Marinerds, etc.

I was actually somewhat specifically asked to blog about this experience, so I'm writing an entry.  I guess maybe there are still readers of this blog who don't know me in other channels, but I'm back in Japan for a month (have been from Sept 5 to Oct 8, basically).  I've already gone to around 25 games here, and have a few more to go.

Anyway, so I went to Kamagaya yesterday afternoon.  My intention for the day was to do absolutely nothing special -- I wasn't going to bring my huge camera and take photos, I wasn't even wearing a Fighters jersey (just a t-shirt), I wasn't going to spend time after the game getting photos or autographs, I was just going to go by myself and do nothing but watch the damn game for a change.

I should know by now that this sort of thing never works out, and adventure happens to me whether I like it or not.

Basically, the guy who used to be one of the interpreters for the team, Mr. Araki, works in the Kamagaya office now, which partially means he helps run all of the daily "events" at Kamagaya.  During the weekend these events can get pretty crazy -- like this upcoming weekend is the Hokkaido Festival, and holiday weekends also tend to have big things where they'll have food tents and rides for kids and a stage set up with singers and dancers and "talk shows" with the players, and autograph tables, and all kinds of crazy things.  During the weekdays, the events tend to be a lot more low-key, like a "special dessert" that might be on sale only in the 5th inning, or the pre-game ceremonial first pitch, or dancing on the field in the 7th inning, etc.

Anyway, one thing that I always saw at Kamagaya but never understood fully was a bunch of people who'd get introduced on the field before the game, just random fans.  And then another thing is that there's this huge book of daily reports from the Fighters Kamagaya games that sits on a table in the concourse, and you can look through it and see what people wrote about the games for the past 2 years or so.  Some are detailed, some are just a drawing and a sentence or two, it depends.

So Araki came up to me and said (in English) "Hey, long time no see.  Would you like to be a daily reporter today?  You get to go on the field before the game and be introduced, and then you write a report about the game that we put in our book.  Maybe you can write about it on your blog."

Well, I was super-nervous but it sure sounded like a new and interesting experience, so I said sure, and about 15 minutes later my name got called out with 5 other people and I reported to the stadium clubhouse entrance thingy.  We got a brief explanation of the Daily Report form and then were escorted into the stadium -- my first time there!  (I'd been on the field before once or twice for various post-game events, but we always entered from the outside of the stadium.)  We went through the lobby (where I saw former Fighter Komai and some other guys working on something) and down a hallway, past a bunch of rooms that had various people in them that looked like media or players getting set up to chart stuff, etc, and waited outside the Fighters dugout:



They told us a little bit about what would happen on the field... now the silly thing is, they specifically asked me if I could speak Japanese, and of course I'd been talking in Japanese up to that point.  But they thought it'd be funny if we did both languages... the suggestion was to do like a comedy routine where I'd say something in English, the announcer would look confused and call for the interpreter and then I'd just repeat myself in Japanese. 

But what actually happened is more like, we went out there, and when the guy got to me he just said in English "Oh hello how are you" and I'm thinking "wait WTF", so I just said something in English like "Hi I'm Deanna, I'm happy to be a daily reporter, I love the Fighters and Kamagaya!" and then he said "oh okay!!" and went on to the next person.

Then a friend of mine from the stands yelled down in Japanese "Oi Deanna, why didn't you say that in Japanese?" and I yelled back "He didn't ASK me in Japanese!" and then the announcer was like "Wait, you speak Japanese?  Then in Japanese please!" and so I repeated myself, kinda, like "let's have a great game today, go Fighters!"

And as a joke he asked the next guy to give his answer in English. 

The other funny thing is that the last guy in the group is actually one of my Kamagaya friends (and is one of the ouendan leaders), but he was wearing a Searex t-shirt, so they were giving him crap about that.

Anyway, that was quite a crazy experience, it was really weird looking out into the stands and realizing how many people I recognized out there -- it sounds crazy but in the last 5 years I've met a LOT of the Kanto-area Fighters fan regulars!

I made Araki-san take photos while I was on the field, so here, you can see that I'm not making this crazy thing up:

Here we are on the field, getting ready to be introduced as daily reporters.


I am looking around at all the people in the stands and definitely being like "WTF am I doing here!"


And here I am being interviewed myself.  How bizarre!  Apparently Nakahara-san didn't get the memo about the comedy thing but it sounds like it was still funny to everyone, so that's good.

Anyway, so after that we were led off the field, back through the clubhouse, back outdoors, and given clipboards with the Daily Report thingies on them, and then went back to our seats!  Lots of my friends were like "OMG I SAW YOU!  SO FUNNY!"

Oh yeah, also, before the game started I went and got a photo with Cubby.  I'd been told that the person inside the Cubby outfit has changed, and there's a new uniform too:

 

So yeah, there was a game.  Because I was a Daily Reporter, I took very careful notes all game!  (Just joking, I kept my normal scorecard, which was more than enough.)

Takayuki Makka started for the Baystars (you may or may not remember that he has my undying support since another craziest day ever of mine) and Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters (you may remember him being our Rookie of the Year in 2006 and never being quite so awesome ever again.  Sigh, I still have hope for him though.)  So two lefties, exciting.

Only thing is, Makka had a really tough time in the first inning, and so after getting two quick outs, he gave up two hits in a row to Shingo Ishikawa and Atsushi Ugumori, walked Takahiro Imanami to lead the bases, and then gave up a grand slam to Masaya Ozaki.  Don't get me wrong, I love my ni-gun Fighters, but I'm not sure the last time I ever saw anyone hit a grand slam in Kamagaya.  So this brought the Fighters out to a quick 4-0 lead.

Though Makka did go 5 innings and only give up those runs in the first inning.  In the meantime, Yagi didn't make it through 5; he came out in the top of the 5th, after giving up a run in the second inning (and then the Baystars ran themselves out of it) and then giving up 4 hits into the 5th inning... so when he left it was 4-3 and two runs had just come in on a Hyuma single that took an awkward bounce up the middle, and then runners were at the corners.  Masao Kida replaced Yagi, gave up a hit to Noriharu Yamasaki, and that made it 4-4.


Makka pitching to Masaya Ozaki.


Yes, Masao Kida turned 44 a week or two ago and actually IS still playing baseball, he hasn't retired.  My friend and I were just talking about that a few days ago.

So then both teams put out a whole bunch of relievers for the next few innings.  The Fighters put out Takahiro Matsuka (yay!!! Todai!!) and Ryuji Wakatake (booo!) and Yutaka Ohtsuka (yay!!! Soka!!) and the three of them kept the next 3 innings scoreless.  The Baystars put out Atori Ohta (yay!!!  Teikyo!!!) and Takehiro Fukuda and Shigeki Ushida (yay Meiji?) and they kept the next 3 innings scoreless.

Then we got Masahiro Inui pitching the 9th.  Look, I know Inui is doing very well on the farm even if he hasn't done a lot with the top team yet.  And I was a fan of his when he was a sophomore at Toyo University. It's just that ever since I saw Takahiro Fujioka pitch instead of him one fateful day in April 2009, I haven't been able to see Inui as anywhere near as awesome since because Fujioka is just that much better.

So when Inui pretty much immediately gave up a home run to Yuki Takamori (who I am also a big fan of), making it 5-4, I wasn't all that surprised.  He hasn't been great whenever I'm watching for quite some time now.

Tangent time!

In the 4th inning or so, my friends were all going back to get lottery cards for an end-of-game event.  Again, these are the things I think I've been aware of but just had never seen or never had anyone tell me what was going on when they happened.  So I went back and got a ticket too, and my friends explained, "At the end of the 8th inning they'll call out 5 or 6 numbers from the 100, and those people get to go on the field at the end of the game and have their photo taken with the game hero, if the Fighters win.  If the Fighters don't win, you can still go on the field but you get your photo with Cubby." 

Well, get this, it was apparently my doubly-lucky day, since my ticket number ALSO got called.

But at the time the game was tied, so everyone was joking how "you'll get to meet Cubby on the field later!"

Then Takamori hit that home run and they were like "Yeah... have fun with Cubby!"



Lottery ticket for the picture-taking at the end of the game.

Anyway.

So with that in mind, the Fighers came up in their half of the 9th, and of all of the people to pitch for the Baystars, they bring out former Fighter Masanori Hayashi, who gets a flyout from Ozaki, a strikeout from Sekiguchi, and then with a very full count and many foul balls, Yuji Arahari walked.  Konta pinch-ran for him, and then, out of absolutely nowhere, Suguru Ichikawa smacked a TRIPLE down the right-field line, scoring Konta and tying the game 5-5.  Go Matsumoto hit a pop fly out, but the game was going into extra innings!

Suddenly I had a lot more to write and no room left on my Daily Report form, oops :)

Ryo Sakakibara handled the Baystars in the top of the 10th and then the Stars sent Shintaro Ejiri to the mound for the bottom of the 10th.  Everyone loves Ejiri, he was with the Fighters for years, I was a huge fan of his then too, so we're all like "well, we want to win but does Ejiri have to lose?"

Unfortunately, yes, that's how it worked.  Murata led off with a double, moved to third on a groundout by Takumi Ohshima (whee!) and they intentionally walked a pinch-hitting Kenji Satoh, to change pitchers to Shoma Satoh.  Shoma pitched to Takahiro Imanami, who hit a single up the middle and Murata scored and that was it!  6-5!!

Apparently Imanami's parents were at the game, or at least several people told me that.


Final score.


Here I am posing with my Daily Report thingy.


And here's my Daily Report.  Fortunately, since I was a Junior High School teacher at some point, and had seen this at Kamagaya before too, I was vaguely familiar with what you were supposed to do for them.  I decided to go all out and write mine in both Japanese and English, which meant a bunch of people were staring over my shoulder like "OMG YOU CAN WRITE KANJI" and "Wow, you really took good notes today huh?"

So as I mentioned before, I won this lottery thing to go on the field.  I went down to the area by the door again and... ran into my friend Tomoko, who had another friend of hers there with her who was a big Imanami fan, and she's like "Deanna, you got a winning ticket?  Can my friend go with you?  He really wants to meet Imanami.  He made this banner and brought it today."  What was I supposed to say, no?  It's really awkward when people put me in those situations, but since I know I owe a lot to my friends here I generally go along with these kinds of things.  You know, like they do a lot of things for me like saving seats or taking photos or trading pinbadges or whatever, we all kind of look out for each other, that's how the whole group dynamic works here in Japan.  (Honestly, had it just been someone I actually knew, I would have been absolutely totally fine with it with no reservations whatsoever, but this was some random dude I had never ever seen before who had never spoken to me... and since almost everyone at Kamagaya has spoken to me at SOME point, I felt kind of weird.  It would have been a lot better if Tomoko came with us, but she wouldn't for some reason.)


On the other hand, I WAS GOING BACK ON THE FIELD!  WHEEE!  So I tried not to feel weird about the situation and just went with the other people, back through the clubhouse again, and back onto the field for the second time in a day.

We had to wait for the team meeting to be over first, so a bunch of us just went around the area behind home plate where we were waiting, taking pictures of ourselves with various things:


Tomoko's friend's Imanami banner that he made and brought that day, pretty lucky that Imanami was the game hero, right?


One of the other guys wanted to pose with the sweepermobile and I was like "OMG ME TOO!!!"  I tried to figure out how to drive it -- that looks hard, there are like 3 separate brushes on the back.


Anyway, after a while, Imanami came out, we lined up in our 6 groups/pairs, and each group took a photo with him as their group, and then all of us together took a photo with him (and the banner).  The only catch is, we weren't allowed to use our own cameras, the Fighters staff take the photo with their camera, and then they'll print out one print for you, that you can pick up at a later game.  Well, I won't *be* here for the final games this weekend, or even in Japan that much longer, so I just told the Imanami fan that he could have the photo print since it meant so much to him.

Plus, really, the nice thing was mostly just getting to say hi to Imanami, congratulate him on a good game, shake his hand, you know?  The entire experience is worth a lot more to me than the photo -- besides, I actually got a photo with Imanami once before, about four years ago, and I have met him and said hello to him after many games at Kamagaya, and even had him sign my uniform, so it's really not that big a deal to me.  Don't get me wrong, I like Imanami and hope he does well with the team someday, but since I'm also high on Haruki Nishikawa I'm not sure where Imanami fits in.

So, very very crazy day.  I got to go through the Fighters stadium building twice, I got to write a report thingy, I got to talk to someone at Kamagaya in actual English for a change, I got to see a lot of my friends, and then, even crazier, when I got on the bus to Nishi-funabashi afterwards, I ran into two MORE friends of mine from my normal Fighters cheering group, who had been sitting in the back and never came over to say hi, so we rode all the way back to town together. 

Unfortunately, when I went to the Tigers-Swallows game that evening, Ryota Imanari wasn't starting for the Tigers as he had been on Tuesday night.  Alas.  The Swallows beat the crap out of the Tigers and it was an all-around good evening with my Jingu friends too.

I should probably write some more about other games I've been to on this trip -- I wonder if maybe I'll have some time to write about them when I get back to the US instead, and whether I'll remember all the details by then.  At least I can post photos, maybe.

Epic weekend at Jingu, but I haven't had any time to write about it. So here are some photos with a little bit of text context.

Saturday

I showed up at 11, and made the mistake of going into the stadium first rather than meeting Kozo outside. So he stayed in section D while I went to do the donation line thing by myself. He'd said there was a huge line at 11am, but by the time I got there, there was pretty much no line, and just some players standing at tables. They had it set up such that a few of the Swallows cheer girls were holding out the donation boxes, and after that were some players, so you put money in the box and then shook hands with some players.

Yasushi Iihara wasn't out there when I went, so I basically saw Oshimoto and picked his line. It was him, Hashimoto, and Carp player rep Ishihara. So I shook their hands and said "Ganbatte kudasai!" to all three of them. Oshi and Hashi are former Fighters so it was kind of funny to me.



(Shortly afterwards they condensed down to 2 lines with more players. Ishikawa and Kyuko moved from the other table to the one I'd been at. Doh! And on my way out, I saw the coaches all showing up -- a few people were like "Hey that's Shiroishi! I want to go shake hands with him!")

There are a bunch of new cheers this year, so the ouendan spent some time before the game teaching them. Iihara, Hamanaka, Kawabata, Hatakeyama, they have new ones, and of course there's one for new guy Balentien. There's also one for manager Ogawa (apparently similar to the one he had in his playing days).


(Teaching Hamanaka's cheer.)


Also, the ouendan held up these signs several times during the game. It says "Our hearts are one, good luck Tohoku, Japan", basically (I guess it's part of the "Ganbare Nihon" slogan stuff).


There were no trumpets or drums, but there was still plenty of singing. And of course it wouldn't be Jingu without the umbrella dancing. Here we are in the middle of the 7th inning, singing Tokyo Ondo, without any trumpets or loudspeaker music or dancing girls on the field.





The Swallows won the game 3-0 on the Kawabata sac fly, Hamanaka solo homer, and an error throwing to 3rd in the 8th inning that allowed Miwa to score. Tateyama pitched well.


Final score.


Our group at the top of section D.

After the game, rather than the "we won" cheering, there was a yell exchange between both sides, although we hadn't really been warned about it in advance. It mostly degenerated into the entire outfield yelling "NIPPON!" like the soccer cheer.

Kozo and Ben and Mac and I walked to Yoyogi Park to just see what the hanami (cherry-blossom viewing parties, basically people drinking under sakura trees) scene was like, and to get a nice walk. As you can see from this picture, there are plenty of cherry blossoms in bloom, and also plenty of people hanging out under them. Though it's true that maybe there aren't as many people as in past years -- usually you can't move at all during this season, but not this time, we were able to walk through the park just fine.


BTW, if you want a cool hat like mine, go talk to Christopher Pellegrini. :)

Actually, a (Japanese) guy heard us talking in English outside Jingu and was like "do you guys do the Tsubamegun blog? I want one of those caps." He spoke surprisingly good English, I'm used to people staring at our group of English-speakers in a combination of awe/disgust, but he just wanted to say hi.

We also got stopped by several random people in the park like "YEAH! GO SWALLOWS!" or whatnot. One girl even high-fived us all in the subway station afterwards.

Sunday

Sunday, I met up with Kozo by the train station and we walked to Jingu together. We went to do the earthquake relief donation thing first -- there was a huge line since it was just starting at 11am! But I saw that Yasushi Iihara was out there, and I was wearing my Iihara jersey, so I wanted to be in his line. We waited... we walked... we waited... we walked... and just as we were getting towards the donation area, we see these two white guys with cameras and they yell out to me "Hey, we're from NBC. Can we talk to you a bit?" and I'm like "Sure, can you catch me AFTER the donation line?"

We go through the line. I steer us towards the table that turns out to just be Yasushi and the mascot Tsubakuro. Fortunately it turns out Kozo really wanted to shake hands with Tsubakuro and I really wanted to shake hands with Yasushi so we both got what we wanted. :) I said "Ganbatte kudasai!" and smiled. We didn't plan well so I don't have a photo of me shaking hands with Yasushi, but I do have Kozo with Tsubakuro...



And THEN the NBC guys caught us. They mostly wanted to talk to me until I'm like "You really ought to talk to Kozo too, he also speaks English."

Mostly they asked things like, "Why are you here today? What do you think of all of the donation stuff? What do you think of the earthquake and the way things are now?" Me being me I just babbled all this stuff about how much I love Japanese baseball and go to a whole ton of games and how I think that the donation thing is EXACTLY what they should be doing -- bringing people together, lifting up spirits, collecting money to help the earthquake victims, etc. I babble a lot and sound like an idiot when I'm under pressure like that. Kozo, on the other hand, with his years of debate and speech practice, sounded really good and eloquent. (Take that, foreign press -- the gaijin is a moron but her Japanese friend that you never would have noticed is the well-spoken one!) He pointed out that I probably gave the reporters a lot of good information, even if I sounded like a big big dork.



Me being interviewed.


Kozo being interviewed.

We have no clue if either of us were actually on the news, though. The guy who interviewed us was Lee Cowan, and he said he was with NBC Nightly News. He also said that he'd been in Japan for 3 weeks covering the earthquake stuff and that I was the happiest person he'd talked to -- mostly because they'd been up north, I guess. I told him I was just happy to be back at a game, to see my friends again and to watch baseball and to help the earthquake and all. It turned out their crew had never actually been to a Japanese baseball game, so we were like "We'll be at the top of section D in the outfield with some other English-speaking friends if you want to come chat with us later!" But they were kinda iffy because it was unclear they'd be able to actually bring their equipment into the park.

And for the record, they must have raised a fortune this weekend -- it was PACKED! I think the whole "get to shake hands with baseball players" thing really motivates people to go give money, certainly.


See how packed it was?




These are two boards that were signed by all the Swallows players, that will be sent up to Tohoku as a "we are supporting you" gesture, I believe.

Then we went into the park, sat down, hung out for a while, because most of the people we know weren't there yet. I went to get lunch and ended up finding the new Pizza-La, but since I hate Pizza-La got some butadon from the place next to it, which was really good.


The new Pizza-La. I suppose this means Pellegrini no longer has to list his home address with them as "Jingu Stadium, Gate 19".

Oh yeah, and I bought an Aoki cellphone strap and shitajiki. I figure that well, he's likely to jump to the MLB next year so it was my last chance, even though I'm not paticularly a fan of his or anything.

After a while, we got a decent group of friends there. This time I actually went down to practice with the ouendan for the new songs but still couldn't get the hang of all of them.

Also I saw this while people were singing:


I guess this is the virtual trumpet in lieu of the real ones...

Yuya Fukui started for the Carp, which was exciting since I saw him play so much with Waseda. Kyohei Muranaka started for the Swallows. The game was kinda just average until basically the 4th inning when the Swallows blew it wide open with Wladimir Balentien hitting a 3-run homer. He also hit another homer later on. So, the Swallows won 6-1 eventually.

It was mostly just fun to be there with friends and cheering and watching baseball!


Umbrellas!


Final score.

And here's a bonus video...



This is on Sunday -- the cheer exchange between the Swallows and Carp fans, rather than our usual postgame "we won" kinds of cheering and singing. On Saturday we didn't know it was happening but on Sunday the ouendan leaders explained it to everyone, so I filmed it instead of participating because I'm a dork like that.

First we'd yell "GANBARE GANBARE TOHOKU!" and then the Carp side would yell Ganbare Nippon, then both sides would yell a Nippon cheer together, and then we'd yell Ganbare Carp and they'd yell Ganbare Swallows. It worked out pretty well -- a nice show of solidarity how even though we're two separate baseball cheering groups we're still united in a love for baseball and a desire to help the folks in the north.

It was quite a weekend. It's been quite a trip, really :)

What a day. I'm still having a little trouble believing that it actually happened.

Well, let me start from the beginning.

I woke up at 6:30am on Sunday and went back to Baystars Kyujo, their minor-league and practice stadium, for Rookie Training. It was my last chance to try to meet rookie pitcher Kisho Kagami and ask him to sign the special jersey I'd had made with his name and number on it. I'd be leaving Japan on Tuesday; I'm actually in Seattle as I write up this post.

I'd been told that if I showed up by 10am, it'd be possible to talk to some of the rookies and maybe bug them for a signature. That was patently incorrect. When I arrived at 9:50am, the rookies were nowhere in sight and various other players were jogging on the field. And rather than gathering near the bullpen, as they had been on Thursday, this time the fans were all standing by the outfield wall. One lady comes up to me and says, "Oh! It's you! From the other day! The Kagami fan! You came back!"

I ask her what's going on, and she's like "Oh, you can't talk to the rookies now... but they're going to jog by here in about 10 minutes. You should hold up your uniform and yell good morning to Kagami so he notices you, then maybe you can tag him later."

So we do that. The rookies jog around the field twice, passing us twice. She helps me hold up the jersey and we both yell "Kagami-kun, ganbatte kudasai!" The first time, he looks over with a look that can best be described as "WTF?"

The second time, I hide behind the jersey because I'm embarrassed, but I help yell. Another fan tells me, "He was smiling as he came by this time... the player next to him was also pointing at you as they went by."

Hmm.

Then the rookies all gather together to do rookie practice... as far away from fans as humanly possible. No, seriously. They basically do their workouts in left field. Fans are allowed to stand behind the fence in right field, or be up in the stands behind home plate, or can stand outside the 3rd-base bullpen. That's it. You can't see left field unless you're in the stands or in the outfield, in which case you are VERY far away from the players.

On the other hand, a bunch of Baystars players, almost all pitchers I believe, also gathered... to play soccer! That was really funny. Kenjiro Tanaka set up some orange cones to be goalposts and by the time their game got underway they had around 10 players out there. Atori Ohta, Yataro Sakamoto, Kentaro Takasaki, Daisuke Hayakawa, Kota Kobayashi, Takayuki Shinohara, and one or two others I couldn't figure out who they were.

I realize it's hard to imagine the layout if you haven't been to this stadium before, so here's a (crappy MSpaint) diagram of the Google Maps satellite image:


The blue lines are where fans were allowed to be, outside the right field fence, and along the 3rd-base line (behind fences and netting or up high in bleachers behind home plate). The red square is where the players set up their soccer game, relatively close to us. And the green dots are where the rookies were doing most of their training, in left field. The green lines are the bullpen.


Here's kind of what it looked like from afar -- the rookies doing some weird stretches/jogging warmups by the training building in LF.

Around this time another lady standing there with a camera came up and introduced herself to me -- turns out she's a friend of Kobayashi's and she used to see me at Jingu a lot because she's also a big Kagami fan. Her name's Yuka and I completely do not ever remember meeting her at Jingu, which makes me feel kind of bad. She even gave me a photo that she'd taken of me and Kobayashi from the final Hosei game this past fall. She apparently lives near Toin Gakuen HS and cheers for their baseball players.

So I ended up sticking with her for most of the day. It was her first time at Baystars Kyujo and she liked talking about Kagami, so we got along okay.

Anyway, we watched soccer for like half an hour. It was really funny. Some of the players are clearly better at it than others; Kenjiro Tanaka is really good ("It's because he's from Shizuoka," Yuka said, "Oh right, Tokoha Kikuchikawa?" I replied.) and so was Atori Ohta, but Teikyo HS also has a strong soccer program in addition to baseball. Some players were clearly just kind of playing for fun and/or to keep warm and/or to look cool in front of the fans. There were a few times where we'd all either be yelling "nice goal!!" or "OH MY GOD BE CAREFUL DON'T GET INJURED!!!"


Atori Ohta (from Teikyo).


Kenjiro Tanaka (from Tokoha Kikuchikawa).


Yataro Sakamoto (formerly Yakult and Fighters) joins the fray.


Daisuke Hayakawa (formerly Lotte) making a big kick.


Kota Kobayashi and Kenjiro Tanaka.


Atori Ohta and Kentaro Takasaki.


Akiyoshi "Hossha" Toyoshima... lefty pitcher released by the Fighters this off-season, is now going to be a batting practice pitcher for Yokohama. He's only 21 years old -- infact Sunday was his birthday! So the other young players just acted like he was one of them, basically.


Takayuki Shinohara (from the Hawks) as goalkeeper.


(and a little bit of video I took. Yataro Sakamoto kicks a goal but Atori Ohta makes the save!)


Then there was bullpen time for the rookies! I went over to see Kota Suda (JFE East, but formerly Waseda) and Kagami pitch, throwing to rookie catchers Tsuruoka and Matsushita. Matsushita, I mentioned before in my pre-draft catchers roundup; he went to Kansai Gaidai and supposedly speaks fluent English from having lived in London for several years as a kid.



Kota Suda. The last time I saw him this close up was the fall of 2008, he was wearing a Waseda uniform, and I was still somewhat surprised he wasn't drafted. (Now he joins his classmates Hosoyamada and Keijiro with the Baystars, I guess.)




Kisho Kagami, the entire reason I went to Yokosuka in the first place.


Rookie catchers Ichiro Matsushita and Kenjiro Tsuruoka.


Matsushita supposedly speaks really good English, but of course I wasn't able to get anywhere near him to actually find out... to be fair, I suppose if I was a lot more outgoing and didn't mind having a lot of people staring at me and thinking I was obnoxious, I could have called out to him in the bullpen, but just like with Kagami, it's just really hard to yell out to one player when there's a whole group of 9 of them there and they are ostensibly "working" at their job, and I hate to be a loud obnoxious gaijin since there's such a ridiculous stereotype here.


Just because you're a pro player doesn't mean you get out of smoothing the grounds out afterwards.


Okay, so that was all well and good and exciting and takes us up until around 11:30am... the rookies all disappeared at that point and went indoors, ostensibly to eat lunch, or to get out of the cold for a bit, it's not really clear what.

I went up into the stands to sit with some of the other fans and watch the other players still playing soccer or running around or whatever.

Eventually the older players settle into a game where Daisuke Hayakawa and one of the other guys hit fly balls to the outfield and the other players have to chase down the fly balls. The rookies came back outside a little while later and started doing some more exercising and some throwing in left field again, once more far away from everyone.


Hayakawa hitting a fly ball out.


The rookies finishing up and coming in.

See... around 12:30pm the rookies just headed indoors, never to return. I guess it was just like Thursday. They might have had some indoor training to do or whatever, but they never did come out to talk to the fans or anything, which actually surprised many people -- Saturday was a day off from training and Sunday is one of the few days most normal people have off from work and can come to the stadium to watch training, so a lot of people expected the rookies to come out and talk a little and sign stuff. Apparently they'd done that on the first day of training, on Saturday the 8th or whenever it was.

On the other hand, the non-rookie players were still all running around shagging flies and playing catch and whatnot. They eventually gathered up all their stuff around 1pm, bowed to the fans in the stands, and ran off the field, done training for the day.

I was already starting to freak out a little like "...you mean practice is over for the day and we had absolutely no chance whatsoever at all to talk to players?"

One fan told me, "Well, you can go wait by the entrance to the stadium and hope some of them come out to go to convenience stores or shopping or whatever... or if you wait by the parking lot you'll sometimes see players coming out to their cars and can call out to them then..."

"I have to be home by 4pm to get a delivery, I can't just stay here all day. Plus it's so cold!" It was seriously around 6 degrees Celsius out (low 40's), which actually wasn't so bad in the sun but was pretty brutal in the shade or when the wind was blowing.

Atori Ohta decided to come out and throw about 30-40 pitches in the bullpen. I like Atori a lot (no, really) so that was at least a nice distraction for a while. He's fun to watch throw, and actually, he kind of resembles Kagami. It's kind of crazy that he's already got 3 years pro experience and is still a year younger than Kagami and this year's college grads, though...





Atori threw for a while and then just basically ended practice and also disappeared inside.

And then a groundskeeper came out and started hosing down the bullpen and taking in the leftover equipment and stuff. Which seemed pretty ominous. Yuka asked him whether practice was over for the day, and he basically said straight out, "They're not going to be coming back out on the field today, no. That's why I'm cleaning up. Sorry. You should probably go home."

Well.

That sucked.

One of the other women who was out there by the bullpen was like, "Oh, how terrible for you, it's such a shame that you came all the way out here twice and still couldn't meet Kagami... it's all about timing you know... maybe if you had been able to get his attention when the rookies were still out there... can you come back another day? Or come to spring camp in Okinawa?"

"I can't," I said, feeling pretty hopeless, "I'm going back to the US on Tuesday and I won't be back in Japan until mid-March. I can't even stay much longer today because it takes me almost 2 hours to get home and I have a delivery coming after 4pm."

"Wow, that sucks. What about in March?"

"I'll only be here for a week or two then, and anyway, by March, I'm hoping he'll already with the ichi-gun team. I'm really afraid that basically there's no day but today, for me. I really failed today. Big failure." 大失敗。

And well, I couldn't help it, I started crying. It was really brutally cold and I was already kind of depressed that this would be my last baseball-related thing I was doing in Japan before leaving, not to mention being depressed about leaving Japan in general. (It's such a catch-22. I can't leave, and yet I can't stay.) And I mean, I'd basically wasted 6 hours coming there on Thursday, and another 8 hours today, time that I should have spent packing suitcases, and was really really cold and really really sad, and had absolutely nothing to show for it.

Everyone was telling me "don't cry, don't cry", as we went from the infield bullpen area towards the outfield and to start walking back to the train station. Yuka also had to get home by a certain time so she had already planned on leaving around 1:30-2pm to begin with.

If you look at the map above, I drew a little yellow smiley face near the outfield gate. That's where the next part of this story takes place.

See, practice was over, but we saw a whole bunch of fans still hanging out there by the gate... around two players. I couldn't tell who they were at first, and I was still all red-eyed from crying, so I hung back a little. The two players turned out to be Takayuki Makka and Taketora Anzai, both 2nd-year pitchers, both pretty young, both very tall.




Takayuki Makka.

I listened to them talking for a while. Taketora is very quiet and a little bit shy; Makka was even riding him for not having a girlfriend and for being so uptight around fans. Makka is ridiculously outgoing and funny, he was telling jokes and laughing with fans, and saying how Taketora should be leveraging his uniform number of 48 to get some kind of tie-in with the AKB48 girls since they're so cute. It was almost like watching a manzai comedy duo. Taketora mostly just kind of smiled and nodded and talked a little.

Even though there was a crowd around them, occasionally people would go up and ask for signatures, so once my eyes had dried up some, I got out some of my shikishi (those Japanese autograph boards) and got Makka and Taketora to sign them... as I said to Yuka, "Well, they're not Kagami, but I mean, I came all the way here, I might as well bug some baseball players... y'know?" and she said "Yeah, these two seem like really nice young guys, even if Makka is a bit crazy." And so I said "I wonder if I could get a photo with them? But they seem happy talking to everyone."

Well.

Yuka finally asks one of the women gathered around the two players whether it'd be ok to take a photo, so the woman's like "oh, that poor American girl, she didn't get to meet Kagami, right?" So SHE actually asks Makka and Taketora on my behalf if I can take a photo with them, because I'm leaving Japan soon and all. And they say sure, of course.


OMG these two are really TALL. You know that I'm 5'7" or so and that I often end up getting photos with Japanese players who are barely taller than I am!

But, it's right before taking the photo that the craziest thing happens.

I have a little stuffed Fighters BB mascot bear hanging off of my bag, you can even see it in that photo. While I'm lining up to stand with Makka and Taketora, he looks at my bag, sees the Fighters bear, and is like "Oi, what's this? You a Yuki Saitoh fan or something?" 「お～い、これ。斎藤のファン？」

"No!" I say. I pull my Baystars Kagami jersey out of my bag. "I'm a Kisho Kagami fan dammit!"

"Whoa! That's crazy! You had this made?" says Makka.

We take a photo together. I thank them and try to explain, but start stuttering (this happens to me sometimes in Japanese when I'm either very excited about something or very stressed about something, and at this point I was both). Fortunately, pretty much every fan there that day knew my story, because I'd either met them on Thursday, met them that morning, or they'd been like "What the hell is the white girl doing here?" to each other, so it got spread that way. Even earlier that day when I stepped down from the stands at one point, one of the little boys saw me and was first surprised like "Oh!" and then in English, "Hello, Kagami fan!"

So the rest of the fans step in and explain. "She's going back to the US on Tuesday... she was a big Kagami fan when he was at Hosei... she used to cheer for the Baystars a few years ago... she promised to come back and cheer for Hichori later this year since he came from the Fighters... but she got this uniform made right after the uniform numbers were announced so that it'd be ready for rookie training, and she really wanted to meet Kagami and get his signature on it before she goes back to the US... but the rookies haven't been coming out... she came on Thursday too, all the way from the north part of Tokyo, but didn't get to meet him then either... isn't it a shame?"

Makka and Taketora look at each other. Makka says, "Want us to go see if we can get Kagami to sign this for you?"

My jaw drops. "What? Really?"

"Yeah. The rookies should still be doing some kind of indoors training right now, maybe weight training or some other stuff like that. It shouldn't be too hard to bug him for a second."

"You'd really do that? Oh my god thank you."

Taketora takes the uniform and my marker. "Where do you want it signed?"

"Uhh... under the uniform number, I guess? On the back?" I gesture.

He smiles and says something to the effect of "We can't really make any guarantees but we'll see what we can do. Be back soon."

And I'm just about ready to faint. All of the other fans are also like "OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY'RE GOING TO DO THAT?"

So we wait.

About 3-4 minutes later, we see three people walking across the field...



Let me zoom in on that a second:


Makka. Taketora. And KAGAMI!

Yes, Kagami himself actually came out with the uniform to give it back to me. All the fans just went crazy like "OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY CAME OUT HIMSELF TO DELIVER IT, WHAT AN AMAZINGLY NICE GUY!"

I'm about ready to faint by this point anyway. I'm not sure what the appropriate reaction would have been but he comes out and hands the uniform back to me and kind of nods to me in a gesture I can best describe as "Yes, I remember you. Yes, I appreciate you being crazy enough to get this uniform made, and I know you're a huge fan of mine, but OMG WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" I mean, he didn't seem angry exactly, but I mean, he wasn't smiling either.

So I just bow like "I'm so sorry to bother you like this! Sorry! Thank you so much!" And he's just kind of like "Hey, it's no problem." I said "I'm going back to the US on Tuesday so there was no day but today. I'm really hoping that by the time I'm back in March, you'll be with the ichi-gun team." And he kind of nodded.

A whole bunch of fans then swarmed the fence who ALSO wanted autographs, and formed a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge line.



Bizarrely, a lot of the other fans had been out at Baystars Kyujo fairly often but hadn't had a chance to meet Kagami either. There'd been a short signing time after practice the very first day, but other than that, most of the only time people had really met most of the rookies had been when the fans were standing out there just loitering by the stadium gate and various rookies came out to go shopping or whatever. (Which is really kind of stalkerish.)

So, I felt really bad for causing him trouble and making him come all the way out of the indoor training to stand in the cold and get stuck signing stuff for everyone (and Kagami being the way he is, he stood there and signed for every single person who asked, just like he used to do in college, when his entire team would have already gone home and he'd still be stuck there outside Jingu talking to fans and signing things).

I got him to sign the front of my uniform too (people were like "shouldn't you get it signed there too? And wouldn't it be nice to see him sign something in front of you?" to which I was like "I don't want to be a bother," but Kagami himself was nice enough about it).

But I still felt like crying afterwards. I was happy, but really felt kind of bad and embarrassed for causing such a thing.

I thanked Makka and Taketora profusely and told them they were really awesome. And then Yuka and I walked to the train station.

Another female friend of mine (one of my college ball friends) later basically told me that I should stop feeling so terrible and realize that I did a really great thing for many people.

She said that I did a great thing for Kagami, because I provided an opportunity for him to get to interact with the fans a bit, and because the fans could talk to him a little and get to know him a little, and see what a great guy he was for coming all the way out there to sign something for this crazy gaijin fan, they will become bigger fans of his. (This kind of interaction is really important in Japan, see, and often you'll see players with huge fan followings which have non-Japanese people scratching their head like "Why does such a mediocre player have so many damn fans?" but then you find out that the guy is a really nice dude who's always out running and stretching and training at the stadium even on off-days, and always talks to fans and signs stuff and takes pictures with kids and bows to the field and to the ouendan and is just a Quintessential Good Guy.) So she said that I raised Kagami's value in the eyes of the fans, and maybe even hopefully in the eyes of his coaches, since the Baystars ni-gun manager Shirai is big on the "fan service is important" aspect of being a ballplayer.

She said that I did a good thing for Makka, because now everyone's going to be telling stories about what a great guy he is too. So his value also goes up in the eyes of the fans -- and the fact that now I, and she too, wants to support him for being a Good Guy, also means a lot.

And she said that I also did a good thing for the fans, since a lot of them really DID want to meet Kagami and/or get his signature, but of course none of them on their own were able to call out to him... so I also gave all of them a good eperience as well. And since it was such a long and cold day and a Sunday at that, and half of the universe (no, really, 11000 people) was out at Kamagaya for Yu-Matsuri as they were calling the Fighters rookie unveiling, it meant that we also had a really amazing thing happen at Baystars Kyujo, so I made the day special for a lot of people.

I still feel kind of bad -- I mean, being a gaijin in Japan often has its pluses and minuses. Sometimes crazy things like this will happen, and I don't know whether it happened because I'm a gaijin or it happened just because of the circumstances. So I worry a little about people thinking "Sheesh, he only came out because this crazy gaijin was here," and of course I also worry like "is he embarrassed that he has this crazy gaijin stalking him?"

But whatever. This may be the last time I ever actually meet Kisho Kagami in person. So I should probably be happy that it happened at all, really. "It's always a little sad when they leave Jingu, but they'll always be ours in our hearts," said one of my other friends.


(And it looks like he's changed his signature from the full "Kagami Kisho" he used to write out in college to just a scrawled version of "Kisho", basically.)

And in some ways, isn't this kind of amazing? I dunno, but I'm not sure I could ever imagine this kind of thing happening in the US. The fan-player interaction in Japan is just really cool. I'm already thinking I should get Makka and Taketora some sort of gift while I'm here in Seattle; I figure they're pretty young and still likely to be in ni-gun when I visit in March.

So, that was my crazy Sunday at Baystars Kyujo.

Thank you for reading.