, their foreign English teacher was interviewed over Asahi's TV feed -- I was super-jealous, I've always wished I knew how to get a job teaching at one of the powerhouse baseball schools. And as for Soujitsu, I had to miss their game last night, but they beat Kurashiki Shogyo 2-0 (and Yasuda-kun got two hits, yay). Their next game is against Chukyodai Chukyo, who I did make a point of watching because I wanted to see Isomura-kun again because I am a big dork, and they won 2-1 over Nanyo in a really close game.

If you want to read English recaps of all the Koshien games with play-by-play, as usual, the place to go is Edwin's blog. He's crazier than the rest of us, and was even up until 4am Pacific time for the end of the Asahikawa vs. Saga game yesterday. I've been trying to hang out a bit in the japanesebaseball.com Koshien chat room too, and trying to be more on-topic than I have been in the past.

So anyway, I went to a Mariners game last Wednesday, and am finally getting around to putting up any kind of post about it. I wasn't even going to bother watching the Mariners at all this trip, but I had something really really really important to do, which was to visit Brian Sweeney in the bullpen. When Brian first got called up by the Mariners, I sent out email to a bunch of my Fighters friends, and they pretty much all said "You have to go tell him a good 'GANBARE!!' for us when you go to Seattle!"

Of course, I nearly had a heart attack that morning when I checked the Mariners' website and it had a headline of "Mariners trade Sweeney to Phils". Fortunately, thank god, they meant MIKE Sweeney.

So, this game had the "Family Pack" ticket deal, so I ended up going with 6 other friends, as one guy figured out that if you had at least 4 people, it was cheaper to buy a ticket and voucher for a hot dog and drink than it was to just buy a ticket, so we did.

I wore a Chiba Lotte Marines t-shirt specifically because nobody in Seattle can ever tell that it doesn't actually say "Mariners" on it. Naturally, right outside the gate I ran into a Japanese dude from Chiba wearing a Kuroki #54 ticketholder neckstrap who immediately recognized my t-shirt, and we chatted in Japanese for a few minutes, much to the bewilderment of my friends, who couldn't figure out why someone would just come up and start talking to me like that.

Anyway, I went in earlier than the rest of our group, around 5:30, but Mariners batting practice was already over. And Rangers batting practice ALSO finished before 6pm, which is crazy early. The reason for this was that there was a Special Olympics softball game going on, which is kind of cool, but I spent most of that time still just wandering around the stadium -- it'd been a while since I'd gotten to just walk around the park and see what's there. I bought a few souvenirs for friends back in Japan, and I got my picture with the Moose again:



And I saw on the big screen coverage that Brian was being one of the batboys for the Special Olympics softball game -- a couple of Mariners and Rangers players were -- but by the time it was over, the ushers were being strict about who could go down and stand near the dugouts. Doh.

So I went to the bullpen and just hung out there until the pitchers came out. One of the coolest things ever was that the Mariners battery for the day was Doug Fister and Adam Moore. I had seen them as a battery once before... in Everett in 2006. I saw Fister's first pro game, and he pitched 5 perfect innings, and Moore was 2-for-4, and they were the two guys I was most impressed with that day, so it's really neat to see them in the bigs together again 4 years later.


Adam Moore, strapping on his catcher's gear


Doug Fister is still super-tall, but no high socks.

Actually, if you want to see some better bullpen shots, go look at Megan from Section 331's. It was funny, I saw her standing on the OF concourse with her camera aimed at the bullpen but didn't think she'd hear me or recognize me if I yelled up, so I didn't. Either way, I only had my pocket camera with me rather than my big one.


I was also happy to see that JJ Putz's pink backpack or a descendant thereof is still being used to bring out snacks and whatever to the bullpen, and of course, provide some mild rookie hazing. I have happy memories of watching Brandon Morrow walk across the field carrying it.


Looking into the bullpen during the top of the first inning. John Wetteland seems like a really good bullpen leader guy.

So anyway...

When the pitchers came into the bullpen, I was still stuck at the top half of the area because there had been a private party in the CF patio before the game, and the guards wouldn't let me down there. But, I yelled out to Brian, and he waved, and after the national anthem and after the bullpen had their meeting to high-five Doug Fister heading out to pitch and so on, Brian had me tap the guard and they let me come down to the lower fence.

First thing he says to me, of course: "What the heck are you doing wearing a Chiba Lotte Marines t-shirt? I would have thought you'd show up in a Fighters Morimoto shirt or something! I saw that 'Satozaki' on the back during the anthem..."

"Brian, you're the ONLY non-Japanese person in this entire stadium that can even tell that this shirt is missing an R. I think they all have 'Satozaki' confused with Kazuhiro Sasaki, who also wore #22..."

"Oh, you've got this all figured out, huh?"

But I put on my Mariners jersey anyway, and hung out for a while down by the bullpen until the middle of the first inning (fans aren't allowed to talk during innings, but before the game and between innings is okay). It was just really great to catch up with Brian for a bit, he's just as nice and funny as he was in Japan, and I did get to tell him that everyone in Japan wishes him good luck, and so on. And he was asking how I'm doing, how stuff is going back in Japan, etc. Seriously, I was really sad when he left the Fighters and I think it's beyond cool that he's pitching for the Mariners again.

And it was funny to hear about how they have a lot of the same pre-game stuff here as they do in Japan, at least the pre-game meetings and bullpen huddles and whatnot. It's just so unbelievably cool. I was tripping over words a lot, I think, because it was actually pretty crazy to be out by the bullpen chatting with an actual major league pitcher. I mean, Brian's still Brian, but now he's wearing an MLB uniform and there are a bazillion fans who speak English around, so the fact that he'll still come chat with me is really awesome :)

Anyway, I convinced him to take a silly photo so that I can relay back to the Fighters fans (and maybe players) that he returns their greetings...



I dunno, I figured this was a photo that nobody except me could take -- who else would have a Fighters mascot doll keychain on their bag?

But Brian was a pretty good sport about it. Seriously, he's got to be one of the nicest guys in baseball ever. Maybe it's a Sweeney thing, as a quick websearch on the string "nicest guys in baseball" uniformly comes up with Mike Sweeney.

I didn't want to bother him too much, so I went to my seat to catch up with my friends in the bottom of the first inning. None of them are huge baseball fans or anything, so when they asked where I was, I just said I'd been chatting with someone I knew from baseball in Japan.

And so there was a game. You can see the box score and wrapup on the Mariners site, really. The Rangers won 11-6. I took a few photos of events along the way...


Adam Moore hits a 2-run homer in the 3rd! This made the score 4-2 -- the first few innings actually were pretty close and it seemed like the Mariners might actually win the game.

Funnier, the guys behind me showed up in the 2nd inning, so one's like "Who hit the first home run of the game?" because they thought the #2 referred to the evening, not to the number of HRs Moore hit this year.


Immediately after that, Michael Saunders gets caught stealing second in a rundown. I start writing down "CS 2-6..." and trying to count who had it afterwards, and they helpfully put up the fielders on the board. Also, "Jumpin Jack Flash" Wilson lists his last read book as the Bible. I am not sure what that indicates.


See this thing in the wall? Can you guess what it is? It is what happens when Franklin Gutierrez makes a RIDICULOUS catch to steal a homer from Vladimir Guerrero. You can see a video of it from this article.

It's kinda funny that it happened on the same day that everyone was asking me about Masato Akamatsu's catch out in Hiroshima, I guess.


Guerrero lost his HR, but Murphy hit one shortly afterwards, to make it 6-5.


And this grand slam by Michael Young pretty much put the final nails in the win for Texas here, bringing the score to 11-6.


BUT I WAS REALLY HAPPY BECAUSE BRIAN SWEENEY PITCHED THE 8TH INNING!!!!!

No, really -- it was funny because I turn to one of my friends like "That's the guy I was talking to before the game!"

"What? You're kidding."

"Not kidding. He pitched for the Nippon Ham Fighters for 3 years in Japan. I used to cheer for him all the time in Japan too. But now I feel like if I get up and yell a good luck cheer and clap my hands, I'm going to get punched."


Brian pitched one inning and didn't give up any runs. He walked Nelson Cruz and gave up a single to David Murphy, but that was it! Very cool.

I applauded, but I think everyone around me thought I was crazy.


Anyway, yeah, the game ended around 10:30pm, which was pretty late.

I always have a tough time explaining the "Eighth Inning Exodus" to people in Japan, since beating the traffic isn't really an issue there, but this game went late enough that I could kind of understand it. The funny part is, if you wait long enough, you also end up beating the traffic as there's nobody left!

I was also able to wander into the "Mariners Wall of Fame" area behind the food court near home plate, and take some photos with stuff, since almost nobody was around:


Here's something they have set up so you can pretend to be Ichiro, which is exactly what a bunch of Japanese tourists were doing. Do I count as a Japanese tourist now?


One of the exhibits is a bunch of bats and gloves from former Mariners players. Since I was wearing a Johjima jersey, I got Mike to take this photo since I thought it'd be kind of cool.

Yeah.

Being at an MLB game is weird. I don't really know what to do most of the time without the organized cheering. I think I've been brainwashed.

On the other hand, it's a reasonable enough way to hang out with some friends for an evening, and it was really, really awesome to see Brian, and even luckier that I got to see him actually pitch! Hooray.

World University Baseball Championship, Day 2 and 3

I am in Seattle until August 18th and thus I am not going to the WUBC.
I am in Seattle until August 18th and thus I am not going to the WUBC.
I am in Seattle until August 18th and thus I am not going to the WUBC.
I am in Seattle until August 18th and thus I am not going to the WUBC.
I am in Seattle until August 18th and thus I am not going to the WUBC.

Day 2:

My Kagami got a chance to pitch! Hooray! But it was against a Chinese team that totally got blown out! Boo!

Japan annhilated China by a score of 15-0 in a 6-inning called game where exactly one Chinese batter reached base (embarassingly, it was a hit off of Kagami). Yusuke Nomura started and pitched 3 innings, striking out 6, Kagami followed with 2 innings striking out 4, and Yuhei Nakaushiro pitched the last inning, striking out 2. (Much better than when he got roughed up by the NPB Fresh All-Stars on Monday.) Hayata Itoh continued his Clutchy McClutchiness streak and hit another home run.

Two other blowout called games happened as well, as Cuba beat Korea 18-0 in 5 innings before an audience of 500 or so at Jingu (ouch), and Canada blew out Sri Lanka 18-0 in 5 innings at Meiji University's Utsumi/Shimaoka ballpark in a relatively large crowd of 140.

Day 3:
Kagami got to pitch again. Unfortunately, this time it was against a Cuban team that pounded the hell out of Japan 12-7, and like most of the other guys who pitched, he got pounded. At least he didn't give up a home run (Fujioka and Sugano each gave up 3 homers, though Sugano also struck out 5 guys in 3 innings, which is not bad). I guess I was right that it was going to be an "interesting" game.

The US beat Chinese Taipei and Korea beat China, neither of which is a surprise.

In the meantime, Sri Lanka has now been pounded 49-0 in 15 innings. I feel kinda bad for them.

Chinese Taipei has been holding its own very well against the other teams despite that it lost to Canada and the US. One wonders why Cuba isn't in the US-Canada group and Chinese Taipei isn't in the Japan-China-Korea group as usual?

Tokyo Big 6 Fall Semester

Tokyo Big 6 released their Fall 2010 Schedule and also the preseason games in August and September. Hosei has the longest preseason stretch with the most games, starting with a game against Tsukuba University on August 5th and going through to the 6th of September. Hopefully this means they want to get in a lot of practice and claw their way back from finishing 5th last semester.

As for the season, the opening ceremony is September 11th at 10:15am. The rest is as follows:

Date            3rd      1st         3rd      1st
Week 1:
9/11            Keio  -  Tokyo       Hosei  - Waseda
9/12            Waseda - Hosei       Keio  -  Tokyo

Week 2:
9/18*           Meiji  - Tokyo       Hosei  - Rikkio
9/19*           Rikkio - Hosei       Tokyo  - Meiji

Week 3:
9/25            Keio  -  Rikkio      Waseda - Meiji
9/26            Meiji -  Waseda      Rikkio - Keio

Week 4:
10/2            Hosei  - Keio        Waseda - Tokyo
10/3            Tokyo  - Waseda      Keio  -  Hosei

Week 5:
10/9            Hosei  - Meiji       Tokyo  - Rikkio
10/10           Rikkio - Tokyo       Meiji  - Hosei

Week 6:
10/16           Meiji  - Keio        Waseda - Rikkio
10/17           Rikkio - Waseda      Keio  -  Meiji

Week 7:
10/23           Meiji  - Rikkio      Tokyo  - Hosei
10/24           Hosei  - Tokyo       Rikkio - Meiji

Week 8:
10/30           Waseda (Away, 1st) - Keio (Home, 3rd)
10/31           Keio (Away, 3rd) - Waseda (Home, 1st)

(The final week is what's called "Soukeisen" (or Keisousen depending on what college you cheer for) and is the biannual Waseda-Keio slugfest, so Waseda is always 1st base and Keio is always 3rd base regardless of who is the "home" team in either game.)

These are all Saturday-Sunday pairs, all games played at Jingu Stadium. They play best-of-3 matches each weekend, so if one team doesn't win both games, they go to a third game on Monday (and rainouts and ties will force it to Tuesday or Wednesday, which then wreaks havoc with the Tohto League game schedule). What this means is that in practice, Tokyo almost never plays Monday games, but you can usually count on at least one series per weekend going to 3 games otherwise.

The first game of the morning starts at 11am and the second one theoretically around 1:30pm, except for on September 18/19 when Yakult has evening games at Jingu, so the first game is at 10:30am, and they won't play into extra innings. (It's likely that a few rainouts at Jingu will also get rescheduled for weekends and push back a few other Big 6 games as well, but we won't know until later in September.)

Just like last year, prices are 1300 yen for special seating behind home plate, 1100 yen for normal infield unreserved, 800 yen for students (JHS, HS, college) for infield unreserved, 500 yen for "ouenseki" which means infield but past the base, and under the designation of the specific college's ouendan leaders (they can tell you where to sit and what to do). The outfield is free for women and for kids up through junior high school, and men of HS age or higher have to pay 700 yen -- except in Soukeisen, where everyone has to pay to get in. Kids up to elementary school get in free anywhere as long as they're with a paying adult.

What's crazy about this year is that since Hosei and Rikkio switched places, the typical Week 7 Hosei-Meiji and Tokyo-Rikkio matches that we've seen the last few semesters have been moved up to Week 5. And this year Ohishi isn't playing a game on his birthday (Oct 10th)...

Anyway, I will probably be at a good chunk of these games, particularly Saturdays where Hosei is playing.

I'll be missing most of the preseason games, but oddly enough, I had already planned a trip to Shikoku for the last weekend in August, so when I found out about the Botchan Stadium 10th Anniversary Tokyo Big 6 All-Star Game on August 28th, I was totally all over the idea of going to that. I've already got my ticket.

(And I'm going to cut this off and continue that in another post... despite being on vacation, I have no time to blog after all. Whoops.)

World University Baseball Championship

As I type this, the World University Baseball Championship (English website!) is starting, although I'm on the other side of the planet now so I'm not going to it. I have to admit that looking at the teams it seems a bit odd that all the USA players are sophomores, whereas the other teams have a mix of all 4 years, including that Cuba has a few graduated players as well -- not sure what the eligibility rules are exactly.

I have to wonder about the usage of KAIT and Utsumi-Shimaoka (Meiji University) for the event, because they're both pretty much in the middle of nowhere and have no seating, but I guess that's what was available. One of the Hosei boys wrote that the Canada and Cuba teams came to practice with the Japan team at the Hosei baseball field too.

Anyway, the big news to me was that two Big 6 kids were added to the roster for the event -- before it was just Yuki Saitoh, Tatsuya Ohishi, Yusuke Nomura, Fumiya Araki, Hiroshi Taki, Keisuke Okazaki, and Hayata Itoh. They are all awesome, to be sure. But then due to injury, Toyodai's Ryo Hayashizaki had to duck out of the tournament and was replaced by Rikkio's Koichiro Matsumoto... and Chuo's Hirokazu Sawamura had to duck out of the tournament and was replaced by none other than my favorite college pitcher Kisho Kagami!

My guess is that with Saitoh and Nomura in the mix as well as the fantastic Tomoyuki Sugano from Tokai and the solid lefty Takahiro Fujioka from Toyodai, there is very little chance of Kagami getting in as a starter, but I could see him getting a few innings of relief pitching before bridging to Ohishi as closer. I hope Kagami does well and doesn't get injured. The draft is only 3 months away...

So far, the USA one-hit Sri Lanka and won 15-0 in a 5-inning called game, with 14 strikeouts. Ouch. Canada beat Chinese Taipei 3-2 in a much closer contest. 50 people came to the USA game, and 300 to the Canada game. Go figure, they're during the day and the USA game was in the middle of nowhere.

5000 people showed up to see Japan beat Korea 4-0 at Jingu. As expected, Yuki Saitoh started, struck out 9 in 6 innings, Masahiro Inui followed him and struck out 5 in 2 innings, and Tatsuya Ohishi pitched a perfect 9th, striking out the side, also as expected. As I've been saying for ages, Ohishi is an awesome strikeout machine. The 4 Japan runs came in on two 2-run homers, one by captain Shota Ishimine and one by Hayata Itoh. Itoh is the best pure hitter in the Tokyo Big 6 league (my nickname for him, especially this spring, has been "Mr. Clutch") and Ishimine is a solid ballplayer, I saw him launch a good home run off Daisuke Takeuchi during the Keio-Tokai game in the All-Japan semifinals.

It'll be interesting to see where the series goes next. I predict Japan will annihilate China, but what happens in the Cuba game could be interesting.

Weekend of High School Games

No photos or boxes yet, sorry. I'm getting on a plane to Seattle in a few hours and I promise that I'll put some photos up while I'm there. I seriously took around 3500 photos of high school baseball in the last week. With luck, at least ONE of the teams I saw will actually go to Koshien... actually, I know for a fact that one HAS to, as I saw the entirety of the East Tokyo semifinals, all four final teams.

Went down to Yokohama Stadium on Saturday to see one of the quarterfinals for Kanagawa prefecture. By a bizarre coincidence, the two schools I saw play each other both have alumni who are current pitchers on the Boston Red Sox -- Yokohama's Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yokohama Shodai's Junichi Tazawa. I sat on the Shodai side because it was slightly less crowded, by which I mean it was still packed, but at least I could find a seat. Shodai was doomed from the start, but they never gave up. They were down 5-0 after the first inning and 10-3 after 2 innings and 12-3 after 3 innings. But rather than be like "oh well, it's hot out, let's just lose and go home", they kept fighting back -- in the bottom of the 5th it was still 12-3 and if Yokohama scored one more run, it would have been called 13-3 on the 10-run advantage, but Shodai wouldn't budge, so it went to the 6th inning, and they managed to hold it at 12-3 then too. Onwards to the 7th, where if they didn't score at least 2 runs, it would be called in 7 innings with a 7-run lead. So what happens? Igarashi hits a 2-run homer and they drive in another run to make it 12-6, and so the game goes on to the bottom of the 7th and they hold yet again! They scored 2 runs off Yokohama freshman lefty Yamauchi in the top of the 8th to make it 12-8, but then the floodgates opened and Yokohama scored 3 in the bottom of the 8th to win 15-8.

It was a seriously exciting game even though Shodai pretty much had no hope of winning. I don't know if they give a "fighting spirit" award for this tournament, although I'm sure plenty of other games have had things like this too. This is why Japanese high school baseball rules, though -- it's such an intense and emotional fight for some of these kids, and they really pour their entire spirit into it, 一球入魂 at its very best.

I didn't stay for the second game of Toin Gakuen vs. Ebina because 3 hours in the blazing sun and 97-degree heat had me already dying of a headache and more sunburn than before. A shame, as Toin Gakuen has turned out many fine ballplayers such as Yoshinobu Takahashi and Taisei Takagi and Koichi Sekikawa and GG Satoh and Keiichi Hirano and of course my favorite pitcher, Kisho Kagami (who is not pro yet, but give it 3 months). Toin lost to Yokohama on Sunday anyway, but that is beside the point.

Sunday, I went to Jingu for the East Tokyo semi-finals, which were Shutoku vs. Kokushikan and Seiritsu vs. Kanto Daiichi. I sat on the first base side to cheer for Shutoku and Seiritsu. I would have been cheering for Teikyo had they been there, but they didn't, so I threw my lot in with Shutoku, and Seiritsu is close to where I live (I always see their soccer club boys in the station with stylized "SEIRITZ FC" bags). And with Shutoku, my college ball friend is a member of the Shutoku Mother's Club, even though her son graduated from there like 15 years ago. He played for the team when they went to Koshien in 1993. So they saved me a seat in the second row behind the Shutoku dugout and I got to listen to older women babbling about what their sons are all up to now that they've grown up and given up baseball for the most part.

One of my JHS students wants to go to Shutoku, and he's been telling me about their ace pitcher slash cleanup batter Taiki Mitsumata for a while. Mitsumata wants to go pro and has had a ton of scouts watching him this year, and having seen him in person now, I could totally imagine it. He's currently 177/82, has a very ballplayer-like build, and can hit the upper 140's on the radar gun in addition to batting for power (15 home runs in his HS career). The other team pretty much refused to pitch to him and he walked three times and had one hit and scored 3 runs. Shutoku won 9-2 in 7 innings. Serves Kokushikan right for beating Teikyo :) One thing that was crazy about this game was that ALL the Kokushikan batters were batting lefty and almost all the Shutoku batters were batting righty. Even a dude who was listed as a righty batter actually went up batting lefty, for Kokushikan. Very bizarre. And yet Shutoku still clobbered them.

It wasn't quite so hot, only in the low 90's instead of the upper 90's, so I managed to stick around for both games that day. The second game was a lot sunnier and hotter than the first, but my friends put an ice pack on my sunburnt neck and that made it a lot better.

The second game was Kanto Daiichi vs. Seiritsu. Kanto Daiichi went to Koshien 2 years ago, they're also a fairly solid team. The boy that captured my heart in this game was Seiritsu's ace pitcher slash cleanup batter Haruki Nishigata, who... I don't know how to describe it, but he pretty much was out there with a smile the entire time he was pitching and batting and playing outfield and whatever. Like, he's not the captain, but he's the kid the others look at when they want to be reassured that hey, everything's okay, we're playing well and we're gonna win, how could we not with a smile like that? The game was close for a few innings and then it started going in favor of Kanto Daiichi, who eventually won 10-3 in 7 innings. The final out of the game was Nishigata, and he slid headfirst into first base, was out, and pounded the ground like "No way. No way. No way." After the two teams lined up and bowed to each other, Nishigata and two other boys collapsed on the ground and started crying like "I can't believe this is how it ends, I thought we were going all the way this year," which is perfectly acceptable here -- usually showing emotion is bad, but for whatever reason, openly weeping after being knocked out of a tournament is normal. They had to be picked up and helped off the field by their teammates.

I did note to my Shutoku friends after the game that I think Shutoku will have a slight advantage in the finals because Daiichi's ace is Keiichi Shirai, a lefty, and Shutoku's lineup is entirely righties, so that should work in their favor. But we'll see. I think it could go either way. Kanto Daiichi's marching band has some AMAZING tuba players, so if nothing else they can entertain the masses at Koshien if they go.

So, that's it for me and high school baseball this year, at least in terms of attending games, but I'll surely be following Koshien over the internet while I'm in Seattle. 13 out of 49 teams have been decided as of right now: Kagoshima Jitsugyo, Nishinihon Tankidai Fuzoku (Fukuoka), Yazu (Tottori), Meitoku Gijuku (Kochi), Konan (Okinawa), Matsumoto Kogyo (Nagano), Hikawa (Yamanashi), Narita (Chiba), Sano Nichidai (Tochigi), Eikou Gakuin (Fukushima), Noshiro Shogyo (Akita), Hachinohei Kodai Ichi (Aomori), and Asahikawa Jitsugyo (Kita Hokkaido). 10 more will be decided by the time my plane is in the air today.

Why I'm too busy to post

I'm going to Seattle from July 26 to August 18, during which time I will probably watch very little baseball, and maybe catch up on cropping some of my huge photo folders.

But anyway, last weekend I spent Saturday going to the Toshitaikou bracketing and to the Yakult-Hanshin game at Jingu, Sunday I went to Edogawa for the Teikyo vs. Nichidai Sakuragaoka game, Monday I was kind of sick so didn't go to Kamagaya and stayed home instead, Tuesday I had my last day of work for spring semester and then went to the Tokyo Dome for the Yakult-Yomiuri game, Wednesday I had to go to the immigration office and ward office, Thursday I went to Jingu for some West Tokyo tournament action and saw Waseda Jitsugyo vs. Soka, as well as bits and pieces of the other two games, and then Friday I went to Omiya for the Urawa Gakuin vs. Washinomiya game.

Both Thursday and Friday involved sitting out in 97-degree heat and coming home in various degrees of heatstroke; Friday also involved sunburn despite wearing sunscreen. Bleh.　　So when I came home from those games, rather than blogging about them, I tended to spend 2-3 hours drinking cold sports drinks and sitting under the airconditioner zoning out until I stopped feeling sick.

In the meantime, I'm hoping/planning to watch some more high school baseball on both Saturday and Sunday, AND I have to pack to go to Seattle.

So let me just try to sum things up quickly for now...

First, at least I got to see Teikyo on the 18th, because they lost on the 20th to Kokushikan. So I didn't get to see Takuro Itoh up close this year, sadly, because I ended up standing in the very back of a tiny 2500-seat stadium in Edogawa, which was at least shady and cool, but not so great for taking photos. Also the game on the 18th was a little bizarre in that it got called mid-inning, but I'll explain more about that when I write a full post about the game. I still can't believe they lost, though; I was seriously planning to watch Shutoku vs. Teikyo on the 25th.

In the meantime, I still haven't seen Shutoku, but plan to go on the 25th anyway. Ace pitcher and cleanup batter Taiki Mitsumata had some leg problems but seems to be okay now, so I look forward to seeing him play.

Oberlin played Nichidai Tsurugaoka at 9am, so I made it there for only the last inning or so. I did see Masaki Kuwata (Masumi's son), but didn't see him actually swing a bat. Masaki, for the record, plays centerfield for Oberlin, and does not pitch as far as I know, or at least didn't pitch in this tournament. They lost 4-1, though, so Tsurugaoka goes on to the next round, where they will promptly get smacked down by Nichidai San, most likely. Tsurugaoka did go to Koshien 2-3 years ago and the manager was a classmate of one of my coworkers. Small world.

Waseda Jitsugyo vs. Soka was fun mostly because Soka's ouendan is really cool. But I ran into one of my 7th-graders there, and he and his family are friends with a kid on the Waseda team named Konsu Yasuda, so they asked me to cheer for him with them. I'm kind of anti-Waseda on the college level, but Yasuda turned out to be a pretty exciting player, great hitter and fast runner, and killer smile as well, he looked like he was just having the time of his life to run around the Jingu bases. As a photographer, he is an ideal baseball player, seriously. Soka's ace is a freshman named Tanaka and he was no match for Waseda, basically. They followed him with a lefty named Andoh who ran out of steam and the team eventually lost 15-3. I have to wonder which current Soka boy will be on the Fighters in 5 years.

I didn't stay for all of Wasedadai Gakuin vs. Toa Gakuen because I was having the aforementioned heatstroke issues. As it is, Waseda won, so there's going to be a Waseda-Waseda semi-final game in West Tokyo. BORING. I am not going to that :)

Urawa Gakuin beat Washinomiya today, 6-2. I did not infact get to see Atsuki Minami, the 197-cm tall half-American pitcher, except on the sidelines with his teammates (he sticks out because he is TALL and funny-looking). Instead, I saw Ryosuke Abe, who has struck out 45 batters in 31 innings of the Saitama tournament, including 13 in this game. Seriously, if Uragaku makes it to Koshien this year, this kid might take the country by storm, as everyone's been reading about Minami instead of him.

And MORE crazy, I got to see Masaya Masubuchi pitch for Washinomiya. I was wondering why people were wearing Yakult Masubuchi t-shirts until I realized, oh crap, Washinomiya... THAT'S TATSUYOSHI'S LITTLE BROTHER. He's a little lefty pitcher with some control issues, he hit several batters and walked several more.

I stayed for a slight bit of the second game, Sakado Nishi vs. Ichiritsu Kawagoe. They both looked pretty hapless in the first inning or two (the very first batter of the game struck out swinging, the catcher dropped the third strike, then missed first base when throwing there), but apparently settled down after a while for a Kawagoe 12-5 win.

The other Masubuchi thing is that in the Yakult game I saw on Tuesday night, the Swallows had tied it 3-3 (home runs by Aoki and Iihara, yay!) and went into extra innings. The game ended on, I am not making this up, a sayonara E1. With runners at first and second, Masubuchi fielded a sac bunt, threw to third, overthrew third, and that was the game. Ugh. I must bring bad luck for that family.

So on that note, hopefully I'll be going to Yokohama tomorrow, then Jingu Sunday, then Seattle on Monday. And when I get back to Japan in August I plan to go on a 10-day wild train adventure all over the country, from Hokkaido to Akita to Iwate for Fighters games, then down to Shikoku for a Tokyo Big 6 All-Star Game and a Shikoku Island League game, and maybe also a stop in at Hiroshima on the way down. And when I get back from all of that, we'll have the Toshitaikou industrial tournament, and following that, my last semester of Tokyo Big 6 will start!

No Koshien for me this year unless something truly bizarre happens, though. Which is why I'm trying so hard to make it to all of these regional tournaments now and get my sunburn and headslides out of the way so I won't feel too bad about missing the real thing.

And on another note, one of my 9th-graders plays on a little league team that won the recent Tokyo Chunichi Sports tournament (and he was selected for the tourney Best 9 list as first baseman!), so he's heading to Kyushu tomorrow for an All-Japan little league tournament. I'm ridiculously proud of him, and hope it helps him get a recommendation to a good baseball high school.

Game Report: Swallows vs. Tigers @ Jingu - The Miki Shall Not Inherit The Earth (yet)

After watching the Toshitaikou bracketing on Saturday, I was like "Hey, I was thinking of going to Jingu tonight for the Yakult-Hanshin game, wanna go?"

So we did.

Before the game, I had a very important piece of business to take care of, however. You see, it's been over a year now since Ryuji moved to Sendai, and it's been a long process for me to get over him and find a new guy. I'd started to notice a certain outfielder towards the end of last year though, and after some soul-searching this year, while I realized I am actually more into Mikinori, it's so unpredictable to know when I'll actually get to see him, you never know where he's going to be.

So I finally went ahead and committed to Yasushi:



And so far, he has reciprocated in kind :)

(In other words, I went and bought a Yasushi Iihara #9 jersey before the game, because I realized that getting a Mikinori Katoh jersey specially made was going to take more time and money than I have right now. And apparently I bring Iihara good luck for hitting home runs. Though I'm a little sad because I wanted an away jersey rather than a home jersey, but "free size" away jerseys have like a 31" chest, whereas "free size" home jerseys had a 40" chest, so I had to go with the one that was actually going to, you know, fit me.)

Anyway, we went and found seats in the infield part of outfield unreserved kind of near the bullpen, and I went off to the top of section D to say hi to Kozo and some of the other Tsubamegun friends. While lineups were announced, I was in the underpass getting food and putting on sunscreen and stuff, so imagine my surprise when I emerge back into daylight and see this:



MIKINORI KATOH! WAS THE STARTER! INSTEAD OF MURANAKA! DUDE!

See, I may have mentioned that part of why we went to the Toshitaikou bracketing in the first place was to find out when former Tokyo Big 6 guys would be playing in that tournament, so finding out that former Keio ace Mikinori Katoh was starting the game at Jingu was also a nice added bonus. Mikinori was the last guy to win 30 games in a Big 6 career -- and I was there for his 30th win, against freshman Yuki Saitoh in the Fall 2007 Soukeisen. Which is ironic because Saitoh himself is now up to 27 wins, so if he can get 3 more this coming fall, which is his last chance, he'll be the next one.

And Mikinori just got his first pro win a week or two ago, too.

So I was pretty psyched to see him out there again!

...until Kenji Johjima blasted a home run to left field in the 2nd inning to make it 2-0 in favor of Hanshin.

And it just got worse in the 3rd, what with a Murton 2-RBI single and a Takahiro Arai 2-run homer. 6-0. Katoh came out of the game right after the Arai homer and Shun Takaichi came in.

And I spent the next few innings being pretty bummed out.

Aoki scored a run in the bottom of the 3rd off two wild pitches -- no, really, he singled to right to get on base, moved to 3rd base on a wild pitch to Hiroyasu Tanaka, and then Hiroyasu walked, the 4th ball also being a wild pitch and Aoki scored then. 6-1.

A crazy thing happened in the 4th -- with a runner at 3rd base, Keiichi Hirano hit a bouncy grounder to second. Hiroyasu Tanaka fielded it and threw to first just in time to get Hirano out on a headslide into the bag. But Hirano didn't agree with that and threw his helmet to the ground and got ejected from the game, and a bunch of Hanshin coaches ran out and argued. Wada shoved the umpire and ALSO got ejected, and the call still stood, and both guys were out of the game, Yamato replacing Hirano at 2nd base.





We were lamenting that it wasn't Hiroki Uemoto replacing Hirano, being as we are partial to former Big 6 players, even Waseda ones, and Uemoto's little brother is currently at Meiji anyway. But apparently Saturday was the only game of the weekend where Uemoto DIDN'T make a token appearance.

Anyway, Hanshin continued to happen. Murton singled in the 5th, Arai followed it with a double to put runners at 2nd and 3rd, and then Murton scored when Brazell grounded out to second, and Arai scored when Kanemoto grounded into a rare G4 Unassisted play as Hiroyasu Tanaka was just faster than both Kanemoto and Josh Whitesell to get the ball and get to the bag. So that brought it to 8-1.

My boy Yasushi Iihara hit a ball into the right-field foul pole for a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 5th to cut the lead to 8-4. Hooray!

Takashi Toritani (dude, can you count how many Waseda alums were in this game?) walked to get on base in the 6th, stole second during Yamato's at-bat... and the throw to get him at second was a little off and so he was safe. The stupid thing is, the ball got away from Tanaka at 2nd base and went into the outfield, and NOBODY got it, so Toritani took 3rd as well! Sheesh. He scored on a Murton single a little bit later. 9-4.

I visited the upper outfield again in the 8th inning, and while I was there, Aaron Guiel pinch-hit a doule and scored on a Miyamoto single to make it 9-5.

(And as people were saying that apparently Yasushi did think I look good in a #9 jersey, I pointed out that "See, if they'd had Katoh #16 jerseys, he would have hit a home run today instead!")

Lotte Hanshin starter Yasutomo Kubo almost got the complete-game win, but in the 9th inning with two outs, up around 150 pitches, he gave up a single to Aoki and then another single to Tanaka, and so Mayumi pulled Kubo and put in Kyuji Fujikawa to pitch to Yasushi Iihara... and it took all of 3 pitches to get Iihara to ground out to end the game, sadly.





Matt Murton was 4-for-5 with 3 RBI on the evening, so he was the game hero.

Oh well.

I still enjoyed sitting out at Jingu for the evening. I really DO seem to live there this year, don't I.

Watching the Intercity Baseball Tournament Bracketing Process

I've been busy enough doing baseball stuff this weekend that I haven't had time to write about it.

The most interesting thing I did, at least in terms of "I don't think most foreign baseball fans EVER do this", was that I went to Hitotsubashi Hall in Jimbocho on Saturday afternoon to watch the bracket drawings for the Intercity Baseball Tournament, which is the big amateur league tournament that takes place every year towards the end of summer.

It's basically like Koshien for adults -- all over the country, there are regional tournaments for a few months in the spring and summer to decide which teams will represent the various regions of Japan. Most of the teams will be company teams, which are basically "extracurricular" arms of big corporations such as Toshiba, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, JR, JFE, etc. Some will be club teams. The format is single-elimination, 32 teams at the start, and is played for 10 days at the Tokyo Dome. Most of the teams, especially the ones from the Tokyo area, will bring thousands of supporters (read: company employees) and marching bands and cheerleaders, and half of the fun of going to the game is to see the cheering sections. I've posted about a few of these games in the past.

Anyway, did you ever wonder how they decided the bracket and schedule for the 32 teams that play each other? Me neither, but in the course of two hours of the assembly, I discovered way more than anyone would ever need or want to know about the process. Come along with me as I enlighten you with photos and videos from my journey through Lots Of Brackets.



I think the auditorium seated around 300-400 people. Offhand I'd say it was about half baseball fans, one-quarter team representatives, and one-quarter media, judging by the suits and cameras and whatnot.

I went to this with one of my college baseball friends. Her pet player at Meiji was a kid named Takuma Kobayashi, who graduated last year and now plays for JR Hokkaido. The main reason she wanted to go to this bracket drawing was to know as soon as possible whether she'd be able to come see him play or not.

Before the assembly started, they were showing videos from past Intercity tournaments. It was funny realizing that hey, I actually remember watching a bunch of these games at a few points, as well as seeing some players in older videos like "OMG that's Yohei Kaneko!" and so on.


Finally, at 2pm, the assembly started.


A guy from the Mainichi newspaper made an opening speech. I zoned out for most of it. I just don't speak Corporate very well.


They had an outline of how the procedures would go for the day.

Basically, first they would split into even-numbered and odd-numbered teams for the bracketing by regions, so nearby teams couldn't play each other. I believe odd-numbered teams were supposed to be the away teams for the matches.

Then they would split out teams that were from the same company group (ie, Mitsubishi, JR, NTT, etc)

Then they'd announce the special seeded teams.

Then choose brackets for odd teams -- and then choose brackets for even teams.

Finally, they would choose the order for most of the games to be played in (some were determined by seeds, but they didn't explain that until later).


A list of the different groups of regional representatives that would be called up. I believe these three guys were from Tokai, South Kanto, and Tokyo.


...and all of them chose to be even-numbered games! These are the huge group of guys representing Tohoku, North Kanto, Kanagawa, North Kansai (Kyoto Shiga Nara), Osaka, Wakayama, Hyogo, Chugoku, and Kyushu.


These three represented Hokkaido, Hokushinetsu, and Shikoku.


When the dust cleared, it was determined that this was the regional split for the odd and even games. How this worked out is actually beyond me, given the parity, but it did split into 16 and 16 somehow.


Next they explained how teams from the same company would all automatically be put in different blocks. How they managed to work this out is also beyond me (and since Mitsubishi had 5 teams, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagoya and Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors actually are both in the A Block).


Next they announced the special seeded teams and which games they would play in. (The idea being that seeded teams don't have to play each other in the first round.) If you can't read, they are:

1-1 Tokyo Gas
2-1 Sumitomo Metals Kashima
2-2 Toyota
2-3 Honda
3-1 Kazusa Magic
3-2 JR Higashinihon
3-3 JFE Higashinihon
4-3 Hitachi Seisakusho
5-3 Toshiba
6-3 NTT Higashinihon

Incase it isn't obvious why they have these specific games, it's for the convenience of these teams to bring their fans and employees to the games outside of normal working hours, and thus draw the biggest audiences. The 1st day of the tournament is Friday August 27, so the first game is at 6:30pm then. The 2nd and 3rd days are weekend days, and then the 4-6 days are Monday-Wednesday, thus being seeded for the 3rd game of the day, which starts at 6pm, means they can make employees work a full day before coming to the Tokyo Dome to work "overtime" cheering for the company team. Ahem.

To be fair, as a normal working baseball fan, I also would of course prefer to go to those later games, although I probably won't be able to make many of the first round games anyway because I'm hoping to go to Shikoku for a weekend at the end of August.

Anyway, they called up guys after that to choose which blocks they were going to be in. There was a ridiculous fanfare they played for every team. Even though I took this video a LOT later in the drawing, it should give you an example of what this procedure was like:



Usually they'd have all the guys for a region come up at the same time and pick their group letters together, though this particular video was of Toyota, which for some reason came up by themselves.


JR Hokkaido representative. (I'm guessing this guy is a player.)


Toshiba representative.

The people in the region would choose to be either in the A, B, C, or D block. After they made their choice, they had to go sit down in a particular row of the seats in the back for their block.


So here is the whole stage, with the 16 guys sitting on the right getting ready to draw the ACTUAL games they'd be playing, block by block.


So here are the 4 dudes for the Odd-Numbered A Block teams, JR Hokkaido, Nippon Paper Ishinomaki, Hakuwa Victories, and Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors.

First they chose cards that would denote which order they would choose game slots in, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then they actually chose the game slots...


...and these were the results.


Repeat for the Odd B-Guys, Toshiba, Nihon Seimei, Shin-Nippon Seitetsu Hirobata and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Hiroshima.


Odd C-Block: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yokohama, NTT Nishinihon, Yamato Takada Club, and JR Shikoku.


The Odd D-Block: 77 Bank, Nippon Shinyaku, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe, and JR Kyushu.


What it looked like when these first 16 guys had chosen their games.


Minami-Kanto group comes up, finishing with JFE Higashinihon. (I took the shot of them with the team because I'm a fan of several of their players.)

So here is another video -- of the game choosing among the B-Block of the Even-Numbered Games:



B was JR Higashinihon, JFE Higashinihon, Toho Gas, and Tokai Rika. This was largely determined by many people to be a pretty tough bracket this year (kind of a tossup between B and D, if you ask me). As you can hear in the video, several people laugh when Tokai Rika draws Toshiba as their opponents, for example.


A-Block results with all of the games drawn.


The Even D-Block guys get up to finish out the Hell Bracket.


Here is what it looked like when all 32 teams had drawn their game slots.

You'd think this would be finished now, right? And they'd just proceed that the first game started at the left, and the schedule went onwards like that, right?

WRONG...


Remember, seeds were seeded to specific games. So first they filled those in at the top...


...and then they had people come up and choose the REST of their slots. So this is what the entire schedule looked like when it was done. Just because you are in a specific bracket doesn't mean you will be playing anywhere near the other teams in your bracket. Also, some teams have to play on 2 days of rest between their first two games, when others have a week. It's kind of crazy.

Several people left the hall at this point, once the full bracket was determined...


...but we stuck around to hear an interview they did with a few of the managers -- the guys from JR Kyushu, Vitalnet, Nippon Express, and Ishinomaki.

At pretty much exactly 4pm they said "Okay, that's all the time we have! Ceremony over! See you all at the Tokyo Dome next month!" and kicked us out of the room.


On the way out we saw these awesome bears they had made for every team, that they were giving to the team representatives. About 1/3 of them were gone by then, but there were still several adorable ones representing teams I want to see. Awwww.

And for the record, they also gave a present to people who attended the bracketing...


...a JABA pinbadge and solar-powered blinking keychain/cellstrap thingy. I don't know if I'll ever actually use mine, but it's still a kind of neat souvenir. (And yes, that is my hand-written bracket that I was making as they were drawing teams.)

There isn't a lot of info about the Toshitaikou out there in English, but here is the JABA site about it. I'll certainly be going to a bunch of the games, though that Sept 4-5 weekend is going to be TOUGH to choose what baseball to watch, dang.

Here is a list of on-loan players, ie, guys whose teams didn't make it into the tournament so they will be playing for some teams that did make it. To me the most notable is former Toyodai infielder Takuya Tsukuura, now playing for Sega Sammy, but in this tournament he'll be on JR Higashinihon's team.

Here is a PDF of the brackets (Japanese)

Or here, I'll just type it into English:

1-1 NTT Nishinihon @ Tokyo Gas
2-1 Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors @ Sumitomo Metals Kashima
2-2 Toyota @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe
2-3 JR Shikoku @ Honda
3-1 Hakuwa Victories @ Kazusa Magic
3-2 JR Higashinihon @ Nihon Seimei
3-3 Shin-Nippon Seitetsu Hirobata @ JFE Higashinihon
4-1 Nippon Shinyaku @ Nippon Express
4-2 Nippon Paper Ishinomaki @ Yamaha
4-3 JR Kyushu @ Hitachi Seisakusho
5-1 JR Hokkaido @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagoya
5-2 Oji Paper @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yokohama
5-3 Toshiba @ Tokai Rika
6-1 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Hiroshima @ Toho Gas
6-2 Yamato Takada Club @ Vitalnet
6-3 77 Bank @ NTT Higashinihon

Day 1 is August 27th, Day 6 is September 1. Each day, Game 1 is at 10:30am, Game 2 at 2pm, Game 3 is at 6pm.

Should be a lot of fun. I'm hoping to go to most of Day 5, and then some of the later evening games during the week (work starts on September 1 for me again), and the weekend will depend on which teams make it. I really want to see Toshiba, Toyota, JFE Higashinihon, and JR Higashinihon... they all have former players I really liked in Tokyo Big 6, as do other teams. I also want to see Honda -- especially now that Hisayoshi Chono isn't on the team anymore, I can actually cheer for them without holding back. Yay!

BTW, I hope people find this kind of post actually interesting/informative. I sometimes have no clue if this kind of thing is even worth blogging about.