Marinerds, etc.

TLDR version: Morino went 4-for-5 including a double and a homerun, scored 3 runs, Tony Blanco also had 3 RBIs in 3 hits, the Dragons scored a bunch of runs off Dicky Gonzalez and except for the 5th inning where Dragons starter Kazuki Yoshimi gave up 4 runs to the Giants culminating in Ogasawara's Clean-Shaven Doppleganger hitting a 3-run homer, which made it kinda close at 5-4, but the game eventually widened to 7-4 and Iwase closed it out successfully to put the Dragons in first place, half a game up on the Giants! Hooray!

Cheering for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome is pure awesome because there are so many added little "DIE GIANTS DIE" kinds of things into the standard cheers. It'd be even better if the Chunichi ouendan could get their act together and actually get licenses to have trumpets and drums and leaders at games in the Kanto region, but whatever. (Seriously, this will now be the 3rd season without ouendan at the Tokyo Dome if it goes on like this, since the yakuza episode.) I happened to be sitting behind a few guys I recognize as being unofficial cheer leader types, or more like, they're really freaking loud and know all the songs and despise the Giants and coordinate with another group of similarly loud people sitting a few rows back.

I showed up at the Tokyo Dome a little after 5pm wearing my favorite t-shirt, which I covered up fairly quickly with my Morino #31 jersey and all my other Morino #31 stuff. Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino wears #30 this year, but I noticed that very few fans of his actually care and almost all still had #31 jerseys for him. See, the team offered Morino #3 after Tatsunami retired, and he briefly said yes, then a few days (weeks?) later said "Wait a minute, I can't dishonor Tatsunami like that. I am nowhere near as great as he is and cannot wear #3 properly." But by the time that happened, they had already re-assigned #31, so they gave him #30, vacated by Nomoto who took Kazuki Inoue's old #9. But Morino has changed numbers so many times in his career that I think most people have just given up on changing their replica jerseys.

Anyway, I got to talking with the guys sitting behind me, since they had ouenka papers and I had no clue where to get one; turns out I'd missed someone handing them out. They were nice enough to give me one of theirs, "we can share ours, the only new cheers we don't know are Blanco and Nomoto's, really." It turned out they were both from Aichi prefecture but just started college in Tokyo, and one of the guys went to the same high school as outfielder Atsushi Fujii, so we reviewed his cheer song together, "just in case he actually plays today", and then they were like "Why the hell are YOU a Dragons fan?" and I had to explain that I'm really a Fighters fan, started cheering the Dragons several years ago thanks to a close friend in Gifu, and now I really just love Morino and despise the Giants. They were cool with that.

So, anyway. Amidst the chaos of the discombobulated ouendan, I managed to kinda pick up Tony Blanco's new ouenka. It has a fanfare which I decided was irrelevant, and then a semi-catchy actual song...


Ima da koko de misero, aoki toushi tagirasete
Teki o hirumaseru ichida, hanate, haruka kanata
Kattobase, Blanco! (Yomiuri taose o!)

You gotta love this video because of the guys in front of me giving the middle finger to the Giants bleachers every time they yelled the last part, which means "DEFEAT THE GIANTS!"

The cool thing is, Blanco led off the 2nd inning with a single, and then Wada followed it up with a single, and then Ibata followed THAT up with a double to score Blanco and make it 1-0! We changed to the Uchimakure chance theme and that led to consecutive sac flies to center by Kei Nomoto and Motonobu Tanishige to make it 3-0!

The Dragons widened their lead to 5-0 in the 5th inning when Araki led off with a single, Ohshima bunted him up successfully (in the first inning Araki had led off with a double and then got out at third on a terrible bunt by Ohshima, so), and then Morino singled to right-center! Araki almost scored but had to go back and hold at third, and in the meantime as the ball was thrown towards home, Morino managed to stretch it into a double, headsliding into second base safely. Woo! Tony Blanco then hit a single that scored the other two guys, and Wada walked, and THEN the Giants took out Gonzalez, put in Satoshi Fukuda (seriously, "dare aitsu?") who got a double play to end the inning.

Then, yeah, Yoshimi ran into a bit of a rough spot in the Giants' half of the 5th. Shinnosuke Abe led off with a double, and then Seung-Yeop Le singled, which put Abe at third. Sakamoto also singled, which scored Abe to make it 5-1. Matsumoto, who is having a monster start so far, grounded out to third and advanced the runners (I'd hoped Morino would make a play at somewhere besides first, but it didn't work out that way), not that it mattered as OCD hit one of his signature low line drive home runs into the Giants' cheering section to make it 5-4. Grumble.

But it worked out okay. I got out my towel to cheer for Morino again in the 7th inning, the guys behind me were like "Your guy is kicking butt tonight!", and then Morino hit a double into the gap in left-center! Immediately after that Tony Blanco also hit the ball to center. Morino scored, and Blanco tried to stretch it into a double and found himself out at second, but at least he got the run in. 6-4.

And the last Chunichi run was Morino's 5th at-bat, and 4th hit, which was a beautiful home run into the right-field stands hit off of Kiyoshi Toyoda. The entire stadium was silent, and then suddenly we realized it was a home run and all went crazy. Everyone around me was high-fiving me because I had been going so crazy for Morino the entire game. So, 7-4.

Hitoki Iwase closed out the game 1-2-3. We all stood up for the final batter, which was Edgar Gonzalez, and just yelled "I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE!" until it was over.



Not a lot of postgame celebrating though, because there isn't really a cohesive ouendan, which makes it difficult. Plus, the Giants games at the Tokyo Dome don't show hero interviews for the visiting team, which is SUPER lame. (I did learn later that the game hero WAS infact my boy Morino, though.) So we did the 1-9 lineup songs, then an Ochiai cheer, a round of Moe Yo Dragons, and... dispersed.

It was a pretty good evening, really.

Oh, incase any of Tyrone Woods's fans or friends still read this blog... one of the guys sitting in front of me still was wearing this jersey:



I swear I was tempted several times during the game to just start singing the "T!" ouenka.

That guy was also waving this apparatus around from time to time:



Which is a Jaws shark chewing up a white Giabbit doll that they were writing nasty stuff all over.

It might just be that I mostly only cheer for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome these days, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the difference in the mood in the Dragons cheering section as opposed to like, the Fighters; Dragons fans tend to do a lot more booing and swearing, certainly, and have a lot less family and a lot more scary-looking dudes. On the other hand I have found that passionately hating the Giants will usually get me at least tolerated in the crowd, so.

And on one last note: I really like Kei Nomoto's cheer song this year quite a bit. It ends in this line of "KagayaKE, HabataKE, Nomoto KEI!" Very catchy. Given that Nomoto is pretty much the only regular on the team under the age of 30 (scary, huh?) it's good that they have something like that to be around for a while.

Tomorrow (or more like, in about 8 hours) the Tokyo Big 6 league starts! I better get like 3 hours of sleep and go to Jingu!

What could possibly be better than getting to watch one of your absolute favorite baseball players on their birthday, playing against your most hated enemy team?

Could it be, perhaps, seeing said player get a hit?

And seeing said enemy team lose?

And perhaps, just perhaps, seeing said player get a TWO-RUN HOMERUN to put his team ahead, and wind up as the game hero on his birthday, where his age happens to coincide with his uniform number?

Well, that was tonight for me. I went to the Tokyo Dome for the Yomiuri Giants vs. Chunichi Dragons game, deliberately skipping the Fighters game in Chiba, because tonight was Masahiko "Dragonbutt #31" Morino's 31st birthday, and I've been a Morino fan for several years, even if I haven't gone to that many Dragons games this year due to the still-discombobulated Kanto ouendan situation. Also, I enjoy yelling "Yomiuri taose o!" after every "kattobase". ("Defeat the Giants!", a tradition which only gets yelled after every batter during Giants-Dragons games at the Tokyo Dome.) An entire evening of yelling anti-Giants cheers can really lift the spirits of any devout Giants-hater.

I spent about an hour and a half this afternoon making a "Happy Birthday" sign to hold up at the game, and I was really hoping I wouldn't end up feeling like an idiot for having it. And at first, as Mr. Morino kept swinging for the fences and just hitting pop flies out, it seemed that might be the case, but finally, finally, when it really counted, he came through for us, and I couldn't have been happier.

I was sitting next to an older guy who said he used to be part of the Kanto ouendan, actually, and as such was not allowed to do the Dragons cheers, or wear a jersey or anything, but after he'd had about 5 beers he was helping me hold up my Morino sign and also yelling with everyone else. He had plenty of interesting stories to tell, too.

Anyway, Wei-yin Chen started for Chunichi and Wirfin Obispo started for Yomiuri. Obispo was having huge trouble controlling inside pitches from the start, and just through mostly dumb luck, the Dragons managed to strand 5 runners in the first two innings alone. Whereas Chen retired the first 8 batters he faced, giving up his first hit to, of all people, Obispo.

The Dragons fans sang Happy Birthday to Masahiko Morino before his first at-bat. What surprised most of us was when the Giants fans started singing Happy Birthday to Yoshiyuki Kamei before HIS first at-bat! Apparently Turtlebutt shares a birthday with Dragonbutt, just four years later.

After a sweet throw from Masaaki Koike kept the Giants off the board in the bottom of the 3rd, Koike also put the Dragons ON the board in the top of the 4th with a solo home run that landed in the Giants half of the left-field stands. 1-0. After Morino hit a huge towering shot that was way too high and caught in centerfield, Tony Blanco hit a huge towering shot that actually landed in the stands. 2-0.

The Giants rallied in their half of the 5th to produce 2 runs, tying it at 2-2. They basically loaded the bases after a botched attempt to catch the lead runner at 3rd on a sac bunt, and then Sakamoto drove in two runs with a single to left. They loaded the bases again but then left them there.

Obispo hit Ibata with a pitch for the SECOND time in the top of the 7th, which pissed off a lot of fans, and there was a ton of booing from the Chunichi section, until a few minutes later when Birthday Boy Morino hit a 115-meter line drive out that finally was caught by a Giants fan in the stands instead of a Giants outfielder on the field, scoring Ibata as well. 4-2. You wouldn't believe the chaos that erupted in the Dragons stands at that point, with all the groups of Morino fans out in force tonight as well as just some general joy over taking the lead again. A woman sitting down the row from me who had seen my sign earlier actually ran over to high-five me. Things like that.

The Giants cut that lead in half in the bottom of the 7th when Edgardo Alfonzo pinch-hit for Obispo and hit a home run that was coming almost straight towards me (and infact landed two rows up and about 6 seats over). 4-3. Chen stayed in for a few more batters, getting two outs before giving up a single to Ogasawara's Clean-shaven Doppleganger. To be fair, the "hit" by Ogasawara totally looked foul, and we were surprised Ochiai didn't come out to argue it, but instead came out to switch pitchers to Junichi Kawahara. Kawahara promptly walked Ramirez, and another pitching change brought Nelson Payano out to the mound, who got a groundout out of Kamei to end the inning.

(Take THAT, Giants Birthday Boy.)

Kazuhiro Wada led off the 8th inning with yet another home run to left, which brought the score to 5-3, and that's where it would stay, as Dragons closer Hitoki Iwase pitched a perfect 9th inning to pick up his 29th save of the year. The only sad part was that the Dragons' offense stopped with Araki striking out in the 9th, and Morino on deck -- would have been nice to see him get another birthday at-bat. Or maybe we should just be glad he saved the best for last.



And yes, all of the Dragons' RBIs came in on home runs. I suppose you could say they were giving the Giants a taste of their own medicine.

Morino WAS the game hero, but being as this is the Tokyo Dome and a Giants game, naturally they didn't actually show him on the screen OR even let us hear the press interviewing him afterwards, though we could see them all gathered by the dugout. The security staff started kicking us out a little while after we finished singing some post-game cheers, basically... and since there isn't an official ouendan, the cheers were basically limited to doing the lineup songs, the Ochiai cheer, a round of Moeyo Dragons, and then a second iteration of singing happy birthday to Morino plus his cheer song.

I asked the guy sitting next to me to take a photo of me with my Morino birthday sign, but then saw an even better photo opportunity a few rows down with another group of Morino fans who also had birthday signs for him, and asked if I could jump in for a photo...



It was really a very good day to be a Dragons fan, and more specifically, a Morino fan. Happy birthday, Dragonbutt!

I need to preface this report with some very square statistics about my weekend; between Sunday afternoon and Monday night, I spent 4 hours sleeping, 9 hours in transit between places, and 16 hours at baseball stadiums. But I got to hang out with great people, yell a lot, and see Atori's ichi-gun debut, so it was all worth it.

The weekend adventure started on Sunday afternoon, when I arrived at Yokohama Stadium. I had planned to sit with Ikeda and Sasaki again, only Sasaki didn't come to this game. But Ikeda was really nice and gave me a raincoat and a cool Yokohama 30th Anniversary pinbadge. I gave him my double Miura and Yoshimura pinbadges in return.

Then, when I went to do pinbadges a bit later, I swear I got two Teraharas in a row, out of the same machine, even. These three women wearing Nishi #7 jerseys all did pinbadges after me, so I asked if anyone wanted to trade for a Terahara... and naturally, just like every other time I have tried to trade, the first offer was, holding out a pinbadge with an air of disgust, "You want Yokoyama?"

"NO THANKS! Err... that is... I already have him," I said.

Ended up trading for a different Miura "浜の番長" one instead. Yay.

I hate to join in the Yokoyama-bashing, but it does seem like I have seen him lose an awful lot of games, both now and when he was the Fighters closer. At the same time, I feel bad for him -- it can't be easy being booed by your own team's fans here in Japan, since that's pretty rare.

Anyway, this was the second Sunday in a row I was watching Dragons vs. Baystars, only this time I was only 30ish kilomters from home instead of 300ish. The Baystars' starter was Futoshi "Hama no Express" Kobayashi, just like last time, but the Dragons' starter was Sohma Yamauchi. Yamauchi was just drafted last year out of Meijo University, and is another one of the Dragons' "local boys". This was actually his first start at ichi-gun; I suppose there isn't that much difference between starting at ni-gun and starting against the Yokohama Baystars, but let's not go there.

Kobayashi had control issues from the start, though, and walked Dragons' leadoff batter (and incidentally one of MY favorite baseball players), Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino, in a 7-pitch at-bat. I don't usually count pitches when keeping score, but I had a hunch that it'd be a good idea for Kobayashi, and I was right. I get the feeling the Dragons came up just wanting to wear him out as soon as possible, and their plan worked. Araki and Lee both hit popouts to left after that, but then Tyrone Woods came up to the plate, and Kobayashi walked him too, on 5 pitches (18 up to that point). Kazuhiro Wada was actually at an 0-2 count for a while before he just started fouling off pitches, then got to a full count, fouled off a few more, and finally got a pitch he liked, driving it to left for a single, scoring Morino and moving Tyrone Woods to third. 1-0.

The Dragons ouendan, which, by the way, is STILL lacking trumpets and drums, started singing the Uchimakure chance theme for Norihiro, who... also walked, loading the bases. The good part about that is that when Tomas Delarosa grounded to third, it was a forceout on Wada to end the inning, with only the one run scoring, amazingly. Kobayashi threw 20 balls, 19 strikes, 39 pitches. Urk. The annoying thing is, he even threw first-pitch strikes to 4 out of 7 batters, but he quickly got behind the count on almost everyone.

Fortunately for the Baystars, Shuuichi Murata is well on his way to bashing out another Home Run King title, and so after Uchikawa singled, Murata came, saw, and launched a home run into the buffer in front of the scoreboard in center field, 125 meters away, his 39th of the year. 2-1.

The top of the second saw one of the weirdest plays I've seen in a while, although since it feels like I keep saying that, maybe it's not true.

You see, Daisuke Tanaka singled to right to start off the inning, and then pitcher Yamauchi grounded to the mound in a sacrifice bunt attempt. Kobayashi smartly threw the ball to Ishikawa covering second to get the lead runner, and then Ishikawa threw to first to try for the double play. Only problem is, the throw to first was high and a bit wide and Nishi had to jump out to get it and dropped it, so Yamauchi was initially ruled safe. I guess he ran too far out though, or seemed to go for second with the dropped ball at first, so when Nishi recovered the ball he tagged out Yamauchi who had started to head back to first, and it was called an out. Morino singled and so did Araki, but Lee hit a big pop fly behind the plate that Takeyama caught for the third out. Kobayashi was up to 52 pitches after two innings.

Tyrone went yard to lead off the third inning, 125 meters into left field. 2-2.

In the 4th, when Morino came up to bat, I finally had to own up to how much I like him. I was saying how he's my absolute favorite Dragons player, and Ikeda was pointing out that Morino grew up in Kanagawa, and was actually a Yokohama Taiyo Whales and later Baystars fan club member as a kid, and wouldn't it be nice for him to come back to his hometown and play for his childhood favorite team, when he becomes a free agent next year?

"Yeah," I agreed, "I doubt the Baystars will spend the money to sign a free agent like him, but it would be nice so I could see him hit home runs here all the--"

BLAM

Morino absolutely CRUSHED the next pitch, that kind of hit where you know it's a home run the second it leaves the bat. It sailed towards us -- literally right towards me -- and then OVER me -- and then OVER THE WALL and OUT OF THE STADIUM, in what was said to be a 145-meter home run. 3-2.

"Holy CRAP," I said in both languages. "Morino always does well when I see him..."

Anyway, when Murata came up to bat in the bottom of the 4th, I yelled "Let's have home run number 40!!!" and wouldn't you know it, but Murata DID infact hit home run number 40 right then, 130 meters to left field, to tie it at 3-3. The other half of the Mura Machine, Yuuki Yoshimura, followed it up with his own 125-meter home run to right, and then BOOM, it was 4-3. Gyakuten! Of course Kinjoh couldn't follow it up with another, and instead grounded out to Araki, or more like, Araki made an AMAZING play, basically diving to snag Kinjoh's grounder and then throwing to first while still on his knees, a perfect shot.

Then the 5th inning hit. Shigeki Ushida, Mr. Cow Field, took over on the mound for Kobayashi, who threw 81 pitches in 4 innings. He pitched to Byung-gyu Lee, who grounded back to the mound...

...kicking off an extremely unlucky chain of events. First, the ball hit Ushida in the leg and went bouncing up in the air. He caught it, but was obviously in a lot of pain and his throw to first was WAY off, so Lee ended up on second. Second, Ushida kind of limped back, and the medical staff came out, and determined that yeah, he should come out of the game, since he didn't particularly seem too happy standing on his leg, let alone pitching from it.

Third, uh, he was replaced on the mound by Yukiya Yokoyama.

I might have mentioned that Baystars fans have a great amount of ire for Yokoyama, some of which is deserved, some of which is really not. And to be fair, I doubt he was actually fully prepared to enter the game at the point he did; nobody really EXPECTS the pitcher to get taken out with a hard grounder. Also, uh, what transpired with him on the mound was not entirely his fault.

But it sucked. That's the bottom line.

Tyrone grounded out, and then Yokoyama walked Kazuhiro Wada. Then Norihiro Nakamura grounded to short, and in a normal universe with a slow Nori hitting, and a slow Wada running from first, it should have been an inning-ending double play. Except what happened instead is, shortstop Takehiro Ishikawa let the ball go through his legs or his glove or whatever, off into left field. BIG ERROR. Lee scored, 4-4, and Wada made it to second. Tomas Delarosa hit a legitimate double to left, scoring Wada, 5-4. The next batter was Ryosuke Hirata, pinch-hitting for Daisuke Tanaka. Hirata, as you might recall, hit that sayonara home run off Yokoyama last week when I saw the Dragons play the Baystars, and he's still not old enough to drink in the USA. So Hirata took the first pitch and launched it way out to centerfield -- fortunately, caught by Kinjoh -- but unfortunately, far enough to be a sacrifice fly to score Norihiro from third. 6-4. Then ex-Baystar Motonobu Tanishige pinch-hit for Yamauchi, and Tanishige doubled to center, scoring Delarosa. 7-4. Morino came up to bat and hit yet ANOTHER double, scoring Tanishige. 8-4! Araki finally mercifully hit a pop fly out to right to end the inning.

Yokoyama, by the way, was credited with the loss, but with no earned runs, because by all means, with normal play Lee shouldn't have been on base to begin with, and Norihiro should have grounded out. As I said, what transpired was really not Yokoyama's fault, and yet it was. No Yokohama pitcher had actually managed to strike ANYONE out in the first 5 innings, but instead issued 5 walks.

So that was the bad part. The good part was that Sign Guy had made his rounds of the infield by then (he's apparently double-ticketing these days to go around more than just the outfield) and had come to visit us losers in the outfield. I asked him if I could take a picture of his sign, as usual:



The girl behind me was like, "He's a Yokohama 名物!", and I didn't catch the last word (meibutsu), so everyone was trying to explain it to me, "He's like, you know, a famous product from Yokohama, like... uhh... Chinese food..."

Anyway, something super-awesome-great happened in the top of the 6th inning. Two things, you could even say. One was that Yokoyama was relieved of his pitching duties. The other was that he was replaced by ATORI OHTA! MAKING HIS ICHI-GUN DEBUT!!!

I already explained my vague obsession with Atori a week or two ago after seeing him at a minor-league game. Heck, I've had a cropped version of this photo I took as my cellphone wallpaper for the last week or two. I love Atori. I want him to be the Boy Who Will Save The Baystars. It's a big weight for someone to shoulder, but he's got pretty big shoulders.

So, Atori's debut went pretty well. He got a 1-2-3 inning in the 6th and only allowed one baserunner in the 7th (who was, incidentally, former Baystar Masaaki Koike). However, the first Baystars pitcher to notch a strikeout was actually Hiroki Sanada, who came in for the 8th and 9th innings, and actually managed to strike out Lee, Woods, and Wada. Not too shabby.

Unfortunately, despite us singing the "Behind" chance theme all through the 6th inning, the Baystars couldn't manage to get anywhere in the later innings; after starter Yamauchi went 4 innings we saw an inning each out of Chunichi relievers Masafumi "not Ken" Hirai, Shinsuke "not Kazumi" Saitoh, Akifumi "Rock Star" Takahashi, Takuya "the Kid" Asao, and of course Hitoki "Closer to Fine" Iwase. And well, even if Iwase had a lot of trouble in the Olympics, he had no trouble with the Baystars, which should give you an idea of how good they are. Er.

And the Dragons won 8-4.

In a fit of cruel irony, the game hero for Chunichi was my favorite Dragon, Morino:



Because, let's face it, when you go 3-for-4, drive in 2 runs, score 2 runs, and launch a home run OUT OF THE FREAKING STADIUM, you deserve some sort of special recognition.

Don't worry, Dragonbutt, I still love you.

It seems that whatever magic I had in the first few months of the season to only see the Baystars win has gone away in the last few months. I'm going to blame it on Ohya for not playing Takuro Ishii whenever I'm there. Yeah.

After the game I ended up walking around with Matt, one of the guys from the japanesebaseball.com forums, who was going to be part of Monday's adventures. We went to the Baystars store, and I did pinbadges again. Still no Takuro. Got Uchikawa and Aikawa, though! Exciting! Also got Nasuno, which is uh, not exciting. Matt did two pinbadges and got two consecutive Shimokubos, which are a lot less tradable than two consecutive Teraharas, that's for sure. I tried to console him by saying that at least he didn't get two consecutive Yokoyamas.

Just a few things while I stagger under the weight of an entry about Sunday:

We Love Hichorillusion

Our centerfielder is cooler than your centerfielder, because your centerfielder certainly does not do things like put a stunt double of himself in the dugout and then rapel down from the dome ceiling.

The Fighters beat the Marines 3-2 tonight. Positives for the Marines are that Satozaki hit another home run, and Hiroyuki Kobayashi actually pitched a complete game for once, even if it was a close loss. But the positive for the Fighters is better than all of that: seeing Makoto Kaneko as game hero is pure happiness to me. I feel really bad for not being more supportive of Kaicho while he was having such a rough start to the year.

The "We Love Hokkaido" jerseys this year, while not quite as awesome as the blue ones from last year, are actually pretty cool-looking. It took the entire team wearing them today for me to really appreciate that. The stupid part is, apparently they were selling them at the Tokyo Dome last week and I was too set on getting gatchapon pinbadges to notice. I'm a dumbass. Wonder if they'll bring them back here when they play at the Tokyo Dome next month or not.

Dragonbutts

Morino seems to have finally found his stride again, homering in two straight games and just kicking butt in general. It's just in time for two things: 1) his 30th birthday next week on July 28th, and 2) the Olympics, which he is going to!

Tatsunami got his 6th hit of the season yesterday, too, a 2-RBI double. I would put an over/under on his number of hits this year, but it would just be depressing.

Back in May, I said that my personal prediction for Masa Yamamoto's 200th win was around August 11th, his 43rd birthday. Then he stopped winning games and I was feeling stupid. But now he's kind of started again. With yesterday's win over Hiroshima (which, might I mention, Morino hit a home run in and went 4-for-5) that puts him at 198 career wins, and he should get at least two more starts before his birthday. So, it could still happen.

The downside is, if Masa gets to 200 wins, it's going to put a crimp in my vague plan to go around hunting down his career's worth of baseball cards this offseason. Although, I assumed that Meikyukai members' cards would become more expensive, and Yukio Tanaka's certainly didn't, so who knows.

Kikenkyu

is why Futoshi Kobayashi came out of the Baystars-Swallows game this evening after only two batteres. He hit Shinya "Captain Japan" Miyamoto in the head with a pitch and was ejected on the Dangerous Pitch Rule. Manager Akihiko Ohya was also ejected from the game in the 8th inning for arguing a call where the umpires said Saeki grounded out to first, but others thought the ball was foul. Kyohei Muranaka, who seems to be doing a pretty good job of being a Left-Handed Kenichi Nakata, got the win in the 4-1 Swallows victory.

Tatsunori Hara

likes birthday cake and is now 50 years old.

Hoshino Japan Gears Up For The Olympics

I saw Atsuya Furuta on TV tonight interviewing Senichi Hoshino, and all I could think was: I'm sad they're taking baseball out of the Olympics because I'd really love to someday cheer for FURUTA JAPAN. Sigh.

Everyone else has already mentioned it, but yeah, the Japan final roster is out for the Olympics.

Pitchers:
Uehara (YG), Kawakami (CD), Iwase (CD), Fujikawa (HT), Darvish (HNHF), Naruse (CLM), Wada (FSH), Sugiuchi (FSH), Tanaka (TRGE), Wakui (SL).

You know what really confuses me when I read stuff about this pitching staff? It's not Uehara's inclusion; he's got international experience and blah blah relief whatever. No, it's more that it doesn't sound like people realize how good Sugiuchi really is. He's having another "on" year (that loss a few weeks ago to the Giants? Not his fault. That 9th-inning game-tying home run came on his 150th pitch of the night. That still bugs me), and I think he can bring that to China. Anyway, Darvish is of course the ace, but there's a pretty good staff here, and even four lefties in Naruse, Wada, Sugiuchi and Iwase. And uhh, Kyuji. He's so good I don't even notice anymore; it's when he's pitching like a mortal man that we go "Hey, that's right, he's not actually a god, he just plays one on TV."

Of course, today Masahiro Tanaka was deactivated from the Rakuten roster due to right shoulder pain; sounds like there's not much chance he can pitch at the All-Star game next week, though they're not ruling out the Olympics. Still, that sucks.

Catchers:
Abe (YG), Yano (HT), Satozaki (CLM)

You know, the funniest part about this is going to be watching the Giants second-string catchers doing janken to figure out who gets to wear Shinnosuke's mask while he's gone. I totally want to see Sanematsu out there. Anyway, whatever, Satozaki is going to hit like 5 home runs during the Olympics. It's going to be awesome. And I'm going to be even more terrified to speak to him when he gets back.

Infield:
Araki (CD), Arai (HT), Murata (YBS), Miyamoto (TYS), Nishioka (CLM), Kawasaki (FSH), Nakajima (SL)

Wait a minute, this team has one 1B, one 2B, one 3B, and FOUR SHORTSTOPS?

(Well, counting Miyamoto as a shortstop. To be fair, I am betting he'll either play 3B or play Captain Japan: Veteran Presence.)

I suppose it makes sense. Hoshino was saying something tonight about wanting to DH Murata, anyway, although I think outfielder G.G. Satoh makes a better DH.

Dear god, Pro Yakyu Ai is going to have a ball with this and their Mune-Aoki-Tsuyoshi triumvirate, though. Add Hiro-chan into the mix and it's just going to be Ikemen Central.

Outfield:
Morino (CD), Aoki (TYS), Inaba (HNHF), G.G.Satoh (SL)

I was surprised, but pleased, to see that Morino got selected to the Olympic team. As Dragonbutt's biggest gaijin fan ever, I had thought he lost his shot at the Olympics when he suffered that freak injury two months ago at Jingu. But, apparently not. The odd thing is, I love him to pieces, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what he gives this team. They have plenty of other lefty bats, and plenty of infielders, although they don't have anyone else who can play all outfield positions AND all infield positions well like Morino. I hate calling him a "utility guy" because that always reeks of "crappy hitter who fills in various positions", when in reality he is "awesome hitter who happens to be able to play lots of positions, which is useful when you are on a team with guys like Tyrone Woods and Norihiro Nakamura playing the infield corners."

You likely know who Aoki is; he's hailed as being the next Ichiro. GG Satoh is a big dude with a big bat. Atsunori Inaba turns 36 next weekend (and I'm going to the Fighters game in Sendai that day!) but still plays excellent defense and is a great hitter, although he recently had a slight injury so I'm not sure what his status is.

I think my brain is going to explode from trying to follow Koshien and the Olympics all at the same time. Seriously.

Alright, so the update on Morino is that he is expected to be out until July. The injury seems to be called a left calf muscle strain, and he was taken back to a hospital in Nagoya to recover, and they're expecting him to be out of action for a while to heal, and then he'll have to do some rehab and then work out on the farm team for a bit before returning to action on the top team.

It's sad also because this injury comes on the heels of an article saying how he was spending his off-day running (on May 12) and working out because he was worried something is wrong, he was having a slight slump lately.

(Naturally, another question is whether he'll still get to play in the Olympics... but I don't know if anyone even wants to think that far ahead now.)

Oddly, I'm not actually sure I'll see the Dragons while Morino is out. Due to interleague and Fighters games taking first priority and a concert and only being able to attend games on Sunday/Monday, the next time I'd be able to see them without having to make an extra effort (like taking a day off, or going to Nagoya) won't be until 6/29, by which point maybe he'll be almost back up, with any luck.

Anyway, I do some crazy things when I feel like I need to bring good luck to a baseball player but there's nothing I can do in particular. (See last fall when I made a Fighters omamori.) Morino happens to be the poster boy for May on the Dragons calendar I have on my wall at work, and I was thinking about the story of folding 1000 origami cranes to bring wishes and health to someone...

So I went out and got some origami paper and spent most of my free time between teaching classes today folding origami cranes and putting them around the calendar.


I suppose I am approximately 986 cranes short, though.

I only had time to fold 14 cranes, though. But I figure that... well... he got injured on May 14th, and it's the May calendar page.

Wait a minute. Kenshin Kawakami was the April calendar poster boy and then he got BLASTED in April, that day that the Giants hit back-to-back-to-back home runs off him, and was out of the rotation for like a month. And Morino is May and now he got injured. OH MY GOD THE CALENDAR IS CURSED

Ibata is June... oh crap.

Tonight at Jingu stadium, Masa Yamamoto got his 195th career win as the Dragons beat the Swallows 4-1, making him 2-0 on the year so far. It seems we're in for another year of Good Masa, which is fantastic news.

But due to other things, I couldn't care less about that right now.

In the 3rd inning of the game, possibly due to wet ground, Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino, who is pretty much my favorite baseball player in Japan, fell down while fielding a hit to centerfield, and injured his left leg, and WAS CARRIED OFF THE FIELD ON A STRETCHER.

You have to understand, I got home pretty late and barely caught the sports news at all. I knew he'd been taken out of the game, but I didn't know why, so suddenly turning on the TV and seeing Morino on a stretcher had me in a mild state of shock for a minute or two.

(Edit: Found a game highlights clip on Youtube, being as it was Masa's 195th career win. Morino's injury is about 1:30 in. Good news is he didn't actually collide with anything... bad news is, it's actually kind of unclear how he injured himself exactly! Argh!)

There's a picture of him on the stretcher down towards the bottom of this article on Sanspo.

If I understand Ochiai's comment properly -- 「１４４試合同じ先発でいきたかったが、悩むことはない。（代わりの）メンバーはいる」, which I think means "Well, I wanted to have the same starting lineup for 144 games, but don't worry -- we have substitute players..." I think that isn't quite true. Yeah, I'm hugely biased, but I don't think Morino is that easily replaceable. First off, he IS actually the best hitter on the team, at least for the season so far, in terms of OPS and most other standards (and is one of the best hitters in the Central League period, actually) and was even called Chunichi's "key man" in the Interleague official program put out by Shube. And all this while he's STILL being shuffled between centerfield and third base all the time -- AND he hasn't made a single error at either position yet.

Anyway, while searching to see if someone posted tonight's sports news with a clip of the injury, instead, I found some other Morino-related clips that cheered me up a little, so I'm going to share those instead:

1995 Spring Koshien clips of Morino, then in his second year at Tokaidai Sagami high school. AWWWW! It's kind of funny that these clips are of Sagami beating the crap out of Gifu (being as Gifu is so close to Nagoya, and I even went there two weeks ago to watch the Dragons).

Scenes of Morino & Doala, a short music video which is ridiculously adorable if you are a huge fan of Morino and of Doala, which, naturally, I am.

Doala! which was tagged as Morino and Doala, but doesn't really involve Morino, but it's so cute I want to share it. Basically a Doala video set to "Sunny Day Sunday" by Sentimental Bus, one of my favorite not-exactly-baseball-related-but-close-enough songs ever.

Sigh. I hope I'm overreacting. It's just that last time I saw an outfielder getting carried off the field on a stretcher it was Hitoshi Tamura, and he's gonna be out for like two months.

勝ったけど森野選手しか考えられない。
早く戻ってきて下さい！
ドアラも待ってることでしょう。