Marinerds, etc.

I've had this post sitting in the "draft" state for almost a year. How silly.

Anyway, I was a huge fan of the Nichidai San HS team that managed to win the Jingu Taikai in fall 2010 and the entirety of Koshien in the summer of 2011, as can be seen in back posts under the Sanko 畔上組 label on here. I first saw them play at said Jingu Taikai and fell in love, then went to Senbatsu in Spring 2011 and sat behind their dugout, and then cheered for them all the way through Koshien, from afar, while working in San Francisco.

So when I went back to Japan in the spring of 2012, of course I had to go hunt down as many of the Sanko boys as possible in their new college digs. Fortunately, most of them were at easily accessible colleges, so here's some photos/details about the Sanko Nine.  (Technically, this post should be called Two Years Later in terms of details, but the photos are all One Year Later, so...)

#1: Pitcher Kentaro Yoshinaga.  College: Waseda.



I was totally in love with Yoshinaga when he was pitching for Sanko, and it was pretty painful for me to watch him go to my least favorite college team, almost like watching a player I love get drafted by the Giants.  Even worse, they gave him Saitoh's old #16 and basically started calling him "the new Golden Boy".  And EVEN worse, he's living up to it -- his freshman year line is a gorgeous 7-2, 1.79 with 71 strikeouts in 70.1 innings.　(And batting .385 while doing so -- you'd think he was trying to outdo Sachiya Yamasaki at being the next Sanko Double Threat.)　He was the front cover of Shube's 大学野球 magazine for the Fall 2012 semester, and there was a 15-page article on "Sanko Boys: The Amazing Freshmen", with 8 pages on Yoshinaga alone, comparing him to Saitoh, among other things.

Anyway, his fans are nowhere near as annoying as Saitoh's fans were, and I think I'm finally feeling slightly less heartbroken about him being at Waseda.  Except when he pitches against Hosei, of course.

#2: Catcher Takahiro Suzuki.  College: Rikkio.



Suzuki's crowning moment in the Senbatsu 2011 was when he actually split his lip while making an amazing play at the plate, had a towel to his mouth to catch the blood... and was back in the game catching and kicking ass again a few minutes later.

Unfortunately, he hasn't had much of an impact at college yet, only appearing in 3 official games, and not even getting an at-bat in any of them.  I was even at one of the games, on October 7... of course, I was sitting in the Hosei cheering section.  Rikkio hasn't had a lot of luck with catchers in recent years since Yuki Maeda left, so hopefully Suzuki-kun will catch on soon enough.

#3 First Baseman Ryoya Kaneko.  College: Hosei.

Actually, so Kaneko was a year behind the rest of the Sanko Nine, and so he spent 2012 still in high school, as captain of this year's Sanko team, which didn't go to Senbatsu, did go to summer Koshien, and lost their first game to Seiko Gakuin (though Kaneko himself hit a solo homer in the 9th to bring a 2-0 game to a 2-1 game).  It will be super-interesting to have two consecutive Sanko captains at Hosei this year (with Azegami there as well), along with the fact that Hosei's captain this year is Kanji Kawai, who was on the 2009 champion Chukyodai Chukyo team.

#4: Second Baseman Kenichi Suganuma.  College: Asia... except he dropped out and is actually entering Nittaidai (Japan Sport Science) college in the fall.




I still have absolutely no idea what the hell happened here.  He made it onto the bench for Asia's team as a freshman, probly on his Sanko credentials, I saw him at a game and took this photo (he didn't play but was on the sidelines) and then never heard of him entering any of their games at all throughout the year, and in the fall he wasn't even listed as being in Asia's baseball club roster at all.  I asked Azegami about it when I had a chance to talk to him in the fall and he was like "I'm not sure, but I think he might have dropped out?"

Anyway, rumor is he's joining the Nittaidai team which has several of his former Sanko teammates, including Taniguchi, so maybe that will be good for him.

#5 Third Baseman Toshitake Yokoo.  College: Keio.



Yokoo was the cleanup batter for that Sanko team, and he did hit a pretty scary number of home runs in high school, and he idolized Seibu's Okawari-kun.

He hasn't been smashing the snot out of the ball quite as much in college -- to the tune of a .196/.316/.393 line for the year with only 2 homers -- but Keio's manager Etoh has been basically letting Yokoo go out there and bat 5th in the lineup for every game.  I guess we'll see how he fills out in college.  I didn't really see him play much, but his swing looked just like it did in high school, so I'm not sure what's up.

#6 Shortstop Koki Shimizu.  College: Nichidai.



Bizarrely the only one of the main 9 Nichidai Sanko boys to actually go to Nichidai (Nihon University).  Unfortunately for Shimizu, first Nichidai fell from the top Tohto League to 2nd League in the fall, and he didn't get enough playing time to end up on the league's stats site, so I'm not entirely sure how he did (though I should probably do more webstalking to figure it out sometime).

#7 Left Fielder Yuta Taniguchi.  College: Nittaidai.

Unfortunately, Nittai is in a league I just don't go to see, so I didn't stalk Taniguchi.  Maybe some other time.

#8 Center Fielder and Captain, Sho Azegami.  College: Hosei.



The great thing for Azegami going to Hosei is that he got to experience them winning the Big 6 League in the fall.  The bad thing is that he was going to a team that was fairly strong and so he barely got any playing time in the spring at all, though a decent amount in the fall.  Still, his attitude seemed to be pretty much "I'm a freshman, I know that if I work hard I'll get playing time and to contribute to the team later."

Fun fact: Azegami was 6-for-16 (.375) with 1 strikeout while I was in Japan for the first 3 series of the fall.  Then he was 0-for-8 with 4 strikeouts for the remainder of the semester after I went home.  Conclusion: for Azegami's sake, I should consider moving back to Tokyo.

#9 Right Fielder Shun Takayama.  College: Meiji.



I'm going to say something that might sound ridiculous, but I feel like Takayama could easily be the next version of Hayata Itoh (wrong HS/college, but whatever).  He's tall and built extremely well, can hit for power AND speed from the left side, is a decent outfielder, etc.  His first semester in Big 6 he hit .417 and the only reason he didn't get the batting title is because Keio's Agata went on a tear and hit .447.  His batting average went down a little bit in the fall but he hit his first college homer and also walked a bit more.

Seriously, I think Takayama might be the second-most likely to go pro after college out of these nine as of right now (Yoshinaga seems to be the most likely).  Though, Sanko doesn't usually produce that many pro players, oddly enough, so who knows.

Bonus pictures: I actually met some of these guys!



This was after an exhibition game of Keio vs. Sega Sammy.  Yokoo seemed sort of very WTF when I was like "can I get a photo with you please please please I'm a huge fan" but Daisuke Takeuchi (who, BTW, had been kinda picking on Yokoo in the dugout during the game -- bet it's some form of freshman hazing) was like "Sure, no problem, we can take a photo". And being a freshman, Yokoo had to listen to his senior. Ha! I am figuring that later on Daisuke explained to him "don't worry, the gaijin is harmless, she goes to a ton of our games". I gotta say, he won a bazillion "good guy" points with me that day.



Shun Takayama. This was after Opening Day vs. Todai.  I'd actually briefly met Takayama when he was still in high school, actually, when I recognized him outside Jingu and talked to him a little.  I asked for a photo then but he said "sorry, I'm not really supposed to".  This time he really had no excuse, especially after one of my Meiji superfan friends said "You have no idea how much this girl loved your Koshien team, she's going back to the US tomorrow" and so he was like "ok, fine, I guess". Hence the kind of grumpy look, but I was really happy to meet him.



So yeah, being as Hosei is my favorite college team and I have the most context and fan cred there, it was only a matter of time before I'd meet Sho Azegami.  While I was introduced to him briefly in the spring with several other Hosei freshmen, this picture was actually taken during the fall semester.  I told him what a huge fan I was and how happy I was he came to Hosei.  The other guy with his eyes closed is Akihiro Wakabayashi from Toin Gakuen.

I created a special tag just for this team: Sanko 畔上組, meaning the "Azegami Team". I needed something to specify that I meant this particular Sanko team; it's a strong baseball school in general, but like I've been saying, this year's particular group of 9 boys are particularly special.

Anyway, in case you didn't already hear, this morning was the final match of Koshien, and your 2011 Koshien champions are none other than Nichidai San!



Blatantly stolen from Mainichi. Go see their photos of the final game.

Really, this all started slightly less than a year ago, when a couple of 9th-grade boys at my JHS and I were reading the sports news and talking about high school baseball, and two of them had been at a Sanko game for the Tokyo Fall Tournament and told me that I HAD to see this Yoshinaga kid (and that Yokoo kid too). Unfortunately, I missed the end of that tourney thanks to Big 6, but I did make it to the Jingu Taikai a few weeks later. And sure enough, that Yoshinaga kid was worth seeing. I'd give anything to be able to go back and talk to my JHS kids about this, since it's partially their fault I went nuts over this Sanko team.

Anyway, the upshot is, I'm really overjoyed to see Sanko win. They were clearly the best team in the tournament, from the top to the bottom of the lineup. And I'm also horribly sad that it's all over.

Not to say that Kosei wasn't a decent opponent, because that's not true. Their pitcher Akita actually seemed to have a lot more energy than Sanko's Yoshinaga, who was clearly exhausted. But, just like he's done the last few games, when he really, really needed to, he could reach back and get something extra for a strikeout, and wait for a patented Sanko Big Inning to blow the game open.

Which they did.

Sanko took the lead in the 3rd inning when Azegami got hit by a pitch, Yokoo hit a bloop-ish single to right (just out of the reach of the running 2B), and then Shun Takayama blasted a home run over the wall in dead center to make it 3-0.

(Nevermind that the inning really started with Shimizu getting hit in the foot by a pitch, but since he swung at it they called it a strikeout.)

Takayama then made the play of the game in the top of the 5th, when he fielded a single and gunned a runner out at the plate to preserve Yoshinaga's shutout. In the bottom of the 5th, Kaneko got a hit, Azegami tried to bunt him over but failed (forceout at 2nd), moved up on a wild pitch to Yokoo, and then to 3rd on Yokoo's single. Runners at the corners again for Takayama, who grounded out into a 4-6 fielder's choice at 2nd (which was actually a really nice play, the 2nd baseman scooped it off the ground and threw to 2nd while still down). Azegami scored on that play, 4-0. Takayama then got himself caught stealing to end the inning. :P

But then Takayama made a running sliding catch of a fly to right to end the top of the 6th, and all was forgiven.

The Patented Sanko Big 7th Inning started with Shimizu singling, and Kaneko bunting him over to 2nd (why?!?!!?). Azegami then hit a double out to right-center and that brought in Shimizu to make it 5-0. Yokoo then legitimately blasted one out to the left field wall for a double, scoring Azegami, 6-0. Takayama followed that up with a single to right, scoring Yokoo, 7-0. Suganuma grounded out, but then Takahiro Suzuki hit a homer over the left field wall and that made it 9-0 and also took Kosei's pitcher Akita out of the game. Yoshinaga then struck out to end the inning.

Whatever.

Sanko added two more in the 8th when Shimizu reached on an error, Kaneko walked, and Yokoo hit a 2-RBI single to right, making it 11-0 and making him 4-for-5 on the day with 3 RBI, second only to Takayama's going 2-for-5 with 5 RBI. Infact, every Sanko batter reached base, although Taniguchi got there on an error and Yoshinaga got there on a walk.

Somehow Yoshinaga finished out the last 3 Kosei batters with a popout and two strikeouts, and that was it! 125 pitches, 8 strikeouts, complete-game shutout...



To steal another one from Mainichi, of course :)

Here's the game log / article on Asahi's site in Japanese.

(I'll add a little more to this in a bit, hopefully)

Oh, this article from the semi-finals has the BEST PICTURE OF SUGANUMA EVER in it, when he hit that 3-run homer :)

I have been so swamped by work in the last few weeks, including a 2-week period where my group actually went off-site and holed up in a hotel in order to work on our project, that I've barely seen any of Koshien EXCEPT Nichidai Sanko and the occasional outlying game like Kyukoku or Teikyo or Yokohama.

I kept holding off on making the Yoshinaga mega-photopost because I wanted to write something significant about him, being as he captured my heart last November at the Jingu taikai and has been at the forefront of my "irrational emotional attachment to high school pitchers" this past year. I've probably read way more about him than any sane person would, from his tribulations learning how to throw a sinker to his obsession with actress Erika Toda.

But right now I don't have the time. And in about 16 hours, assuming no rainout, he's going to be pitching in the final game of Koshien 2011. The Azegami-team, which I've been writing about here on and off for the last several months, will come to an end in a few short days no matter what the outcome is. I find that so very sad. Part of why I love Japanese high school baseball, but definitely don't usually spend the time getting to learn the players as much as I do in college or the pros, is because the teams are so ephemeral, it's so hard to learn them and really grow any attachment to them. By the time the kids truly mature, it's time for them to step down after the summer of their 3rd year, and let the underclassmen take over.

So this Sanko team has been truly special for me, watching these boys over the last year, seeing Suganuma mature into a power hitter, seeing Suzuki show how to play through the pain, seeing Azegami's leadership on the field. And most of all, seeing Yoshinaga mature as a pitcher. He's got stuff, sure, but he's certainly not the most overpowering pitcher out there. He has his moments of weakness, which make him that much more human. But he also has a fantastic team behind him, and they score more runs than he gives up, and they back him up on the field. And he comes through when they need him most, and they come through when he needs them most.

What can I say, I love this team, and I love this guy.

These are from Senbatsu, but does it really make a difference? :)












(oh, that smile!)




(oh yeah, he can bat too, you know)


I don't know for sure if I'll get to watch tomorrow's game live, but I'll certainly be frantically checking the scores either way. I haven't been this into a team since Saga Kita. Seriously!

This boy...



is going back to this place!



:)


So yeah, fairly close final game to close up the West Tokyo qualifiers, between Nichidai San and Waseda Jitsugyo. In 2006, these two teams also faced off, and Waseda's ace at the time was this kid named Yuki Saitoh. You may have heard of him. Waseda won in the 11th inning and went to Koshien, and the rest is history. Saitoh went on to beat Ma-kun and Komadai Tomakomai and stop their 3-peat, and set the rest of the country on a rage for blue handkerchiefs. Half of Sanko's team went on to attend Meiji University and spent the next four years still trying to beat Saitoh and Waseda. (Fumiya Araki did a fairly good job and found his way back to Koshien as a Hanshin Tiger.)

This year's Sanko team, aka the Azegami squad, has been pretty magical. They've got all the parts of a successful team there -- a strong-hitting and strong-fielding outfield in Taniguchi, Azegami, and Takayama, a bunch of power bats in Yokoo and Suganuma, a strong infield in Shimizu and Kaneko, a rock behind the plate in Suzuki, and most importantly, something else Sanko's lacked in the last few years -- a true ace in the form of Kentaro Yoshinaga. As long as he could keep things together, they would win. And today he certainly did -- 14 strikeouts to win it 2-1.

It was a deadlock of a 0-0 game until the 5th, when Yuta Taniguchi, batting 9th, got hit in the head by a pitch -- literally, it was just a high curve that curved into the front of his helmet. Taniguchi stole second, and 2nd-year Ryoya Kaneko hit a double to center to score Taniguchi to make it 1-0.

The boy I've dubbed "Secret Power", Kenichi Suganuma, launched a homer in the 6th to make it 2-0.

Waseda threatened in the top of the 7th when Watanabe led off with a double and was bunted to 3rd; during Shigenobu's at-bat, Yoshinaga threw a wild pitch into the dirt that bounced up and Watanabe was able to score on it to make the score 2-1. But fortunately Yoshinaga then struck out Shigenobu and Manabe to end the threat, and that was kind of the game right there.

I was able to watch the game on justin.tv (though with no sound, so I had to guess that the men they were interviewing in the stands were Yoshinaga and Suzuki's dads, for example), and it was really great to see them win. Yoshinaga couldn't stop crying afterwards. It's got to be a big weight off his shoulder -- the ghosts of the last time Sanko and Sojitsu faced off in addition to what people have called the "Jingu Taikai curse", meaning that the team who wins the Jingu Taikai can't have further success at Koshien that year. Who knows?

Anyway, this is the high school team that I irrationally fell for this year, and you have no idea how tempting it is to get a plane ticket to Osaka. Alas. (And yes, that second photo is me at Senbatsu this spring...)

Part 3 in a series. See Part 1, See Part 2.

As we close in on the finals of the summer taikai, I find myself wanting to revisit and finish my monster Nichidai San posts from the spring. They did infact go on to win the entire Tokyo spring taikai, though that shouldn't really surprise anyone, and now they're contending for a spot at summer Koshien. I started this series of posts as a sort of glorified "Sanko Senbatsu Photopost", and then got distracted.

Last time I covered the first 4 of the lineup -- oddly, the lineup I saw at the Jingu Taikai last year, and the lineup at Senbatsu, and the lineup in the West Tokyo Qualifying Tournament, hasn't significantly changed between then and now, although the last 5 spots tend to get switched around a bit. The only thing is, I found a lot more stuff written about the first four guys in the lineup than the next four, to be sure. They're certainly all strong players though -- none of these guys is a weak spot in the lineup at all, and every one of them is prone to launch a homer at any time (and has).


The Youngster, Ryoya Kaneko
(HS meikan)



This year's power team is almost all 3rd-years with the exception of Kaneko, the sole 2nd-year in the starting 9. (Which practically guarantees he'll be team captain next year, although there are certainly a few other 2nd-years on the 18-man roster.) Despite being one of the youngest on the team, Kaneko is also listed as being one of the tallest on the team, at 180cm. He's said to have a really good batting eye and is expected to develop into a power hitter when he fills out, which bodes well for him as a lefty-batting first baseman.

Kaneko also played for the All-Tokyo team when the Urban Youth Academy came over for a few friendship games in June, again being one of the only underclassmen.

Shortstop Koki Shimizu





Voted by the rest of his team as the biggest "yancha", which kinda means "pain in the ass", Shimizu is a solid shortstop with strong footwork. You probably wouldn't notice how good he is because he's one of those stealthy shortstop types like Hirokazu Ibata.

The Secret Power, Kenichi Suganuma





Suganuma didn't particularly appear to be a huge power threat when I saw him, and he batted only .235 during that Senbatsu, but then he went on to hit 4 homers in the Tokyo Spring Taikai, which was pretty insane. Shimizu claims that Suganuma's become a "weight baka", and he said (in the Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine) that he went from being able to lift 45kg to 90kg in a year.

Suganuma usually wears uniform number 7, and was ostensibly the left fielder at some point, but has been playing second base in pretty much every official game Sanko's had in 2011. I'm guessing that he works together well with Shimizu, though I recall him being a decent 2nd baseman in the games I saw him in...

Taking One For The Team - catcher Takahiro Suzuki
(HS meikan)





Here are your normal photos of catcher Takahiro Suzuki -- smiling by the dugout, bunting up the runner, both of which he's good at. But what really made Suzuki a hero in the eyes of many high school baseball fans is what happened in the top of the 8th inning of this game, on March 25, 2011. I happened to be sitting behind the dugout for this just because I wanted to see Sanko, so I also had a great angle for what happened.

Edwin's blog recount and the Sanko blog recount (in Japanese).

Basically an errant throw to the plate bounced and hit Suzuki in the face, and it allowed Meitoku to score a go-ahead run. The game paused for a while as Suzuki kind of got knocked out, and they put a towel to his mouth as he appeared to have a bloody lip and might have lost a tooth. I was using my zoom lens as a binoculars to figure out what was going on, and got the following shots...







The game paused for a bit, and then Suzuki did what was way above and beyond the call of duty -- he came back out after a few minutes, finished the inning, and then in the bottom of the 8th, with runners at first and second, he said he wanted to bat, went to the plate, and SMACKED ONE to the center field wall, scoring Suganuma and Yoshinaga to bring Sanko up 6-5 over Meitoku, which is where the game would end.

The Sanko blog describes it as "Covered in blood and sweat, Suzuki showed his fighting spirit and hit the go-ahead 2-RBI double."

Here's a Youtube Video recap of the game. If you go to about minute 10:45 you can see what happens -- Suganuma's throw to the plate and Suzuki going down. Then at 12:04 Suzuki comes up to bat, clearly with a bloody lip, and BAM. I've seen players play through a lot of random things, but this was definitely up there.

Anyway, the great postscript to this is that Suzuki -- who has been described more as "the guy catching Yoshinaga, a solid but not spectacular player", in the Tokyo Spring Taikai final game against Kosei... the game went into extra innings, and Sanko even brought in Yoshinaga to pitch, who had largely not been pitching in that tournament. Anyway, Sanko does win the game... on a walkoff grand slam by Suzuki.

Awesome.

And now that I'm finishing this, Sanko and Waseda Jitsugyo are slated to face each other in 2 days. I'll try to put my Yoshinaga monster photopost out before then...

Part 2 in a series. See Part 1.

Due to time constraints, I only managed to get through the first 4 batters in the lineup for today's photopost. Sorry.

I started to write an introduction to this post but then found that captain Sho Azegami had clearly written it for me already. This is from page 35 of the spring 2011 Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine, the "Captain's Team Check":

戦力的には、去年のチームと比べ、長打力では少し劣ります。 でも、去年になかったタイプの谷口が、足を絡めたプレーをしてくれたり、今年は9人全員で一点を取りにいく野球ができます。 1番の高山が出塁して、谷口が送って自分と横尾がかえす。
そのパターンが秋はうまく機能しての優勝でした。 でも、もう少し走塁を絡められたら、ラクな展開で勝てました。 冬は、走塁練習にも力を入れています。 エースの吉永も成長し、自分が抑えるという気迫であふれています。 昨年、なしえなかった優勝に向け、全員１つになって戦います！

(And my translation:)
"If I compare this year's batting to last year's, our power numbers may be a little smaller. But, last year's team also didn't have a speedster type guy like Taniguchi, who has caused our team to play more of a running game. This year our play style is more like, any guy of the 9 in our lineup can score a run at any time. Leadoff man Takayama gets on base, Taniguchi moves him up and then either I or Yokoo bring him in. That was the pattern we used to earn our championship in the fall. But, making our baserunning a bit better, that also helps us win in general. This winter, we put a lot of effort into baserunning practice. And our ace Yoshinaga has also gotten better, his mound presence is amazing. (lit: his self-control and determination is overflowing) So, coming back to the Senbatsu crown we couldn't quite win last spring, this year our team fights together as one to win it!"


He's not kidding about the "winning formula". The top of this lineup is certainly one of the best in Japanese high school baseball, currently.

Leadoff man Shun Takayama
(draftrepo HS meikan)





Takayama lists his favorite baseball player as being the Fighters' Atsunori Inaba, and it's not surprising -- Takayama himself is a very similar player, a guy who can hit for a combination of power and speed from the left side, and has a decent arm and glove in the outfield as well. He became the leadoff man and regular right fielder for Sanko as a sophomore, already standing almost 6 feet tall.

Takayama was my introduction to this Sanko team, as a matter of fact -- I showed up at the Jingu Taikai slightly late, the first time I was seeing them play in person. I found a seat as Takayama was coming to the plate for the second time of the day, and no sooner had I sat down than he was launching a 2-run homer into the right-field bleachers. At least it was an easy at-bat to write in my scorecard.

Koshien no Hoshi mentions that he's the #1 モテる man on the team, meaning popular/well-liked: "Takayama has a lot of fans -- he sure fills out a baseball uniform well!"

Number 2, Speedster Yuta Taniguchi
(mainichi)





Everyone agrees that Taniguchi is not only the fastest runner on the Sanko team, but he very well might be one of the fastest high school baserunners out there in the current field. He's not a particularly flashy player, and hasn't been written up in the draft notes like most of the other regulars on the team have (although check out this draft repo page -- look at stolen bases). But clearly he's been a contributor to the team both in his fielding and his hitting, and apparently he and captain Azegami have worked out together for their entire time at Sanko ("Azegami called out to me when we first joined the team as freshmen, 'Wanna practice together?' Now, two years later, we just always practice together. It's our habit. If team practice was cancelled, we'd probably still go out and run together or something.")

An interesting side story about Taniguchi is that he has one sister 4 years older than him, and she went to Koshien before him with her high school as a team scorekeeper/assistant).

The Heart of the Team: Captain Sho Azegami
(HS meikan draft repo)





I started talking about Azegami, a rare non-catcher captain, in my last post a little. Basically, when I was sitting behind Sanko's dugout at Koshien, from the minute he emerged from the dugout before the game, I immediately saw him and was like "Ah! That's Azegami, the captain." He somehow manages to carry this air of authority; a somewhat serious, almost professional attitude, but at the same time he's shouting at his teammates with a smile on his face like "Come on guys, it's time to PRACTICE! Up and at 'em! RUN RUN RUN! We can't win today if we don't get in a good pregame!" You could see the other guys kinda laugh like "Yessir!" and fall into line around him.

One scout's report calls him "自主練習の量も自他ともに認めるナンバーワン", or "the team's number one guy when it comes to personal training", basically. In other words, the dude works his butt off and inspires others to do the same. Which makes it no wonder he's in sync with Ogura-kantoku and the team slogan of "practice makes perfect".

Azegami tied a Senbatsu record with 6 hits in one game against Kakogawa Kita, and was overall 11-for-16 for a .688/.722/1.000 line for the tourney. So far in the Spring Tourney he's already 6-for-13 with 2 homeruns as well.

What else can I possibly say? He lists math as his weak subject. Guess that means he's not overly concerned with figuring out his exact batting average, though I'm guessing he can certainly count to 6.

The Okawari Wannabe: Cleanup Man Toshitake Yokoo
(HS meikan draft repo)









If you look up the word "akogare"　(憧れ） in a Japanese-English dictionary, the definition it'll probably give you is "yearning", which will sound a little bit weird. The word, when applied to a person, usually actually means "I want to be like them" or "I look up to them".

The first time I heard of Yokoo was from one of my JHS students, who basically used that exact phrase to describe him: 三高の4番横尾はすごい！憧れます！ Even after said JHS student enrolled at a rival baseball high school, when we chatted a bit about Senbatsu and Sanko, he was still like "You saw Sanko? Cool! Did you see Yokoo play? He's the man. I wanna be like him. I'm gonna be a cleanup batter and hit a bazillion homeruns someday just like Yokoo too."

A guy who inspires that in his peers is a little frightening.

Yokoo started playing baseball at a very young age; both his older brother and his father also played. Apparently even as an elementary school student, his father put a lot of pressure on him; supposedly they'd be riding back in the car from his little league practice and his dad would recap the day and berate him for mistakes he made in the game and then make the brothers do more baseball practice at home afterwards as well. Weekday evenings, when his father got home from work, they might also go to a batting cage and practice together as well.

As a result, when Sanko manager Ogura tagged Yokoo as a sophomore and basically said, "You're our cleanup batter. If you don't hit, we don't win. Got that?", Yokoo was already used to such pressure and responded in kind by hitting.

Yokoo's hero is apparently Takeya Nakamura of the Seibu Lions, otherwise known as "Okawari-kun", the man who eats way too much and hits way too many homeruns. As a result, I think Yokoo is already starting to get kinda big, and maybe he'd be better off not continuing that path. Though, in the games I saw him play, he moved just fine over at third base. I wouldn't say he's an astoundingly good fielder (and he got a lot of heat for making a big error at last year's Senbatsu that allowed Konan to win the game) but he's not terrible.

The only thing is, his hitting was kind of on the downturn at this year's Senbatsu. Last year he mashed for a .458/.480/.708 line, and this year was .200/.333/.200 instead. I think I saw 2 of the 3 hits he managed to get. He walked a few times too, but still, the real batter at Senbatsu was Azegami. I read that Yokoo got a slightly heavier bat over the winter to improve his power swing; maybe he's still adjusting to that. In the Tokyo spring tourney he's managed a 5-for-13 average with a homer, although that's against weaker pitching than he faced at Senbatsu.

Amusingly, as a 2nd-year Yokoo wrote his future dream as "major leaguer", but as a 3rd-year, he wrote just "pro ballplayer". Coming down to earth, maybe? He also lists English as his strong subject and math as his weak subject.


(This is proving more difficult to write than I thought it would be, because I keep getting sidetracked reading through Koshien magazines and websites. So, Part 3 will be coming in a day or two. Hopefully by then I can tell you all how Sanko won the Spring taikai...)

First part in a series, I hope. I've wanted to make a monster Nichidai San post since a month ago when I sat behind their dugout at Senbatsu (or since the Jingu Taikai last fall), but didn't really have time.

Your first question might be, "...what the heck is a Nichidai San? Why do you call it Sanko half the time?"

The full name of the school is 日本大学第三高等学校, or Nihon University Number Three High School, usually shortened to either 日大三 ("Nichidai San") or 三高 ("Sanko", and their school seal is a stylized version of that latter abbreviation, which is also what's on the baseball uniform). The 2-character abbreviation 日大 "Nichidai" is short for 日本大学 "Nihon Daigaku". Many universities in Japan have one or more affiliated high schools, which either end up numbered or named after the type of school or the location the campus is in. For example, "Nodai Niko" (numbered), "Waseda Jitsugyo" (type), "Tokaidai Sagami" (location).

Nihon University is the largest university in Japan (something like 70,000 undergraduates spread among all of their campuses), which kind of makes sense, given that it's kind of "the University of Japan". Though the university's baseball team has produced several solid pro players in recent years (Shuichi Murata, Shohei Tateyama, Mitsuru Manaka, Eiji Ochiai, Hirotoshi Kitagawa, Takumi Nasuno, Naoyuki Shimizu... and that idiot Hisayoshi Chono), in general they actually haven't been THAT great in about... 50 years. Heck, in my 4 years of watching college ball in Japan, Nichidai was only in the top division of the Tohto League for 2 semesters, and promptly fell back out of it.

But bizarrely, the Nichidai high schools are pretty much almost always in Koshien -- you'll rarely see a tournament that does not involve at least one high school with 日大 attached to it, kids wearing uniforms with "NIHON" across their chests. And I've been told that how closely attached they are to the university itself also depends on whether the Nichidai comes first or last in the school's name -- that is, the ones that are Nichidai 1, 2, 3 are the highest, then the ones like Nichidai Tsurugaoka, Nichidai Fujisawa, etc, and then after that, Ogaki Nichidai, Sano Nichidai, Nagasaki Nichidai, etc. What this really means is how much more of a chance a student has of getting into Nichidai itself based on attending a Nichidai high school, really. (Unlike how supposedly with Keio high school, if you manage to graduate, you'll just get into the university automatically.)

Sanko in particular has been a Tokyo high school baseball powerhouse in recent years -- they've consistently managed to end up Best 8 or higher in most regional tournaments for the last decade or so; if they're not representing West Tokyo at Koshien, they're making it awfully hard for someone else to get there. When they do go to Koshien, they're a force to be reckoned with. It was almost unfair in 2010 when the first two teams they faced were 21st Century teams -- schools invited for reasons other than stomping all of their opponents. "Welcome to Koshien. Meet Nichidai San. It won't hurt for more than 9 innings, we promise."

Since 1997, the Sanko team has been under the leadership of this man:



Masayoshi Ogura, born in 1957, went to Nichidai San HS, was an infielder in the baseball club but never made it as a regular. He continued on to Nihon University, but didn't even join the baseball club there, instead working towards becoming a teacher so he could coach high school baseball. After graduating, he became the manager for Kanto Daiichi HS, and took them to several Koshien and Senbatsu tournaments in the mid-80's. Eventually, in 1997, he became manager at Nichidai San, which was his life's goal, and he's been there since. In that time they've been to Koshien 10 times and compiled a 19-10 W/L record, winning it all in summer 2001 (behind Kazuki Kondoh, who now pitches for Orix).

One of Ogura's slogans as a baseball coach is 練習はうそをつかない, meaning loosely "Practice makes perfect". Other things he teaches as a coach and social studies teacher are for self-restraint and to have a caring heart; that is, to put others before yourself (you can go see his lectures on the subject if you want to, in mid-June). One of his comments about this 2011 team is that they were just an unusually solid unit as a team, working together very well, and not only that, they'd built a solid 1-9 lineup where all of the batters were strong, behind a real ace in Yoshinaga. Which is definitely what I saw last fall and what drew me to this team in particular. No weak links. A well-oiled machine. Welcome to Koshien, meet Nichidai San.

Every year in the Koshien magazines, they ask the players various questions, like their favorite food, favorite baseball player, future dream, etc. Most of the answers are predictable; a lot of "pro baseball player" for future dream, some AKB48 member as favorite celebrity, etc. But two of those categories are always also "person I most respect" and "favorite word or phrase". You can actually kind of guess how united a team is and how much they follow their manager by how they answer these questions. The 2010 Nichidai San team had 10 out of 18 players put Ogura as the person they most respected, and 4 put "練習はうそをつかない" as their "favorite phrase". With 2011's team, FIFTEEN of them have Ogura as their "person I most respect". And 10/18 have "練習はうそをつかない" as their favorite phrase.

In recent years, Sanko's team captains have mostly been catchers. In 2006 it was Shuhei Ikenaga (incidentally my favorite Meiji University player, a super-likeable bespectacled catcher), in 2007 it was catcher Yohei Kurosaki, now at Meisei University. In 2008 they took a break and had an outfielder, Kenta Nakashima (now at Nihon Taiiku University). That didn't work so well, so back to a catcher captain in 2009 with Yuta Yoshida (now at Rissho Univ). 2010's team had catcher Kazuki Ohtsuka as their captain (who just entered Nihon University).

Oddly, despite that catcher Takahiro Suzuki seems like total captain material, the captain is centerfielder Sho Azegami. Who is even MORE captain-like:



(Suzuki and Yokoo are the co-captains, actually. Suzuki describes Azegami as being "a natural leader type with a booming voice in the dugout that you can't help but follow." and Yokoo adds, "The three of us work together to make sure the team runs smoothly. So far we haven't had any disagreements.")

It doesn't hurt that Azegami is one hell of a hitter, in addition to being one hell of a leader. He hit well as a sophomore, continued it with a 5-for-11 run in the Jingu Taikai, tied a Senbatsu record when he went 6-for-6 in one of the games this spring, and has continued his assault in the Tokyo Spring Tournament now.

Speaking of which, the final game of the Tokyo Spring Tournament (tourney brackets) is on Sunday -- May 1st -- at Komazawa Stadium.

And said final game pits Nichidai San against Kosei Gakuen HS... whose campus is right by the Salvation Army headquarters out in Suginami. (I only know that because I was out there donating stuff from my house before I left Japan, bizarrely.)

However, as far as I can tell, Kosei hasn't won a game against Sanko for at least the last 4 years. I hope I'm not jinxing anything by pointing that out.

Hopefully I'll get the second half of this post up tomorrow as a Friday Foto, before the final game starts.

Well, when I STARTED writing this, the Jingu Taikai tournament was finishing up the finals. The high school final match was Kagoshima Jitsugyo High School, aka "Kajitsu", against The Third Senior High School Of Nihon University, aka Nichidai San or just "Sanko". The university final match was Waseda vs. Tokai. And Sanko beat Kajitsu 4-1 and Waseda beat Tokaidai in a heartbreaking 2-1 game, so Sanko and Waseda are your champs. The media already had a field day with the Yuki Saitoh stuff, and now maybe he can finally get around to signing with the Fighters.

I'm not sure why the Jingu Taikai has both high school and college in the same tournament, but it makes for some really interesting days at Jingu where you can see some of the finest players in both levels of play. Each day they have 4 games, with 2 high school games in the morning and 2 college games in the afternoon, and if you buy a ticket for the day, you can sit for all 4 matches if you so desire.



The only problem is that it starts on Saturday and goes until Wednesday, so only the first two days are weekend days; the other days I'm checking the scores on my computer at school between classes and meeting some of my 9th-grade boys in the hallway to feed them contraband information like how many batters Tatsuya Ohishi struck out.

Anyway, so Saturday November 14th, I went down to Jingu for the second game of the tournament. My actual motivation for going was to see Sanko's team and specifically right-handed pitcher Kentaro Yoshinaga, who I've been following along with some of my students, but had never seen in person thanks to the rainouts at Senbatsu and a scheduling snafu during the Tokyo summer tournaments.

Sanko vs. Hokkai was the second game of the day, scheduled to start at 11am, which is when I arrived. Unfortunately, due to Game 1 of the day, Ogaki Nichidai knocking out Tenri 2-1, taking only 1 hour and 43 minutes, Game 2 actually started at 10:45am, so it was already the bottom of the 2nd inning when I arrived. Fortunately, I could get the box scores off Sanko's website and find out what I missed later. (It was only two walks, anyway.)

The stadium was already pretty full when I got there, and I'd guess that fully half of the people in the stands were other high school or college students, with the other half being a mixture of friends/family of the teams, and the usual suspects that make up the college games, ie, housewives who love Yuki Saitoh, and old men who have nothing better to do than come to Jingu and drink beer and yell at young boys playing baseball. Naturally the front area I usually sit in was taken up by high school students on my side -- Sanko's cheering section -- and by tons of towels that were seatholders for Waseda's game on the other side. I am not sure that Hokkai actually really brought a cheering section down from Hokkaido, to be honest.


(Nichidai Sanko's ouendan -- they scored a run in the middle of me filming this, so you can even see them singing the school song.)

I sat about 2/3 of the way up the stands, behind the Sanko dugout, basically, and kept score, watched the cheering, and didn't have my big camera for a change. The only shame about that was that I didn't get to take any good pictures of Yoshinaga-kun, who was the main reason I wanted to see the game.

(And in short: He is GOOD. We saw him hit upwards of 147km/h on the Jingu gun with his fastball, but he also threw a bunch of other stuff as well... and he literally allowed 4 runners all game, not even allowing his first hit until the 5th inning. And that for a sophomore who is already 6' tall!)

Right after I arrived, in the top of the 3rd inning, Sanko's catcher Takahiro Suzuki was hit by a pitch, and then leadoff rightfielder Shun Takayama followed that up with a home run to right field! That made it 2-0.

But then things settled down for a while. Hokkai's starter was a freshman named Shoichi Tamakuma -- he wasn't nearly as overpowering as Yoshinaga, and the highest speed he was getting was maybe 134ish. Also, his control was iffy and he walked like 4 guys over the course of 8 innings (and hit two more), so there was a Sanko runner on base EVERY inning pretty much. But somehow for the next 3 innings, despite 6 runners, Sanko scored no runs, including leaving the bases loaded in the 6th.

Top of the 7th, Suzuki led off with a legitimate double to left (I say legitimate because at the HS level you often get "doubles" and "triples" that are really just "this dude will learn to judge the ball a lot better with time" problems). Takayama popped out to left, and so Yuta Taniguchi tried to bunt up Suzuki, but the Hokkai pitcher made an awkward grab and throw to field the bunt, and so both runners were safe at the corners. Sho Asegami singled to right to bring home Suzuki; 3-0, and Toshitake Yokoo singled to bring home Taniguchi, 4-0, before Ryoya Kaneko grounded into a double play.

Hokkai put one run on their side through a big mistake by the Sanko battery; two runners in a row had singled and so there were runners at 1st and 2nd when Yoshinaga threw a wild pitch that Suzuki couldn't block. But for whatever reason, they kind of stalled on actually GETTING the ball back, long enough that runner Tama was able to score from second base on the wild pitch. Pretty nuts. 4-1.

Koki Shimizu led off the top of the 8th with a double to right, and then Kenichi Suganuma sac bunted... and Hokkai pitcher Tamakuma fielded and threw the ball over first base, with Shimizu scoring on the play, 5-1. Pitcher Yoshinaga grounded into a double play after that.

Back to the top for the top of the 9th, though, where home-run hitter Takayama led off with a single, at which point Hokkai switched pitchers from Tamakuma to Hirata, another freshman righty. Taniguchi bunted and Hokkai third baseman Matsumoto booted the ball, so there were two runners on. Asegami struck out but Yokoo was hit by a pitch on his arm, loading the bases. Kaneko hit a fly ball to right field that should have been a routine out, only the right fielder misjudged the ball completely, got to a spot, planted his feet, put up his arm to catch it... and the ball landed about 15 feet behind him. SUPER embarrassing, and by the time the dust cleared, Takayama and Taniguchi had scored, 7-1, and Yokoo was on third. (And they called it a "double", of course.) Fortunately, a walk and a double play later, the inning ended and Hokkai escaped further embarrassment.

Yoshinaga finished out the game quickly and painlessly and 7-1 was the final score, with him pitching a complete game win on 103 pitches, striking out 7.



And a few more (crappy) photos from that game:




This was the view of the infield and Jingu during the game. It was surprisingly full for a high school tournament game. In the third game of the day, which involved Waseda and His Handkerchiefness, they had to open the outfield since the infield was full -- for the first time in 33 years, since Suguru Egawa (Hosei, later Giants) faced off against Tatsunori Hara (Tokai, later Giants).




Sanko's Kentaro Yoshinaga.


Hokkai's freshman pitcher Shoichi Tamakuma.


Shun Takayama, the boy who hit the homerun.


Sanko ouendan in the 7th inning, singing the school song.


Sanko ouendan later on waving megaphones.


Between the games, they showed "Memories of past Jingu Taikai Tournaments", going all the way back 40 years. It was pretty neat spotting various schools and various players. For example...


1977, the famous college matchup of Hosei vs. Tokai, of Egawa vs. Hara.


1992 -- a famous high school matchup of Teikyo's Koichi Misawa (who later on played for Yomiuri and various other places, including the US indie leagues), and Seiryo's Hideki Matsui... you probably know who he is.


The second game of the day was Waseda University (representing Tokyo Big 6) vs. Aichi Gakuin University (representing the Tokai and Hokuriku region). I was conveniently sitting on the Aichi Gakuin side (on purpose, of course), so between the two games I also went down to the field briefly to take a look at the Aichi Gakuin players, since I'd never seen them before. Their uniforms look remarkably like the Yomiuri Giants (with the hats vaguely resembling Aomori Yamada):







However, their ouendan didn't really resemble any other college that I've seen in particular, besides that the cheer girls had "AGU" on their shirts -- and AGU usually means "Aoyama Gakuin University" to me, the school in the Tohto League.







Interestingly, unlike the Tokyo Big 6 ouendan that I'm used to, which usually have a bunch of guys in black gakuran jackets waving and punching and dancing in unison on the platform along with the cheer girls, this one only featured ONE dude on the platform -- an extremely loud guy in a red t-shirt and black shorts. He spent the entire game yelling cheers and getting the crowd into the game, with the cheer girls alternately either dancing or holding up signs with players' names and things to yell.

Aichi Gakuin also did bring up their marching band. To be fair, their band mostly played stuff that is typical for high school baseball games, like Yamato and Nerai Uchi, but they did also have a few more interesting routines, including a recurring rendition of YMCA that they did for leadoff man Kajiwara:



And the band also played while cheerleaders flipped up in the air during the 5th inning:



As for the game itself... THAT was particularly boring, sadly. Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda, as expected, and Hiroshi Urano (浦野博司) for Aichi. You probably know who Yuki Saitoh is by now. Urano, on the other hand, was a new pitcher for me. Aichi Gakuin has represented Tokai in the last three years of the Jingu Taikai, BUT they have also gotten knocked out in the first round each time. According to draftrepo, though, Urano was definitely a legitimate ace this year for his team, pitching 64.1 innings in 8 games and personally going 6-1 with a 0.70 ERA, striking out 54 in those 64 innings. Not too shabby.

I noticed that he had a really high kick, but couldn't pick anything else out in particular about his throwing:



Anyway, Urano started off great -- the first 3 innings, he struck out 5 guys and only gave up one hit. Unfortunately, then the floodgates opened on him in the bottom of the 4th; with one out Koji Udaka singled, Toshiki Yamada also singled, moving Udaka to third... fortunately a Yuki Jihiki squeeze bunt completely FAILED after that and Udaka was out at the plate. But Hiroki Matsunaga walked, which loaded the bases, and then Daisuke Ichimaru hit a bases-clearing double to left which made it 3-0.

As for Saitoh, well, he only had one time where Aichi even got more than one runner on the bases in the same inning, and that was when they managed to load the bases off him in the 6th on a single, an error, and a walk... and he worked his way out of the jam with a strikeout and a groundout, and then came out of the game so Yuya Fukui could finish out the final 3 innings anyway. (The luxury of having more than one ace pitcher for these tournaments.)

Though Saitoh also had a somewhat bonehead moment on the bases in the 5th inning; he led off the inning with a double to left, which had the entire stadium oohing and ahhing over how "Yu-chan is also such a good batter!" And then Shohei Habu bunted him up to 3rd... except that Saitoh didn't run. No, seriously. I have no idea why, and even "Bob", the third base coach (really Shoji Nozaki, long story there), was waving him and looking confused.

So Waseda didn't add a run there, but they did add one a little later off Aichi's reliever Ogiwara in the 8th inning; Hiroki Matsunaga singled, stole second, advanced on a grounder, and was then batted in by a pinch-hitting Keisuke Sakuraba. 4-0.



Boring game, really, overall. At least the AGU ouendan was entertaining; it's always interesting for me to see and hear new marching bands and cheer routines, and the non-traditional approach was kind of refreshing (but don't get me wrong, I love gakuran jackets and the ouendan boys in Big 6 too).

Anyway...

The fourth game of the day was Kyushu Sangyo University (representing Kyushu) vs. Kokugakuin (representing the Tohto League). Now... I do not have the stamina to do three full games, especially by myself, so I was not planning to stick around for the entirety of this game. I even already had dinner plans with two friends who were moving back to the US this week.

HOWEVER, Kyushu Sandai's starter was Yodai Enoshita, and he just got drafted by the Fighters two weeks ago, so I just HAD to run down to the bullpen to watch him warm up and take a few photos. Plenty of other people had the same idea too, but I was able to get right up there against the netting and watch him throw.

I stuck around for the first few innings of the game before leaving for dinner. Enoshita did eventually get the win. I like him quite a bit already! Shame I won't be around next year at Kamagaya to harrass him about blowing his arm out in college like I did with Yutaka Ohtsuka, though.




Yodai Enoshita.


Well. Sorry this post took so bloody long to write. I've actually been spending this month watching a lot of non-baseball sports -- hockey, American football, and even a basketball event. The offseason still sucks, though. I did make it to the Swallows fanfest today though, hopefully I'll post a few photos from that soon. Seeing Keizo Kawashima again made it all worthwhile :)