Marinerds, etc.

Oh man, where to start with this one.

I think there are two major things I took out of this game:
1) JR East's ouendan is freaking awesome!
2) Toshitaiko tie-breaking rules are freaking retarded!

If you don't already know, JR Higashinihon, or JR East, is the Japan Railways arm that runs all the passenger trains in the Tokyo area and up through Tohoku. (Wikipedia actually has a reasonable explanation of the JR evolution.)

I think that in order to properly talk about this game I have to start at the end and work back to the start.

So I went to the Tokyo Dome on Thursday night for a game in the Intercity Baseball Tournament, and saw Toshiba beat JR East 8-6 in 11 innings.

If you don't really know Japanese, you'd look at that box score like "What's the big deal? Toshiba scored 2 runs in the top of the 11th and won. So what."

Well, there is a line there that says 連盟規定によりタイブレーク, or "League regulation tie break".

I don't know whose brilliant idea this is, and it wasn't the first game in the series to have it happen -- the 11-inning 3-2 walkoff win by Mitsubishi Yokohama that moved back Tuesday night's game was also on a "tie break".

But basically, after 10 innings, the game effectively enters sudden death mode. Each team starts their offense with the bases loaded and 1 out.

So in this game, Toshiba led off the 11th with Katoh, Igawa, and Ichikawa on base already; Ryoichi Adachi hit a double to right and that scored 2 runs right there. JR switched pitchers from Katayama to Takumi Kon, who struck out the next batter, walked another and then got a groundout to end the inning.

JR came up in their half of the 11th with the same thing, Keiji Fujita leading off with Tsukuura, Matsumoto, and Genki Satoh on base and one out. Unlike Adachi, Fujita leads off by hitting a grounder up the middle, which shortstop Adachi promptly grabs, steps on second base, and throws to first to complete the double play. Game over.

It just felt like a really anticlimactic end to what really was a very exciting game.

Basically, I sat on the JR East side for this one, for a few reasons. First, I had already seen Toshiba's ouendan and wanted to get a good look at JR's, which I heard was top notch. Second, JR East has several players that I saw play in college or followed through college, and I was especially hoping to see Shuhei Ishikawa and Takuya Tsukuura play again.

This game was also moved back from 6pm to 6:45pm after the earlier games in the day went long, so by getting there around 5:30pm, I was actually downright early; some nice JR employees gave me a big green JR uchiwa fan and a player's list on my way in, despite that I wasn't in employee/team seating, and I actually got to watch the ouendan setting up from the beginning! Like, several groups of people in green happi coats got together to do vocal warmups and then set up their piles of signboards, while others were raising the JR banner, and others were setting up stage and the brass band and so on, and more interesting props as well. Infact, I wandered downstairs to get something to eat, and saw this in the basement concourse behind the JR area:



This is the JR East huge inflatable train that comes out a few times during their performances. It is QUITE a sight to behold when it does:



That is not just a train sitting there on a whole bunch of people's shoulders, either, that is a fully mobile train unit that goes running through the stands. I took two movies of it, one while their brass band is performing YMCA and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You":



And the other is later in the game and an actual train-themed song, "Galaxy Express 999":



Truly a sight to behold.

I also watched the ouendan get all of their groups together, and they had some greetings, during which they explained a little about their group, introduced the leaders of the various factions (the dance group, the brass band, the men's ouendan, etc) thanked everyone for participating so far, and begged us all to please yell and scream as loud as possible to support the team with our cheering.

Then they sang the company song with everyone present, and even got out their flags and set off the steam engines on the stage (these things were cool, every time they scored a run they set them off):



And then a representative from the Toshitaiko organization came out to present them with an award! Apparently they had gotten some sort of honors from the "ouendan competition", for filling their side of the stadium with people, getting them all to cheer, and especially for the JR Logo wave in the outfield (more on that in a second):





By the time the game got underway around 6:45pm, the entire 3rd base side was filled with JR employees. Looking down from the balcony, it was just a huge sea of green:



There were several places where a bunch of ouendan gathered in front with signs to coordinate the crowd yelling to the music; there were groups on either side of the stage, and then another group out by the outfield as well. The signs largely said things like "Ganbare Takashi" (for starter Takashi Saitoh) or "Kattobase [player's name]" for the batters, or a lot of "GO! GO! JR!"

These, for example, say "Katsuzo Tokyo", which means "Win, Tokyo!"



And then, something else that rocked, but there was a big group of JR people who had filled up two full sections in the outfield way before the game started, and I assumed they had something to do with the ouendan but I wasn't sure what.

It became clear in the 3rd or 4th inning when they all whipped out ponchos to wear and suddenly the left field cheering area had a JR logo showing:



Of course, the Chiben Wakayama Big Red C has nothing on this JR Logo.

Why? Because this logo could also DO THE WAVE when the team scored a run!



And I present two more videos of the JR East ouendan just for the heck of it:


This video, starting about 20 seconds in, is the song "Train Train" by The Blue Hearts. I just thought it was so appropriate that the Japan Railways ouendan was playing "Train Train". Though the reason I started filming at the moment I did was because it was Shuhei Ishikawa's at-bat; while at Hosei we cheered for him as "Ishikawa", they cheer for him as "Shuhei" with JR, so that's what they're yelling as one of the cheers.


This is during the first inning; a pretty generic cheer, I was just filming for the heck of it, and then Takuya Tsukuura launched a home run into the left-field bleachers! (That moment is about 2:10 in this video.) So everybody went totally crazy afterwards.

Wheee.

For the record, Toshiba's ouendan did pretty much the exact same routine they did on Tuesday night, so it wasn't nearly as impressive the second time. It's true that JR's might not be as impressive a second time either, but they had catchier tunes and that train riding through the stands is pretty amazing, I'd totally like to see that up close sometime.

So ouendan aside, I guess there was some baseball going on too. Infact, it was just exciting all around, gamewise.

Righty Hayato Arakaki started for Toshiba, and aforementioned lefty Takashi Saitoh started for JR. And things got off to a very good start for our train heroes when Tsukuura slammed that two-run homer to left to make it 2-0 in the first. Tsukuura also took a diving leap into the field seats in the top of the 2nd to catch a foul ball for the 3rd out.

JR added another run to their total in the bottom of the 4th when Keiji Fujita doubled to right, and Tatsunori Saitoh hit this fly ball that went to shallow left... and managed to land right between the left fielder and the shortstop, whose hat had gone flying. Still, neither of them managed to get the ball in until Fujita had crossed the plate and Saitoh found himself on second. 3-0.

Takahiro Kudoh led off the top of the 5th for Toshiba with a home run to left that landed in almost the exact place as Tsukuura's to make it 3-1. Jun Yoshida hit an infield single that I'm still not sure wasn't really an error, but whatever. Ryoichi Adachi followed that with a clean single to right, moving Yoshida to second. Masaya Iseki hit a grounder to second, and it almost ended up being a double play, but the throw to first went wide, and so Iseki was safe and Yoshida scored, making it 3-2, before Shota Fujiwara lined out to short to end the inning.

Toshiba's Ryuta Matsunaga singled with one out in the top of the 6th, and Masato Ohkawara followed it with another single to put Matsunaga on 3rd base, and that's when JR pulled starter Saitoh for Taku Sakaue (or Sakagami if you look at some sites, but he had "Sakaue" on his jersey so I'm sticking to that)... who promptly gave up another one of these "it might have been a DP if we were slightly faster" grounders, and so Matsunaga scored to tie the game at 3-3.

Hiroshi Satoh took the mound for JR in the top of the 7th, and got a groundout and then got taken yard, as Ryoichi Adachi hit a ball to left that actually looked foul from my perspective, but was apparently a home run, making it 4-3 in favor of Toshiba. Satoh came out of the game and was replaced by lefty Yoshio Karasawa, who gave up a single to Iseki and walked Fujiwara, and also earned himself a trip back to the bench, with lefty Junichi Katayama replacing him. Katayama got a grounder to third out of Keiji Ikebe, but Kazuya Takeuchi bobbled the ball and it got to first base a split-second late, so the bases were loaded.

This is what they call a "dai pinch", in Japanese baseball language.

Katayama struck out Matsunaga to make it 2 outs and bases loaded, but then Ohkawara slammed a ball to left, and everyone was off running, and by the time the dust cleared, he was on second, Ikebe was on third, and the other two guys scored. 6-3. Ouch.

It didn't look promising for JR, especially since at that point Toshiba starter Arakaki had managed 10 strikeouts in the first 6 innings without a single walk (and was about to notch his 11th), but Tatsunori Saitoh managed to lead off with a single to left, and catcher Shoji Tanaka (he replaced Shuhei Ishikawa behind the plate in the top of the 7th) followed that up with a double to right, moving Saitoh to third.

So, Toshiba took out Arakaki and put in Kazuo Kido.

And Fumiaki Sawa came to the plate as a pinch-hitter...

...and hit a 3-run home run to left field, almost right to the JR logo! 6-6!

But Kido stayed in anyway, got the next two outs, and then the two teams and two pitchers (Katayama and Kido) stayed in a deadlock for the next several innings. JR got runners at 2nd and 3rd in their half of the 8th but couldn't bring them in. Toshiba had two runners in the top of the 9th (there was a really bizarre play where Ikebe grounded to the mound, and rather than throw to first or third, Katayama just RAN to the runner, Sudoh, who was stuck between 2nd and 3rd... and yet somehow Sudoh got back to the bag without getting tagged, and Ikebe was also safe!) and also couldn't bring them in. Kido struck out the JR side in order in the bottom of the 9th. And so we went into extra innings.

Katayama pitched a 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 10th, and then Genki Satoh led off the bottom of the 10th with a single! Daisuke Ikushima went to bunt him up... and hit a really poor bunt that Toshiba's catcher fielded and fired to second base to get Satoh on the force. Tsukuura hit a big fly ball to right, but it wasn't out of the park, and then, for all the stupid ways for the 10th inning to end, Ikushima got himself caught stealing second for the third out.

And then the *%$#@$!!ing tiebreaker thing happened, and well, you know what happened there. 8-6 Toshiba.



Game hero was, unsurprisingly, Adachi, for his go-ahead homer and then for his go-ahead double later on, AND he executed the double play that ended the game as well. Not a bad night for him, really.

(If you want to see game action photos from this game, actually, take a look at JR's team site.)

Also, incase you've never been in the Tokyo Dome balcony seating... this year they have the WEIRDEST thing I've ever seen up there:





I mean, I think the idea is that you're supposed to feel like you can shake hands with Wonder Boy himself, but to me, the hand just looks CREEPY. Seriously.

There were some very, very sad penguins outside the Tokyo Dome...



And I was actually so bummed out about the game that I took the subway most of the way home instead of JR. Of course, there's a Toshiba memory card in my digital camera that took all of the photos and videos for this entry, but that's beside the point.

By the way, at this point, Toshiba has made it to the finals; the final match is Tuesday night, Sept 7th, at 6:30pm at the Tokyo Dome, Toshiba vs. JR Kyushu. I don't think I'm going to go, as the Fighters are in the Seibu Dome for their last Kanto series of the year.

Now that Koshien for kids is over, Koshien for adults, aka the Intercity Baseball Tournament, has started! 32 corporate teams from all over Japan get together at the Tokyo Dome for almost 2 weeks of a big single-elimination baseball tournament! Just like Koshien, the teams bring all of their students employees to come cheer for them, and their brass bands and ouendan and dancing cheer girls and all, just that everyone is 10-15 years older than the Koshien kids, and rather than school uniforms, all the people in the stands are wearing suits and bright colored towels from their company. Also, it is played indoors at the Tokyo Dome rather than outdoors under the sweltering heat. But other than that, it's about the same.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I went to the bracket drawings for this, though at the time I was already vaguely planning to be out of town for the first weekend of it, so even at that time my thought was "The first game I can get to is Toshiba's. At least maybe I can see Waizumi and Urushibata play again."

So with that in mind, I headed down to the Tokyo Dome on Tuesday night, first stopping at the McDonald's by the dome to get a Tsukimi Burger combo. (Tsukimi Burger is a seasonal thing every September, basically a bacon-egg-and-cheese burger. It is fantastic and the only reason I will go to McDonald's voluntarily rather than "it's the only choice at this time and place" or "I want WBC folders".)



The home plate entrance was relatively empty, but you should have seen the ridiculous line snaking around the stadium for the Toshiba employees and fans. Toshiba is located in Kawasaki City, a half an hour or so from the Tokyo Dome, so they basically get their entire company to "work overtime" for the evening, by which I mean "come to the Tokyo Dome and cheer for the baseball team". Toshiba has also sent a ridiculous number of players to the pros (right now the Fighters have Hirotoshi Masui and Tomochika Tsuboi from there, but you've likely also at least heard of Naoyuki Shimizu and Hisanori Takahashi and Hiromitsu Ochiai as well as probably Kiyoshi Hatsushiba) so it stands to reason that they also have a reasonable number of fans beyond just the employees who come.

Whereas their opponent, Tokai Rika, is from Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, a few hours away even by Shinkansen. And where Toshiba has been in the Toshitaiko 32 times and is one of the best-known teams, Torika has been in it 4 times ever, and 3 of those times were the last 3 tournaments.

So first, I was inadvertantly 40 minutes early for the game; due to the 2nd game of the day going into extra innings (with Mitsubishi Yokohama winning 3-2 in the 11th over Oji Seimei), the Toshiba-Torika game was moved to a 6:30pm start to give the bazillion Toshiba employees time to get into the stadium. I bought a balcony seat for 700 yen, since this is my only opportunity to sit in the cushy balcony seats at the Tokyo Dome usually... and the Toshiba side was PACKED, no empty seats to be had short of the outfield. I gave up and went to the Torika side and got a seat in the front row right behind the ouendan, behind 3rd base. I like watching the ouendan to begin with, which is half of the reason I wanted to sit in the front row.

But well, the Torika ouendan was way outmatched by Toshiba. Torika had 6 cheer girls and 5 male ouendan, and then an assortment of about 10 other dancers who came out occasionally, and one guy and one girl who were in charge of yelling/singing into a microphone. They didn't have a particularly huge brass band, and I didn't see many cheer guys in the audience trying to get the crowd fired up, though at least they DID have inflatable cheer sticks for people to bang together.

Toshiba, on the other hand, had a BASE unit of 8 cheer girls whose main job was to hold up letter signs that spelled out "TOSHIBA" on one side and "KAWASAKI" on the other. Then they had another 20-person dance group of men and women, with varying costumes, another 5 men who seemed to be the "ouendan" types, then MORE dance women who were only in the stands, and then a troop of around 40 guys whose job was to run around in the stands and get the crowd fired up, waving uchiwa fans and yelling a lot. Their brass band was huge, they had several mascots, and they also had a bunch of people on "yelling/singing" duty as well.

Seriously, you could have gone to this game just to watch Toshiba's ouendan and probably not come out disappointed. Unless, of course, you were sitting on the Torika side.

Let me show you what I mean, anyway. For example, these two photos were taken in the 5th inning:


Tokai Rika side, seen from behind Toshiba ouendan. Note all the empty space.


Toshiba side, seen from behind Tokai Rika ouendan. Note that even the OUTFIELD and SECOND FLOOR are PACKED. Toshiba employees continued filing into the stadium well into the middle of the game.

So beyond the obvious geographical constraints in rousing up a huge audience, let's talk about these bands for a minute.

Torika had three main problems IMO:
1) Lack of people. Perhaps due to the size of the company more than anything, but there is only so much you can do when your ouendan is that small, and the ouendan does depend on how many people at the company exist to join it in the first place.
2) Lack of variety. Seriously, everything their brass band played is something you will hear being played by every high school band as well.
3) Lack of brass band repertoire even so. Almost half the time they didn't even have the brass band play, but instead played music over a tape for their cheer girls or dancers to dance to.

For example, this is one of their early innings. If you are familiar with high school baseball here, you will recognize all of these songs:



And when the band wasn't playing, they had two other dance groups; one was girls in black leotards and tutus who seemed to be hopping around and baton-twirling to pop stuff like Arashi, and then there was a more traditional Japanese group of dancers:



Here's a video of them doing Soran Bushi, which is a very very old Japanese fishing-related dance:



To be fair, they are at least as good at the Soran Bushi dance as my junior high school students who dance it every year for our Sports Day...

Anyway, for what they have, they do okay, I suppose. But they can't compare to the ouendan kickass of Toshiba, who come out in full force for this event.

One main thing is that Toshiba actually has a sort of standby "Toshiba" cheer, distinctive and with an actual tune to it, where girls hold up TOSHIBA signs that spell something else on the back. I saw a version on YouTube that were "VICTORY" on the other sides, but this is what they had for us:






And here, after the brass band does a riff of Footloose, they are actually doing that TOSHIBA cheer:



I feel a little bad for the girl holding the A, who kept getting confused about where she was supposed to be facing at any given time.

Here are two other videos I took of the Toshiba ouendan:


Dance routine.


Flag routine. Ryuta Matsunaga hit a double during this, which is why all the cheering suddenly.

Anyway...

The Toshiba band solidly defeated the Torika band, and well, the Toshiba baseball team also defeated the Torika baseball team.

Lefty Teruo Kawawaki started for Tokai Rika, and righty Takashi Fujita for Toshiba. It was actually a pretty close game for the first 5 innings, scoreless, although that was mostly due to Toshiba's guys batting into two double plays in the 2nd and 3rd innings, and then running themselves into a failed sac bunt in the 5th.

But then the floodgates opened in the 6th; with one out Ryoichi Adachi singled to center, and Masaya Iseki followed it with a single to right -- the throw came to third but Adachi slid in JUST safe there. Shota Fujiwara hit a sac fly to right and that scored Adachi to make it 1-0. Keiji Ikebe, a loan player from ENEOS, singled to right as well to advance Iseki, and Tokai Rika changed pitchers to Yuta Murai... and Ryuta Matsunaga singled again to drive in Iseki, making it 2-0.

And that was pretty much the game, aside from a Torika fireballer named Masaya Kanemaru who walked two guys in the bottom of the 8th before Ikebe lined into an unassisted double play (shortstop catches the ball and steps on 2nd base for the force).

Toshiba won 2-0, and Torika got two hits the entire game, both by right-fielder Tomoyuki Ishikawa, who I was actually pretty impressed by, even if he's no Ichiro. Toshiba's Fujita got a CG shutout with 5 strikeouts, no walks, 2 hits, facing 29 batters, throwing 84 pitches. Not bad at all.

Official score here.



Only sad thing is that the college players I was hoping to see didn't play. I'd actually seen Matsunaga before when he was in college at Toyo, but it was a little different. I am heading back to the Dome though for Toshiba vs. JR East, so we'll see.

I've been busy enough doing baseball stuff this weekend that I haven't had time to write about it.

The most interesting thing I did, at least in terms of "I don't think most foreign baseball fans EVER do this", was that I went to Hitotsubashi Hall in Jimbocho on Saturday afternoon to watch the bracket drawings for the Intercity Baseball Tournament, which is the big amateur league tournament that takes place every year towards the end of summer.

It's basically like Koshien for adults -- all over the country, there are regional tournaments for a few months in the spring and summer to decide which teams will represent the various regions of Japan. Most of the teams will be company teams, which are basically "extracurricular" arms of big corporations such as Toshiba, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, JR, JFE, etc. Some will be club teams. The format is single-elimination, 32 teams at the start, and is played for 10 days at the Tokyo Dome. Most of the teams, especially the ones from the Tokyo area, will bring thousands of supporters (read: company employees) and marching bands and cheerleaders, and half of the fun of going to the game is to see the cheering sections. I've posted about a few of these games in the past.

Anyway, did you ever wonder how they decided the bracket and schedule for the 32 teams that play each other? Me neither, but in the course of two hours of the assembly, I discovered way more than anyone would ever need or want to know about the process. Come along with me as I enlighten you with photos and videos from my journey through Lots Of Brackets.



I think the auditorium seated around 300-400 people. Offhand I'd say it was about half baseball fans, one-quarter team representatives, and one-quarter media, judging by the suits and cameras and whatnot.

I went to this with one of my college baseball friends. Her pet player at Meiji was a kid named Takuma Kobayashi, who graduated last year and now plays for JR Hokkaido. The main reason she wanted to go to this bracket drawing was to know as soon as possible whether she'd be able to come see him play or not.

Before the assembly started, they were showing videos from past Intercity tournaments. It was funny realizing that hey, I actually remember watching a bunch of these games at a few points, as well as seeing some players in older videos like "OMG that's Yohei Kaneko!" and so on.


Finally, at 2pm, the assembly started.


A guy from the Mainichi newspaper made an opening speech. I zoned out for most of it. I just don't speak Corporate very well.


They had an outline of how the procedures would go for the day.

Basically, first they would split into even-numbered and odd-numbered teams for the bracketing by regions, so nearby teams couldn't play each other. I believe odd-numbered teams were supposed to be the away teams for the matches.

Then they would split out teams that were from the same company group (ie, Mitsubishi, JR, NTT, etc)

Then they'd announce the special seeded teams.

Then choose brackets for odd teams -- and then choose brackets for even teams.

Finally, they would choose the order for most of the games to be played in (some were determined by seeds, but they didn't explain that until later).


A list of the different groups of regional representatives that would be called up. I believe these three guys were from Tokai, South Kanto, and Tokyo.


...and all of them chose to be even-numbered games! These are the huge group of guys representing Tohoku, North Kanto, Kanagawa, North Kansai (Kyoto Shiga Nara), Osaka, Wakayama, Hyogo, Chugoku, and Kyushu.


These three represented Hokkaido, Hokushinetsu, and Shikoku.


When the dust cleared, it was determined that this was the regional split for the odd and even games. How this worked out is actually beyond me, given the parity, but it did split into 16 and 16 somehow.


Next they explained how teams from the same company would all automatically be put in different blocks. How they managed to work this out is also beyond me (and since Mitsubishi had 5 teams, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagoya and Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors actually are both in the A Block).


Next they announced the special seeded teams and which games they would play in. (The idea being that seeded teams don't have to play each other in the first round.) If you can't read, they are:

1-1 Tokyo Gas
2-1 Sumitomo Metals Kashima
2-2 Toyota
2-3 Honda
3-1 Kazusa Magic
3-2 JR Higashinihon
3-3 JFE Higashinihon
4-3 Hitachi Seisakusho
5-3 Toshiba
6-3 NTT Higashinihon

Incase it isn't obvious why they have these specific games, it's for the convenience of these teams to bring their fans and employees to the games outside of normal working hours, and thus draw the biggest audiences. The 1st day of the tournament is Friday August 27, so the first game is at 6:30pm then. The 2nd and 3rd days are weekend days, and then the 4-6 days are Monday-Wednesday, thus being seeded for the 3rd game of the day, which starts at 6pm, means they can make employees work a full day before coming to the Tokyo Dome to work "overtime" cheering for the company team. Ahem.

To be fair, as a normal working baseball fan, I also would of course prefer to go to those later games, although I probably won't be able to make many of the first round games anyway because I'm hoping to go to Shikoku for a weekend at the end of August.

Anyway, they called up guys after that to choose which blocks they were going to be in. There was a ridiculous fanfare they played for every team. Even though I took this video a LOT later in the drawing, it should give you an example of what this procedure was like:



Usually they'd have all the guys for a region come up at the same time and pick their group letters together, though this particular video was of Toyota, which for some reason came up by themselves.


JR Hokkaido representative. (I'm guessing this guy is a player.)


Toshiba representative.

The people in the region would choose to be either in the A, B, C, or D block. After they made their choice, they had to go sit down in a particular row of the seats in the back for their block.


So here is the whole stage, with the 16 guys sitting on the right getting ready to draw the ACTUAL games they'd be playing, block by block.


So here are the 4 dudes for the Odd-Numbered A Block teams, JR Hokkaido, Nippon Paper Ishinomaki, Hakuwa Victories, and Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors.

First they chose cards that would denote which order they would choose game slots in, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then they actually chose the game slots...


...and these were the results.


Repeat for the Odd B-Guys, Toshiba, Nihon Seimei, Shin-Nippon Seitetsu Hirobata and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Hiroshima.


Odd C-Block: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yokohama, NTT Nishinihon, Yamato Takada Club, and JR Shikoku.


The Odd D-Block: 77 Bank, Nippon Shinyaku, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe, and JR Kyushu.


What it looked like when these first 16 guys had chosen their games.


Minami-Kanto group comes up, finishing with JFE Higashinihon. (I took the shot of them with the team because I'm a fan of several of their players.)

So here is another video -- of the game choosing among the B-Block of the Even-Numbered Games:



B was JR Higashinihon, JFE Higashinihon, Toho Gas, and Tokai Rika. This was largely determined by many people to be a pretty tough bracket this year (kind of a tossup between B and D, if you ask me). As you can hear in the video, several people laugh when Tokai Rika draws Toshiba as their opponents, for example.


A-Block results with all of the games drawn.


The Even D-Block guys get up to finish out the Hell Bracket.


Here is what it looked like when all 32 teams had drawn their game slots.

You'd think this would be finished now, right? And they'd just proceed that the first game started at the left, and the schedule went onwards like that, right?

WRONG...


Remember, seeds were seeded to specific games. So first they filled those in at the top...


...and then they had people come up and choose the REST of their slots. So this is what the entire schedule looked like when it was done. Just because you are in a specific bracket doesn't mean you will be playing anywhere near the other teams in your bracket. Also, some teams have to play on 2 days of rest between their first two games, when others have a week. It's kind of crazy.

Several people left the hall at this point, once the full bracket was determined...


...but we stuck around to hear an interview they did with a few of the managers -- the guys from JR Kyushu, Vitalnet, Nippon Express, and Ishinomaki.

At pretty much exactly 4pm they said "Okay, that's all the time we have! Ceremony over! See you all at the Tokyo Dome next month!" and kicked us out of the room.


On the way out we saw these awesome bears they had made for every team, that they were giving to the team representatives. About 1/3 of them were gone by then, but there were still several adorable ones representing teams I want to see. Awwww.

And for the record, they also gave a present to people who attended the bracketing...


...a JABA pinbadge and solar-powered blinking keychain/cellstrap thingy. I don't know if I'll ever actually use mine, but it's still a kind of neat souvenir. (And yes, that is my hand-written bracket that I was making as they were drawing teams.)

There isn't a lot of info about the Toshitaikou out there in English, but here is the JABA site about it. I'll certainly be going to a bunch of the games, though that Sept 4-5 weekend is going to be TOUGH to choose what baseball to watch, dang.

Here is a list of on-loan players, ie, guys whose teams didn't make it into the tournament so they will be playing for some teams that did make it. To me the most notable is former Toyodai infielder Takuya Tsukuura, now playing for Sega Sammy, but in this tournament he'll be on JR Higashinihon's team.

Here is a PDF of the brackets (Japanese)

Or here, I'll just type it into English:

1-1 NTT Nishinihon @ Tokyo Gas
2-1 Kyushu Mitsubishi Motors @ Sumitomo Metals Kashima
2-2 Toyota @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe
2-3 JR Shikoku @ Honda
3-1 Hakuwa Victories @ Kazusa Magic
3-2 JR Higashinihon @ Nihon Seimei
3-3 Shin-Nippon Seitetsu Hirobata @ JFE Higashinihon
4-1 Nippon Shinyaku @ Nippon Express
4-2 Nippon Paper Ishinomaki @ Yamaha
4-3 JR Kyushu @ Hitachi Seisakusho
5-1 JR Hokkaido @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagoya
5-2 Oji Paper @ Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yokohama
5-3 Toshiba @ Tokai Rika
6-1 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Hiroshima @ Toho Gas
6-2 Yamato Takada Club @ Vitalnet
6-3 77 Bank @ NTT Higashinihon

Day 1 is August 27th, Day 6 is September 1. Each day, Game 1 is at 10:30am, Game 2 at 2pm, Game 3 is at 6pm.

Should be a lot of fun. I'm hoping to go to most of Day 5, and then some of the later evening games during the week (work starts on September 1 for me again), and the weekend will depend on which teams make it. I really want to see Toshiba, Toyota, JFE Higashinihon, and JR Higashinihon... they all have former players I really liked in Tokyo Big 6, as do other teams. I also want to see Honda -- especially now that Hisayoshi Chono isn't on the team anymore, I can actually cheer for them without holding back. Yay!

BTW, I hope people find this kind of post actually interesting/informative. I sometimes have no clue if this kind of thing is even worth blogging about.

Industrial league baseball tournaments are fun, sure, but for me, there's something specific that makes them awesome.

It's not about the beer or the takoyaki, or the Tokyo Dome ice cream sandwiches.

It's not about the hordes of company employees in their white shirts and black pants, wearing company bibs or towels, wielding their company's colored uchiwa fans.

And to some extent, it's not even about the baseball, the players out there on the field in an adult version of Koshien, complete with headslides and sirens and players scanning the crowd for scouts, hoping for a shot at being drafted.

What is it about, then, you ask?

Why, it's ALL ABOUT THE MARCHING BANDS, of course!


Honda band and cheer group after scoring the first run of the game, complete with a banzai at the end.


Honda band playing one of their standard ouenka, with cheerleaders dancing.


NTT Higashinihon marching band and company employees yelling - Kattobase Kiyota!


NTT Higashinihon band plays 銀河鉄道999 by EXILE between innings, and the cheerleaders do formations.


Monday night, August 31, I went to the Tokyo Dome to take in an industrial league baseball game -- one of the semi-final games of the 都市対抗野球大会 (toshitaikou yakyuu taikai), aka Intercity Baseball Tournament. It is vaguely like a Koshien for adults in that there are regional tournaments all over the country to qualify for it, and then the best 32 teams come to the Tokyo Dome and match up in a single-elimination tournament for a week, and they bring their cheerleaders and marching bands from all over Japan. However, unlike Koshien, this one happens indoors during typhoon season instead of outdoors under the blazing heat of summer. Also, rather than being whittled down from 4000 teams all over the country, this is more like being whittled down from maybe 400 teams, between club teams and corporate teams.

The players on one of these corporate teams, from what I understand, are employees of the company who basically spend 90% of their "working hours" with the company practicing and competing in sports, and after their sporting careers are over, they become harmless office workers for the company, which under the Japanese system of "work is family, job for life" means they can be pretty set. Although I think that system is changing with the current Japanese economy being what it is, so perhaps these guys actually WILL have to do real work for their companies in the future. Who knows.

The cheerleaders and marching band members apparently work normal 9-5 office jobs with no overtime, so they can practice as an extracurricular activity. Or at least, that's what I heard; I'm sure it's different at different companies (another rumor suggested that cheerleader girls are all daughters of rich company execs, so who knows). Either way, it's an interesting way to continue such an activity once one gets out of college, I think.

And of course, during one of these tournaments, the company strongly suggests that as many regular employees as possible come out to support the company team. In this case, since NTT Higashinihon is representing Tokyo, they pretty much filled up half of the Tokyo Dome. We watched in morbid fascination as the employees continued filtering in, wearing their "NTT East" teal vests, slowly spreading from the infield employee seating to cover most of the right field bleachers, and then even extending to take over the second floor once they had exhausted the outfield seating. It was truly an impressive showing.


(This is towards the end of the first inning or so, while they hadn't QUITE filled up the RF bleachers yet.)

The particular branch of Honda featured in this game was the one simply referred to as Honda (as opposed to Honda Kumamoto or Honda Suzuka), located in Sayama, which is close to the Seibu Dome, maybe an hour from Tokyo. I'm not entirely sure why they didn't fill their entire half of the stadium likewise, since it's not THAT far away, though my best guess is that since the Honda team actually has a fair number of baseball fans on their own -- no joke, they're in this tournament pretty much every year -- the company didn't feel a need to fill the stadium themselves.


This is the Honda band and cheerleaders. You can see that there are a fair amount of people in the outfield on this side, but that they hadn't filled the entire infield with employees. Note the sousaphones which say 必勝狭山市 (Victory for Sayama City) in the bells!

You are possibly by now wondering where I was sitting for this game, given the various perspectives of the movies and photos. Well, I went to this game with my friend Carl, who found himself stranded in Tokyo thanks to Typhoon #11 cancelling all flights out on Monday. Carl isn't particularly a baseball fan, but I've dragged him to plenty of games in the past. We were in marching band together in college, so I figured if nothing else, he could enjoy the craziness of the bands and the cheering sections.

We bought balcony tickets for 700 yen each -- I don't even know how us peasants can sit in those plush balcony seats during a normal game, so it's a special treat for me to sit there. We entered on the Honda side by random chance. The only problem is, there are 5 rows of seats, and while they all have fantastic views of the GAME ACTION, you only get a truly good view of the marching bands and cheerleaders from the front row. And thanks to Honda actually having fans, and us arriving at about 5:55pm for a 6pm game, we ended up sitting in the 4th row or so.

After about 3 innings, the Honda band exhausted all of their songs and started repeating them, and being band nerds, we actually even had started to pick up on exactly how many unique measures of music they had. So sometime in the 4th or 5th inning we decided that the NTT Higashinihon band sounded MUCH more interesting and moved over to their side instead. It took an entire inning to move across because you can't simply walk through the back area on the balcony level, but instead have to go downstairs to the main floor and walk across, and then NTT had a huge 6th inning so I stopped to watch it, and Carl went to get a hot dog, but when the dust settled we ended up in the front row on the NTT balcony from the bottom of the 6th.

The real benefit of switching sides, of course, besides taking videos of the band, was that I could finally actually boo Hisayoshi Chono without feeling bad about it. Chono aside, I actually like a lot of the players on Honda's team, but my dislike for him kind of outweighs the rest of Honda.

(If you're wondering, the 700 yen was half price due to an anniversary deal or something -- usually they sell the behind-home-plate area seats for 2400 yen, the balcony seats for 1400 yen, and outfield is something cheaper that I forget. The rest of the infield area is used for the company employees' cheering section.)


The NTT cheering section, as viewed from a full standing-only area behind the seats.


The NTT section, viewed from the balcony.


This drum player was awesome and scary all at once. Carl commented that they were using the old unsimplified kanji for "ouendan".


I pointed out that cheering for industrial teams is quite easy, as they always let you know exactly what you should be yelling at any given time. (Those signs say "Ganbare" "Kishiro".)

Anyway, despite a rough start involving some recycled college tunes and a somewhat awkward routine carrying around a mikoshi on the stage, I can tell you that the NTT Higashinihon band, using Spanish-themed marches and some J-Pop riffs, managed to defeat the Honda marching band by a signature of 5/4 in the key of B flat. Honda's repetitive 16-measure songs were certainly catchy and more unique than those used by NTT, but at the same time, they tended to fall flat after about two times through. It was a close match though.

Wait, you wanted to know how the BASEBALL TEAMS did against each other?

Oh, um. Well, actually, it was a really close game, which Honda won in the end. Yoshio Ohta started for Honda and Toshiichiro Kishiro started for NTT.

NTT ran themselves out of the first inning (went from runners at the corners with 1 out, to three outs a second later after a strikeout and a failed steal of second. WHY on earth do you steal second in the first inning with a runner at third? Come on.) and then Honda put the first run of the game on the board in the bottom of the 2nd. Yuichi Tabata doubled to left, and two batters later Katsutoshi Okano singled to left. The throw home got there around the same time as the runner, but the NTT catcher Ueda lunged to get the ball, which got away from him, and then he was knocked over by a running Tabata. Okano saw the ball go and made a run for it, and in the meantime Ueda recovered the ball and threw out Okano at second. 1-0.

Honda starter Ohta managed to load the bases for NTT in the 4th off two walks and a hit batter, but NTT didn't capitalize on it, and left all three runners on base.

Naturally, because I was making my way across the stadium, the top of the 6th ended up being totally crazy. Kenji Takahashi walked, and the next batter, Masashi Arakawa (actually on loan to NTT from Meiji Yasuda Seimei), hit a single to right, moving Takahashi to second. At this point, Honda switched pitchers, putting in their ace Rikiya Chikugawa, who had pitched the majority of the innings in the tournament already for them. The first guy Chikugawa faced was NTT cleanup batter Ikuhiro Kiyota, whom he struck out. But then Yoshiyuki Takao singled to left, and somehow nobody scored on the play, so the bases were loaded. Hiroshi Hirano hit a sacrifice fly to right field, and Takahashi scored the tying run! 1-1. Another loan player, Kazuya Takeuchi from JR Higashinihon, then hit a grounder up towards third base. Takeuchi was safe at first and Arakawa scored, and then SOMEONE got tagged out on the play to make the third out, but I have no clue who because when the run scored, the entire NTT section went nuts and blocked the sightline for the entire standing area. 2-1.

We went upstairs in time to see Hisayoshi Chono get another hit in the 6th (grr), but it wasn't until the 7th where Honda started stringing together a real offense. Hidenori Taura, on loan from JFE Higashinihon, singled to left, and Okano singled to right, moving pinch-runner Kyuta Horiuchi to third. Okano was also replaced by a pinch-runner, Satoshi Yoshioka. Ryo Saeki followed that up with a successful squeeze bunt up the middle, as Horiuchi was home almost before the ball even reached the pitcher. 2-2. NTT switched pitchers from Kishiro to Katayama at this point. Yoshioka got himself caught stealing next, with Yoshinobu Kotegawa at the plate. Kotegawa grounded to short -- except that somehow the ball went bounding THROUGH the shortstop's glove, so Kotegawa was safe at first. Saeki was off running on the two out play to begin with, so he passed second and was going towards third as the left fielder Katamichi recovered the ball. Saeki started home and Katamichi made a throw home -- over home -- more like FIVE FEET over home -- and Saeki was safe, Kotegawa safe at second by the time the ball was recovered, and Honda was ahead 3-2. Two errors, one run.

Kiyota got a one-out single in the top of the 8th for NTT, but then got caught stealing second, and that was the last thing NTT would accomplish offense-wise. Hisayoshi Chono got another hit in the bottom of the 8th for Honda, much to my chagrin, but then Yasuyuki Saigo hit a pop fly to right field, which right fielder Arakawa ran down and made a dramatic diving catch. Chono was already practically at home plate when the ball was caught, so he had no chance to make it back to second. Three out.

And thus Honda's marching band advanced to the finals.


(Honda team captain Okano makes a victory speech.)

Gen was also at this game, and after playing email tag for half of it, he sat across the aisle from us for the last inning or two and we all walked out together. I talked to him a bit about his new blog (Yakyu Baka, aka the Blog Formerly Known As Simcentral) and we made our way over towards home plate.

We're standing there looking at the tournament board, and we notice a guy with a big ice thing on his right arm. Gen's like "I wonder who that is?" and I'm like "I think it's got to be one of the Honda pitchers from today... but which one? I've never seen either of them close up!" So I finally bite the bullet and ask the guy's family in Japanese, "Who's that?" and they say "That's Chikugawa," and I'm like "The second pitcher for Honda today? He was really good!" They replied, "Thank you so much for watching!" or something to that effect. So after some other people asked him for photos and it looked like he was going to run off I just butted in and asked if I could take a photo with him too.


Rikiya Chikugawa, Honda #16

I told him thanks, and that he pitched really well and good luck in the game tomorrow and all of that stuff.

Here's the funny thing -- not only was he the winning pitcher in this game, and has pitched over half of Honda's innings this tournament, but -- last year, when I went to see Honda vs. ENEOS in the semi-finals, he also pitched the last half of that game as well! What a weird coincidence that we randomly saw him standing there.

What an exciting day. I wish I could go back and see the finals, but I'll be down in Chiba watching the Fighters-Marines game instead. I secretly want Honda to lose just for the Chono Factor, but it doesn't matter that much to me. Yukinaga Tanaka plays for Toyota, and I liked him when he was at Waseda, so I hope he can do well too.

No idea whether Toyota's band will beat Honda's, though.