Marinerds, etc.

Uh, the Mariners won tonight, 4-1 over the Royals. Are you surprised? I'm not.
Chase Utley rules. But you knew that already.
The draft starts tomorrow. We're taking a pitcher in the first round. We still don't know who.

I really don't feel like speculating on the draft, so I feel a need to read mindless Japanese tabloids, so here's yet another only-vaguely-baseball-related entry.

The gossip I've been reading about is all the stuff about the Chiba Lotte Marines' Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who is apparently pretty seriously involved with actress Sakura. They were introduced on a TV show called "Koisuru Hanikami" (aka "Honey Coming") back in January, which I'd actually watched part of and completely forgotten about. Basically, the show hooks up a pair of famous or semi-famous young adults on a "blind date", and generally the date is planned out by the previous couple on the show, and the cameras follow them around all day. It's sort of a combination reality show and dating show. Sometimes it can be extremely funny, sometimes it's just dumb, sometimes it's funny BECAUSE it's dumb. The episode with Nishioka and Sakura was kind of cool because they met up at Chiba Stadium for their "date" and spent part of it hanging out in the ballpark doing silly things like playing catch.

(Oh, heh, I found the clip of them on the "top ten best dates" one on YouTube, they're about 4 minutes in, after Edison Chen/Anne Suzuki and Hayami Mokomichi/Asami Reina.)

Anyway, six months later, they're apparently still dating, and various articles say that he apparently was talking about how important she is to him before a Yakult-Lotte game last week, and introduced her to his parents and all. I always sort of figured that most of the "dates" from that show never really led to anything in the future, so good for them!

Thanks to Gary Garland pointing it out.