Marinerds, etc.

This story actually starts towards the end of June. It was a grumpy morning for me, I was running late for work, was feeling pretty tired, really just wanted to go back to sleep. I walked into the BART station near my house, absentmindedly ran my Clipper card over the machine, and suddenly noticed that there was a BIG ELEPHANT IN AN OAKLAND A'S JERSEY STANDING IN FRONT OF ME!

This is one of the A's promotions with BART -- they have their mascot Stomper riding around on the trains sometimes, and even better, occasionally you'll catch the street crew in stations giving away free A's tickets and BART tickets! This had happened to one of my coworkers who lives in Oakland a few weeks ago as well, but since I live in San Francisco, which is decidedly Hipster Giants Fan Land, I figured there was no way I'd ever get that lucky. Apparently I was wrong!

You may be wondering, what did I have to do to get free A's tickets?

I had to get my picture taken with Stomper.

That was it. Really. And if you know me at all, you know I LOVE getting my photo with mascots and baseball people, and have been known to chase down mascots in Japan with my friends.  Think about this one: first, I don't have to chase down Stomper for a photo.  Second, they WANT me to get a photo with Stomper.  Third, they're going to give me free tickets to a baseball game for getting my photo with Stomper.  Does it get better than that?



Actually, it does, because the tickets they gave me were for the 4th of July game! I'd already been thinking of going on the 3rd or 4th, vaguely in the hope of seeing Bobby, but even so, just to watch baseball on July 4th. And it ALSO gets better because they gave me two $5 BART tickets, which would pay for me to get to the game! And the tickets were for 200-level seats behind the bullpens, not something crappy in the middle of the outfield! How lucky is that?

(The retarded thing is, I swear to god, there were people just saying "no thanks" and walking past the A's crew and going down to the platform. WTF? How do you turn down BART tickets and baseball tickets? San Francisco is dumb.  I walked off saying "You guys made my day!" and went to work with a big smile on my face instead of a big frown.)

Anyway, as for the day of the game itself, I went with one of my coworkers who lives in Oakland, and we had a pretty good time.  I mentioned that I knew Bobby Valentine from my days in Japan, and hoped to say hi to him, and I even wore my Bobby 2010 t-shirt from the Keep Bobby in Chiba campaign back during the 2009 season when the Lotte front office was stupid and decided to fire him.  UNFORTUNATELY, the downside of us having seats in the 200-level for a day game with no batting practice and a crowd-drawing team like the Red Sox was that the ushers and staff were being particularly careful about letting people who didn't have appropriate tickets down to the front of the field, and I made a few attempts to get down to the dugout but completely failed.  Here, however, is proof that I really did make the attempt:



And I saw a guy in the stands holding up a "In Bobby V We Trust" sign during the game, too:



Anyway, disappointment about not seeing Bobby aside, and given that I actually root for the A's in general, it was really a pretty good game.  Aaron Cook, who's mostly spent his career in the Rockies system, started for the Red Sox, and AJ Griffin, who's barely older than my interns at work, started for the A's.

Because it was the 4th of July, they were theoretically giving out some kind of red, white, and blue A's hats, although we not only were too late to receive one, we didn't even SEE anyone wearing one anywhere.  But, they had a whole bunch of pregame ceremonies involving the Marines and various other military things, including a bunch of fighter jets flying over the stadium after the singing of the National Anthem.

And then things got underway.  Brandon Moss hit a home run right over the "400" sign in dead center in the 2nd inning to put the A's up 1-0, and then in the 4th, David Ortiz tied things up for the Red Sox by hitting a home run of his own into the corner of the right-field stands, slightly over from the A's mini-ouendan cheering section, making it 1-1.

I haven't really been paying close attention to the MLB like I used to back in the old days, so my brain started to wonder "How many career home runs is that for Big Papi now?" and before I could even look it up on my phone, someone a few rows behind us said "Hey, that was his 400th career home run!"

And sure enough, the A's announcer even called that out the next time Ortiz was up to bat, and there was a stadium-wide round of applause for him:



(Honestly, in a semi-related point, I was kinda shocked to hear what stupid shit Manny Ramirez has been up to since last I lived in the USA -- but at the same time, I'm kinda sad I never got out to a Sacramento River Cats game to see him while he was playing there this year.  Apparently he was released a few weeks ago, at his own request.)

The Red Sox did go up 2-1 in the top of the 6th after Ortiz walked, Jarrod Saltalamacchia (who I pointed out as "the most annoying name to stitch on a uniform") reached on a fielding error by Jemile Weeks and Adrian Gonzalez singled in Ortiz.

But the A's tied it up in their half of the 6th when Brandon Moss hit a "double" that was really a sun ball that got lost by 3 guys in left field and just dropped, and then Brandon Inge hit a real double to bring him in ("Inge-sanity!"), and then Coco Crisp hit a triple to right to lead off the bottom of the 7th and was brought in by a single by Jemile Weeks, and that made it 3-2 and the A's won the game. Box score here.

There were a surprising number of people carrying brooms around the stadium:





But well, that's about what you can expect.

Personally, I was glad the game ended by 4pm because it was pretty hot and sunny out there.  On the other hand, because BART was running on a Sunday schedule it took forever to get on a train!  They actually have police holding up people at the staircase to the station and only let people through in waves, so that the platforms don't become crowded enough to be dangerous.  I was surprised, since in Japan, teams would often run extra trains after games to disperse the fans (well, Seibu and Hanshin and teams that owned their own train lines at least.  Nevermind...)

Still, it was a good time at the park.  If I'm lucky I can try to see Bobby around Labor Day, I guess.

Monday, I decided not to go to the 3rd game of the Meiji-Hosei series and instead did a doubleheader of the Lions vs. Fighters at the Seibu Dump, then the Swallows vs. Baystars at Jingu.

I guess I arrived at Seibu around 12:30pm. First thing I noticed was a lot of people taking photos of the Seibu train cars. This is why:



I'm assuming it must be a new makeover for the cars or something. Remember, if 20 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it must be special.

I tell you this because I went into the stadium, put down my stuff in the spot my friends had saved for me, and then noticed another huge group of people clustered by the outfield fence taking photos of something. This is why:



Apparently Yuki Saitoh is working on a new pitch. I dunno. Clearly if 50 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it REALLY must be special. Me, I spent 4 years watching Saitoh pitch for Waseda, so I'm kind of already over the hype, you could say.

Seibu still sucks for actually getting decent food within the stadium, at least if all you have is an outfield ticket, so like most people, I went back OUTSIDE of the stadium to find lunch. They had a lot of fancy bento boxes for various players, but what caught my eye was their "special limited edition Sapporo vs. Tokorozawa" bento:





Interesting mix of stuff, though I have to admit I don't really get how it was either Hokkaido-themed OR Saitama-themed except for the potato croquette (that's a typical Hokkaido thing). I'm a sucker for these kinds of bento boxes, though; I love how you get a filling healthy meal with such a wide variety of stuff for such a reasonable price.

I guess we spent the next hour before the game either chatting, doing opening cheers, or watching the Lions fans do their new chance theme which reminds me of a weird cross of MVP-era Lotte plus the Fighters Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cheer, as it had a lot of "LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAA" stuff going on, as well as a split part where men sing first and then women.

Shota Ohno was playing in this game, and hadn't at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday, so I spent a while studying his cheer, too. Fortunately, one of my friends who's a college student and fluent in English was sitting next to me, so I made him help me figure them all out.



Brian Wolfe started for the Fighters, and Kazuhisa Ishii for the Lions.

The first half of this game was pretty awesome from a Fighters fan perspective. We got on the board in the 3rd inning when Bobby Scales hit a home run, and then added two more runs to it in the 4th inning on a Sugiya hit, stolen base, an RBI double by Koyano, and an RBI single by Inaba-sama. 3-0.

We loaded the bases in the top of the 5th, even, when Ishii hit both Yoh and Itoi with pitches. Unfortunately, we didn't DO anything with that.

Even so, things seemed good going into the bottom of the 5th. But Yutaro Ohsaki led off with a close single to second. Shogo Akiyama followed that up with a single, and Ginjiro bunted them both up to 2nd and 3rd. Yasuyuki Kataoka, batting 9th (??) singled in Ohsaki, making it 3-1. Well, okay. But then Takumi Kuriyama followed that with another hit, bringing in Akiyama, 3-2. And Takuya Hara followed that with YET ANOTHER HIT, bringing in Kataoka, 3-3.

Naturally the only other thing that could possibly happen then was a 3-run homer from Hiroyuki Nakajima, right? Right. 6-3. By this point I'd had enough and got up to go to the bathroom, expecting that Wolfe would be taken out and I'd have some time, but apparently that isn't what happened, and instead, while I was in the bathroom I could hear a really big roar of Lions fans cheering... as Okawari-kun Nakamura had hit his 41st home run of the year. 7-3.

I've joked in the past that Seibu should hang me from the ceiling as an omamori for their players hitting homeruns, because BOY do they hit a lot of homers when I'm there.

(Side note: I don't know if it's this new ball or what, but it's kind of insane that Okawari has 41 homeruns, the next highest in the PL is Softbank's Matsuda with 23, then Seibu's Nakajima with 16. Even in the CL, the leader is Wladimir Balentien with 27 right now. There are some TEAMS -- I'm looking at Lotte with their 39 and Hiroshima with their 43 -- that barely as a WHOLE TEAM have as many homers as Nakamura does.)

Got back to my seat to see the inning end, anyway. And I got to see Kazuhito Tadano pitch the 6th, and I'm a relatively big fan of his all things considered, so it was nice to see him get into a game, at least.

The Fighters managed to take back 2 runs in the 7th from a Sugiya double, an Itoi single, a Koyano RBI single and an Inaba fielder's choice, making it 7-5, but that's all they'd get as the Lions won the game.

To nobody's surprise, the game hero was Nakajima:



But I didn't stick around for the post-game at all because I was running off to Jingu. I basically quickly gathered up my stuff, packed up my bag, had Taicho make fun of me for having an Iihara jersey, and then ran to the Seibu train station. Quite frankly, my legs were killing me after 3 hours of sitting/standing on the slanted Seibu outfield turf -- I'd forgotten how painful that gets when you're not used to it.

The only other comment I have about the Seibu game offhand was that I'm not sure how to explain the exact difference, but without Hichori and Hichori fans in the outfield, there's a slightly different feel to things at Seibu. He was always a really big showman of sorts and always waved to fans and threw them baseballs and did antics and climbed on the fences, and his fans also kind of had goofy banners and lots of crazy green stuff, and I guess with Hichori gone and Kensuke injured, it felt like a lot of the goofiness was gone, and mostly replaced by a sort of glumness. And lots of Saitoh jerseys.

But anyway.

Onward to Jingu -- I managed to get a Seibu train that went straight from there to Shibuya, and then took the subway to Gaienmae, and I got into Jingu at about 6:30pm, or in the bottom of the 2nd inning.

Now, the nice thing about being late is that I deliberately decided not to keep a scorecard, which means that as a result, if you really want to read a more detailed log of what happened in the game, you ought to go read the official Tsubamegun writeup on their blog.

I mean, what I recall is:

- It was 1-0 when I arrived
- I saw Aoki hit his homer into the foul pole shortly after that to make it 1-1
- I had gotten back from my first jaunt around the concourse (more on that in a second) in time to see the WTF moment of the game when Fukuyama balked in a run to make it 2-1
- I saw Aikawa's home run too, which made it 3-1.



Now anyway, for what really happened to me during this game:

Kozo and I went hunting for food at some point in the 3rd or 4th inning. I bought a Shingo Kawabata t-shirt first, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, and then we surveyed a bunch of the places in the left field stands before Kozo decided to just get bulgogidon at the yakiniku-place that I forget the name of.

HOWEVER, when we got to the end of the stands, I saw Hossiezo, one of the Baystars mascots, posing at the food counter and with some fans! I went to take a photo and one of the "diana" girls was like "Would you like your picture with him?" and I said sure. I also told her how my name is ALSO Deanna, pronounced the same as their "diana", but spelled different.

I was so super-psyched about this, except GET THIS, the "diana" girl didn't press the button on my camera hard enough for the flash to fire, and the picture DIDN'T TAKE!

SIGH.

I was really bummed out about that. It's silly because usually I wouldn't have even had the chance to get a photo with a mascot anyway, this was just dumb luck, and I did get a photo with a Baystars star mascot a few years back. But it still kind of sucks to have that chance and to pose and all and then not get a picture. I realize that part of it is that I have a really cheap camera, but...

Anyway, we got food and went back to the stands. Shortly after that, I decided I wanted some soft serve ice cream, and went back hunting for that. The stupid thing there is that they sell it literally right underneath where we were sitting, but I didn't notice, and walked all the way to the other end of the outfield and back before figuring it out.

So, public service announcement: IF YOU WANT SOFT ICE CREAM AND ARE SITTING IN THE RIGHT FIELD BLEACHERS AT JINGU, IT IS IN THE SAME STAND ALCOVE AS THE PLACE WITH THE SAUSAGES. Which makes it right under the ouendan, basically.

Though I have to admit that the Belgian waffle place that just opened this year looks pretty damn good too. I'll try to report on that at a future time.

Anyway, I think that I had a decent time at this game, relaxing for once and not keeping score, mostly hanging out with Kozo and our friend Kentaro, who wants me to come to a Carp game with him sometime (and I really should, since I brought my Carp Saitoh jersey with me to Japan). Though I dunno, I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to Jingu in the first place -- the Fighters game took a lot out of me. So I was mostly at Jingu to hang out, really, and so the Swallows win was nice, but since I was zonked and since it was against the Baystars, I guess it didn't really feel like that big a deal.

Oh, one final photo from the day, along the same sort of "Spot what's wrong with this" variety:



DEAR THE SEIBU LIONS:

I AM FAIRLY SURE YOUR LITTLE SCHEDULE BOOK DOES NOT INFACT SAY WHAT YOU THINK IT SAYS. ARE YOU PLANNING TO INCINERATE ALL OF YOUR PLAYERS?

LOVE, THE MARINERD

After spending all afternoon Saturday at Jingu dying of heatstroke, and being unable to endure the pro game that evening, I came up with the brilliant idea to only watch 1.5 games of Big 6 ball on Sunday and go home for 2-3 hours to change and shower and cool off and become human again. Then I came back to Jingu for the pro game in the evening.

I was at this game with Kozo and David from Tsubamegun, and also Ben, a a friend of ours who used to live in Tokyo and come to games sometimes, but now lives in Osaka. I had bought Ben's ticket that morning, so I met up with him at the subway station, and when we got to Jingu, guess what we saw -- fans taking photos with Swallows mascots! So I made Ben line up with me and take my photo with Entaro:



Then spent the hour before the game basically greeting people and getting food and learning the new songs and so on. (No, I'm sorry, but Hatakeyama's cheer is right out. His old one was hard enough, why did they have to change it?)

I will say that it was a spectacular sunset over Jingu, as usual:



And actually, apparently, due to it being some kind of Yakult Family Night thing where they were giving out tickets or selling cheap tickets to Yakult company employees, a lot of the stadium was PACKED. The outfield was REALLY PACKED and even the infield on the 1st-base side was pretty full. Here's a view during the 7th-inning stretch:



Now uh... the bad thing is that the first time anyone got out their umbrellas WAS infact the 7th-inning stretch.

(If you don't know, when the Swallows score a run, the Swallows fans get out umbrellas and sing "Tokyo Ondo" and dance around with umbrellas. If you don't know Tokyo Ondo, you might know it as "the 'Kutabare Yomiuri' song". The other time that Swallows fans get out the umbrellas is always for the middle of the "Lucky 7"th inning.)

The Baystars' starter was Kentaro Takasaki, who I was saying is their "ace". This is because he had 4 wins to his name (5 now!), which is more than anyone else on their pitching staff. He also has thrown more innings than anyone else on the team, and, honestly, were he on any other team in the league, he'd probably have a winning record rather than his current 5-12, 3.08 mark. 115 strikeouts and 34 walks in 155 innings is really not bad at all. Also, he's a pretty decent soccer player, which I learned this winter. But that's beside the point.

Takasaki, for better or worse, basically was just mowing down the Swallows lineup left and right. He pitched 4 PERFECT INNINGS before finally giving up a base hit to Shinichi Takeuchi. And it didn't stop there -- in eight innings, Takasaki allowed two baserunners. TWO. That Takeuchi hit, and a Kawabata hit that was barely a hit, if it hadn't gone off Tsutsugo's arm. Seriously.

In the meantime, the Swallows starter was Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi. Don't get me wrong, I loved Masubuchi as a reliever, and always looked forward to seeing him come into the game, and not just because he uses that Taio Cruz "Break Your Heart" song as his entrance music. (True story: I was in a store in Seattle, and that song came on the radio/whatever, and I just stopped in my tracks and said "Masubuchi??" Several people looked at me really weird. But I digress.) I don't know, though, I've never really thought he's all that great as a starter. Or maybe he just has bad starts whenever I see them.

In this case, he gave up a home run to Shuichi Murata in the 4th inning -- and we'd just been saying how Murata's power numbers are down this year. Then he had a disaster of a 5th inning, where even pitcher Takasaki led off with a single, and then Aranami tried to bunt him up but replaced him on base instead with a 1-6 FC. Ishikawa also singled, and then Shimozono walked, which loaded the bases for Murata... who didn't hit another homer, but instead was HIT BY A PITCH to give the Baystars another run. To add insult to oshidashi, then Tsutsugo hit a sac fly to center, and Tatsuhiko Kinjoh (!!) singled in another run. It was 4-0 by the time everything cleared.

Everything was looking great for Takasaki even into the 9th inning -- Aikawa led off with a single, but a pinch-hitting Whitesell hit a pop out to second, and then Aoki hit into a fielder's choice -- almost a double play but not quite. With two outs and Hiroyasu Tanaka at bat, Aoki ran to second base on defensive indifference. Unfortunately, that might have made the big difference in the game -- Hiroyasu then hit a solid single to center which scored Aoki to make it 4-1. Having lost the shutout, the Baystars pulled Takasaki and put in Shun Yamaguchi, their closer. Yamaguchi then walked Kawabata, putting runners at 1st and 2nd for Hatakeyama... who hit a REALLY HIGH POP FLY right over the mound and would you believe it, whoever fielded it (Tsutsugoh?) DROPPED THE CATCH. Oh man. Hiroyasu scored. 4-2.

But that was it -- Takeuchi then hit a pop fly to right that even Kinjoh couldn't possibly not catch, and that was the game.



Most of the people in the group we were cheering with fell asleep up on the tarps for half the game. They at least woke up for the 9th inning.

Takasaki was, understandably, the game hero. And he mentioned how it was the first time since June that the Baystars had won 2 consecutive games, and how he was proud of the whole team's effort in the game. I think I'm finally over my anger at the Baystars administration to the point that I now just feel bad for them.

I gotta admit, I didn't even know what the hell QVC was until I just looked it up.



Going to The Stadium Formerly Known As Chiba Marine isn't all that much fun for me anymore. I have a lot of memories there, of course, from all the time I spent there during Bobby Valentine's time as manager, and so going there now feels strange, unless I'm sitting in the Fighters cheering section in left field.

But well, on Thursday night I had been sending phonemails with Steve to see if he was at the Tokyo Dome (he wasn't), and he suggested I come to Chiba Marine sometime during the weekend. And then they announced the starting pitchers for Friday night, and you wouldn't believe who was starting for Lotte...



Hiroki Ueno is one of my favorite favorite baseball players and through a lot of dumb luck, I barely ever get to actually see him play. Infact, I think the last time I got to see him start a game might have been Draft day 2008 when he was still at Toyo University.

Unfortunately, in this game at Chiba, he had a rough first inning -- he walked 3 batters, loading the bases, and then Seung-Yeop Lee (wearing the wrong uniform, apparently he didn't have his?) hit a 2-RBI single and Shogo Akada followed it up with another RBI single to make it 3-0.

The Marines put one on the board themselves in the bottom of the 1st, with Shota Ishimine leading off with a walk and stealing second, and coming in on a Jose Castillo single.

But that was it for a very long time as Buffaloes starter Yuki Nishi, all 20 years old of him, pitched a bunch of scoreless innings after that. In the meantime, the Buffaloes added a run in the 4th off a Sakaguchi RBI single, making it 4-1.

Nishi game out of the game in the 6th after giving up another run -- this time largely on letting Castillo advance on a wild pitch, so when Hisao Heiuchi made a dramatic infield single, headsliding into first just ahead of the throw from shallow center, it made the score 4-2.

As for Ueno, he went 7.2 innings, and if not for that horrible first inning, he would have won the game, so that made me kind of sad. Instead, the Buffaloes won 4-2, with Mamoru Kishida getting the save for them, and the Marines putting in Yuta Kimura for their last 2 innings.



Other things:

There were fireworks. Apparently they change the firing location each game? We couldn't see them at ALL from the infield jiyuuseki on the 1B side:



Another observation is how popular Shota Ishimine is. Batting leadoff with an interesting cheer song (hailing to him being from Okinawa with a big "I-YA-SA-SA" cheer in the middle), I'm surprised by how many #5 shirts I saw at the stadium, and they were Ishimine shirts, not all just old Koichi Hori shirts. I thought people might be more pissed off about #5 going to someone again so soon after Hori left, but Ishimine's a likely Rookie of the Year candidate and is trying to fill those shoes as best he can. I said it last fall and I'll say it again, Ishimine is the MAN. Heck, one of my college baseball friends was at this game just because she's been following Ishimine around, she doesn't usually go to pro games all that much.

I'm saddened by how boring the Lotteria at the stadium got. Ever since the Bobby Burgers went away it's been kind of silly, the Taekyun burger was terrible, and apparently this year's special was a Saburo menchi katsu burger, but of course, the team traded Saburo -- err, Ohmura -- to the Giants, so now there's basically nothing special. I forgot to hunt down some Karakawa karaage. Oh well.

I went to the Marines team store to try to find ANYTHING of Ueno, too -- a t-shirt, a towel, a cell strap, ANYTHING. But there was nothing. I even asked a store clerk, like "Hey, do you have any Hiroki Ueno merchandise?" "Uh, who?" "Hiroki Ueno. Tonight's starting pitcher. Number 15." "Oh, number 15. No we don't."

Sigh.

Hanging out with Steve and and his friend Lou was fun though. I really have no reason to go to Chiba much anymore except Fighters games, so it was good to have people to hang out with.

Oh yeah, and after the game...



Way too many mascots in Chiba. This one is "Cool".

Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome are really special to me. It was, infact, at the Tokyo Dome 8 years ago that I got my start as a Fighters fan. Thus, I planned my trip to Japan this fall to allow me to get to at least one Tokyo Dome game, and I'm really glad I did.

I showed up around 3:30 for the 4pm doors opening for the 6pm game, and there were already a ton of people out there, mostly because they now make Marines and Fighters fans both come in at the same gate for the outfield, which sucks. On the other hand, all of the established groups of friends I have were already out there waiting, so I basically just said hi to a bazillion people, and snuck in with one of my closer friends, who let me just get in line with him. This resulted in me getting into the stadium before the friends who were actually saving me a seat.

Mostly, people were like "Welcome back! When did you get in?" but several didn't know I'd left the country and reacted like "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THIS YEAR?!!?"

I was fortunate to run into a friend of mine who speaks fluent English and engineered it so that I ended up sitting with him for most of the game (his group and mine had saved seats next to each other). So that was great; I made him teach me some of the new cheer songs.

We went up to do pinbadges, too. (We ran into BB on the way and took the above photo then.) Of course, this is my only real chance this year to get them for sure; I want to go to Sapporo but don't know that I'll do it or not yet. My only real goal was getting an Imanari badge, since I have one for every year he's been on the Fighters. So I got my raijo badge, then went to get in line to do gatchapon badges... and while we were all there, some guy comes up to Crazy Matsuda like "I got these, they're mostly crap, anyone want to trade?" and I said "OMG YOU HAVE IMANARI!!!! I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!" so he basically just gave it to me for my Tadano, which is the one I got for just showing up. I *knew* that something would work out for me getting an Imanari badge as usual, I just had no idea what it would be. I immediately affixed it to my uniform, I was so happy:



Anyway...

I took videos of some of the new songs so I could study them later. Here's a few:


Fighters full lineup cheer before the game:
1. Scales 2. Yoh 3. Itoi 4. Koyano 5. Inaba 6. Nakata 7. Hoffpauir 8. Imanami 9. Tsuruoka


Micah Hoffpauir cheer song.
鍛え抜かれた体で　迎える敵を蹴散らせ　内に秘めた闘志　熱く熱く燃やせ
kitaenukareta karada de osaeru kataki wo kechirase uchi wo himeta toushi atsuku atsuku moyase

This was actually Micah Franklin's song ten years ago, bizarrely...


Bobby Scales cheer song.
溢れる力を出し　その名を刻め　希望の道を拓け　Ｇｏ！ＭＹ！ＷＡＹ！　レオン
afureru chikara wo dashi sono na wo kizame kibou no michi wo hirake GO MY WAY Leon!

This one was used for Andy Green for like, the 2-3 months he played for the Fighters in 2007... which was before I moved there that summer.


Atsushi Ugumori's new cheer song -- actually entirely new just for him.
ひかりの中に　素晴らしい明日あすを見つけて　がむしゃらに追い掛けろ　煌めく世界を
hikari no naka ni subarashii asu wo mitsukete gamushara ni oikakero kirameku sekai wo

On the subject of those guys, bizarrely, this one person had some cheering props for Scales and Hoffpauir, both of which were bad puns in Japanese. For Scales he had a 助さん (suke-san) sign, which I first thought was something to do with the word "suketto", but I have since been informed that it's probably a reference to Mito Komon's bodyguard. For Hoffpauir, whose first name is Micah, this guy had a squid hat. Get it? Micah sounds like "maika" in Japanese, which is a kind of squid.



Anyway, as for the game itself, it was less exciting than it could have been. The Fighters scored runs in the first and second innings; first off Scales reaching base on a dropped fl to right field, being bunted up and scored on a Koyano single, and in the second inning, Tsuruoka doubled, and Scales doubled, and that was it. Things largely progressed like that for the next few innings, with the Marines scattering some kinda sucky plays in the field that somehow didn't let the Fighters score, and eventually in the 8th inning Shota Ishimine led off with a walk, advanced on a single and a bunt, and then scored on an error by Bobby Scales, who dropped a fly ball in shallow center. That's most of the action for the game right there and the Fighters won it 2-1.



Bobby Keppel pitched 7 strong innings and was the game hero. It was Nashida's last game managing in the Tokyo Dome so they made a big deal out of that.



On one last note, here's a photo I took out of the Tokyo Dome:



Notice anything... strange... about that?

In a measure of solidarity to my friends in Tokyo who can only go to afternoon games, I also went to an afternoon game today at Safeco Field.

(Just kidding. Actually, I went to it because it happened to be convenient. But, for the record, as I write this post, I'm watching the Swallows-Dragons game over the internet, which is happening in the afternoon in Tokyo, and a bunch of my friends are there, and I can't tell you how wholly homesick I am for Jingu.)

Anyway, I got there about an hour and a half early, which gave me a lot of time to just look around. I'm amazed by "The Pen", the new bullpen area, mostly in that they have such wacky food now (a creperie? REALLY?) and they've taken down the screen between players and fans at the bullpen itself, so you're just that much closer to the guys warming up or hanging out in there. I was surprised that despite the "no autographs" sign, several fans got autographs from Aardsma and Pineda out there, and probably others. I do have to wonder whether anyone considers it dangerous not to have a barrier between fans and players -- I suppose they're operating on the Reasonable Person Principle, and if anyone DOES try to throw something at an opposing pitcher or something, there'll be a huge smackdown? Who knows.

I'm also amazed by how they've still managed to raise the prices of food even more around Safeco. It's like... $15 as a "combo" for a hotdog, popcorn, and soda? Really? I think that'd still only run you like $8 in Japan without a "discount".

So in the pre-game time, I watched the Tigers take BP, I watched Pineda throw in the bullpen, I got my ticket signed by Phil Coke and Brandon Inge (he's so delightfully dorky!), and then I watched Rick Porcello and Erik Bedard do their pre-game bullpens as well.

One surprising thing that happened was another fan stopped me in the bullpen like "Hey, were you allowed to bring in your dSLR? I was under the impression we can't anymore -- they say any camera with switchable lenses..." and I'm like "I have no clue. I haven't really been around here much in the last few years; the policy used to just be 'don't piss off the fans around you with your big clicky camera, or stick your big lens in their faces'..." So we talked for a bit and it sounds like basically, it's possible I wasn't supposed to have it, but since I didn't piss anyone off and this was a low-attendance afternoon game (there were apparently 13,339 people there), I guess I got away with it. I didn't really take many photos during the game, anyway, just beforehand, for the most part. Though the idea of not being able to bring my big camera makes me pretty sad.

Also, this entire bullpen thing makes me wonder: does anyone know where Brandon Buckley is now? The old A's bullpen catcher from a few years ago? He was a riot.

We got to see Carlos Peguero's first MLB at-bat in this game. Unfortunately, as I realized later, the reason why is because he was called up to replace Justin Smoak, who is on bereavement leave since his father just died of lung cancer yesterday. There was a moment of silence before the game today for him. I know from personal experience that having your dad die of lung cancer really truly sucks, and so my heart goes out to Justin and his family. It's not an easy thing to deal with by any means, even when you're prepared for it.

This game was pretty boring overall, to be honest, though. I think that part of it is just that I don't know what to do during MLB games anymore, since there's no organized cheering, so I just keep score and watch. Erik Bedard started for the Mariners and kind of sucked (LOTS of walks, plus giving up a homerun in the 2nd AB of the game). Rick Porcello started for Detroit and did not suck. I was already intrigued by Porcello as being a young up-and-coming star type of player (the Tigers seem to always have a few of those around), and so he didn't disappoint, at least.

Ryan Raburn hit a homer off Bedard as mentioned, to make it 1-0, and in the 3rd inning Austin Jackson walked and was batted in by Miguel Cabrera to make it 2-0. The Mariners halved that lead in the bottom of the 3rd when Jack Wilson singled and moved up on a groundout, and then Ichiro singled to right to bring Wilson in (and made it to 3rd base himself on a throwing error from right field), 2-1. Raburn walked in the 5th and came in on a Brennan Boesch single, 3-1.

Actually, the odd thing about the 5th inning was that it was the Chone Figgins Blooper Reel. I'm still not sure how he didn't get charged with any errors given that he did things like drop grounders, not throw the ball, etc. As if the shoddy fielding wasn't enough, the booing around me definitely hammered in that I wasn't in Japan anymore.

David Pauley pitched a fine final 4 innings after Bedard, though, aside from a few wild pitches.

Jose Valverde came in to close out the game in the bottom of the 9th and the most improbable thing ever happened: Adam Kennedy (!) hit a home run off of him, a neat little 354-foot shot into right field. 3-2. But that's pretty much all the Mariners got -- well, Michael Saunders hit a double, but everyone else that faced Valverde, including a pinch-hitting Milton Bradley (!?) struck out.

I still don't quite get how people think this is more exciting than Japanese baseball, but that's neither here nor there. You know what else was ridiculous? I saw a little boy get a baseball from a ball girl, which he came back up and showed off to his family like he was the hottest thing on earth for getting it. And then the ball girls changed in the 5th inning, and would you believe it, that same little boy went up there and got a SECOND ball from the other ball girl, edging out a bunch of other little kids who wanted them. How selfish is that? I realize that all's fair in love and ballhawking, but seriously, WTF? Half of me wonders if the kid decided to do it or if his parents told him to.

I stopped in at the team store after the game and bought an Ichiro birthday card that I'm going to send to my Hosei birthday doppleganger Kazuki Mishima, and tell him he better come play at the Japan-USA collegiate tourney this summer because I miss him and everyone else so much.

Anyway, photos...




Michael Pineda




David Aardsma, who I thought was supposed to be in Tacoma. Apparently not...




Erik Bedard






Rick Porcello


Thanks to commenters for pointing out that this is Tom Wilhelmsen. I'd actually read about him a little but just didn't know the face yet... I don't know the Mariners bullpen very well anymore now that they don't have cool former Fighters players.


More bullpen guys.


Brandon Inge signing for people.


My ticket. Whee.


Seriously, these prices! I was amazed when I asked a vendor walking by how much it was for a soft pretzel and he told me $4.75. Really? Shishkaberries are apparently up to $7 or $8 now, too? I'd give anything for a 1000-yen bento at this point.


Raburn's Tale of the Tape.


Peguero's "First MLB at-bat!"


Kennedy's Tale of the Tape.


Ichiro at 3rd base.


Jose Valverde.


Final score.


Well, the Swallows beat the Dragons 2-0 as Shohei Tateyama pitched a complete-game win because HE IS THE MAN! Apparently the Tsubamegun guys were up at the top of section D, but I didn't see them on TV. It's nice that I can watch some NPB games during the evening here, since they're going on during the daytime there. I'm annoyed, however, that the Pacific League TV thingy still won't let me pay them money so that I can watch games over their service.

I've also been following my normal college ball and high school ball circuits and keep meaning to write some posts about those; maybe I'll get to those soon. I had a whopping Nichidai San post in the works and the Spring Taikai finals are this coming weekend too.

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 :)