Marinerds, etc.

Well, who on earth would have expected this kind of start...

Central League
                  GP   W   L   T   GB       HR
1     Yakult      11   6   3   2   -        10 
2     Hiroshima   12   6   4   2   .5        4
3     Yomiuri      8   4   3   1   .5        6
4     Hanshin     11   5   5   1   .5        4
5     Yokohama    11   4   6   1   1        15
6     Chunichi     9   2   6   1   1         5

Pacific League
                  GP   W   L   T   GB       HR
1     Softbank    11   7   3   1   -         9
2     Nippon Ham  11   7   4   0   .5       11
3     Rakuten     12   6   6   0   1.5       7
4     Lotte       11   5   6   0   .5        6
5     Seibu       11   4   7   0   1        11
6     Orix        12   4   7   1   0         6

Crazier still: the top batter in the CL right now is Yakult's elder statesman Shinya Miyamoto with a .436 average, and the PL's top batter is Seibu rookie (he played a few games at ichi-gun last year but) Hideto Asamura with a .450. WTF? Asamura was a year behind Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin; maybe he can get in some good trash-talking.

The home run numbers are a little easier to figure out: Sledge had that 3-HR game and has 6 total on the season now, and Brett Harper has 3, so that's where most of Yokohama's gaudy total comes from. Hatakeyama (5) and Balentien (3) make up most of Yakult's. Similarly over in Pacific-Land, Okawari-kun is leading the HR total with 6, accounting for half of Seibu's, and the Fighters have gotten 4, 3, and 2 out of Hoffpauir, Itoi, and Koyano respectively.

I'm guessing that Yakult's doing well because I moved away! I guess we'll see how things continue. I've watched a few of their games over the internet because they're at a decent time for here in Seattle (day games in Japan start at 9pm for me here) and there's a guy on justin.tv who's a big Swallows fan and broadcasts them all. So I saw Shohei Tateyama pitch a gem against the Dragons the other day, and then last night saw Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi face off against the Carp and Yuya Fukui. (Fukui, now that he's no longer at Waseda, is someone I'd like to see succeed, especially since he turned down the Giants in the draft back in 2005 and then got his first pro victory against them last week.) So Fukui came out of the game with the Carp down 0-2 to Yakult, and then Masubuchi ran into a roadblock and suddenly loaded the bases and then BAM, next thing you knew Tracy and Kurihara had hit the Carp up to 3-2, and Fukui would get the win if they won, except then Yakult's Hatakeyama decided to hit a 2-run homer and make it 4-3, with the Swallows eventually winning 8-3.

I've joked for ages that Hatakeyama sucks whenever I'm at the stadium watching him and is awesome otherwise, so he'll probably have a monster year, it seems. On the other hand, Yasushi Iihara got taken off the active roster a few days ago and is now playing in ni-gun alongside Miyade, making me really wish it was still just a bike ride away to their minor-league facilities.

As an aside, the guy who pinch-hit for Fukui was none other than my former favorite Baystar Takuro Ishii, who apparently played a full game the night before and went 3-for-3 with a walk and a sac bunt. He walked in this game too and is thus still 1.000 for the season with an OBP of 1.000 as well. Takuro turns 41 this summer and it's nice to see him still have some success down there in Hiroshima.

I couldn't sleep the other night and caught a Fighters game against the Eagles at the Stadium Formerly Known As Skymark. Though even from the start of the game I was like "Yagi doesn't look so good out there", and he even gave up an oshidashi run by hitting Toshiya Nakashima with a pitch. Leave it to former golden rookie Sho Nakata to tie the game up, though, before they eventually lost on a sayonara home run by Randy Ruiz.

Just as I feared, Yuki Saitoh won his first two starts for the Fighters, so his "Golden Rookie" status is only escalating more and more by the day. Would you believe that when I went looking for baseball cards before I left Tokyo, they were already selling his Rookie Edition card for 1000 yen? This is the first time in years that I didn't buy the Fighters RE set.

I suspect it'll take a few years and hopefully some hype dying down before I can accept him. (I made the mistake of re-watching the Waseda Jitsugyo vs. Nichidai San high school West Tokyo finals from 2006 the other night, a nailbiter that Saitoh won in 11 innings; I wonder how different things might be had Sanko won that game and gone to Koshien instead?)

On another note, I am happy that Ryota Imanari is sticking with the top team -- I was hoping that the team would get to a point where him and Shota Ohno were the team's regular catchers, but so far Ohno's doing the majority of the work behind the plate. We'll see, I guess. Tsuruoka's going to be out for a while, so the other two really have a shot to prove themselves.

I've been following Tokyo Big 6 but haven't gotten a chance to actually watch the back games yet, so haven't written much. The most interesting thing so far, IMO, is Keio's decision to convert Koji Fukutani into a closer role, sort of along the lines of what Waseda did with Tatsuya Ohishi. I think it's a great idea since Fukutani is actually a very Ohishi-like player, and this way he can get even more gaudy strikeout ratios and still wow people with his ability to hit 96 mph on the radar gun. Hopefully both him and Daisuke will make it to the Japan-USA college tourney this summer!

(Well, also interesting was the Battle of the Koryo Aces yesterday, as Koryo 2007, Meiji's Yusuke Nomura, took the mound and won against Koryo 2010, Waseda's Kohei Arihara. I suppose you could say that the Keio-Hosei game was between two former Chukyodai Chukyo teammates who are both captains of their respective college teams now, Keio's Hayata Itoh and Hosei's Masashi Nanba. Nanba was team captain when they were both in high school, but Itoh has unquestionably had the much more successful college career...)

In what was a lot closer of a race than it should have been, Lotte secured 3rd place in the Pacific League by winning tonight. (It was seriously down to them winning tonight put them in the playoffs, and them losing tonight put the Fighters in the playoffs.)

Selfishly, this makes my life a little easier as I have to work on October 9th and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get out of it for the playoffs at Seibu, which are annoyingly scheduled each day at 1pm. (First stage is Oct 9-11.)

And then, since Hanshin lost their game to Hiroshima, Chunichi clinched 1st place in the Central League. Technically, I believe Hanshin could still fall out of the playoffs altogether if they lose the rest of their games, but I'm not expecting it.

On another note, I'm going to Nagoya tomorrow for the Dragons-Swallows game. I am really, really, really hoping they let Masa Yamamoto take the mound.

Fighters

The Fighters played their last game of the year last night at the Kyocera Dome, and they won 4-0. I spent an hour trying to get Yahoo to accept my money in exchange for letting me watch the game over their internet feed, to no avail, and justin.tv had broadcasts of every OTHER game except the Fighters, so instead of watching the game, I slept for 10 hours last night.

This win puts them into 3rd place with a W/L/T record of 74-67-3 and a .525 win percentage. Softbank and Seibu are now pretty much set in 1st and 2nd place, so it's just a matter of who takes 3rd -- the Fighters or the Marines?

The Marines have pretty much run out of steam, and right now are in 4th place with a 73-67-2 record... and 2 games left to play, both against 5th-place Orix. They beat 6th-place Rakuten last night. If the Marines win both of their last 2 games, they will edge out the Fighters for 3rd place at 75-67-2 and a .528 WP%. If they win one and lose one, they will finish in 4th. If they win one and tie one, the two teams will be in a dead tie. I am not sure what happens in that case -- a one-game playoff, perhaps?

Either way, over the last few days, my Fighters friends have started the email chain for "Who's coming to Seibu for the playoffs if we make it?" and seeing how many Seibu Fan Club members we have among us to secure tickets.

Big 6

You may be wondering where my Big 6 Week 3 roundup is. Well, guess what -- Week 3 isn't OVER yet. Waseda beat Meiji in 2 games, but after Keio beat Rikkio in the first game, they tied their second game on Sunday 0-0 (in 9 innings due to the pro game in the evening, with both Koji Fukutani and Masato Komuro refusing to budge), and were rained out on Monday, and then tied their THIRD game on Tuesday 4-4 (in 12 innings due to league regulations, with homeruns from both Hayata Itoh and Soichiro Tanaka), so now they are set to play their FOURTH game today. And get this, if Rikkio wins or if they tie again, they will go to a FIFTH game on Thursday. What I'm wondering is, who's going to pitch today? Daisuke and Fukutani both pitched 6 innings yesterday for Keio, and Okabe and Komuro both pitched several innings for Rikkio.

I feel sort of bad for the Tohto League, who gets pushed aside by all this, especially because their first game this week is Toyo-Aoyama, which should be a fantastic pitching duel between Takahiro Fujioka and Yuto Fukushima. Alas.

(EDIT> The answer to "Who will pitch?" was apparently Akihiro Hakumura for Keio and Hayato Saitoh for Rikkio. But Hakumura got knocked out after like 2 innings.)

Draft

Also, if you are in the Tokyo general area and are interested in the 2010 draft, you have one more day to enter the lottery for fans attending the draft.

I have been closely monitoring the college players who registered to enter the draft and today finally saw the first Big 6 guy to show up on the list -- Kisho Kagami! Hooray! I expect a few more guys to show up out of the Big 6 and Tohto leagues, but I'm not sure when their deadline is to notify the league is. I think the only other big-name college player listed so far is Yudai Ohno from Bukkyo University.

The high school players who registered list is a lot longer right now, and a lot more diverse. I know that they have until Oct 14th to notify the league. The only players on there so far that I've seen play in person (at a glance, there are probably others) are Shutoku's Taiki Mitsumata, Teikyo's Yasuaki Yamasaki, and Chiben Wakayama's Haruki Nishikawa, but I expect that some more Kanto-area players will show up soon. Narita's Ryo Nakagawa and Kojo's Justin Nakano are also registered for the draft.

I'm more nervous about this year's draft than I have been in the past, that's for sure -- probably because I am so much more emotionally invested in the college players more than anything else.

I was pretty busy last week with some personal obligations, notably that my boyfriend was visiting from Seattle, and other than taking him to the two Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome, and watching the Koshien finals together, I pretty much ignored baseball this past week.

Naturally, I had quite a few shocks when I was catching up on news.

Shock #1, which had actually been texted to me on Friday: Giants' Coach Kimura Takuya had a stroke and is in a coma. Apparently he was doing pre-game practice at the Carp stadium in Hiroshima and suddenly just collapsed; they used a defibrillator to revive him and took him unconscious to a hospital, where he has been for the last two days in intensive care. The diagnosis was a subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding in the brain, a kind of stroke. (Decent Mainichi translation here.) Apparently he is in the hospital but reports are that his condition has worsened and now people are praying for a miracle. I can't read medical Japanese very well and a lot of stuff hasn't come across in English yet, although I saw someone tried to update his Japanese wiki page to say he died today, which makes me also kind of freak out.

Look, you know I hate the Giants, but Kimutaku actually started out with the Fighters, and when I first came into the whole Japanese baseball thing, he was the Super Utility Man for the Hiroshima Carp. Much as I was always making fun of him and the way his name coincides with the prettyboy from SMAP, the truth of the matter is that Kimura was always a thorn in my side because he would always seem to find a way to come out of nowhere and be productive in any Giants game I watched. (Although he sucked in the Japan Series against the Fighters, so that was at least good.)

But you know what the really disturbing thing here is? He's going to be THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD in two weeks, assuming he lives that long. He's only a couple of years older than me, for crying out loud! A guy who was in physical shape to be playing baseball professionally less than 6 months ago, who had a long and productive career, should NOT be falling over with a stroke at such a ridiculously young age. I feel pretty terrible for him and his family and hope he recovers, although it seems like a long shot at this point.

Shock #2: The Fighters traded Shintaro Ejiri to Yokohama for Yuya Ishii. This is more of a shock on a semi-personal level as Ejiri has been one of my favorite guys on the Fighters for years. He was one of the few players who's still around from when I first started following the team in 2003, and he's also the closest in age to me, being one week older. But what I always loved about Ejiri is that whenever you'd see him at Kamagaya -- or anywhere, really -- he always had a smile on his face and was ridiculously nice to everyone around him.

I was lucky enough to get to talk to him a few times, and my favorite Ejiri story is from when he was still retooling his delivery to more of a sidearm slot. I went to the May 2nd Fighters vs. Futures game at Kamagaya last year, and after the game Ejiri came past all of us regulars standing by the dorm, and he asked Ojisan if he had any photos of the inning he pitched. See, the minor-league pitchers sometimes don't get to see photos or video of their pitching until much later if at all, so he was really curious what he'd looked like. Ojisan had a few, though not many. Well, I love Ejiri so I'd taken like 50 photos of him or so, but was feeling a little too shy to butt in. Kazuya Murata's mother told me "Oh, you should show him these, he'll really appreciate it!"

So I scrolled to where I had the inning of him and told him I had a whole bunch of photos, and he took my camera and was looking through them, and was really excited about it, nodding to himself as he saw how he looked while throwing. He told me I took really great photos, thanked me, and then said in perfect English, "The Nikon D200 is a really good camera!" I giggled and thanked him. Turns out Ejiri loves digital SLRs, he even has a D90.

Ejiri also had a great back story, kind of like Satoru Komiyama, in that he didn't get into Waseda based on sports recommendations, but actually spent 2 years studying his butt off after high school to pass the entrance exam. The funny part is he originally wanted to go to Keio, so when he got into Waseda and started pitching really well, he made a point of trying to be a Keio-killer.

Ejiri's just the kind of guy you could really get behind as a player -- tall, smart, cute, positive, nice, etc. You know, the kind of guy you'd want as a role model for your kids. It's a shame he's had such streaks of greatness and mediocrity as a baseball player, and has largely sucked lately, because then I have to explain the Japanese fan mindset to people outside who don't really understand why people could totally love this guy.

It's also funny in that it continues my bad luck in which I get a photo with a player and they disappear from the team within a year or so. (I got Ejiri in September 2008.)

On that note I'm going to leave you with one of the cutest photos ever from when Sledge and Ejiri were game heroes last summer during Obon and Sledge's son was up on the podium with them. Well, and I'll also leave you with Ejiri's blog link since I got totally sidetracked catching up on it while I was writing this. I'm now really bummed out.

Shock #3: The Fighters suck.

No, really, WTF? Lotte is in first place at 9-2-1 as I write this and the Fighters are in last place at 2-8-1. Only Hiroshima's 1-7 record is worse than ours, even the Baystars have 3 wins to their name already. Ugh.

Shock #4: Shimabukuro and Konan HS managed to win Koshien!

This is not a shock exactly, but it is true that it seemed like a REALLY long shot at the beginning. Yosuke Shimabukuro is this kid from Okinawa who's been striking out batters at a ridiculous rate over the last year, but his team never gets past the first round when they go to Koshien. (Last spring he struck out 19 in a game and lost 2-0; last summer he went up against Imamiya-kun and Meiho and struck out 9 and still lost 4-3.)

So it's been interesting following them this year, especially since they did NOT have an easy route to that victory! Look at their games: 4-1 against Kanzei, 7-2 against Chiben Wakayama, 5-0 against Teikyo, 10-0 against Ogaki Nichidai, and the extra-inning nailbiting final 10-5 against Nichidai San. Those are ALL strong schools and he pitched 46 innings in 5 games, striking out a total of 49 batters with like a 1.17 ERA. He's not huge like Kikuchi and his max speed is 90mph or so, but he has a funky delivery and is left-handed and I'd bet you'll see him as a big name in this year's draft for sure.

I was, of course, cheering for Teikyo this year, and still am bitter that I didn't get to see them play in person thanks to the 2-day rainout, but I didn't mind seeing them lose to Shimabukuro-kun as long as he could win the entire thing, so that was good.

Oh yeah, something funky about the Koshien final game: both Konan's Ganeko-kun and Nichidai San's Yamasaki finished the tournament with 13 hits apiece, which ties them for the tournament hit record. The best part is that Yamasaki is Nichidai's pitcher. Go figure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Player Reps (新選手会長)

Senshu-kaicho doesn't really translate very well into English.　　I mean, "captain" is not the right word, but "player rep" isn't exactly a direct translation either. It's sort of like "class president", but.

Giants: Shinnosuke Abe (taking over for Tomohiro Nioka, traded to Fighters)
Yakult: Masanori Ishikawa (taking over for Noriyuki Shiroishi)
Yokohama: Shuuichi Murata (taking over for Ryoji Aikawa, FA going... somewhere...)
Orix: Takeshi Hidaka (taking over for Hirotoshi Kitagawa, getting old?)
Fighters: Kensuke Tanaka (taking over for Makoto Kaneko... argh...)

Haven't heard of any other changes, though I have to wonder who the Softbank kaicho will be -- Kazumi Saitoh is still listed on the JPBPA site, though I could have sworn Munenori Kawasaki had taken over for him.

Chase Lambin Tries Out With Lotte And Lives To Blog About It

From NY Future Stars: Chase Lambin went to try out for the Chiba Lotte Marines and had quite an adventure. A fun read.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

They went to the Japan Series at Seibu one day after I did, for Game 5. Dang. Would have been funny to run into Bobby there, that's for sure. Though it was sort of amusing to read his stories about Bobby predicting all of the hits in Series Game 3 and thinking, "Wait a minute, I know exactly who he's talking about..."

Anyway, no idea whether Chase will end up on the Marines roster next year or not -- from his minor league stats he actually looks like a perfect candidate to succeed in Japan -- but, if he does, rest assured I'll do my best to stalk him next season.

Yes, I heard about Eri Yoshida

Actually, Simon mentioned it to me during the Asia Series, but I was too preoccupied cheering for the Lions to beat the Lions to think about it at the time.

So yes, the Kobe 9 Cruise team drafted a 16-year-old high school girl named Eri Yoshida. She throws a sidearm/submarine knuckleball, and was apparently inspired by Tim Wakefield.

(Youtube video here.)

I am a little bit unclear on whether she's really the "first professional female baseball player in Japan", namely because I don't really understand exactly what Ayumi Kataoka's status is per se. I mean, the Ibaraki Golden Golds are still probably a lower level team than the Rakuten Golden Eagles, but they do compete in the nationwide club/industrial tournaments. Those tournaments are run by the Japan Amateur Baseball Association, though, so perhaps the club players simply don't count as pros? I think Ayumi was still in college when she started playing for the Golden Golds, too.

The thing is, the independent leagues aren't exactly pro level either, and their players also have to have day jobs to make a living (there were stories of Shikoku Island League guys basically working in the fields during the week and getting paid in food, though I'm not sure I entirely believe that).

Anyway, so far this new Kansai league has four teams (Osaka, Kobe, Akashi, and then Wakayama), and I get the feeling they want to have two more teams in Nara and Shiga, to bring the league to six like the other independent leagues.

Yoshida, for the record, lives in Kanagawa, near Tokyo, so it seems she'll have to transfer schools to somewhere in Kobe if she wants to play with this team.

I think it's pretty cool, of course, given that one of the worst days of my childhood was when my mother informed me that little girls can't become professional baseball players when they grow up.

I was already making a goal of seeing Shikoku Island League and Hokushinetsu League games next year, so I'll just have to add the Kansai ones to my list as well. I wonder if Yoshida will actually play regularly though, or if she really is just a publicity gimmick for the new league and team. I'm sure plenty of people come to Golden Golds games hoping to see Ayumi and don't get to.

Unfortunately, this is definitely going to put even more of a damper on "throws like a girl" jokes. Not that Yukiko Ueno didn't do that already, but still.

So, I've been back in the US for about a week now. I was in Seattle for a few days, now I'm staying with my father in Philadelphia for the next few months. (He has cancer. I'm here to cheer him up.) Anyone who wants to hang out and talk about Japanese baseball while I'm here is welcome to drop me a line. I'm planning to head back to Japan the first week in February.

I'm still sometimes reading news and trying to catch up on stuff, but it's really weird not being able to watch the Japanese sports news or read Shukan Baseball and other sports magazines. I try watching the sports news here, but being as I'm in Philly, it's all about the Eagles, despite that they apparently suck this year. I think there are a FEW people in town aware that the local baseball team won some big games a month ago, but aside from the big display at Modell's, and a bunch of people in red jackets, I haven't seen too much evidence thereof.

(I really want a "Phinally" t-shirt.)

So, back to NPB, what can I say that hasn't been said already?

The 2009 Schedules are out. Lots of Fighters games in Kanto during April. I'm looking forward to it.

One important thing that happened in the last week is that Brian Sweeney re-signed with the Fighters for next year. Yay! That made me really happy to hear -- both because he'll be good for the team, and because I'll get to harrass him for another year.

And of course, now we're going to start calling him a "blue-eyed Dosanko" instead of a "blue-eyed Samurai", I think. Dosanko meaning someone or something born in Hokkaido; I don't know whether "I am Dosanko" was what he said or what got put in the translation of his comments, though.

(I forget if I ever mentioned it before, but Consadole Sapporo, the soccer team that the Fighters share the Sapporo Dome with, took their name from the word Dosanko -- if you turn it around in Japanese syllables, you get ko-n-sa-do, which they added "Ole!" to the end of, to make their team name. I still think it's the coolest soccer name in Japan by far.)

That stupid trade seems to becoming official as I write this; Nioka is supposed to be taking uniform number #23 from Ozaki, in theory. I'm still in denial about the entire thing. I'm just glad they didn't make him armwrestle Tsuboi for #7 or anything. (EDIT: New Player press conference says Nioka did indeed get #23 and Hayashi is taking #19, last used by failed Hanshin tradee Yasuhiro Nakamura before he got released. And apparently Ozaki will wear #53, Kudoh's old number. That's not good for him. Tsuda-kun moved up from #48 to #70 as well.)

Fighters Fanfest happened last weekend. Darvish dressed up as a bee and ran bicycle races against Sho Nakata, or something. Of course, Imanari dressed up as a... umm... I don't know. I really gotta find someone who actually WENT to Fan Fest to explain to me what was up there.

Either way, I vaguely doubt it could be as nuts as what apparently happened at Yakult's fan fest, where Norichika Aoki, backed up by Kawashima and Okamoto, sang the title song by baka-band Shuchishin as part of the player Karaoke event.

（No, really. Check out the Youtube video. It's not great quality and was filmed from the stands, but it's FUNNY if you know the original. Of course, it's a bit more disturbing to see this one of Yoshinori and Masaru Satoh in drag...)

The Yokohama Baystars and Shonan Sea Rex fan fests happened last weekend as well. Westbay blogged about them. I can't decide how I feel about them -- whether I'd have gone if I was in Japan still or not, that is. I had a really good time at Baystars fanfest last year, but that was before they had this abysmal year and also released my favorite player on the team.

Speaking of my favorite player on the team, Takuro Ishii, he was infact signed by the Hiroshima Carp, and had a press conference last week to be introduced as a new team member. I'm glad he found a place to go, and I might have to actually make it to more than one Carp game next year as a result, assuming they actually PLAY him. He's wearing uniform number 25.

(But now I'm torn -- if I do get a Carp jersey, do I get a Takuro jersey or still go with Yuki Saitoh, #21? I'm still tending to think the latter.)

On another note, there have been a lot of people going on about this guy:



Yeah, I took that shot of Junichi Tazawa at the semi-final at the All-City industrial league tournament back in September before all of this stuff started. Seems he's getting the heck out of Japan fairly soon, and signs point to Boston. I don't know. I don't really like the situation -- mostly the money disparity between the two nations.

I could rant about it, but what my opinion comes down to is that it's not the NPB's problem to get more money and pay their players higher salaries; the problem is that MLB players are simply paid too much. I'm never fully convinced that the exodus really has that much to do with the "challenge", but more to do with the money.

(I should perhaps make it clear that the preceding statement is not really about Tazawa but about the situation in general. I should perhaps also mention that I greatly dislike discussing this stuff.)

As for why I didn't really write much about watching Tazawa at the tournament games: first, I'm not a scout, second, I was mostly there to watch the marching bands, and third, I was too busy booing this guy:



Yes, Hisayoshi Chono seems to have a goal of making half of the fanbases in Japan hate his guts, as this time he apparently decided he will not play for Lotte.

This follows two years after the Fighters tried to draft him out of Nihon University and he said he'd only play for the Giants, invoking the ire of Fighters fans everywhere for the snub. He then went on to play for Honda Sayama's team, and has been a fairly standout player in the industrial leagues, at least judging by the amount of space he's given in the magazines and such. (When I saw him play, he did pretty poorly, but that might have just been karma.) Now, he's turning down Lotte. Does he really expect to get drafted again in two years? I think he's basically screwed over his chances at a pro career -- I doubt a 26-year-old outfielder will be worth all that much by the time he comes up again, and the Giants really have no reason to take him.

Something funny: my Japanese cellphone automatically completes, if I type 長野 (Chono), it suggests that the next thing I want to say is 馬鹿 (Baka). That should give you a good indication of how many times I typed it when discussing the draft in Japanese.

I guess this does solve one problem for me: I didn't think I'd be able to watch him at Lotte's minor-league park next year without getting an urge to boo him, so this way I don't need to worry about it.

I'm about halfway done reading the Wally Yonamine book; I slept more on my flights home than I intended to. Alas.

After three Marines players were hit by pitches in five at-bats, Benny Agbayani showed that he can throw baseballs AND throw catchers equally well.


Photo from Jiji.

See, Seibu had a magic number of 1 going into today's game. And for the first three innings everything was level at 0-0, but then into the top of the 4th, Shoitsu Ohmatsu hit a 2-run homer, and then there were a whole ton of hits, and then... and then Wakui hit Tomoya Satozaki on the elbow with a pitch... with the bases loaded. That made it 4-0. They switched pitchers to Koji Mitsui, who struck out Hashimoto before hitting Julio Zuleta on the elbow with ANOTHER pitch. Ohmatsu came up and hit a double for yet another 2 RBI (how often does a guy get 4 RBI in one inning without a grand slam, I wonder?)

Anyway, they switch pitchers to Ming-Chieh Hsu, who hits Benny in the left hip with a pitch. And well, Benny is PISSED OFF, with good reason. I don't know what Toru Hosokawa said to him, but a second or two later Benny just grabbed him and threw him to the ground, a perfect judo move, and a brawl started.

Here's a pretty good Youtube video of it. Go to 4:04 if you want to see the at-bat.



I feel bad that this had to happen on the same night as Sadaharu Oh's retirement speech and doage, Kenshin Kawakami's first appearance on the top team since the Olympics (and subsequent win PLUS getting hit PLUS Tatsunami finally crossing the Mendoza line), and the continuation of the deadlock between Hanshin and Yomiuri as both teams won their respective games today, plus a shout-out to Hiroshima for having awesome throwback uniforms.

But yeah. Don't mess with Benny.

Unfortunately, Seibu heads up to Sapporo after this and will play games against the Fighters on Friday and Saturday. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I think even if Seibu loses, if Orix loses too, Seibu clinches anyway, so it seems they'll be doing their beer-kake party with a ton of Sapporo beer.

(EDIT: I have been informed by Simon in the comments that Hosokawa will be out for a while with a dislocated shoulder. That actually sucks a lot. I know I joke all the time about hating on Hosokawa because all of his career grand slams have pretty much happened while I was watching him beat the Fighters, but this could actually be pretty bad for Seibu. Last time Hosokawa sat out with an injury, they got plastered 16-0 by Lotte...)

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

We Love Hichorillusion

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

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

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

Dragonbutts

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

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

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

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

Kikenkyu

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

Tatsunori Hara

likes birthday cake and is now 50 years old.

Hoshino Japan Gears Up For The Olympics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's a couple of interesting things going down this week despite having no top-team games to talk about.

Free Agency Changes

First, there are a bunch of reforms going down with respect to free agency and the draft over here. This Japanball article in English reports some of the major points:

- The draft this fall will be combined highschool and college and industry
- From this year onwards, college/industry draftees will need 7 years of service for free agency within Japan.
- All other players will need 8 years. This includes high school draftees, and those signed outside the draft.
- However, players all still need 9 years before being allowed to try to move overseas as free agents.

One very big detail that is being overlooked by a lot of people in this is that another effect of shortening the free agency requirement is that foreigners ALSO need one less year to be free agents. A foreign player who acquires enough service time in Japan to be a free agent doesn't count as a foreign player for team roster limits, meaning a team can effectively sign extra foreigners. The ramification of this policy -- pun intended -- is that as of next year, Alex Ramirez will no longer be a foreign player by the rules here. He started his NPB career in 2001 with the Yakult Swallows.

Dragons Ouendan Struggles Continue

2 Chunichi Dragons supporters groups sue baseball clubs over cheering ban

Way back at the start of the season there was a big to-do when a couple of Dragons cheering groups (白龍会, Hakuryukai/White Dragon Club, and 竜心連合, Ryushin Rengo/Dragon Spirit Club) got banned from attending games and from playing instruments such as trumpets and drums. They were banned for suspected yakuza ties, which in itself is not a bad thing -- there's a long history of yakuza problems with ouendan groups in various teams in various times, though I think most of those problems are now in the past.

The problem is that many of the other cheering groups, as a measure of solidarity, decided they weren't going to lead cheers or play instruments either. So as a result, the cheering experience has been pretty strange this year. I don't entirely know who's in charge of leading stuff during games, but it's been anywhere from a guy or two with whistles (in Jingu) to a few people holding small flags (in Tokyo Dome) to, well, whatever. (Whoever was leading it in Gifu had a drum, though no trumpets. Maybe a regional group.) The fans, of course, are still cheering and singing, but it's kind of a strange experience trying to figure out what's going on and what we're supposed to be singing when, and keeping it all together without instruments.

(Plus they had to go and make up words for the mostly-instrumental chance themes like Nerai Uchi, and the lyrics are kind of stupid.)

So, these banned ouendan groups have gotten together and are suing the NPB organization about this. I'm not really sure what to think about the situation. On the one hand, I want normal cheering to resume. On the other hand, I don't see why the teams should give the group members any compensation money, which sort of reeks of yakuza to me. The only reason I could think of it would be is if these groups had spent money ordering plane tickets or other things in order to go cheer for the Dragons and were then banned from attending the games.

The Old Man and the SeaRex

(With apologies to Ernest Hemingway.)

Yesterday saw the triumphant return of Bancho and Oyaji!

Shonan SeaRex 1, Lotte Marines 0, June 25th farm team game at Yokosuka.

Daisuke "Hama no Bancho" Miura pitched 5 innings, struck out 4, walked 2, and gave up 2 hits and no runs. Then Kimiyasu Kudoh took over and pitched a quick 1-2-3 inning.

Kudoh, who turned 45 years old on May 5th, pitched only one game this year for the Baystars before going on the DL with a strained left elbow. He was working out with the farm team to rehab in the meantime, but this was his first real game appearance. According to Sankei Sports, this was actually the first time in 10 years that he'd pitched in a farm team game. The last time was during his Daiei days, on July 11th, 1998.

34-year-old Miura, on the other hand, has been suffering through the Baystars season for a while, until he injured his shoulder at the start of June and was sent down. The team could really, really, really use him back in the rotation, so it's encouraging that he is able to pitch a few innings again.

Other Stuff

In other random farm news, Hichori Morimoto played in the Swallows-Fighters farm game yesterday and is expected to re-join the top team on July 1st. I am really sad, because I wanted to go to the game yesterday but couldn't, and probably can go see the Fighters farm team next week, but he'll be gone by then. Sigh.

And, Jim Allen wrote a neat two-part article on Sadaharu Oh: Part 1 Part 2.

3 Down, 4 to go!

Chunichi's elder statesman, 42-year-old lefty pitcher Masa Yamamoto, has been doing a great job of looking like the same guy who pitched a no-hitter in the fall of 2006. Last year, he was sporting signs of "RETIRE NOW BEFORE IT GETS WORSE" with his 2-10 record and 5.07 ERA. But this year -- which by all indications is a "Good Masa" year -- he is 3-0 with a microscopic 0.45 ERA in 4 games (his first game, he came out after an inning with back pain). Last night the Dragons beat the Eagles 3-1, with Masa getting the win. Now he is up to 196 career wins! Fantastic!

When will Masa get to 200 wins? My bet is it will be around August 11th, his 43rd birthday. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I do want to note that I took a brief look at some stathead stuff for him though. My calculations might be slightly off (I'm using 3 as the constant for FIP, too), but:

              Real ERA   FIP     Real OBA   BABIP
Masa 2006       3.32     3.19      .240     .275
Masa 2007       5.07     4.69      .292     .324
Masa 2008       0.45     2.70      .191     .240

I'm gonna say that phrase that baseball statheads love to say all the time: "He's due for a regression to the mean", which basically means he was a little unlucky last year, and has been a little lucky so far this year. But, people aren't hitting homeruns off him so far, although that might change when he faces a lineup that isn't Rakuten, Hiroshima, or Yakult.

Please, Masa -- stay strong, win (at least) four more games, and make us all proud of you.

And then there were two

Orix Buffaloes manager Terry Collins finally realized exactly how futile it is trying to manage the Buffaloes and resigned as Orix manager after Wednesday's game, where the Buffaloes split a subway series with the Kansai kitties, claiming that he no longer has enough fire and passion for the game to continue leading club. The rest of the foreign coaches (Debus and Brown) also left with him. There's a bit of ongoing discussion here on japanesebaseball.com. My personal feeling on the matter is that it's a surprising and sudden event to me, but overall I am not surprised that it happened.

Either way, it gives a new meaning to the Lotte-Hiroshima matchup this coming weekend, as those are the only two teams in Japan that still have foreign managers.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Uniforms are SUCH A FRIGHT!

These are the ugliest interleague uniforms I have ever seen in my entire life.

Seriously. I think they've officially gone into "weirder than Lotte" territory with these...

Hip hip hooray! The 20th of May! Lots of things about today!

First, birthdays:
Hawks manager (and living legend) Sadaharu Oh turns 68 today.
Marines catcher Tomoya Satozaki (who is sadly having some arm trouble) turns 32 today.
Chunichi outfielder Atsushi Fujii (who got called up in the wake of Morino's injury) turns 27 today. He is 0-for-15 on the season so far.
Seibu relief pitcher Atsushi Okamoto (who got called up last weekend) turns 27 today.
Fighters AWESOME SECOND BASEMAN Kensuke Tanaka turns 27 today. ♥♥!
Giants' number one college draft pick from last year Tooru Murata turns 23 today.

Second, interleague!
Today starts the interleague season across Japan. It'll go for the next month or so and end on approximately June 22nd. I say approximately because June is tsuyu, the rainy season, in most of Japan, and I would be surprised if a few of those empty days left for makeup games are not used as such.

Of course, naturally, it is raining right now in Kanto and Tohoku, which means there's a chance the Eagles-Dragons game and the Marines-Giants games might get rained out. (Hawks-Carp, Buffaloes-Tigers, and Fighters-Baystars are all in domes.)

It'd be a real shame to see the RAKUTEN-CHUNICHI SHOWDOWN get rained out:


(From Rakuten's site: Boxing match of Doala, Iwase and Araki vs. Clutch, Takeshi Yamasaki and Ma-kun.)


(Also from Rakuten's site: And now we see their secret plan for how they're going to win... seriously, I would bet on the Big Man to win any such fight :)

Read full interview here. It's pretty funny from what I went through so far. After all, Yamasaki is from Nagoya, played for Aikodai Meiden (same HS as Ichiro), was drafted by Chunichi before Ma-kun was even born, and won his first Best Nine in 1996 as an outfielder with Chunichi who hit a bazillion home runs. And now he's almost 40 and kicking butt again, which is neat.

Naturally, Rakuten-Chunichi is also a fun showdown because the two managers, Nomura and Ochiai, are two of the best hitters in Japanese baseball history, and are also two of the craziest men to ever grace the game over here. かかってこい！

Shukan Baseball put out a rather nice Official Program for interleague. I've been too lazy/cheap to buy it, but it's quite nice, actually, has a lot of interesting breakdowns of numbers and whatnot.

Third: Shinjo
This isn't really today, this is actually Sunday, but I was too busy watching college kids play baseball on Sunday to catch this one as it was happening.



So, before the Hawks-Fighters game on Sunday (you know what's really sad? A few weeks ago I had actually considered going down to Fukuoka this weekend for this very game! Fukuoka is the only city I haven't seen a home game in), as a promotion for bringing the Olympics to Tokyo in 2016. Being Shinjo, he couldn't just go out in normal clothes and throw a ceremonial first pitch. No, he had to go out there WEARING A FULL FUKUOKA HAWKS UNIFORM and actually throw an entire CEREMONIAL FIRST AT-BAT to his protege Hichori Morimoto. And his pitches were clocked at 90mph!

He got Hichori to ground out to short on a 2-2 pitch -- and really, that last pitch was high and outside and if this was a real game I would be pretty annoyed that Hichori isn't laying off those :)

Before you ask, what number did he wear? Why, he wore Number Shinjo:


(From Sankei Sports.)

This is, of course, a little bit like the last time he did a stunt around interleague time in 2006 and ran around Koshien before the game wearing his old Hanshin Tigers uniform with "Shinjo #5" on it, despite that it was Hamanaka's number at the time. The difference is that Hanshin was Shinjo's first team -- aside from growing up in Fukuoka, he doesn't have any affiliation with the Hawks.

But I think everyone enjoyed the performance as it were -- after the at-bat he throws a ball from the mound into the outfield stands, then after running off the mound, he high-fives all the Fighters, high-fives and/or hugs most of the Hawks, throws his Golden Glove -- which he brought to wear for the at-bat -- into the crowd, bows to Oh-kantoku, and leaves. I know a lot of people get angry at Shinjo for his stunts, but I believe now as always that he really just wants to entertain people and make baseball more exciting, and I'm pretty sure this helped to do that.

(Also something somewhat frightening is that with his hair in this style, and being so tall and skinny, at first he actually reminded me a lot of what Kazumi Saitoh looked like back in 2006. Sigh.)

I guess this means his new career as the forgotten 6th member of SMAP isn't working out, though...

I just wanted to point this out since it might look odd to anyone reading the box scores:

Friday night, Fighters 3, Buffaloes 2

In the first inning, you'll notice the sequence of Hichori walked, Kensuke walked, Inaba walked, Shinji Takahashi (playing first base again!) hit a popout to center, and that's the inning. Sounds odd, right? Well, Hichori got caught stealing second for one out... and then Kensuke got caught stealing second for the second out. So when Inaba walked, that didn't load the bases but instead put one runner on with two out. Hence, the three walks and a fly out for one inning. I know, you were also hoping for some kind of bizarre triple play on the pop out, weren't you?

Also, because I haven't seen it in English anywhere (though I don't always read enough articles), you know the back-to-back-to-back home runs the other night by the Giants? Off Kenshin Kawakami? If I'm reading this correctly, the last time the Giants had back-to-back-to-back homers was on June 19, 1999 -- Kiyohara, batting fourth, Yoshinobu, batting fifth, and Domingo Martinez, batting sixth. (Matsui was batting third that day, but wasn't part of the festivities.)

I got home tonight after work just in time to NOT see any of the Giants-Tigers came on TV, as it ended relatively early. Instead, though, I saw a couple of NHK history clips of the old V9 Giants and the 1985 Tigers, and they showed the back-to-back-to-back homeruns of Bass, Kakefu, and Okada. Good timing!

I'm going down to Chiba tomorrow. Please remind me NOT to mention how Shota Ohba completely owned Lotte tonight. I might get punched. But still... SIXTEEN STRIKEOUTS, which is one away from Hideo Nomo's rookie record of 17 in one game. That's amazing. I was saying a few months ago that Ohba even LOOKS like Kazumi Saitoh. Ohba and Kume could really turn out to be the prizes of this year's draft, it seems (even with Kume's bizarre eyebrows).

So, first off, today was the birthday of Yoshinobu Takahashi (Giants, 33) and Koji Uehara (Giants, 33) and Iron Man Tomoaki "Aniki" Kanemoto (Hanshin, 40). Strangely, I've known Yoshinobu's birthday for a long time and Kanemoto's, but somehow I had never made the connection that Uehara and Yoshinobu were born on the exact same day. Crazy, since they are both kind of the "Face of the Giants" sorts of players.

Chunichi's Kenshin Kawakami was handling the Giants just fine tonight until Yoshinobu remembered it was his birthday, sometime around the middle of the 7th inning, and he said "Wait a minute, today is my birthday, I'm not supposed to be grounding out!" And so he hit a home run into the first few rows of Dragons fans in the left field stands. Yoshiyuki Kamei followed that up with another home run into the right field stands, and to add insult to insults, Ogasawara's clean-shaven doppleganger, who had already hit a home run in the 4th inning, ALSO followed that up with a home run into the right field stands. Back to back to back. Kenshin was just like "WTF?" That made it 6-5 and thus the Giants won their first game of the year.

I'm also a bit saddened by Wednesday's Giants-Dragons game. Masa Yamamoto was the starting pitcher for Chunichi, leading many Dragons fans to say, "Masa ka?" But the 43-year-old lefty was actually doing just fine... until he threw his back out in the second inning. Wei-yin Chen did pretty well in long relief, and despite Tetsuya I-Love-You-Please-Switch-Teams Utsumi striking out half of the people in the Tokyo Dome, the Dragons still won 3-0. But I'm worried about Masa. This is supposed to be one of his GOOD years.

On a Dragonbutt note, I don't know which I want more: Ochiai to move Morino up in the lineup to 3rd where he's supposed to be (watch, now when the Moeyo Dragons 2008 CD comes out next week it'll have "Nana-ban Morino" and I'll cry), or for Kazuhiro Wada to wake up his bat enough so I don't mind. Today was a nice start, I suppose. And, as an aside, Morino was a crossword puzzle answer in last week's Shube: 中日の背番号31.なぜかマスコットのドアラに似ていると言われる--将彦選手. ("Chunichi #31. Some people say he looks like the mascot Doala. Masahiko _____.") I was working on the puzzle on the train and nearly fell out of my seat when I saw that :)

Darvish was the starting pitcher tonight for the Fighters, and he got 9 strikeouts in 7 innings. Some guys on the Fighters even decided it'd be a cool idea to hit the baseball with their bat a few times and thus they won 6-2 but I am hugely, hugely, hugely worried about Makoto Kaneko. Usually our fearless leader has all glove and no bat, but in this case I'm SERIOUSLY wondering where he left his bat, being as he has gotten all of ONE HIT this year so far, in 28 plate appearances. I hope he figures things out soon. We seriously had Shinji Takahashi playing first base tonight, and given that I'm not sure he's done that before in his career, makes me wonder what the heck's going on. I mean, I know we need the SHINJI SMASH!!!! bat in the lineup, and in all fairness Tsuruoka is a better defensive catcher and he is also fortunately ON FIRE these days, but really, Shinji's a better option at first base than Terrmel Sledge? Really? That's kind of frightening.

Speaking of SMASH, Takeshi Yamasaki smashed his 300th career home run today in a 9-1 whipping of the Chiba Lotte Marines by the Rakuten Golden Eagles. Hisashi Iwakuma is finally getting some good karma, which he really deserves after all the crap he's been through, particularly that heartbreaker when Domingo Guzman chewed up and spit out his win on Opening Day. After starting out the season 0-4, Rakuten won their next 7 games straight for a club-best winning streak AND they are now in first place for the first time ever. Nomura-kantoku always comes out and says some bizarre quotes after the game, but today when they interviewed him on the news, he just stepped out and said "どうもすみません.また勝っちゃった." ("I'm sorry. Unfortunately, we won again.")

(So it's batting .900 or so?)

Things Darvish has

A new son! Born Monday at 2:01pm in Sapporo. Congratulations to Darvish and Saeko!

Things Softbank has

A five-game winning streak to start the season. Yikes.

Things Kyuuji has

Sights set on playing his "A" game elsewhere?

Things Morino has

A healed hand and a spot back in the ichi-gun lineup!! After 6 weeks with a broken hand he seems to have come back just fine (he was 4-for-12 in the last three open-sen games which he got to play in). Hooray Dragonbutt!

Things Kensuke Tanaka has

HE HAS THE POWER!!! Kensuke hit two home runs in tonight's 9-1 routing of the Seibu Lions. I might point out that he has now hit 3 home runs so far in the 4 games this season... having hit three home runs for ALL OF LAST YEAR.

Seriously, I'm not unaccustomed to the idea of a Fighters middle infielder named Tanaka hitting a ton of home runs. It's just that in the past, his first name would have been Yukio (287 career HR, you know).

Things Deanna has

Official Fighters fan club card!
One ticket to each of the three Fighters games in the Sapporo Dome during Golden Week!

Things Deanna does NOT has

Plane tickets to go to Hokkaido.
Hotel reservations in Sapporo.

Hmmm...

These haven't really changed much from last year, with a few notable exceptions, but I noticed they were printed in the pocket meikan I bought today, so here you go:

Pacific League:

Fighters: 「熱く、頂点（サミット）へ」　～F・A・N・S　’０８～

("Atsuku, chouten e!" "Burning, to the summit!")

It's unclear to me whether they want to use "chouten" or "summit" to be honest. I'm sure if Hillman was still around they'd use the English word.

Marines: 「A Passion for Our Dream, a Commitment to the Flag ～夢に情熱を、フラッグに誓いを～」

("Yume ni jounetsu wo, FLAG ni chikai wo". Pretty literal translation.)

Softbank: 「めざせ世界一！」

("Mezase sekai ichi!" Again, no official English version, but they've had this slogan for four years now... effectively "Aim to be the best in the world!" It's also the Softbank company slogan in general, I believe.)

Rakuten: 「Smart&Spirit 2008 考えて野球せぃ！」

("Kangaete yakyuu seii!" which pretty much means "Thinking baseball!")

Seibu:「No Limit! 2008」

Orix: "One Heart Beat" ～鼓動をひとつに～

("Kodou wo hitotsu ni")

Central League

Giants: 「Show the Spirit-奪回-」

(It's the same as last year. That last part is pronounced "dakkai" and means "recapture". Technically, dakkai is the slogan, and "show the spirit" is the catchphrase, but whatever.)

Chunichi: "Road to Victory"

Hanshin: "Be the Best For the Fans" ～最高をめざせ！　そしてファンのために！～

("Saikou wo mezase! Soshite FAN no tame ni!" literally "aim for the best! For the sake of the fans!")

Yokohama: 「なせば成る～Move on～」

("Naseba naru" -- same as last year)

Hiroshima: "All-In 激"

激, pronounced "geki", sort of means... violent/excited. They refer to a 激戦, a gekisen -- hard-fought battle -- as the way the Carp will play this year.

Yakult: 「Dynamic & Dramatic 躍動感あふれるプレーでファンに感動を！」

("Yakudoukan afureru PLAY de, FAN ni kandou wo!" I do think it's some sort of play on having doukan and kandou, but maybe I'm just reading more into it)

It doesn't make much sense literally in English, kind of like "Vibrant overflowing play, fans are deeply moved!", so I'd like to take poetic license and turn this into "Play bright, EXCITE!"


Yeah, I know open-sen has started. Unfortunately, even if I wanted to translate box scores, I'm not sure where complex ones are. The best ones I've seen are on the official site and even those are just simple boxscores, not events like Yahoo usually has. Alas. Even if I wanted to, though, I've just been running into weird troubles with Japanese text. I'm now running Debian on my USB stick, but it's still something of an adventure. No hard drive? No problem!

I'd seen the Atsuya Furuta commercials for the Nintendo Wii on TV once or twice, but today while heading home, I was in Ikebukuro station and saw this on the wall and thought, "Hey, I recognize that guy!"



You can see the Furuta WiiFit television commercials on the official Wii site. His are numbers 11, 12, and 16. 16 is undoubtedly the funniest, involving the hula hoop exercise.

But to be honest, if you want to know what Furuta is up to these days besides playing Nintendo Wii games, he's restarted his blog on a non-Swallows site.

---

While I'm at it, in other things I saw on TV tonight, they had some features around the various Spring training camps. Apparently the foreigners on the Baystars were introduced to the Japanese holiday of Setsubun today, which involves throwing beans to "cast out evil spirits". (I was supposed to celebrate it today, but since it was snowing and freezing cold in Tokyo we decided against it.) They also did the normal tour of showing the young hotshots working out -- it was nice to see some of Rakuten's Hasebe finally, I'm really looking forward to seeing him pitch this year. Saw Kazuhisa Ishii wearing #61 and not looking quite as cool as Seibu's #16, Wakui, who has a trendy but messy hairstyle these days.

But the kicker -- the absolute most awesome thing I saw -- was from the Chiba Lotte Marines spring camp, which is in Yuuta Omine's hometown of Ishigaki. The Marines drafted another guy named Yuuta, Yuuta Shimoshikiryo, in the college/industry draft this past fall. Shimoshikiryo, in addition to having an extremely long name, also has an extremely low release point. As in, he's another submariner. So, he's been working out with Shunsuke Watanabe, and they were interviewed on the news together, where Shunsuke was being funny about having a "lower" classman, and Shimoshikiryo was like "BEST. SEMPAI. EVER."

Bobby Valentine is excited to be back in camp but fortunately does not weigh in on the ugly new Lotte uniforms.

On January 11, articles happily reported that Jeremy Powell was going back to Orix. It was even on the Buffaloes' site. They said he would wear #50 and made him a player page accordingly.

However, uh, today, supposedly the Softbank Hawks signed Powell? Huh? They seem to be claiming either that the Powell signing by Orix was announced but not finalized, or finalized but not announced properly, or something like that.

I see nothing of it mentioned on the Hawks' site yet, though there's a bunch of articles categorized as "パウエル獲得" on Yahoo and other sports article sites. And sadly, this is all the variety of stuff that I have trouble reading, but I'm sure that whenever people figure out what the hell is going on, it'll get posted to the thread on japanesebaseball.com accordingly.

(There is another article in the Daily Yomiuri which has some more details, but is almost as "WTF?" as everything else, I think.)

Spring training starts in only a few days, so I hope they get this mess straightened out soon. (And in all honesty, I hope he ends up with Orix, because Softbank already has a pretty loaded rotation.)

Anyway, on another note, the Fighters apparently invited Jermaine Van Buren to spring training to try out for the team. Yes, this guy. They're very kind to him, saying that he's 1-2 in 16 games in the majors, rather than mentioning his career 9.00 ERA and that he's walked 24 guys and struck out 11. But to be fair, his AAA numbers are actually really good and the kind of stuff that can sometimes transition really nicely to Japan. So, who knows.

Seriously, the problem with the Japanese baseball news at this point is that most of it is things like which guys are going to be in the ichi-gun or ni-gun camps for spring training, which starts in about a week (yay!!)... or random gossip about players and what trips they're making for personal training time, or some last-minute contract-signing stuff (such as Old Man Shimoyanagi finally agreeing to a 2-year deal with the Tigers), or whatever else people think is worth reporting about, even if it's something like "Sho Nakata's mom rants about her son".

Mostly I just skim articles and go "Er, whatever" a lot of the time, but tonight when I came across one saying that Orix Buffaloes manager Terry Collins came back to Japan and essentially said "Hamanaka? Who the hell is that?" about Osamu Hamanaka, I was thinking that they're REALLY stretching it for stories. To be fair, Orix did the Hirano-Hamanaka trade like two months ago now and have been hyping the "Kiyo-Hama" combination. Erm.

Senichi Hoshino's 61st birthday was on Tuesday, and there was a big party for him. I saw it on TV a bit, but here's a picture of him eating a special "2008" rice-baseball and curry. He said that he hopes to eat delicious curry again in August", following the Olympics, I suppose :) It's funny how I never really understood why Hoshino is so well-liked until I came here and saw him on TV all the time, and now I get it. He oozes charisma.

I also just realized that I never mentioned here about Koji Yamamoto and Tsuneo Horiuchi being elected to the Japanese baseball HOF. (Press conference photos here.) I really ought to get down there and check out the new HOFer stuff and the Hoshino Japan exhibit. Hmm.

The funny part is, in college, one of my Japanese professors had a Tsuneo Horiuchi poster up on her wall. I asked her who he was, and she told me how great a pitcher he was, and how great it was to be a Giants fan in their V9 days. She grew up in Tokyo and was a gigantic Giants fan. She said that pretty much EVERYONE in Japan was a Giants fan. It took me a while to find out how untrue that statement was, of course.

Which also reminds me -- since putting my Fighters calendar up on my wall at work, which has new manager Nashida as the January guy, I've had comments anywhere from "Why the heck is Nashida your manager? He's not even a Fighters OB. Is it because Takada went to manage the Swallows?" from one guy, to "Ohhh, I remember when Nashida was young. He was VERY cool and had MANY female baseball fans!" from one woman. As for my Dragons calendar, which is on the other wall, the overwhelming reaction has been "Why is Kosuke Fukudome in this calendar? He isn't on the Dragons anymore."

And that leads me into my latest conspiracy theory. See, the Swallows and Fighters both recently posted their "welcome to the new guys!" about the players involved in the 3-for-3 trade a week ago. The Fighters welcomed Fujii, Miki, and Sakamoto, who will wear #18, #33, and #30 respectively, and the Swallows welcomed Hashimoto, Oshimoto, and Kawashima (sigh), who will wear 35, 65, and 00 respectively.

Anyway, I had this weird realization that the aforementioned new Yakult manager Shigeru Takada... just spent a 3-year stint as the general manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters. And he even would have been at the helm to draft Kawashima, and Hashimoto and Oshimoto came in the two previous years. I'm not sure why, but this just feels very Gillick-like to me -- a GM switching teams and then grabbing some of his old prospects to follow him. Although I suppose it can't be THAT Gillick-like, being as he traded away veterans to get younger players.

In other news, Seibu outfielder GG Sato attempted to go into salary arbitration to be the seventh Japanese player in history to do so. However, he was denied. I have to admit I don't really understand the system at all, and it's true, you rarely ever hear about players here going to arbitration. (Come to think of it I haven't seen any crazy stories about holdouts/etc this year; I must just not be reading enough articles, but it's plainly nowhere near as exciting as last year with Sekimoto's crying, Satozaki's yawning, and Morino's dragonbutting.)

It also seems that most teams have their rosters pretty set now. Wayne Graczyk talks about this year's foreigners in the Japan Times, and this week's Shukan Baseball is the "money issue", in which we find out that Ichiro's 2008 salary is larger than the 2008 team payrolls for the Hiroshima Carp and the Rakuten Golden Eagles. I mentioned this in a class tonight to try to get a discussion started about economics, but instead it turned into a discussion about how they all need to make sure they teach their children to bat left-handed and run very fast.

Also, in case you're curious, the payrolls from this chart:

Giants: 53.9-oku
Dragons: 38.2-oku
Tigers: 36.5-oku
Baystars: 23.6-oku
Yakult: 22.8-oku
Carp: 15.5-oku

Hawks: 34.5-oku
Marines: 26.4-oku
Fighters: 23.3-oku
Orix: 23.4-oku
Seibu: 21.8-oku
Rakuten: 17.3-oku

Of course, these aren't exact figures -- they had an estimate for Shimoyanagi's salary, for example -- but still, it's kind of scary.

Speaking of the Hawks and Giants, an image that pretty much showed up on every sports site possible, rightfully, is one of Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, and Isao Harimoto hanging out together at a celebration dinner recently. I'm not sure what the MLB equivalent would be, but it'd be something to the effect of if you could get Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ty Cobb to pose for a picture together. Again, Japan is really lucky in some ways that its legendary baseball figures are mostly still alive, although that's becoming less true.

In fact, I was noticing that a lot of former Nishitetsu guys have been dying lately, what with Inao and Hanai passing away in December, and then earlier this week Hirokazu Katoh died at the age of 56 of lung cancer. Katoh spent most of his early career languishing on Nishitetsu's ni-gun team, then spent a few years breaking into the Hanshin Tigers lineup before he eventually became a base-stealing terror with the Yokohama Taiyo Whales for a few years in the mid-80's, even ending up on one all-star team. He worked as a media analyst after retiring as a player.

I heard about Katoh's death while I was at a baseball card shop looking through cards from the early 1990's Yokohama teams; it was announced on the evening news. Katoh's last year as a pro player was 1990, with the Whales -- a team that had a young hotshot pitcher named Kazuhiro Sasaki who would become a star closer a few years later, a not-so-hotshot pitcher named Tadanori Ishii who would become a hotshot shortstop named Takuro Ishii a few years later, a kid named Motonobu Tanishige who would become one of the best defensive catchers in Japan's history, and a big slugger named Jim Paciorek who would go on to be awesome for Hanshin two years later before fading away. Oh yeah, they also had a guy named Masahiro Takahashi who I would see going 3-for-4 in a Master's League game 17 years later, but that's beside the point. I thought it was really surreal to be digging through the early 1990's Baystars and then to hear about Katoh's death. At least it put it all in context, I guess.

Dear Ichiro,

First, I was really happy to see you on the news the other night, back here in Japan, doing personal training. You have a lot of knowledge to share with other players here. Also, about your upcoming milestone of 3000 hits in both the MLB and NPB, I think that's really amazing, I hadn't even realized you were up to 2870 hits now. Given that we all know you are incapable of getting less than 200 hits per year, you are likely to beat Isao Harimoto's all-time record career 3085 hits either at the end of the 2008 season or early in 2009. I have no doubt that you could have surpassed his number had you stayed in Japan, of course. At first I thought that it was a little unfair that you get 30-40 games per year more, but I guess that means that you're really only getting maybe 2-3 "seasons" worth more of games, so that's not that big a deal.

Second, I went to the post office today and I saw you on the front of the "Entertain-post" magazine. The Ichiro ASG MVP postage stamps are REALLY sweet. I totally should buy some and send postcards to people in Seattle. That'd be awesome.

Sincerely,
Deanna the Marinerd


Dear Kazuhito Tadano,

You should know by now that I really don't judge you for things you did while you were in college. I was really happy when the Fighters drafted you, and I was really looking forward to seeing you in our rotation this year.

However, a month ago I noted that you were probably going to get struck by some sort of curse when they assigned you Kanemura's old uniform number #16. So it completely shouldn't surprise me that you had to go and break your wrist while going for a run the other day. Now, at least you broke your LEFT wrist instead of your RIGHT wrist, but still.

I'll come see you pitch in Kamagaya in a few months!

xoxoxo,
Deanna the Hokkaidork


Dear Keizo Kawashima,

I will miss you. A LOT. I was really expecting to see you in a platoon with Kudoh this year in left field, and then this trade came out of nowhere. I'll totally come see you play at Jingu sometime this year (maybe I'll get to see a Kawashima-Aoki-Miyade outfield someday! That'd be all cute and happy).

Love,
Deanna (and the rest of the female Fighters fans)


(The Fighters and Swallows just did a 6-man trade: Fighters gave up 24-year-old outfielder Keizo Kawashima, 25-year-old RHP Takehiko Oshimoto, and 28-year-old RHP Yoshitaka Hashimoto, for Yakult's 30-year-old LHP Shuugo Fujii, 30-year-old switch-hitting utility guy Hajime Miki, and 25-year-old RHP Yataro Sakamoto. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the deal here is, but offhand it seems like this deal favors Yakult a LOT more than it favors the Fighters. Maybe it's just that I like Kawashima. Feels like Yakult may have filled in the Ramirez hole in their outfield and the Fighters got another left-handed starter, but I kind of feel like Fujii's really not that good.)

This past weekend I went stomping around Hokuriku with my friends. While in Kanazawa I picked up a team yearbook for the champion Ishikawa Million Stars (and made plans to come back and visit people and go to a game this summer!), and then I also went down to Komatsu to see the Hideki Matsui Baseball Museum, where I took about 300 pictures and haven't had time to go through them yet, so I'll hopefully get around to posting them later this week. Hard to believe my winter vacation is over already.

Some stuff has happened in the last week. Notably, I'm really sad that Nick Swisher got traded to the White Sox and thus won't be visiting with the A's when they play in Tokyo in March. I'm also sad that Kazumi Saitoh is having shoulder surgery, and thus won't be playing when the Hawks come to Kanto for some weekends early in the season. I'm happy that Chunichi managed to re-sign Iwase and Tyrone. I'm a bit perplexed that the Royals signed Hideo Nomo to a minor-league contract, but I hope it works out for all involved.

The Carp took Masato Akamatsu from the Tigers as compensation for the Arai signing, which is pretty awesome. Akamatsu wears high socks and steals a bazillion bases, which should go really nicely with Eishin Soyogi, assuming Akamatsu can get on base to begin with.

In the meantime, players have officially started their personal training. Personal training usually starts about a month before Spring Camp starts, which is on February 1st. News Zero showed a bunch of Giants doing various training (including Hisanori Takahashi being incredibly bad at racquetball), but the interesting story to me was how a bunch of the young Osaka Toin hotshots got together at a batting cage and had a bazillion media folks watching every swing. For some reason it just didn't occur to me that Tsuyoshi Nishioka was a sempai to both Chunichi's Ryosuke Hirata and the Fighters' new kid Sho Nakata.