As for Week 7, well, it sounds like Todai fought valiantly but fell 2-0 to Rikkio as expected, so Keio has to win Soukeisen for the league championship, which seems likely.
Meiji and Hosei were basically battling for 3rd place, as both went into the weekend with 2 Series Points, meaning they weren't going to catch Keio and probably not Rikkio.
Game 1
Saturday was Hosei's Tomoya Mikami against Meiji's Yusuke Nomura. It was broadcast on Sky A, and the usual suspect rebroadcast it on justin.tv. I watched it about 3 hours after the game actually happened, but kept myself from checking Big 6 scores until I got home, so it was "live" to me, which was fantastic.
The game itself was pretty good, too, for the first half at least. Meiji took first blood in the 2nd inning when Hiroki Nakashima hit a home run into the leftfield bleachers to make it 1-0. Hosei evened that up in the top of the 3rd when Mikami led off with an infield single, he moved up on a sac bunt, and then Kento Tatebe hit a double that scored him, 1-1. Meiji came back in the bottom of the 3rd when Takashi Uemoto led off with a single, stole second, moved to third when captain Ikuhiro Takeda reached base on an error by second baseman Junpei Morimoto (aww), and then Uemoto scored on a single by Hiroaki Shimauchi, 2-1. Hosei evened it up in THEIR top of the 4th inning when freshman Ryosuke Itoh hit a HUGE homer to right field, 2-2.
Itoh, for the record, hit 94 home runs as a high schooler at Shinko Gakuen, and is one of these "golden freshman" types; I saw him play at Koshien, and then when I went to Hosei's ground in the preseason, they were already making it clear he'd be cracking the real lineup ASAP.
Also, Shimauchi got injured running during the May 7th game; as a friend described it, "he ran to 1st base and when he got there, his leg kinda gave out and he stumbled." After the game they saw him going to the hospital in a taxi, and he sat out the rest of the Todai series. But I guess it wasn't too bad, because he played the weekend after that.
Anyway, the tie game didn't last long; in the bottom of the 4th, Yusuke Nomura led off with a single (BOTH pitchers got singles in their first 2 at-bats!), Yosuke Kobayashi bunted him up, he went to 3rd on a single by Masataka Nakamura, and then scored on an RBI single by Takeda. 3-2.
Hosei would never actually score any more for the rest of the game. Mikami only pitched 4 innings before sophomore Hirohisa Umeda took the mound in the 5th. Umeda pitched one decent inning, but then gave up 2 runs in the 6th, hitting Kobayashi with a pitch and walking Nakamura; Uemoto sac bunted them up and then Takeda got two more RBIs on a blooper fly kind of single to the infield which landed behind second base. 5-2. Kazuki Mishima finished out the last 2 innings with 3 strikeouts and no runs, though, so that was good.
Nomura only pitched the first 7 innings, while Takayuki Morita pitched the last 2 for Meiji, and he also got 3 strikeouts and no runs.
Game 2
Amidst a bunch of light rain, Hosei and Meiji met for their second game, with Kazuki Mishima taking the mound for Hosei and Gota Nanba for Meiji. All was normal through 7 innings; Meiji was up 1-0 on an RBI single by Nakamura. Kazuki Funamoto took over to pitch in the top of the 8th, and THEN in the bottom of the 8th, suddenly Hosei surged for 3 runs. Junpei Morimoto singled, and Taki hit a popout, but then Hasegawa got a single to center that put runners at the corners. During Naoki Harada's at-bat, a wild pitch scored Morimoto to make it 1-1, and Harada struck out. It was, of course, at that moment that Ryosuke Itoh hit his second homerun against Meiji, a 2-run shot to right, that scored Hasegawa and him, and made it 3-1. Shogo Shibata and Tomoya Kumabe (!) got the next 3 batters out to end the threat.
But they couldn't account for the WEATHER.
Meiji had 2 on and 2 out in the top of the 9th and the game got called due to rain, with Hosei winning 3-1.
So the series was tied at 1 game each.
Game 3
As mentioned in the short post before this one, Game 3 was where Mikami and Nomura had a rematch against each other. Meiji couldn't do anything against Mikami, amazingly, and Nomura gave up 2 runs in the 7th to Shohei Doi, a 2-RBI single. So Hosei won 2-0, and Nomura didn't get his 6th win of the year, but he DID get his 301th college career strikeout!
It's possible that he could get 6 wins in the spring and get to 30 wins, but kind of unlikely as he's never gotten that many in a semester before.
(BTW, in the time it took me to write up Week 7, Week 8 happened, and Keio did infact win the league! Hooray for Daisuke and Fukutani and Itoh!)
Showing posts with label Meiji. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meiji. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Yusuke Nomura - 300 K's!
Despite that Nomu-chan always seems to be avoiding me on purpose, I still have a great amount of respect for the kid. Hard to believe I've been watching him pitch for almost 4 years now, since he was a senior at Koryo high school and came within 2 innings of winning Koshien 2007 before running out of steam.
Meiji played their final series against Hosei this past weekend, and lost it under bizarre circumstances (more on that in another post). Nomura pitched and won Saturday, and pitched and lost Monday. But despite losing the game on Monday the 23rd, he struck out 9 Hosei batters, which put him at 68 strikeouts for the semester. He'd had 233 strikeouts before this semester, so it means he ends the season with 301. (Nikkan Sports)
He's averaged around 40-50 strikeouts per semester, so if he continues that in the fall, he'll probably be able to make it into the Big 6 career strikeout records between Mikinori Katoh's 5th-place position at 371 and the 6th-place tie between Noboru Akiyama and Kazuhito Tadano at 334. (From here.)
Meiji played their final series against Hosei this past weekend, and lost it under bizarre circumstances (more on that in another post). Nomura pitched and won Saturday, and pitched and lost Monday. But despite losing the game on Monday the 23rd, he struck out 9 Hosei batters, which put him at 68 strikeouts for the semester. He'd had 233 strikeouts before this semester, so it means he ends the season with 301. (Nikkan Sports)
He's averaged around 40-50 strikeouts per semester, so if he continues that in the fall, he'll probably be able to make it into the Big 6 career strikeout records between Mikinori Katoh's 5th-place position at 371 and the 6th-place tie between Noboru Akiyama and Kazuhito Tadano at 334. (From here.)
Friday, April 01, 2011
Friday Foto: Tomoyuki Sugano
This guy is going to get drafted this fall. There's just no way he won't. He's not only amazingly good, and can hit 97mph, but he's also Tatsunori Hara's nephew.
I went to the Meiji University baseball grounds today for a preseason game between Meiji and Tokai, and Sugano pitched the last 2 innings and retired every batter he faced, with 2 strikeouts. Unlike the Hosei-Chuo game the other day where I didn't get to meet Shimabukuro, this time I pretty much went down to the Tokai dugout and with another lady we beckoned Sugano to pretty-please come sign stuff for us, and he was gracious and polite, if a little bit like "...I've got to go really soon, sorry". But I was able to get a photo with him, so I was really happy about that!
Yusuke Nomura ignored me yet again, I think he just hates me. But I got to chat with a bunch of my other favorite Meiji boys, so that was good. Got signatures from Uemoto, Morita, Kumabe, and Ueda, and gave a bag of easter candy to captain Takeda. I told them that I was only going to be in Japan until the 12th, so I won't be able to see any of their league games. But they told me that there's a chance that the Big 6 League is going to try to hold 3 games per day on opening weekend -- so the games would start at like 8:30am, and it'd be Waseda-Todai, Keio-Rikkio, and Meiji-Hosei. That way, they can cancel a weekend later on and let the Yakult Swallows use Jingu for day games.
(Supposedly, if this happens, it'll be decided on April 4th. Which is why Meiji and Hosei are kind of trying to prepare to be ready to play on the 9th even though they're currently not scheduled for it yet.)
So, maybe I will get to see them play for real. Who knows.
And in super-pre-gossip, Kumabe told me that he's going to "work" at Honda Kumamoto next year! Lucky him for getting his job search out of the way early on, and for being level-headed enough to realize he's not going pro any time soon.
Also, for the record, Tokai won today's game 6-4. Meiji's Toshiki Abe hit two triples, though, which was exciting, and Tokai's Torai Fushimi, the cleanup batter and clearly the post-Koike starting catcher for Team Japan, hit two doubles, including a ground-rule one that bounced out of the field and that nobody could find. Fushimi is really good, and it was really a treat to see Tokai's team play.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Junpei Morimoto to Hosei! (And some other new Big 6 faces)
I know that basically only two readers of this blog probably have any idea who Junpei Morimoto is in the first place, but he's going to Hosei next year! I was just idly reading their list of incoming freshmen for the baseball club and that name leaped off the screen for me.
Basically, he was Chukyodai Chukyo's ace pitcher this last year after Shota Dobayashi graduated. I saw him at Koshien last summer (wow... I never wrote up that game) and also at Senbatsu this spring. Shin and I were there calling him Hichori as a joke, because he was Morimoto and wearing #1.
(Of course, you might also remember him if you saw the landslide Sojitsu 21-6 Chukyodai game at Koshien this summer, where he was responsible for giving up 11 runs...)
Anyway, it's just kind of neat to me because the Chukyodai guys in Big 6 have notoriously been very interesting to follow; both Keio and Hosei have Chukyodai guys as captains (Hayata Itoh and Masashi Nanba respectively), Keio has Daisuke Takeuchi as an ace, and Hosei got Kanji Kawai as a freshman this past year, and I saw him hit a home run both at Koshien in HS and at Jingu as a college player! And Soma Uendo, while he still hasn't broken out as a player in league games, is also a really crazy guy with high aspirations. So we'll see.
Of course, I'm most likely not going to be around to see Morimoto play in college but I still think it's cool. Maybe I'll get to stalk him when I visit next fall.
Now, looking at Meiji's incoming freshmen list is even crazier, because this past week I not only went to a bounenkai with several guys on the Meiji team on Monday, but then on Tuesday I went to a bounenkai at Yuji Ohno's izakaya down in Tamachi. Yuji Ohno is a former Taiyo/Yakult/Yomiuri player, and his son is the cleanup batter for Yokohama Hayato HS, so they had a ton of Yokohama Hayato stuff up as well as all the stuff from Ohno's career. So I told him, "I saw your son's team play against Hanamaki Higashi! They lost... but the only guy I really remember is Imaoka-kun..."
Well, Imaoka-kun is going to Meiji next year, or so it seems! Wow! He was nicknamed the "Smiling Prince" for a bit there, Hohoemi Oji, though it obviously was not as big a media sensation as certain other Koshien princes.
The next most intriguing name to me on Meiji's list is Daiki Maehira, the cleanup batter from Konan HS, the team that won both spring and summer Koshien in 2010. I know a lot of the Konan boys are planning to go to college, which is great. Wonder if Maehira will develop kind of like Shashiki did (he also came to Meiji as a lefty slugging Koshien hero first baseman).
And they're also getting Junnosuke Takahashi from Nihon Bunri. I have to admit that it's interesting he's listed as a catcher; I remembered him as an infielder at Koshien in 2009 (there were two Takahashis on the team, and Yoshihito was a freshman at Tokaidai this year; Ken D was a big fan of his), as the Naoki-Naoki battery was the big story of that team.
Anyway, wow. That's really cool. Of course, who knows what'll happen to Big 6 in general next year. I had a long talk with Meiji's Kawashima-kun about it, and he was saying that pretty much all of the merchandising done in the last 3 years (calendars, baseball cards, t-shirts, etc) are all being discontinued now that Saitoh's gone, and instead, the teams have been asked to think of ways to get people to keep coming to Jingu without a big name. Which is really sad. Though, even the non-Waseda games last year drew several thousand people on the weekends, so you never know. Yusuke Nomura's a surefire draft pick next fall, as is Hayata Itoh, so one would hope people would at least come to see those guys play... and Shohei Habu and Keisuke Okazaki are sure to be hyped up next year as well.
On the other hand, hearing how stuff is already getting kind of crazy at Kamagaya because of Saitohmania, I'm somewhat glad I won't be around for that. Maybe I *should* be aiming to go to Yokohama more instead when I'm visiting next year...
EDIT> Photos to go with the stuff in this post:
Chukyodai's Junpei Morimoto at Koshien in the summer of 2009.
Ippei Imaoka, from Yokohama Hayato, at Koshien in 2009.
Kota Ohno, Yuji Ohno's son, batting cleanup for Hayato.
Year-end party with some of my Swallows cheering section friends at Yuji Ohno's restaurant (he's the guy in white on the right. I'm kind of behind him.)
"This is a really cool glass!" "They cost 600 yen each."
Yokohama Hayato stuff on the walls from their Koshien appearance.
Swallows jersey and other assorted stuff from Ohno's baseball career.
Basically, he was Chukyodai Chukyo's ace pitcher this last year after Shota Dobayashi graduated. I saw him at Koshien last summer (wow... I never wrote up that game) and also at Senbatsu this spring. Shin and I were there calling him Hichori as a joke, because he was Morimoto and wearing #1.
(Of course, you might also remember him if you saw the landslide Sojitsu 21-6 Chukyodai game at Koshien this summer, where he was responsible for giving up 11 runs...)
Anyway, it's just kind of neat to me because the Chukyodai guys in Big 6 have notoriously been very interesting to follow; both Keio and Hosei have Chukyodai guys as captains (Hayata Itoh and Masashi Nanba respectively), Keio has Daisuke Takeuchi as an ace, and Hosei got Kanji Kawai as a freshman this past year, and I saw him hit a home run both at Koshien in HS and at Jingu as a college player! And Soma Uendo, while he still hasn't broken out as a player in league games, is also a really crazy guy with high aspirations. So we'll see.
Of course, I'm most likely not going to be around to see Morimoto play in college but I still think it's cool. Maybe I'll get to stalk him when I visit next fall.
Now, looking at Meiji's incoming freshmen list is even crazier, because this past week I not only went to a bounenkai with several guys on the Meiji team on Monday, but then on Tuesday I went to a bounenkai at Yuji Ohno's izakaya down in Tamachi. Yuji Ohno is a former Taiyo/Yakult/Yomiuri player, and his son is the cleanup batter for Yokohama Hayato HS, so they had a ton of Yokohama Hayato stuff up as well as all the stuff from Ohno's career. So I told him, "I saw your son's team play against Hanamaki Higashi! They lost... but the only guy I really remember is Imaoka-kun..."
Well, Imaoka-kun is going to Meiji next year, or so it seems! Wow! He was nicknamed the "Smiling Prince" for a bit there, Hohoemi Oji, though it obviously was not as big a media sensation as certain other Koshien princes.
The next most intriguing name to me on Meiji's list is Daiki Maehira, the cleanup batter from Konan HS, the team that won both spring and summer Koshien in 2010. I know a lot of the Konan boys are planning to go to college, which is great. Wonder if Maehira will develop kind of like Shashiki did (he also came to Meiji as a lefty slugging Koshien hero first baseman).
And they're also getting Junnosuke Takahashi from Nihon Bunri. I have to admit that it's interesting he's listed as a catcher; I remembered him as an infielder at Koshien in 2009 (there were two Takahashis on the team, and Yoshihito was a freshman at Tokaidai this year; Ken D was a big fan of his), as the Naoki-Naoki battery was the big story of that team.
Anyway, wow. That's really cool. Of course, who knows what'll happen to Big 6 in general next year. I had a long talk with Meiji's Kawashima-kun about it, and he was saying that pretty much all of the merchandising done in the last 3 years (calendars, baseball cards, t-shirts, etc) are all being discontinued now that Saitoh's gone, and instead, the teams have been asked to think of ways to get people to keep coming to Jingu without a big name. Which is really sad. Though, even the non-Waseda games last year drew several thousand people on the weekends, so you never know. Yusuke Nomura's a surefire draft pick next fall, as is Hayata Itoh, so one would hope people would at least come to see those guys play... and Shohei Habu and Keisuke Okazaki are sure to be hyped up next year as well.
On the other hand, hearing how stuff is already getting kind of crazy at Kamagaya because of Saitohmania, I'm somewhat glad I won't be around for that. Maybe I *should* be aiming to go to Yokohama more instead when I'm visiting next year...
EDIT> Photos to go with the stuff in this post:
Chukyodai's Junpei Morimoto at Koshien in the summer of 2009.
Ippei Imaoka, from Yokohama Hayato, at Koshien in 2009.
Kota Ohno, Yuji Ohno's son, batting cleanup for Hayato.
Year-end party with some of my Swallows cheering section friends at Yuji Ohno's restaurant (he's the guy in white on the right. I'm kind of behind him.)
"This is a really cool glass!" "They cost 600 yen each."
Yokohama Hayato stuff on the walls from their Koshien appearance.
Swallows jersey and other assorted stuff from Ohno's baseball career.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Nishijima Signs?
Well, it's all over the Japanese news sources but the only one I can find in English is the LA Times plus a whole bunch of people copying and pasting from that article.
I'm not really sure what to say, as I knew that Nishijima and a few other Meiji boys were hoping to find ways into playing in the US next year, so I guess I should be happy for him. Except that before this year I was a much bigger Nishijima fan than I was after this year. Long story, really. (Or more like, a lot of long stories from various players and fans, and well, Nishijima himself blew me off the time I tried to talk to him, so.)
So let's call this a Friday Foto, I suppose:
Kazuki Nishijima, in his last weekend as an undergraduate pitcher, Oct 23 2010. He pitched one inning that day, and then 10 innings the next day. And for once people were saying "he did his best" rather than "boy, he's selfish".
Kazuki Nishijima throwing between innings. September 21, 2009.
Anyway, Nishijima's certainly not a bad pitcher, he's just inconsistent at times. He won the ERA title in the Big 6 last fall, but it kind of took a lot of people by surprise. He's a big lefty dude from Yokohama HS who can hit the low 140's on the radar gun, so he certainly has potential.
But part of why I have no good pictures of him from the left side is that I'm usually at Jingu for the Saturday ace games, and Nishijima has never in his 4 years been Meiji's ace, even in his ERA crown semester. His freshman year they had Kume (now with Softbank), his sophomore year they had Iwata (now with Chunichi), and by his junior year, sophomore Yusuke Nomura had taken the ace role. I think that's always kind of pissed him off since he was such a hotshot in high school.
(Actually, this is my favorite photo I've ever taken of Nishijima because he actually looks so excited and happy, which I never really saw out of him much. This was right before Meiji won the Fall 2009 championship.)
Also, for the record, Meiji announced their 2011 Team Leaders, and I guess Kumabe wasn't kidding when he told me "It's Ikuhiro!", because, yes, the next captain is Ikuhiro Takeda, who is a little infielder that barely appears in games. (Of course, the 2010 captain, Yamauchi, was a tiny catcher who ALSO barely appears in games.) Yosuke Kobayashi, Masataka Nakamura, and Yusuke Nomura are the vice-captains. Takayuki Morita is the pitching leader, which is kinda funny, but we'll see what shakes down with Meiji's pitching staff this year anyway.
EDIT> Hey, an actual announcement on MLB.com posted a few days after I made this post, with some comments from the guy who scouted him, etc.
I'm not really sure what to say, as I knew that Nishijima and a few other Meiji boys were hoping to find ways into playing in the US next year, so I guess I should be happy for him. Except that before this year I was a much bigger Nishijima fan than I was after this year. Long story, really. (Or more like, a lot of long stories from various players and fans, and well, Nishijima himself blew me off the time I tried to talk to him, so.)
So let's call this a Friday Foto, I suppose:
Kazuki Nishijima, in his last weekend as an undergraduate pitcher, Oct 23 2010. He pitched one inning that day, and then 10 innings the next day. And for once people were saying "he did his best" rather than "boy, he's selfish".
Kazuki Nishijima throwing between innings. September 21, 2009.
Anyway, Nishijima's certainly not a bad pitcher, he's just inconsistent at times. He won the ERA title in the Big 6 last fall, but it kind of took a lot of people by surprise. He's a big lefty dude from Yokohama HS who can hit the low 140's on the radar gun, so he certainly has potential.
But part of why I have no good pictures of him from the left side is that I'm usually at Jingu for the Saturday ace games, and Nishijima has never in his 4 years been Meiji's ace, even in his ERA crown semester. His freshman year they had Kume (now with Softbank), his sophomore year they had Iwata (now with Chunichi), and by his junior year, sophomore Yusuke Nomura had taken the ace role. I think that's always kind of pissed him off since he was such a hotshot in high school.
(Actually, this is my favorite photo I've ever taken of Nishijima because he actually looks so excited and happy, which I never really saw out of him much. This was right before Meiji won the Fall 2009 championship.)
Also, for the record, Meiji announced their 2011 Team Leaders, and I guess Kumabe wasn't kidding when he told me "It's Ikuhiro!", because, yes, the next captain is Ikuhiro Takeda, who is a little infielder that barely appears in games. (Of course, the 2010 captain, Yamauchi, was a tiny catcher who ALSO barely appears in games.) Yosuke Kobayashi, Masataka Nakamura, and Yusuke Nomura are the vice-captains. Takayuki Morita is the pitching leader, which is kinda funny, but we'll see what shakes down with Meiji's pitching staff this year anyway.
EDIT> Hey, an actual announcement on MLB.com posted a few days after I made this post, with some comments from the guy who scouted him, etc.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Tokyo Big 6, Week 7, Sunday - Retirements, Rikkio, and Rain
I spent the entire week writing about the draft instead of about last Sunday's games at Jingu. Whoops. So this entry is about October 24. I really wanted to clear it out of my pile before starting on more Soukeisen stuff, because it was ALSO a very interesting day.
On that Sunday, I showed up at Jingu at 10:30am. On my way in a bunch of high school ballplayers were jogging past me... they were from NICHIDAI SANKO! I didn't take a photo, and now I am kicking myself, as they went on to beat the crap out of Kokugakuin Kugayama 4-0 and claim a Senbatsu berth. (Their game was at Jingu #2 stadium, which is used mostly for high school ball, lower college leagues, and doubles as a golf shooting range as well.) Sanko is one of THE powerhouse baseball high schools of the Tokyo area, they regularly go to Koshien and steamroll everyone for the first few rounds, though though they also rarely make it past Best 8 for some reason.
But, the reason I was there early was that a friend of mine was giving me a free ticket to the games, and I wanted to get a front-row seat because I'd promised Kazuki Mishima that I'd take some nice photos of him one of these days, and this was my last chance, since he was the starting pitcher and it was Hosei's last game. Mishima actually saw me in the front row and kept looking my way, which was both awesome and yet disconcerting. I saw his girlfriend there too, but she was sitting behind home plate for this game. (Instead, this time it was backup bullpen catcher Tomoaki Kuroda's girlfriend sitting a few seats down from me, also taking photos.)
On the other hand, it made for some nice shots. I rarely ever actually get any with the player facing my camera, but it wasn't a problem this time:
The starting pitcher for Todai was Shota Suzuki, the freshman who actually WON A GAME this semester. Suzuki went into this game with a 1-4 record and a 2.83 ERA, which is actually ridiculously good for a Todai pitcher. By comparison, captain and "ace" Yoshihiro Maeda went into the weekend 0-4 with a 5.48 ERA. Maeda, the true hero of Sunday's game, came out of the weekend 0-5 4.91, while Suzuki came out 1-5, 4.58.
Yes, you read that right. Suzuki's ERA went up almost 2 points in this one game, because he faced 9 batters, managed to record one out, which was a sac bunt, and gave up 8 runs, 7 of them earned, in that 1/3 of an inning. OUCH.
The top of the 1st inning lasted 33 minutes and took 13 batters and 2 pitchers to get through. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not:
Kawai singles to center. Runner at 1st.
Nanba sac bunts to 3rd. One out, runner at 2nd.
Hasegawa singles to left. One out, runners at 1st and 3rd.
Hasegawa steals second during Taki's AB.
Taki walks. Bases loaded.
Narita singles to right, Kawai and Hasegawa score, Taki to 3rd. 2-0.
Hiromoto singles to center, Taki scores, Narita to 3rd. 3-0.
Tatebe walks. Bases loaded.
Matsumoto doubles to left, Narita and Hiromoto score, Tatebe to 3rd. 5-0.
Mishima ALSO doubles, to right. Tatebe and Matsumoto score. 7-0.
Suzuki is "mercifully" relieved of his duties and captain Yoshihiro Maeda takes over on the mound, despite starting and losing Saturday's game too.
Kawai grounds out to second; Mishima moves to 3rd. Two down, runner at 3rd.
Nanba grounds to second but Utsumi boots the ball for an error; Mishima scores. Two down, runner at 1st. 8-0.
Nanba steals second during Hasegawa's at-bat.
Hasegawa doubles to left. Nanba scores. 9-0.
Taki grounds out to second for real to end the inning.
Shota Suzuki.
Yoshihiro Maeda.
I'm going to tell you something very funny: from that point in the game, Maeda actually allowed less baserunners (6) and earned runs (1) in his 8 2/3 innings pitched than Mishima did in his 7 innings pitched (10 baserunners, 2 earned runs).
Infact, if the Todai batters could run a little faster, or had a little more baseball sense for that kind of thing, I think they should have even gotten more than 2 runs off 10 hits!
Takashi Kihara led off the bottom of the 2nd with a single, was bunted up by Horiguchi. Shota Utsumi also singled cleanly to center, but rather than scoring from second, Kihara only made it to third. He finally scored when the next batter Atsushi Tanaka singled as well, making it 9-1.
The other Todai run came in the bottom of the 4th, when Horiguchi led off with a single, and two batters later advanced to second on another single by Tanaka. Then pitcher Maeda went to bunt up those runners... and laid down such a perfect bunt that he ended up being safe, loading the bases! Unfortunately, Yamakoshi grounded into a fielder's choice 6-2, getting the runner at home and keeping the bases loaded. But Hisanari Takayama singled to bring home Tanaka, making it 9-2.
That was all Todai could string together in the form of offense, though.
Hosei got two more runs in the top of the 8th; Tatebe got on base via a throwing error by Todai shortstop Iwasaki, and Matsumoto walked. (Tatebe stole second during Matsumoto's AB and then advanced to third on a pop fly out by Seiya Ohyagi.) Matsumoto also stole second during Kanji Kawai's at-bat, so Kawai's single to center brought home both Tatebe and Matsumoto to make it 11-2.
Hosei sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama pitched the 8th inning and lefty Ryoto Yoshikoshi pitched the 9th. I was originally going to go up to the Hosei cheering seats when Mishima left the mound, but Kitayama is way too interesting to take photos of, so I stayed up front for the entire game. (I had the same problem with sidearmer Kohei Nishi before he graduated last year. So WEIRD!)
I felt terrible for Maeda-kun though. I moved my stuff over to the 1st-base side after Game 1, and my friends were like "Maeda was crying and could barely address the fans -- it was his last game and he tried so hard," and I said "He DID. I was really impressed."
(The next day I saw this article in the paper, where Maeda's quoted as saying "I really wanted to win ONE game. Pitching from the mound at Jingu was the best and I don't want to ever forget the way this looked and felt." In his 3 years pitching for Todai, Maeda appeared in 38 games and his record was a whopping 0 wins and 23 losses. You have to feel bad for a guy like that. And here's another article about Maeda, as the "Akamon Ace". (Akamon is the red gate landmark in front of one of the Tokyo University campuses.) Since he's quitting baseball after college, it's just really a shame.
Teams line up to bow to each other.
Then they bow to their fans (and you can see the 11-2 scoreboard here). This was the last game for the 4th-year players. Even some guys who weren't officially on the active roster, like Yoh Sasaki, were still there in the dugout with the team.
Hosei captain Seiya Ohyagi gets interviewed.
And a few more shots from during the game...
Mishima on the mound.
Mishima at bat.
Todai's Maeda-captain at bat.
Shuhei Iwasaki, who I am betting will be captain next year.
Of course no day at Jingu is complete for me without stalking Kagami.
Sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama.
He not only holds the ball at a weird angle that makes you wonder why his wrist hasn't fallen off yet,
but also makes you wonder why his elbow hasn't fallen off yet either.
It's the last game of the semester for the ouendan too -- and the last game ever for the graduating seniors -- so they also addressed the fans after the game.
So, Game 2 was Meiji-Rikkio, starting 30 minutes after Game 1 ended. As I mentioned, I moved my stuff to the Meiji side where my friends were sitting, and then went outside for... I'm not sure what exactly. I guess I wanted to try to say goodbye to some of the Hosei players, and to some of my friends who cheer for them. A few people had mentioned to me that there would be a retirement ceremony outside Jingu for the graduating seniors, so I figured I should check that out too.
You'll never believe what happened, though -- on my way over to the Hosei gathering place, I saw a boy walk by in a Rikkio blazer and I'm thinking WAIT A MINUTE I KNOW THAT FACE HEY ISN'T THAT and before I was really aware of what I was doing, I said to him, "Hey, you're Hirahara-kun, aren't you? From Teikyo?"
He stopped, looked at me quizzically like "...yes, I am..."
My brain just spilled forth, the most surprising thing probably being that I didn't stutter but managed to get this all out in reasonable Japanese. "OMG I was a huge fan of yours in high school I went to Koshien last summer and saw you play I've cheered for Teikyo for a while I thought you were a great pitcher and 3rd baseman I saw you guys beat Tsuruga Kehi um, can I get a photo with you? Please?"
He seemed surprised, maybe confused, but flattered, and said sure. I ended up tagging a random Hosei-related friend of mine I saw go by at the moment to take the photo. It didn't come out so well, but I'm still really happy about it:
As usual, ballplayers don't smile in photos with fans usually... and also as usual I am totally on the wrong plane rather than standing next to him. Whoops. BUT... who cares! I mean, here is a kid I watched win a game at Koshien! For Teikyo! Seriously, I was just totally psyched to meet him, even if maybe I freaked him out a little. Really, I'm pretty proud of myself for actually recognizing him and tagging him -- that would have NEVER happened a year ago.
I showed him that I have a whole bunch of Teikyo charms on my cellphone, which I think led some credibility to my story... I said that I went to Koshien to cheer for Teikyo both last summer and this spring, and to the Tokyo regionals too. I asked if he'd be appearing in the rookie tournament, but he said it was pretty unlikely, there are a lot of really good freshmen at Rikkio this year and a LOT of strong sophomores, most of whom are regulars on the normal team anyway.
So after that excitement, I continued on to where a bunch of the Hosei baseball club guys who aren't on the active roster right now were hanging out, and asked them what was up. They basically told me that there'd be a ceremony but it wasn't likely to start for a while, until all the ouendan and brass band people got set up, and the seniors all assembled and came out, since some had been playing in the game and some were just at Jingu to cheer for the team and to be part of the retirement.
In the meantime, the guys were mostly hanging out and messing around, which was amusing. Some of them were being silly and dressing in Halloween costumes. The most ridiculous was this one:
That's sophomore Soma Uendo, from Chukyodai Chukyo (a year before they won it all at Koshien, he's Daisuke Takeuchi's classmate). He's a pretty crazy kid. And his name is spelled 上戸 which almost always gets misread either as Ueto or Joko. Even in a college ball magazine they mispelled the kana as Ueto. Oops. Either way, I guess he really likes taiyaki.
I hung out for a while either talking to people or just kind of watching people set up and whatever. Eventually the seniors and current players did come out; though a lot of them were looking for vantage points to either harrass the seniors or to take photos from. And last year's student 1st-base coach Kitao was also there; it took me forever to remember who he was since in my mind he was always just "not Abe-chan".
The gathering finally started around 2:45pm, about an hour after the first game ended. By this point I knew the second game was well underway, since we could hear the Rikkio marching band. But I also figured that by that point I was committed to the Hosei thing, plus I was genuinely curious about it anyway.
Eventually when the seniors got there, before the actual procession started, things started off with a BANG! Well... that is, the seniors yelled some stuff, the underclassmen yelled some stuff, and then two of them got into a fight:
"Oi! You seniors!"
"Yeah? What do YOU want? Especially the freaks in the back dressed like Spiderman?"
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
"You guys better cool down. Here's some Cold Spray to help."
A sign things were going to start was first that some cheerleader girls came around handing people confetti to throw on the seniors as they paraded by:
And then things calmed down for a minute or two...
Co-captain Yoh Sasaki on the left. And the 4th-years in the ouendan club also got prepared to go through the confetti parade, at right.
Here we go! Running! And confetti! The marching band played the Hosei fight song as this was all going on, too.
I can't help but stalk Kagami; here he is kind of heading up the back of the parading seniors.
Once all of the ouendan leaders and players got into the space under the Jingu arches, the ceremony started. I was way too far back and on the side to really hear everything that happened, though I could catch some of it. The Hosei club also has a page up about the retirement ceremony with a few photos.
First guy up was Kagami; the ouendan leader spent a while extolling the virtues of our ace, about how he was a Waseda-killer and had anchored the Hosei pitching and been a leader for everyone and a role model for the younger players with his work ethic and all. The ouendan yelled a cheer for him and one of the other players gave him flowers.
And well, that's about how it went for every guy. I stayed for about 10 of them, of whom I actually knew 5 for real. But even for the players who had never appeared in a league game, they still talked about what the guy had done for his 4 years in the club, and yelled a cheer for him.
Kento Kameda... who has at least appeared in enough games that I'm familiar with him.
Due to being so far back anyway, and having already seen Kagami, I ended up giving up after a bit and found one of the guys I knew in the crowd and asked if there would be anything else after this player-introduction part, and he said no, not really, and I said that I had friends waiting for me inside the stadium, so I really ought to go join them. So I did that.
On the way in, I saw some people coming out of the Sanko game, and found out that indeed, Nichidai San had just claimed a Senbatsu spot. Good for them.
When I got back into Jingu and to where my group was sitting on the Meiji side, it was already 0-0 in the 5th inning. Fast game! This was the view to my right:
Kazuki Nishijima had started for Meiji and was still pitching. Yuho Yabe started for Rikkio but came out of the game pretty much right around when I got there, and Kenya Okabe took over for him.
But it stayed tied 0-0 for quite some time.
Meiji loaded the bases in their half of the 7th when Okabe hit both Uemoto and Katsuya Kawashima, but they couldn't get a run in.
It started raining around 4:45pm, and lots of fans made an exodus to the covered area behind home plate... while the rest of us idiots got out plastic bags and raincoats.
The score was still 0-0 in the 9th, and Meiji couldn't put up a run in their half, and the rain was falling, and it went into extra innings, with Kazuki Nishijima STILL pitching for Meiji.
Rikkio's Ryuichi Maeda led off the top of the 10th with a single to left, and Sekine pinch-ran for him... and was immediately caught stealing second. One down.
Kitada struck out after that. Two down.
But then Yuki Maeda singled to center.
And pitcher Okabe... walked.
And Koichiro Matsumoto... ALSO walked. Bases loaded.
And would you believe it but Ryugoro Mogi ALSO walked. Oshidashi! 1-0.
At this point, having walked in a run, and having thrown 134 pitches, and being completely soaking wet, Nishijima came out of the game. Takayuki Morita took the mound...
...and promptly gave up a single to captain Soichiro Tanaka. Okabe and Matsumoto scored. 3-0.
Okazaki ALSO walked to load the bases again, but Fujita hit a fly out to second to end the inning.
Meiji, to their credit, also loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th; Shimauchi got a hit, and Yajima reached base on an error, and Abe walked. So, bases loaded. But Kenji Kawabe pinch-hit, and while he isn't a bad hitter, he chose this moment to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. Game over, Rikkio wins 3-0.
As you can see, by the time it ended at almost 6pm, Jingu was quite cold and quite wet, and umbrellas were all over the parts of the stands that still had people:
Yeah.
I thought it might be neat to catch a final Meiji ceremony -- and Yusuke Nomura had promised a signature! But no, thanks to the rain and thanks to Meiji losing, there was pretty much no chance to stalk anyone, the players were in a sour mood and I didn't want my stuff getting wet anyway.
And then I found out that they don't have a final ceremony with the players and band and ouendan anyway, because they don't actually have a cohesive ouendan club, or something weird like that.
Hosei had won their series against Todai after those two games, but Meiji and Rikkio faced off a third time on Monday, where Meiji won 11-7 in what was a huge slugfest of sorts from what I heard, combined with a bunch of "must... play... seniors... and... freshmen..." All of Meiji's pitchers were either freshmen (Sekiya and Takayuki Oka, the first 7.2 innings) or seniors getting their last chance to appear in a game (Nakamichi, Kondoh, and Nagai, the last 1.2 innings). The game and series didn't actually matter for the standings at all, so. Fumiya Araki collected a double and two triples -- his only extra-base hits of the season, and raised his average to .302, though I doubt that actually had any effect on him getting drafted 4 days later.
Week 7 decided the standings for the bottom 3 teams, at least:
Hosei was guaranteed a finish in the top half, at least. Yay!
And thus, we went into Week 8, Soukeisen/Keisousen, to determine the actual winner of the league. Waseda was favored to win, but Keio had a shot if they could win 2 games in a row against Waseda in Soukeisen to tie their W/L/SP record, and then win a forced playoff game as well... (and at the time of this finally being finished, that is EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. I love this Keio team.)
On that Sunday, I showed up at Jingu at 10:30am. On my way in a bunch of high school ballplayers were jogging past me... they were from NICHIDAI SANKO! I didn't take a photo, and now I am kicking myself, as they went on to beat the crap out of Kokugakuin Kugayama 4-0 and claim a Senbatsu berth. (Their game was at Jingu #2 stadium, which is used mostly for high school ball, lower college leagues, and doubles as a golf shooting range as well.) Sanko is one of THE powerhouse baseball high schools of the Tokyo area, they regularly go to Koshien and steamroll everyone for the first few rounds, though though they also rarely make it past Best 8 for some reason.
But, the reason I was there early was that a friend of mine was giving me a free ticket to the games, and I wanted to get a front-row seat because I'd promised Kazuki Mishima that I'd take some nice photos of him one of these days, and this was my last chance, since he was the starting pitcher and it was Hosei's last game. Mishima actually saw me in the front row and kept looking my way, which was both awesome and yet disconcerting. I saw his girlfriend there too, but she was sitting behind home plate for this game. (Instead, this time it was backup bullpen catcher Tomoaki Kuroda's girlfriend sitting a few seats down from me, also taking photos.)
On the other hand, it made for some nice shots. I rarely ever actually get any with the player facing my camera, but it wasn't a problem this time:
The starting pitcher for Todai was Shota Suzuki, the freshman who actually WON A GAME this semester. Suzuki went into this game with a 1-4 record and a 2.83 ERA, which is actually ridiculously good for a Todai pitcher. By comparison, captain and "ace" Yoshihiro Maeda went into the weekend 0-4 with a 5.48 ERA. Maeda, the true hero of Sunday's game, came out of the weekend 0-5 4.91, while Suzuki came out 1-5, 4.58.
Yes, you read that right. Suzuki's ERA went up almost 2 points in this one game, because he faced 9 batters, managed to record one out, which was a sac bunt, and gave up 8 runs, 7 of them earned, in that 1/3 of an inning. OUCH.
The top of the 1st inning lasted 33 minutes and took 13 batters and 2 pitchers to get through. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not:
Kawai singles to center. Runner at 1st.
Nanba sac bunts to 3rd. One out, runner at 2nd.
Hasegawa singles to left. One out, runners at 1st and 3rd.
Hasegawa steals second during Taki's AB.
Taki walks. Bases loaded.
Narita singles to right, Kawai and Hasegawa score, Taki to 3rd. 2-0.
Hiromoto singles to center, Taki scores, Narita to 3rd. 3-0.
Tatebe walks. Bases loaded.
Matsumoto doubles to left, Narita and Hiromoto score, Tatebe to 3rd. 5-0.
Mishima ALSO doubles, to right. Tatebe and Matsumoto score. 7-0.
Suzuki is "mercifully" relieved of his duties and captain Yoshihiro Maeda takes over on the mound, despite starting and losing Saturday's game too.
Kawai grounds out to second; Mishima moves to 3rd. Two down, runner at 3rd.
Nanba grounds to second but Utsumi boots the ball for an error; Mishima scores. Two down, runner at 1st. 8-0.
Nanba steals second during Hasegawa's at-bat.
Hasegawa doubles to left. Nanba scores. 9-0.
Taki grounds out to second for real to end the inning.
Shota Suzuki.
Yoshihiro Maeda.
I'm going to tell you something very funny: from that point in the game, Maeda actually allowed less baserunners (6) and earned runs (1) in his 8 2/3 innings pitched than Mishima did in his 7 innings pitched (10 baserunners, 2 earned runs).
Infact, if the Todai batters could run a little faster, or had a little more baseball sense for that kind of thing, I think they should have even gotten more than 2 runs off 10 hits!
Takashi Kihara led off the bottom of the 2nd with a single, was bunted up by Horiguchi. Shota Utsumi also singled cleanly to center, but rather than scoring from second, Kihara only made it to third. He finally scored when the next batter Atsushi Tanaka singled as well, making it 9-1.
The other Todai run came in the bottom of the 4th, when Horiguchi led off with a single, and two batters later advanced to second on another single by Tanaka. Then pitcher Maeda went to bunt up those runners... and laid down such a perfect bunt that he ended up being safe, loading the bases! Unfortunately, Yamakoshi grounded into a fielder's choice 6-2, getting the runner at home and keeping the bases loaded. But Hisanari Takayama singled to bring home Tanaka, making it 9-2.
That was all Todai could string together in the form of offense, though.
Hosei got two more runs in the top of the 8th; Tatebe got on base via a throwing error by Todai shortstop Iwasaki, and Matsumoto walked. (Tatebe stole second during Matsumoto's AB and then advanced to third on a pop fly out by Seiya Ohyagi.) Matsumoto also stole second during Kanji Kawai's at-bat, so Kawai's single to center brought home both Tatebe and Matsumoto to make it 11-2.
Hosei sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama pitched the 8th inning and lefty Ryoto Yoshikoshi pitched the 9th. I was originally going to go up to the Hosei cheering seats when Mishima left the mound, but Kitayama is way too interesting to take photos of, so I stayed up front for the entire game. (I had the same problem with sidearmer Kohei Nishi before he graduated last year. So WEIRD!)
I felt terrible for Maeda-kun though. I moved my stuff over to the 1st-base side after Game 1, and my friends were like "Maeda was crying and could barely address the fans -- it was his last game and he tried so hard," and I said "He DID. I was really impressed."
(The next day I saw this article in the paper, where Maeda's quoted as saying "I really wanted to win ONE game. Pitching from the mound at Jingu was the best and I don't want to ever forget the way this looked and felt." In his 3 years pitching for Todai, Maeda appeared in 38 games and his record was a whopping 0 wins and 23 losses. You have to feel bad for a guy like that. And here's another article about Maeda, as the "Akamon Ace". (Akamon is the red gate landmark in front of one of the Tokyo University campuses.) Since he's quitting baseball after college, it's just really a shame.
Teams line up to bow to each other.
Then they bow to their fans (and you can see the 11-2 scoreboard here). This was the last game for the 4th-year players. Even some guys who weren't officially on the active roster, like Yoh Sasaki, were still there in the dugout with the team.
Hosei captain Seiya Ohyagi gets interviewed.
And a few more shots from during the game...
Mishima on the mound.
Mishima at bat.
Todai's Maeda-captain at bat.
Shuhei Iwasaki, who I am betting will be captain next year.
Of course no day at Jingu is complete for me without stalking Kagami.
Sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama.
He not only holds the ball at a weird angle that makes you wonder why his wrist hasn't fallen off yet,
but also makes you wonder why his elbow hasn't fallen off yet either.
It's the last game of the semester for the ouendan too -- and the last game ever for the graduating seniors -- so they also addressed the fans after the game.
So, Game 2 was Meiji-Rikkio, starting 30 minutes after Game 1 ended. As I mentioned, I moved my stuff to the Meiji side where my friends were sitting, and then went outside for... I'm not sure what exactly. I guess I wanted to try to say goodbye to some of the Hosei players, and to some of my friends who cheer for them. A few people had mentioned to me that there would be a retirement ceremony outside Jingu for the graduating seniors, so I figured I should check that out too.
You'll never believe what happened, though -- on my way over to the Hosei gathering place, I saw a boy walk by in a Rikkio blazer and I'm thinking WAIT A MINUTE I KNOW THAT FACE HEY ISN'T THAT and before I was really aware of what I was doing, I said to him, "Hey, you're Hirahara-kun, aren't you? From Teikyo?"
He stopped, looked at me quizzically like "...yes, I am..."
My brain just spilled forth, the most surprising thing probably being that I didn't stutter but managed to get this all out in reasonable Japanese. "OMG I was a huge fan of yours in high school I went to Koshien last summer and saw you play I've cheered for Teikyo for a while I thought you were a great pitcher and 3rd baseman I saw you guys beat Tsuruga Kehi um, can I get a photo with you? Please?"
He seemed surprised, maybe confused, but flattered, and said sure. I ended up tagging a random Hosei-related friend of mine I saw go by at the moment to take the photo. It didn't come out so well, but I'm still really happy about it:
As usual, ballplayers don't smile in photos with fans usually... and also as usual I am totally on the wrong plane rather than standing next to him. Whoops. BUT... who cares! I mean, here is a kid I watched win a game at Koshien! For Teikyo! Seriously, I was just totally psyched to meet him, even if maybe I freaked him out a little. Really, I'm pretty proud of myself for actually recognizing him and tagging him -- that would have NEVER happened a year ago.
I showed him that I have a whole bunch of Teikyo charms on my cellphone, which I think led some credibility to my story... I said that I went to Koshien to cheer for Teikyo both last summer and this spring, and to the Tokyo regionals too. I asked if he'd be appearing in the rookie tournament, but he said it was pretty unlikely, there are a lot of really good freshmen at Rikkio this year and a LOT of strong sophomores, most of whom are regulars on the normal team anyway.
So after that excitement, I continued on to where a bunch of the Hosei baseball club guys who aren't on the active roster right now were hanging out, and asked them what was up. They basically told me that there'd be a ceremony but it wasn't likely to start for a while, until all the ouendan and brass band people got set up, and the seniors all assembled and came out, since some had been playing in the game and some were just at Jingu to cheer for the team and to be part of the retirement.
In the meantime, the guys were mostly hanging out and messing around, which was amusing. Some of them were being silly and dressing in Halloween costumes. The most ridiculous was this one:
That's sophomore Soma Uendo, from Chukyodai Chukyo (a year before they won it all at Koshien, he's Daisuke Takeuchi's classmate). He's a pretty crazy kid. And his name is spelled 上戸 which almost always gets misread either as Ueto or Joko. Even in a college ball magazine they mispelled the kana as Ueto. Oops. Either way, I guess he really likes taiyaki.
I hung out for a while either talking to people or just kind of watching people set up and whatever. Eventually the seniors and current players did come out; though a lot of them were looking for vantage points to either harrass the seniors or to take photos from. And last year's student 1st-base coach Kitao was also there; it took me forever to remember who he was since in my mind he was always just "not Abe-chan".
The gathering finally started around 2:45pm, about an hour after the first game ended. By this point I knew the second game was well underway, since we could hear the Rikkio marching band. But I also figured that by that point I was committed to the Hosei thing, plus I was genuinely curious about it anyway.
Eventually when the seniors got there, before the actual procession started, things started off with a BANG! Well... that is, the seniors yelled some stuff, the underclassmen yelled some stuff, and then two of them got into a fight:
"Oi! You seniors!"
"Yeah? What do YOU want? Especially the freaks in the back dressed like Spiderman?"
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
"You guys better cool down. Here's some Cold Spray to help."
A sign things were going to start was first that some cheerleader girls came around handing people confetti to throw on the seniors as they paraded by:
And then things calmed down for a minute or two...
Co-captain Yoh Sasaki on the left. And the 4th-years in the ouendan club also got prepared to go through the confetti parade, at right.
Here we go! Running! And confetti! The marching band played the Hosei fight song as this was all going on, too.
I can't help but stalk Kagami; here he is kind of heading up the back of the parading seniors.
Once all of the ouendan leaders and players got into the space under the Jingu arches, the ceremony started. I was way too far back and on the side to really hear everything that happened, though I could catch some of it. The Hosei club also has a page up about the retirement ceremony with a few photos.
First guy up was Kagami; the ouendan leader spent a while extolling the virtues of our ace, about how he was a Waseda-killer and had anchored the Hosei pitching and been a leader for everyone and a role model for the younger players with his work ethic and all. The ouendan yelled a cheer for him and one of the other players gave him flowers.
And well, that's about how it went for every guy. I stayed for about 10 of them, of whom I actually knew 5 for real. But even for the players who had never appeared in a league game, they still talked about what the guy had done for his 4 years in the club, and yelled a cheer for him.
Kento Kameda... who has at least appeared in enough games that I'm familiar with him.
Due to being so far back anyway, and having already seen Kagami, I ended up giving up after a bit and found one of the guys I knew in the crowd and asked if there would be anything else after this player-introduction part, and he said no, not really, and I said that I had friends waiting for me inside the stadium, so I really ought to go join them. So I did that.
On the way in, I saw some people coming out of the Sanko game, and found out that indeed, Nichidai San had just claimed a Senbatsu spot. Good for them.
When I got back into Jingu and to where my group was sitting on the Meiji side, it was already 0-0 in the 5th inning. Fast game! This was the view to my right:
Kazuki Nishijima had started for Meiji and was still pitching. Yuho Yabe started for Rikkio but came out of the game pretty much right around when I got there, and Kenya Okabe took over for him.
But it stayed tied 0-0 for quite some time.
Meiji loaded the bases in their half of the 7th when Okabe hit both Uemoto and Katsuya Kawashima, but they couldn't get a run in.
It started raining around 4:45pm, and lots of fans made an exodus to the covered area behind home plate... while the rest of us idiots got out plastic bags and raincoats.
The score was still 0-0 in the 9th, and Meiji couldn't put up a run in their half, and the rain was falling, and it went into extra innings, with Kazuki Nishijima STILL pitching for Meiji.
Rikkio's Ryuichi Maeda led off the top of the 10th with a single to left, and Sekine pinch-ran for him... and was immediately caught stealing second. One down.
Kitada struck out after that. Two down.
But then Yuki Maeda singled to center.
And pitcher Okabe... walked.
And Koichiro Matsumoto... ALSO walked. Bases loaded.
And would you believe it but Ryugoro Mogi ALSO walked. Oshidashi! 1-0.
At this point, having walked in a run, and having thrown 134 pitches, and being completely soaking wet, Nishijima came out of the game. Takayuki Morita took the mound...
...and promptly gave up a single to captain Soichiro Tanaka. Okabe and Matsumoto scored. 3-0.
Okazaki ALSO walked to load the bases again, but Fujita hit a fly out to second to end the inning.
Meiji, to their credit, also loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th; Shimauchi got a hit, and Yajima reached base on an error, and Abe walked. So, bases loaded. But Kenji Kawabe pinch-hit, and while he isn't a bad hitter, he chose this moment to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. Game over, Rikkio wins 3-0.
As you can see, by the time it ended at almost 6pm, Jingu was quite cold and quite wet, and umbrellas were all over the parts of the stands that still had people:
Yeah.
I thought it might be neat to catch a final Meiji ceremony -- and Yusuke Nomura had promised a signature! But no, thanks to the rain and thanks to Meiji losing, there was pretty much no chance to stalk anyone, the players were in a sour mood and I didn't want my stuff getting wet anyway.
And then I found out that they don't have a final ceremony with the players and band and ouendan anyway, because they don't actually have a cohesive ouendan club, or something weird like that.
Hosei had won their series against Todai after those two games, but Meiji and Rikkio faced off a third time on Monday, where Meiji won 11-7 in what was a huge slugfest of sorts from what I heard, combined with a bunch of "must... play... seniors... and... freshmen..." All of Meiji's pitchers were either freshmen (Sekiya and Takayuki Oka, the first 7.2 innings) or seniors getting their last chance to appear in a game (Nakamichi, Kondoh, and Nagai, the last 1.2 innings). The game and series didn't actually matter for the standings at all, so. Fumiya Araki collected a double and two triples -- his only extra-base hits of the season, and raised his average to .302, though I doubt that actually had any effect on him getting drafted 4 days later.
Week 7 decided the standings for the bottom 3 teams, at least:
G W L T SP WP%
1 Waseda 10 8 2 0 4 .800
2 Hosei 13 8 4 1 3 .667
3 Keio 12 6 4 2 3 .600
4 Meiji 13 7 6 0 3 .538
5 Rikkio 15 4 8 3 1 .333
6 Tokyo 11 1 10 0 0 .091
Hosei was guaranteed a finish in the top half, at least. Yay!
And thus, we went into Week 8, Soukeisen/Keisousen, to determine the actual winner of the league. Waseda was favored to win, but Keio had a shot if they could win 2 games in a row against Waseda in Soukeisen to tie their W/L/SP record, and then win a forced playoff game as well... (and at the time of this finally being finished, that is EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. I love this Keio team.)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Tokyo Big 6, Week 3 - First 5-Game Series in 20 Years
Week 3 was a non-Hosei week, so in theory I wasn't going to be all that interested in it. But you know that these things have a weird way of working out. I did go to one and a half games of Saturday, where I saw the tail end of the Keio-Rikkio game, and the entirety of the Meiji-Waseda game, though that is all I actually saw in person of this series.
The other thing about Week 3 is that rather than just being the weekend, it technically lasted for a week and a half -- it started on September 25 and ended on October 5th, thanks to some rain and to Keio and Rikkio getting into a 5-game deathmatch, the likes of which hadn't been seen in 20 years.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 1
Keio took the first game, 8-4.
It was rainy when I woke up that day and I decided to punt this game and do a double-header of Waseda-Meiji and Swallows-Giants instead.
But I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.
I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.
Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa doubled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.
I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds. It was pretty sparse out there, so I could spread out, BUT the sun was in my eyes the entire day, and it was a lot hotter than the weather forecast would have you believe.
Waseda - Meiji: Game 1
Waseda beat Meiji 4-2.
It was not a particularly exciting game, to be honest. Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji, and Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda. Waseda's first run came in on a throwing error by Meiji shortstop Abe in the 2nd inning (grounder by Hiroki Ohno), and two more runs came in on a triple by Hiroki Ohno in the 6th inning. Nomura struck out 9 in 7 innings, but those 3 runs gave him the loss. Gota Nanba gave up the 4th run to Waseda in the 8th inning, also unearned; Shohei Habu led off with a single, was bunted to second, stole 3rd during Hiroki Ohno's at-bat and Meiji catcher Yuki Yamauchi made a bad throw to 3rd to catch him, and Habu scored on that error.
(Oddly you could say, thus, that all of the runs scored occurred on Hiroki Ohno at-bats, but he only had 2 RBI.)
Meiji's first run was off Saitoh, on an RBI single by Sho Nishi, who has been tearing up the league this semester out of nowhere (he seriously has a line of .692/.750/1.077 after 4 games). The next one came in the 9th inning off closer Ohishi; Nishi led off with a bizarre double where 3 outfielders just let the ball fall, and he came in on a double by Yamauchi a bit later.
It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...
Waseda - Meiji : Game 2
Sunday was the day I went to watch hockey, so I wasn't at either game, though I followed them from afar. Meiji was beating Waseda 1-0 for most of the game, and Kazuki Nishijima was taking a 2-hit shutout into the bottom of the 9th inning, and then naturally out of nowhere I saw that suddenly Waseda had won 2-1.
What happened is, apparently, Udaka led off the bottom of the 9th with a single to left (and was replaced by Satoh as pinch-runner). Ayuki "Little Keijiro" Matsumoto bunted Satoh up to second. At this point, Nishijima was replaced on the mound by Takayuki Morita... and Kawanishi pinch-hit and walked on 4 straight pitches.
Yusuke Nomura came in to pitch. Sakuraba pinch-hit for Ichimaru and hit a fly out to center, making it two outs and runners at 1st and 2nd. Hiroki Matsunaga walked, loading the bases...
...and Shohei Habu, Nomura's teammate from Koryo, hit a double to center and that brought in two guys to score, winning the game.
By the way, Ohishi's line in 3 innings:
K, G4, K / K, D8, G3, K / K, K, L1
That's 10 batters faced and 6 strikeouts.
Just sayin'.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 2
In the afternoon, Rikkio and Keio tied their second game 0-0, with Masato Komuro and Koji Fukutani both going the distance. It was only a 9-inning game due to the league regulations for when there is a Yakult game in the evening.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 3
Well, as I also mentioned, it rained Sunday night. And continued raining into Monday, so the Big 6 games that day were rained out.
On Tuesday, Keio and Rikkio faced off again. This time, Keio was up 4-1 when I first looked at the game, on a Hayata Itoh 2-run homer, among other things. When I got back from classes and looked again, Rikkio had tied it up 4-4 on a Soichiro Tanaka solo homer in the 6th and a Ryuichi Maeda 2-RBI double in the 7th.
By the regulations, a 3rd game in the series is called a tie in 12 innings, so this ended up being a 4-4 12-inning tie. Daisuke Takeuchi and Koji Fukutani each pitched 6 innings for Keio, and Kenya Okabe came out of the game after giving up Itoh's home run; Hayato Saitoh pitched another 2 innings and then Masato Komuro pitched the last 7 innings for Rikkio.
As it turns out, this was the first time in TWENTY YEARS that big 6 had consecutive ties. How nuts is that?
Keio - Rikkio: Game 4
Tokyo Big 6 has the right to push Tohto League games out of Jingu for a day or two, so the 4th game of the Keio-Rikkio deathmatch happened on Wednesday, September 29th.
After both teams had run out of aces -- Daisuke and Fukutani had both already thrown 15 innings in this series, and Komuro had already thrown 16 (Okabe had thrown 9, but I hesitate to call him an "ace"), I wondered: Who was going to start THIS game?
The answer? Golden rookie Akihiro Hakumura for Keio, and 3rd-year Hayato Saitoh for Rikkio.
Well, needless to say, this game did not go so well for Hakumura. The first inning, both teams scored runs, an Okazaki RBI for Rikkio and an Itoh RBI for Keio.
Hakumura gave up a solo homer to catcher Yuki Maeda in the 2nd inning, walked a couple of guys, and apparently 3 unearned runs came in on an error, and that was it for Hakumura, who faced 12 batters, walked 6 of them, struck out 2, and gave up 2 RBI hits. I guess adjusting from his one pitching experience against Todai to pitching against the best power hitters in the league was a little bit of a rude awakening for him.
Though, the next pitcher was Kohei Yamagata, another freshman. He finished out through the 4th inning, only giving up one more run. Keio's catcher Kazumasa Matsumoto added an RBI single for Keio in the bottom of the 4th, making it 6-2 at that point.
Keio gave up on freshmen at that point and put in Fukutani and Daisuke to pitch the rest of the game (3 and 2 innings respectively), and the final score was 8-2 in favor of Rikkio. Rikkio's Hayato Saitoh only gave up the two runs to Keio in his 7 innings pitched, and Masato Komuro added 2 scoreless innings as well to his tally.
If you're keeping count, the series had so far gone Keio Win, Tie Game, Tie Game, Rikkio Win, and so there was no actual series winner yet, which forced the series into a 5th game for the first time in 20 years.
Interlude: 5-Game Serieses in Tokyo Big 6 League History
Most series in Big 6 are decided in 2 or 3 games. 4-game series aren't common, but they aren't rare either; I remember the last time it happened, which was Fall 2008 and Hosei had TWO 4-game serieses; one was the infamous one where Kagami struck out 26 Waseda batters in one weekend... and also threw 215 pitches in one game and lost 2-0 to Waseda in the 14th inning. The other was the last time Todai actually won a game before this season, and forced the 4th game in the series.
But in the 85-year history of the Tokyo Big 6 League, there have been exactly 12 series to go to 5 games, and there has NEVER been a 6-game series.
Because I was curious, I went and found a newspaper (like, one made of actual paper) article that listed all the 5-game series in Big 6 history:
Pretty nuts, huh? There's only been one time in history that there were 3 tie games in a row, and only 5 times that there were 2 ties in a row.
I also find it somewhat amusing that Keio and Rikkio are involved in these huge series more than any other schools. (For the record, the school with the most tie games in history, up through Spring 2010, is Hosei with 104. Meiji is second with 92, Rikkio is third with 87, and Keio and Waseda were tied with 81 before this season started.)
Keio - Rikkio: Game 5
After Game 5 was forced, they announced that rather than happening on Thursday, September 30th, it would happen the day after Week 4 finished up. This is because, technically, Tohto League still had to get in their ostensible 2-game series that week as well, so Toyo-Aogaku and Chuo-Kokushi had their games scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Get this, though, it rained on Thursday, so they were only able to play one game of their matchup on Friday, and will finish out that series... sometime, but we still don't know when, because of course it depends on Big 6 and the Big Weather Gods In The Sky. Tohto League is supposed to finish up right before Draft Day -- but that may not happen this year.
Anyway, Week 4 was "normal" in terms of only taking 3 days to resolve itself, although it was abnormal in that 5th place Hosei beat Keio 2 games to 0, and even MORE abnormal in that Todai beat Waseda. Hell, Todai winning a game at all is abnormal, but beating Waseda is even MORE crazy, and beating Yuki Saitoh is unheard of. More on that later.
Actually, Hosei probably beat Keio just because Keio was worn out after their ongoing battle with Rikkio; these guys don't usually play actual league matches every day for over a week and a half.
So, Game 5 started at 1pm on Tuesday, October 5th. There was a Yakult game in the evening, but that shouldn't have been an issue, assuming the game would be over by 3-3:30, right?
Well, with a bizarre series like this, one should NEVER assume ANYTHING.
Coming into this game, in addition to all the innings already logged in the Keio-Rikkio series, Daisuke Takeuchi pitched a complete game against Hosei on Saturday, and Fukutani pitched 5 innings on Sunday (Yamagata pitched one more, and Naohiko Tadano finished out the last 2 innings).
So of course, having thrown 26 innings in 5 games over the course of a week, the start for this game ALSO went to Daisuke Takeuchi. I just hope he can still raise his arm over his head by the time he turns 21 next summer.
Rikkio had a vague advantage in that their ace, Masato Komuro, was not only rested, but in his 18 innings pitched over this series so far, he had yet to give up an earned run. On the other hand, Rikkio had a vague disadvantage in that they didn't have a second ace to compliment their first one.
Anyway, what happened is: Komuro lasted 6 innings, Daisuke lasted 4, and after those first 6 innings, the game was tied 3-3. Keio's Ryuta Iba hit a 2-run homer to tie the game up in the 6th inning. So much for Komuro's spotless record.
Fukutani took over on the mound for Keio and Hayato Saitoh took over for Rikkio and neither would budge for the next 7 innings. Fukutani walked a ton of guys and yet somehow Rikkio couldn't push their runners past 2nd base. In the meantime, the time went on and on, past 5pm. It got to be the 14th inning and the game was looking likely to end in a tie and cause the first-ever 6-game series in Big 6 history, because with a pro game in the evening, they have to stop the game at whatever inning they're at when they reach 5pm...
Anyway, in the top of the 14th, it seems that Hiroshi Aoyama led off with a single to left -- and reached second on a throwing error of some sort by Rikkio left fielder Hasegawa. Ren Yamasaki then managed to get an RBI hit that brought in Aoyama to finally make the score 4-3. Yamasaki went to 2nd on a dropped pitch, and was bunted to third, and then scored on a sac fly by Yasuhiro Takao to make the score 5-3.
Rikkio loaded the bases in the bottom of the 14th on two hits and a walk, at which point Keio switched pitchers to 4th-year Hironori Tanaka, making his first appearance of the semester. He struck out Masakazu Shiina, pinch-hitting in the pitcher's slot, and got Naoshi Hasegawa to ground out to short, ending the game with Keio winning 5-3. The game lasted 4 hours and 17 minutes.
(The entire SERIES lasted 14 hours and 35 minutes.)
The craziest thing is that when I arrived at Jingu that evening for the Swallows-Tigers game, around 5:45, I ran into one of my college ball friends and a bunch of the Keio players standing outside, in a general round of "What are you doing here?" (Bizarrely, it was Fuchigami-kun who actually noticed me first and nodded hello, so I came over to him and a few other players say an overly-appropriate "otsukaresama", which literally means "You must be exhausted", but is usually just used to mean "Good job.") They all pretty much looked like they wanted nothing more than to get back to their dorm and take a nice long bath and a nice long nap. I was happy that I could see them and say hi though, since I'd missed the entire weekend of Big 6 ball while down in Nagoya. And it was also good to get to congratulate them on finally ending the series, and on winning it as well. Hooray!
Of course, now that I'm finally done writing Week 3 up, I still have Week 4, and Week 5 is about to start tomorrow (Monday) after raining out the entire weekend.
The other thing about Week 3 is that rather than just being the weekend, it technically lasted for a week and a half -- it started on September 25 and ended on October 5th, thanks to some rain and to Keio and Rikkio getting into a 5-game deathmatch, the likes of which hadn't been seen in 20 years.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 1
Keio took the first game, 8-4.
It was rainy when I woke up that day and I decided to punt this game and do a double-header of Waseda-Meiji and Swallows-Giants instead.
But I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.
I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.
Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa doubled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.
I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds. It was pretty sparse out there, so I could spread out, BUT the sun was in my eyes the entire day, and it was a lot hotter than the weather forecast would have you believe.
Waseda - Meiji: Game 1
Waseda beat Meiji 4-2.
It was not a particularly exciting game, to be honest. Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji, and Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda. Waseda's first run came in on a throwing error by Meiji shortstop Abe in the 2nd inning (grounder by Hiroki Ohno), and two more runs came in on a triple by Hiroki Ohno in the 6th inning. Nomura struck out 9 in 7 innings, but those 3 runs gave him the loss. Gota Nanba gave up the 4th run to Waseda in the 8th inning, also unearned; Shohei Habu led off with a single, was bunted to second, stole 3rd during Hiroki Ohno's at-bat and Meiji catcher Yuki Yamauchi made a bad throw to 3rd to catch him, and Habu scored on that error.
(Oddly you could say, thus, that all of the runs scored occurred on Hiroki Ohno at-bats, but he only had 2 RBI.)
Meiji's first run was off Saitoh, on an RBI single by Sho Nishi, who has been tearing up the league this semester out of nowhere (he seriously has a line of .692/.750/1.077 after 4 games). The next one came in the 9th inning off closer Ohishi; Nishi led off with a bizarre double where 3 outfielders just let the ball fall, and he came in on a double by Yamauchi a bit later.
It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...
Waseda - Meiji : Game 2
Sunday was the day I went to watch hockey, so I wasn't at either game, though I followed them from afar. Meiji was beating Waseda 1-0 for most of the game, and Kazuki Nishijima was taking a 2-hit shutout into the bottom of the 9th inning, and then naturally out of nowhere I saw that suddenly Waseda had won 2-1.
What happened is, apparently, Udaka led off the bottom of the 9th with a single to left (and was replaced by Satoh as pinch-runner). Ayuki "Little Keijiro" Matsumoto bunted Satoh up to second. At this point, Nishijima was replaced on the mound by Takayuki Morita... and Kawanishi pinch-hit and walked on 4 straight pitches.
Yusuke Nomura came in to pitch. Sakuraba pinch-hit for Ichimaru and hit a fly out to center, making it two outs and runners at 1st and 2nd. Hiroki Matsunaga walked, loading the bases...
...and Shohei Habu, Nomura's teammate from Koryo, hit a double to center and that brought in two guys to score, winning the game.
By the way, Ohishi's line in 3 innings:
K, G4, K / K, D8, G3, K / K, K, L1
That's 10 batters faced and 6 strikeouts.
Just sayin'.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 2
In the afternoon, Rikkio and Keio tied their second game 0-0, with Masato Komuro and Koji Fukutani both going the distance. It was only a 9-inning game due to the league regulations for when there is a Yakult game in the evening.
Keio - Rikkio: Game 3
Well, as I also mentioned, it rained Sunday night. And continued raining into Monday, so the Big 6 games that day were rained out.
On Tuesday, Keio and Rikkio faced off again. This time, Keio was up 4-1 when I first looked at the game, on a Hayata Itoh 2-run homer, among other things. When I got back from classes and looked again, Rikkio had tied it up 4-4 on a Soichiro Tanaka solo homer in the 6th and a Ryuichi Maeda 2-RBI double in the 7th.
By the regulations, a 3rd game in the series is called a tie in 12 innings, so this ended up being a 4-4 12-inning tie. Daisuke Takeuchi and Koji Fukutani each pitched 6 innings for Keio, and Kenya Okabe came out of the game after giving up Itoh's home run; Hayato Saitoh pitched another 2 innings and then Masato Komuro pitched the last 7 innings for Rikkio.
As it turns out, this was the first time in TWENTY YEARS that big 6 had consecutive ties. How nuts is that?
Keio - Rikkio: Game 4
Tokyo Big 6 has the right to push Tohto League games out of Jingu for a day or two, so the 4th game of the Keio-Rikkio deathmatch happened on Wednesday, September 29th.
After both teams had run out of aces -- Daisuke and Fukutani had both already thrown 15 innings in this series, and Komuro had already thrown 16 (Okabe had thrown 9, but I hesitate to call him an "ace"), I wondered: Who was going to start THIS game?
The answer? Golden rookie Akihiro Hakumura for Keio, and 3rd-year Hayato Saitoh for Rikkio.
Well, needless to say, this game did not go so well for Hakumura. The first inning, both teams scored runs, an Okazaki RBI for Rikkio and an Itoh RBI for Keio.
Hakumura gave up a solo homer to catcher Yuki Maeda in the 2nd inning, walked a couple of guys, and apparently 3 unearned runs came in on an error, and that was it for Hakumura, who faced 12 batters, walked 6 of them, struck out 2, and gave up 2 RBI hits. I guess adjusting from his one pitching experience against Todai to pitching against the best power hitters in the league was a little bit of a rude awakening for him.
Though, the next pitcher was Kohei Yamagata, another freshman. He finished out through the 4th inning, only giving up one more run. Keio's catcher Kazumasa Matsumoto added an RBI single for Keio in the bottom of the 4th, making it 6-2 at that point.
Keio gave up on freshmen at that point and put in Fukutani and Daisuke to pitch the rest of the game (3 and 2 innings respectively), and the final score was 8-2 in favor of Rikkio. Rikkio's Hayato Saitoh only gave up the two runs to Keio in his 7 innings pitched, and Masato Komuro added 2 scoreless innings as well to his tally.
If you're keeping count, the series had so far gone Keio Win, Tie Game, Tie Game, Rikkio Win, and so there was no actual series winner yet, which forced the series into a 5th game for the first time in 20 years.
Interlude: 5-Game Serieses in Tokyo Big 6 League History
Most series in Big 6 are decided in 2 or 3 games. 4-game series aren't common, but they aren't rare either; I remember the last time it happened, which was Fall 2008 and Hosei had TWO 4-game serieses; one was the infamous one where Kagami struck out 26 Waseda batters in one weekend... and also threw 215 pitches in one game and lost 2-0 to Waseda in the 14th inning. The other was the last time Todai actually won a game before this season, and forced the 4th game in the series.
But in the 85-year history of the Tokyo Big 6 League, there have been exactly 12 series to go to 5 games, and there has NEVER been a 6-game series.
Because I was curious, I went and found a newspaper (like, one made of actual paper) article that listed all the 5-game series in Big 6 history:
Season Card 12345 Winner
1926 F: W-H -W-HW Waseda
1927 F: R-H R--HR Rikkio
1952 S: M-W -WM-M Meiji
1954 F: R-H R--HR Rikkio
1956 F: K-H H-K-K Keio
1958 F: K-W -W-KK Keio
1959 S: R-K --RKR Rikkio
1962 S: R-W ---RR Rikkio
1963 S: K-M -M-KK Keio
1988 S: H-M H--MH Hosei
1990 F: K-R --R-R Rikkio
2010 F: K-R K--RK Keio
Pretty nuts, huh? There's only been one time in history that there were 3 tie games in a row, and only 5 times that there were 2 ties in a row.
I also find it somewhat amusing that Keio and Rikkio are involved in these huge series more than any other schools. (For the record, the school with the most tie games in history, up through Spring 2010, is Hosei with 104. Meiji is second with 92, Rikkio is third with 87, and Keio and Waseda were tied with 81 before this season started.)
Keio - Rikkio: Game 5
After Game 5 was forced, they announced that rather than happening on Thursday, September 30th, it would happen the day after Week 4 finished up. This is because, technically, Tohto League still had to get in their ostensible 2-game series that week as well, so Toyo-Aogaku and Chuo-Kokushi had their games scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Get this, though, it rained on Thursday, so they were only able to play one game of their matchup on Friday, and will finish out that series... sometime, but we still don't know when, because of course it depends on Big 6 and the Big Weather Gods In The Sky. Tohto League is supposed to finish up right before Draft Day -- but that may not happen this year.
Anyway, Week 4 was "normal" in terms of only taking 3 days to resolve itself, although it was abnormal in that 5th place Hosei beat Keio 2 games to 0, and even MORE abnormal in that Todai beat Waseda. Hell, Todai winning a game at all is abnormal, but beating Waseda is even MORE crazy, and beating Yuki Saitoh is unheard of. More on that later.
Actually, Hosei probably beat Keio just because Keio was worn out after their ongoing battle with Rikkio; these guys don't usually play actual league matches every day for over a week and a half.
So, Game 5 started at 1pm on Tuesday, October 5th. There was a Yakult game in the evening, but that shouldn't have been an issue, assuming the game would be over by 3-3:30, right?
Well, with a bizarre series like this, one should NEVER assume ANYTHING.
Coming into this game, in addition to all the innings already logged in the Keio-Rikkio series, Daisuke Takeuchi pitched a complete game against Hosei on Saturday, and Fukutani pitched 5 innings on Sunday (Yamagata pitched one more, and Naohiko Tadano finished out the last 2 innings).
So of course, having thrown 26 innings in 5 games over the course of a week, the start for this game ALSO went to Daisuke Takeuchi. I just hope he can still raise his arm over his head by the time he turns 21 next summer.
Rikkio had a vague advantage in that their ace, Masato Komuro, was not only rested, but in his 18 innings pitched over this series so far, he had yet to give up an earned run. On the other hand, Rikkio had a vague disadvantage in that they didn't have a second ace to compliment their first one.
Anyway, what happened is: Komuro lasted 6 innings, Daisuke lasted 4, and after those first 6 innings, the game was tied 3-3. Keio's Ryuta Iba hit a 2-run homer to tie the game up in the 6th inning. So much for Komuro's spotless record.
Fukutani took over on the mound for Keio and Hayato Saitoh took over for Rikkio and neither would budge for the next 7 innings. Fukutani walked a ton of guys and yet somehow Rikkio couldn't push their runners past 2nd base. In the meantime, the time went on and on, past 5pm. It got to be the 14th inning and the game was looking likely to end in a tie and cause the first-ever 6-game series in Big 6 history, because with a pro game in the evening, they have to stop the game at whatever inning they're at when they reach 5pm...
Anyway, in the top of the 14th, it seems that Hiroshi Aoyama led off with a single to left -- and reached second on a throwing error of some sort by Rikkio left fielder Hasegawa. Ren Yamasaki then managed to get an RBI hit that brought in Aoyama to finally make the score 4-3. Yamasaki went to 2nd on a dropped pitch, and was bunted to third, and then scored on a sac fly by Yasuhiro Takao to make the score 5-3.
Rikkio loaded the bases in the bottom of the 14th on two hits and a walk, at which point Keio switched pitchers to 4th-year Hironori Tanaka, making his first appearance of the semester. He struck out Masakazu Shiina, pinch-hitting in the pitcher's slot, and got Naoshi Hasegawa to ground out to short, ending the game with Keio winning 5-3. The game lasted 4 hours and 17 minutes.
(The entire SERIES lasted 14 hours and 35 minutes.)
The craziest thing is that when I arrived at Jingu that evening for the Swallows-Tigers game, around 5:45, I ran into one of my college ball friends and a bunch of the Keio players standing outside, in a general round of "What are you doing here?" (Bizarrely, it was Fuchigami-kun who actually noticed me first and nodded hello, so I came over to him and a few other players say an overly-appropriate "otsukaresama", which literally means "You must be exhausted", but is usually just used to mean "Good job.") They all pretty much looked like they wanted nothing more than to get back to their dorm and take a nice long bath and a nice long nap. I was happy that I could see them and say hi though, since I'd missed the entire weekend of Big 6 ball while down in Nagoya. And it was also good to get to congratulate them on finally ending the series, and on winning it as well. Hooray!
Of course, now that I'm finally done writing Week 3 up, I still have Week 4, and Week 5 is about to start tomorrow (Monday) after raining out the entire weekend.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday at Jingu - College and Pro
It was still cold and rainy in the morning when I woke up, so I decided to skip the Keio-Rikkio game and instead do my double-header of Waseda-Meiji plus the Swallows-Giants game in the evening.
I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. While watching on TV, I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.
I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.
Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa duobled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.
I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds.
So between the games I wandered out to see if I could find any of my friends or to find the Nikkan Sports people who put out the Tokyo Rocks! papers, but to no avail. I did get my ticket to the Yakult game, which turned out to be a good move as it was CROWDED later. And I ran into the Keio ouendan leader and said hi; it's important to greet people, even if I wasn't actually in the cheering section.
It was also crowded on the 3rd base side, for this reason...
...tons of Giants fans waiting to see if they could get autographs or even get players to notice them at all. And this was 5 hours before game time!!
Anyway, back on into the outfield..
...where it was sparsely attended, so you could spread out and all, BUT the problem was that the sun was in my eyes the entire game. I put up my umbrella to keep the sun out a little, but it didn't help much. It was also HOT as a result -- I think it was still 20-21 degrees in the shaded infield, but the keychain thermometer I carry said it was around 30 where I was. Ouch.
Anyway, the second game was Waseda-Meiji. Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda and Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji. And well, Saitoh pitched a good game and Tatsuya Ohishi finished it up for him and Waseda won 4-2. Gota Nanba finished out the game for Meiji.
(I will add more details later.)
It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...
It was amusing to me, because I was in the outfield until 5pm... and then by 5:20pm I was back in the outfield! I left, walked around to the front of Jingu, and walked back. Meiji and Waseda both had gated-off buses, so it wasn't possible to talk to players at all anyway. I couldn't find my usual group of friends, but I did run into my friend Kobayashi on her way out and she gave me this HUGE stack of photos she printed out of Kagami and Itoh from the World University Baseball Championships and they are AWESOME. Seriously, like 70 photos, that must have cost her a bunch to print. I'm not sure what I can do in return. I think her camera is better than mine.
While walking past the Swallows facility (there's no clubhouse IN the stadium, the players have to come in from outside), I heard a bunch of people yelling "WHITESELL! WHITESELL!" or more like, "HUWAITOSERRU!". So I put my camera up and snapped into the clubhouse parking lot, and later on saw...
...Kazuhiro Hatakeyama. WHY DOES HE HAUNT ME?
Anyway, when I got back into the stadium, the outfield was already packed with Swallows fans. I sat with Kozo, and his friends Aki and Charles, and the rest of the gang at the top of Section D, and we had a grand old time yelling crap at the Giants.
Kozo already summarized the game, including that we saw Aoki's 198th and 199th hits but not his 200th because he got plunked in his last at-bat. So let me just add a few photos I snapped from the outfield:
This is a scheme to get you to give them your cellphone email address. It says "The 2011 Manager will be _ _ _?" You're supposed to enter "O ga wa" and maybe you will win a prize. The amusing part is that I was saying, "TA KA DA? FU RU TA? A RA KI?" They all fit.
New and creative way to raise your umbrella for Tokyo Ondo -- attach it to a 2-year-old kid on your shoulders. Awwww.
Crowded.
This game started at 6:10pm and ALSO went long, until 10:10pm or so. Around 9:45 they reminded us that you can't use ANY instruments to cheer after 10pm at Jingu. (You can't use drums after 6pm.)
Final score. Alex Ramirez hit a homerun off Hei-Chun Lee in the 7th, after the Swallows had gone to great lengths to tie up the game in the bottom of the 6th. Sigh.
Game hero Rami-chan.
I will add more to this post later, but I'm already two great stories backlogged from last weekend. Sigh. And now I'm off to watch some hockey, and maybe another game at Jingu if I'm up for it...
I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. While watching on TV, I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.
I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.
Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa duobled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.
I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds.
So between the games I wandered out to see if I could find any of my friends or to find the Nikkan Sports people who put out the Tokyo Rocks! papers, but to no avail. I did get my ticket to the Yakult game, which turned out to be a good move as it was CROWDED later. And I ran into the Keio ouendan leader and said hi; it's important to greet people, even if I wasn't actually in the cheering section.
It was also crowded on the 3rd base side, for this reason...
...tons of Giants fans waiting to see if they could get autographs or even get players to notice them at all. And this was 5 hours before game time!!
Anyway, back on into the outfield..
...where it was sparsely attended, so you could spread out and all, BUT the problem was that the sun was in my eyes the entire game. I put up my umbrella to keep the sun out a little, but it didn't help much. It was also HOT as a result -- I think it was still 20-21 degrees in the shaded infield, but the keychain thermometer I carry said it was around 30 where I was. Ouch.
Anyway, the second game was Waseda-Meiji. Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda and Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji. And well, Saitoh pitched a good game and Tatsuya Ohishi finished it up for him and Waseda won 4-2. Gota Nanba finished out the game for Meiji.
(I will add more details later.)
It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...
It was amusing to me, because I was in the outfield until 5pm... and then by 5:20pm I was back in the outfield! I left, walked around to the front of Jingu, and walked back. Meiji and Waseda both had gated-off buses, so it wasn't possible to talk to players at all anyway. I couldn't find my usual group of friends, but I did run into my friend Kobayashi on her way out and she gave me this HUGE stack of photos she printed out of Kagami and Itoh from the World University Baseball Championships and they are AWESOME. Seriously, like 70 photos, that must have cost her a bunch to print. I'm not sure what I can do in return. I think her camera is better than mine.
While walking past the Swallows facility (there's no clubhouse IN the stadium, the players have to come in from outside), I heard a bunch of people yelling "WHITESELL! WHITESELL!" or more like, "HUWAITOSERRU!". So I put my camera up and snapped into the clubhouse parking lot, and later on saw...
...Kazuhiro Hatakeyama. WHY DOES HE HAUNT ME?
Anyway, when I got back into the stadium, the outfield was already packed with Swallows fans. I sat with Kozo, and his friends Aki and Charles, and the rest of the gang at the top of Section D, and we had a grand old time yelling crap at the Giants.
Kozo already summarized the game, including that we saw Aoki's 198th and 199th hits but not his 200th because he got plunked in his last at-bat. So let me just add a few photos I snapped from the outfield:
This is a scheme to get you to give them your cellphone email address. It says "The 2011 Manager will be _ _ _?" You're supposed to enter "O ga wa" and maybe you will win a prize. The amusing part is that I was saying, "TA KA DA? FU RU TA? A RA KI?" They all fit.
New and creative way to raise your umbrella for Tokyo Ondo -- attach it to a 2-year-old kid on your shoulders. Awwww.
Crowded.
This game started at 6:10pm and ALSO went long, until 10:10pm or so. Around 9:45 they reminded us that you can't use ANY instruments to cheer after 10pm at Jingu. (You can't use drums after 6pm.)
Final score. Alex Ramirez hit a homerun off Hei-Chun Lee in the 7th, after the Swallows had gone to great lengths to tie up the game in the bottom of the 6th. Sigh.
Game hero Rami-chan.
I will add more to this post later, but I'm already two great stories backlogged from last weekend. Sigh. And now I'm off to watch some hockey, and maybe another game at Jingu if I'm up for it...
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