Marinerds, etc.

I was reading the winter Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine while on a recent trip, and while going through the Chukyodai Chukyo page, trying to memorize Junpei Morimoto's face so I can stalk him in the Hosei preseason, noticed that a 3rd-year pitcher/1B named Hirotaka Takeuchi (竹内啓貴) was going to be entering Keio this year. And in his comments, he said how "I learned so much from my older brother, I owe my baseball success to him."

Wait... a Chukyodai kid, going to Keio, named Takeuchi, talking about his older brother... my first thought was, is he Daisuke's brother? (Upcoming 3rd year Keio pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi also is from Chukyodai Chukyo HS, graduated the year before they won Koshien, sadly). From the photo in the Koshien magazine, I thought he bore a vague resemblance to my current favorite Keio lefty.

But, no. Hirotaka's older brother is actually ANOTHER Chukyodai Chukyo baseball club alum named Hiroaki　(啓明), who was on the Chukyodai team that made it all the way to the Best 8 in the 2004 summer Koshien tournament. Hirotaka was in 6th grade at the time and watched his brother on TV and decided he wanted to someday play at Koshien too. So Hiroaki, who is now in grad school studying sports medicine at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki and coaching Mito Daiichi's baseball team, came down to Koshien to watch his little brother play in Senbatsu 2010. It's a nice story, really, the Japanese press loves stuff like this.

Also, someone else has scanned a bunch of the stuff from that Koshien no Hoshi, the Chukyo Story is the 2nd picture there. And the next entry mentions how Hirotaka got into Keio, too.

The notes on Hirotaka that I've seen mostly read as follows:
中京大中京背番号10竹内啓貴、AOで環境情報学部に合格。
野球部入部志望のAO入試は11人受験して4人合格とのこと。（中日スポーツ）

竹内は去年の夏も優勝メンバーとしてベンチ入りしていた。
今年春選抜も野手としてレギュラーだったが夏は控え投手。
堂上弟や慶大4年山口尚記と同じ名古屋北シニア出身。

Basically, he passed the entrance exam for Keio, and apparently of the 11 who applied early as hopefuls for the baseball team, only 4 managed to actually pass the exam. (Keio doesn't have a "sports recommendation" entrance exam, but I think there are various reasons they'll let people apply early decision, and sports is one of them.) They mention he was on the roster for the team that won Koshien, played as a regular this past year, and his little league team was Nagoya Kita Senior, the same team that both Donoue brothers (Naomichi and Takehiro, both currently Chunichi Dragons players) and Naoki Yamaguchi (graduating from Keio this month) played on.

And, no relation to Daisuke. But I'm betting that I'm not the only person who wondered!

(For the record, Koji Fukutani, upcoming 3rd-year righty ace, was also an Aichi kid who aced the Keio entrance exam. He's also really nice and really smart (and wrote a Keio team blog entry recently, thanking the past and present baseball team faculty advisors and marvelling in that they're both professors from the department of science. I'm really psyched that I'll get to be in Japan for a bit of the college preseason, even though I won't be around for the actual season -- I think Keio will do really well this year, though.)

Oh! And just as an aside, since I haven't been writing much, but this was really cool to find out about -- Shogo Shashiki, graduating this month from Meiji, is going to be playing for the Ishikawa Million Stars in the Hokushinetsu Baseball Challenge League this year! That's really great for him, they've been a very strong team, have had guys drafted into the NPB every year of their existence, and it appears former Washington Nationals minor-leaguer and Komadai Tomakomai HS grad Naoya Washiya is also staying with them for this year as well. Shashiki had told me he hoped to play in the US this year, and even did come to the US in the fall with Yoshihiro Doi to try out for some major league scouts, but I guess nobody picked him up. A shame, but I think the Ishikawa team will be a good experience for him, and he'll be close enough to his hometown Osaka that his family can come see him, too. (He was one year ahead of Sho Nakata at Osaka Toin, they used to bat 3rd and 4th in the lineup.)

And while I'm at it... Dave over at Japanese Baseball Cards notes that he thinks there is a Big 6 Card Set this year after all, despite the lack of Saitoh. I guess BBM changed their minds, since a bunch of players had told me they were told there wouldn't be another set. Good for BBM if so, and good for the players too! (This is one case where I'd be overjoyed to be completely wrong.) I noticed that on the page from Discount Niki that Dave linked, that the set says "Featuring this year's draft candidates Yusuke Nomura and Hayata Itoh! Get your insert cards of famous Big 6 alumni like Kenshin Kawakami, Yoshinobu Takahashi, and Atsunori Inaba! 2 insert cards per box!" So, we'll see. It may not come out in time for me to actually get a copy while I'm in Japan, but so what?

Oh, so yeah, I'll be in Japan from March 16 until April 8th or so (it's still undecided; I have to be back in Seattle by April 12, but don't have my return ticket yet), by the way. I won't be there for most of the rest of the year, though, so if you want to go to a game with me, act now :) I am planning to go to Senbatsu if at all possible, as well as a bunch of preseason college games and early season pro games...

This is mostly a placeholder post until I can write more about it, but after winning 2-0 on Sunday, Keio won 7-1 on Monday too! So they take Soukeisen... and now there is a playoff game scheduled for Wednesday the 3rd, a national holiday.

You can buy tickets in advance at Lawson's, Ticket Pia, E-Plus... and I recommend that you do, if you are thinking of going. The game starts at 1pm, the stadium opens at 10am, and I am betting people will be there as early as 6am to try to line up for seats. This thing gets pretty crazy, really.

(They have already announced that the day-of tickets will be 1000 of the behind-home-plate tickets, 3000 infield tickets, 3000 Keio cheering and 3000 Waseda cheering tickets, and 8000 outfield tickets. That's 18000 total, so the other 15000 are being sold beforehand.)

What is ridiculous is that even though Keio decisively won, with both Ren Yamasaki hitting a 3-run home run off Yuya Fukui (soon to be Carp) and pitcher Koji Fukutani hitting a 2-run home run off Tatsuya Ohishi (soon to be Seibu)... the newspapers still all have Yuki Saitoh on the front page today. Sheesh. All of it is "Waseda needs Saitoh to win the championship!!!" rather than "Keio kicked Waseda's collective butts!!" Why the hell Fukutani is not on the front page of the newspaper for both relieving on Sunday for 2 innings and then pitching a complete game win on Monday and hitting a homerun himself, is beyond me. Seriously.

Even better, it was Fukutani's first and only hit of the Fall 2010 season. That's a pretty good one to start with, though!

In the meantime, the Big 6 Rookie Tournament is today and Thursday and Friday.

First off, I'm going to Japan Series Game 3 tomorrow with Steve from We Love Marines. If you want to know about the Japan Series, I recommend reading his blog as he is going to EVERY game of the Series because he is crazy like that. I didn't even watch Game 1 because I opted to go to a dinner party with non-baseball friends who are moving out of Tokyo in two weeks (Lotte won 5-2), and then I watched most of Game 2 on TV, though by the time I got home from Jingu and turned it on, Chunichi was already up 10-1 on their way to winning 12-1.

Actually, Steve invited me to Nagoya for the weekend too since he had an extra ticket, but I decided to stay at home because first, shinkansen tickets are expensive (and as it turns out the shinkansen stopped running through parts of Shizuoka thanks to the typhoon anyway), and second, I really wanted to go to my final Soukeisen.

Going into Soukeisen, the final week of the season, the standings were such that no other team could catch Waseda, and the Waseda-Keio records were:

          G   W   L   T   SP   WP%
Waseda   10   8   2   0   4   .800
Keio     12   6   4   2   3   .600

So if Waseda won one game of Soukeisen at all, even if Keio won the other two, Waseda would get the pennant as their record would be 9-4 and Keio's could only reach 8-4 at best.

But if Keio won both games, they would have an identical 8-4 record.

So this would force a one-game playoff for the championship. Thanks to there being a national holiday on November 3rd, a few days before Soukeisen, the Big 6 league announced that should it come to a playoff, that playoff game would be on November 3rd.

Keep in mind that the Big 6 Rookie Tournament is supposed to take place for 3 days following the end of the season. I originally figured I'd get to go to at least one day of it on November 3rd. But no dice this time -- they will probably hold it on November 2, 4, and 5, thanks to the weekend's results...

Basically, Saturday was rained out, thanks to the typhoon, so the two Soukeisen games were moved to Sunday/Monday.

I went on Sunday. It was a fantastic game and I want to post photos and more details of it later. Yes, it was PACKED -- reported attendance 33000, I would guess more like 35000. Yes, it was Yuki Saitoh vs. Daisuke Takeuchi, and yes, Tatsuya Ohishi pitched too. What rocked is that Keio's Hitoshi Fuchigami led off the game by hitting a home run off Saitoh, and Keio eventually won the game 2-0. Some of my friends lined up for seats at 7am (for a 1pm game) and we sat in the front row! And afterwards I got autographs and photos with a whole bunch of guys from the Keio team! (And gave a bunch of them bags of Halloween candy because, hey, it was Halloween.)


(megaphone autographed by Iba, Takeuchi Kazuma, Fuchigami, Nagasaki, Takeuchi Daisuke, and Fukutani)

Now, where things get interesting is...

If Keio wins today, Monday -- the game on Wednesday Nov 3rd is the playoff for the league championship. It will be PACKED. You can buy tickets for it at a convenience store or ticket-seller, and I recommend you do, if you are thinking of going.

If Waseda wins today, Monday -- they win the Big 6 league, there will be some kind of parade and celebration and whatnot tonight or tomorrow. However, the season will NOT actually be finished, and so I think what will actually happen is in that case, the game on Wednesday will be the final game of Soukeisen. Which makes it the final game of the semester. Which means lots of 4th-years playing for their final game and getting all emotional about it. Especially for Keio, since the core of this team has now been playing together for SEVEN YEARS, through Keio HS as well.

I live for this stuff.

Week 3 was a non-Hosei week, so in theory I wasn't going to be all that interested in it. But you know that these things have a weird way of working out. I did go to one and a half games of Saturday, where I saw the tail end of the Keio-Rikkio game, and the entirety of the Meiji-Waseda game, though that is all I actually saw in person of this series.

The other thing about Week 3 is that rather than just being the weekend, it technically lasted for a week and a half -- it started on September 25 and ended on October 5th, thanks to some rain and to Keio and Rikkio getting into a 5-game deathmatch, the likes of which hadn't been seen in 20 years.

Keio - Rikkio: Game 1

Keio took the first game, 8-4.

It was rainy when I woke up that day and I decided to punt this game and do a double-header of Waseda-Meiji and Swallows-Giants instead.

But I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.

I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.

Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa doubled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.



I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds. It was pretty sparse out there, so I could spread out, BUT the sun was in my eyes the entire day, and it was a lot hotter than the weather forecast would have you believe.

Waseda - Meiji: Game 1

Waseda beat Meiji 4-2.

It was not a particularly exciting game, to be honest. Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji, and Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda. Waseda's first run came in on a throwing error by Meiji shortstop Abe in the 2nd inning (grounder by Hiroki Ohno), and two more runs came in on a triple by Hiroki Ohno in the 6th inning. Nomura struck out 9 in 7 innings, but those 3 runs gave him the loss. Gota Nanba gave up the 4th run to Waseda in the 8th inning, also unearned; Shohei Habu led off with a single, was bunted to second, stole 3rd during Hiroki Ohno's at-bat and Meiji catcher Yuki Yamauchi made a bad throw to 3rd to catch him, and Habu scored on that error.

(Oddly you could say, thus, that all of the runs scored occurred on Hiroki Ohno at-bats, but he only had 2 RBI.)

Meiji's first run was off Saitoh, on an RBI single by Sho Nishi, who has been tearing up the league this semester out of nowhere (he seriously has a line of .692/.750/1.077 after 4 games). The next one came in the 9th inning off closer Ohishi; Nishi led off with a bizarre double where 3 outfielders just let the ball fall, and he came in on a double by Yamauchi a bit later.

It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...



Waseda - Meiji : Game 2

Sunday was the day I went to watch hockey, so I wasn't at either game, though I followed them from afar. Meiji was beating Waseda 1-0 for most of the game, and Kazuki Nishijima was taking a 2-hit shutout into the bottom of the 9th inning, and then naturally out of nowhere I saw that suddenly Waseda had won 2-1.

What happened is, apparently, Udaka led off the bottom of the 9th with a single to left (and was replaced by Satoh as pinch-runner). Ayuki "Little Keijiro" Matsumoto bunted Satoh up to second. At this point, Nishijima was replaced on the mound by Takayuki Morita... and Kawanishi pinch-hit and walked on 4 straight pitches.

Yusuke Nomura came in to pitch. Sakuraba pinch-hit for Ichimaru and hit a fly out to center, making it two outs and runners at 1st and 2nd. Hiroki Matsunaga walked, loading the bases...

...and Shohei Habu, Nomura's teammate from Koryo, hit a double to center and that brought in two guys to score, winning the game.

By the way, Ohishi's line in 3 innings:
K, G4, K / K, D8, G3, K / K, K, L1

That's 10 batters faced and 6 strikeouts.

Just sayin'.

Keio - Rikkio: Game 2

In the afternoon, Rikkio and Keio tied their second game 0-0, with Masato Komuro and Koji Fukutani both going the distance. It was only a 9-inning game due to the league regulations for when there is a Yakult game in the evening.

Keio - Rikkio: Game 3

Well, as I also mentioned, it rained Sunday night. And continued raining into Monday, so the Big 6 games that day were rained out.

On Tuesday, Keio and Rikkio faced off again. This time, Keio was up 4-1 when I first looked at the game, on a Hayata Itoh 2-run homer, among other things. When I got back from classes and looked again, Rikkio had tied it up 4-4 on a Soichiro Tanaka solo homer in the 6th and a Ryuichi Maeda 2-RBI double in the 7th.

By the regulations, a 3rd game in the series is called a tie in 12 innings, so this ended up being a 4-4 12-inning tie. Daisuke Takeuchi and Koji Fukutani each pitched 6 innings for Keio, and Kenya Okabe came out of the game after giving up Itoh's home run; Hayato Saitoh pitched another 2 innings and then Masato Komuro pitched the last 7 innings for Rikkio.

As it turns out, this was the first time in TWENTY YEARS that big 6 had consecutive ties. How nuts is that?

Keio - Rikkio: Game 4

Tokyo Big 6 has the right to push Tohto League games out of Jingu for a day or two, so the 4th game of the Keio-Rikkio deathmatch happened on Wednesday, September 29th.

After both teams had run out of aces -- Daisuke and Fukutani had both already thrown 15 innings in this series, and Komuro had already thrown 16 (Okabe had thrown 9, but I hesitate to call him an "ace"), I wondered: Who was going to start THIS game?

The answer? Golden rookie Akihiro Hakumura for Keio, and 3rd-year Hayato Saitoh for Rikkio.

Well, needless to say, this game did not go so well for Hakumura. The first inning, both teams scored runs, an Okazaki RBI for Rikkio and an Itoh RBI for Keio.

Hakumura gave up a solo homer to catcher Yuki Maeda in the 2nd inning, walked a couple of guys, and apparently 3 unearned runs came in on an error, and that was it for Hakumura, who faced 12 batters, walked 6 of them, struck out 2, and gave up 2 RBI hits. I guess adjusting from his one pitching experience against Todai to pitching against the best power hitters in the league was a little bit of a rude awakening for him.

Though, the next pitcher was Kohei Yamagata, another freshman. He finished out through the 4th inning, only giving up one more run. Keio's catcher Kazumasa Matsumoto added an RBI single for Keio in the bottom of the 4th, making it 6-2 at that point.

Keio gave up on freshmen at that point and put in Fukutani and Daisuke to pitch the rest of the game (3 and 2 innings respectively), and the final score was 8-2 in favor of Rikkio. Rikkio's Hayato Saitoh only gave up the two runs to Keio in his 7 innings pitched, and Masato Komuro added 2 scoreless innings as well to his tally.

If you're keeping count, the series had so far gone Keio Win, Tie Game, Tie Game, Rikkio Win, and so there was no actual series winner yet, which forced the series into a 5th game for the first time in 20 years.

Interlude: 5-Game Serieses in Tokyo Big 6 League History

Most series in Big 6 are decided in 2 or 3 games. 4-game series aren't common, but they aren't rare either; I remember the last time it happened, which was Fall 2008 and Hosei had TWO 4-game serieses; one was the infamous one where Kagami struck out 26 Waseda batters in one weekend... and also threw 215 pitches in one game and lost 2-0 to Waseda in the 14th inning. The other was the last time Todai actually won a game before this season, and forced the 4th game in the series.

But in the 85-year history of the Tokyo Big 6 League, there have been exactly 12 series to go to 5 games, and there has NEVER been a 6-game series.

Because I was curious, I went and found a newspaper (like, one made of actual paper) article that listed all the 5-game series in Big 6 history:

Season   Card  12345   Winner
1926 F:  W-H   -W-HW   Waseda
1927 F:  R-H   R--HR   Rikkio
1952 S:  M-W   -WM-M   Meiji
1954 F:  R-H   R--HR   Rikkio
1956 F:  K-H   H-K-K   Keio
1958 F:  K-W   -W-KK   Keio
1959 S:  R-K   --RKR   Rikkio
1962 S:  R-W   ---RR   Rikkio
1963 S:  K-M   -M-KK   Keio
1988 S:  H-M   H--MH   Hosei
1990 F:  K-R   --R-R   Rikkio

2010 F:  K-R   K--RK   Keio

Pretty nuts, huh? There's only been one time in history that there were 3 tie games in a row, and only 5 times that there were 2 ties in a row.

I also find it somewhat amusing that Keio and Rikkio are involved in these huge series more than any other schools. (For the record, the school with the most tie games in history, up through Spring 2010, is Hosei with 104. Meiji is second with 92, Rikkio is third with 87, and Keio and Waseda were tied with 81 before this season started.)

Keio - Rikkio: Game 5

After Game 5 was forced, they announced that rather than happening on Thursday, September 30th, it would happen the day after Week 4 finished up. This is because, technically, Tohto League still had to get in their ostensible 2-game series that week as well, so Toyo-Aogaku and Chuo-Kokushi had their games scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Get this, though, it rained on Thursday, so they were only able to play one game of their matchup on Friday, and will finish out that series... sometime, but we still don't know when, because of course it depends on Big 6 and the Big Weather Gods In The Sky. Tohto League is supposed to finish up right before Draft Day -- but that may not happen this year.

Anyway, Week 4 was "normal" in terms of only taking 3 days to resolve itself, although it was abnormal in that 5th place Hosei beat Keio 2 games to 0, and even MORE abnormal in that Todai beat Waseda. Hell, Todai winning a game at all is abnormal, but beating Waseda is even MORE crazy, and beating Yuki Saitoh is unheard of. More on that later.

Actually, Hosei probably beat Keio just because Keio was worn out after their ongoing battle with Rikkio; these guys don't usually play actual league matches every day for over a week and a half.

So, Game 5 started at 1pm on Tuesday, October 5th. There was a Yakult game in the evening, but that shouldn't have been an issue, assuming the game would be over by 3-3:30, right?

Well, with a bizarre series like this, one should NEVER assume ANYTHING.

Coming into this game, in addition to all the innings already logged in the Keio-Rikkio series, Daisuke Takeuchi pitched a complete game against Hosei on Saturday, and Fukutani pitched 5 innings on Sunday (Yamagata pitched one more, and Naohiko Tadano finished out the last 2 innings).

So of course, having thrown 26 innings in 5 games over the course of a week, the start for this game ALSO went to Daisuke Takeuchi. I just hope he can still raise his arm over his head by the time he turns 21 next summer.

Rikkio had a vague advantage in that their ace, Masato Komuro, was not only rested, but in his 18 innings pitched over this series so far, he had yet to give up an earned run. On the other hand, Rikkio had a vague disadvantage in that they didn't have a second ace to compliment their first one.

Anyway, what happened is: Komuro lasted 6 innings, Daisuke lasted 4, and after those first 6 innings, the game was tied 3-3. Keio's Ryuta Iba hit a 2-run homer to tie the game up in the 6th inning. So much for Komuro's spotless record.

Fukutani took over on the mound for Keio and Hayato Saitoh took over for Rikkio and neither would budge for the next 7 innings. Fukutani walked a ton of guys and yet somehow Rikkio couldn't push their runners past 2nd base. In the meantime, the time went on and on, past 5pm. It got to be the 14th inning and the game was looking likely to end in a tie and cause the first-ever 6-game series in Big 6 history, because with a pro game in the evening, they have to stop the game at whatever inning they're at when they reach 5pm...

Anyway, in the top of the 14th, it seems that Hiroshi Aoyama led off with a single to left -- and reached second on a throwing error of some sort by Rikkio left fielder Hasegawa. Ren Yamasaki then managed to get an RBI hit that brought in Aoyama to finally make the score 4-3. Yamasaki went to 2nd on a dropped pitch, and was bunted to third, and then scored on a sac fly by Yasuhiro Takao to make the score 5-3.

Rikkio loaded the bases in the bottom of the 14th on two hits and a walk, at which point Keio switched pitchers to 4th-year Hironori Tanaka, making his first appearance of the semester. He struck out Masakazu Shiina, pinch-hitting in the pitcher's slot, and got Naoshi Hasegawa to ground out to short, ending the game with Keio winning 5-3. The game lasted 4 hours and 17 minutes.

(The entire SERIES lasted 14 hours and 35 minutes.)

The craziest thing is that when I arrived at Jingu that evening for the Swallows-Tigers game, around 5:45, I ran into one of my college ball friends and a bunch of the Keio players standing outside, in a general round of "What are you doing here?" (Bizarrely, it was Fuchigami-kun who actually noticed me first and nodded hello, so I came over to him and a few other players say an overly-appropriate "otsukaresama", which literally means "You must be exhausted", but is usually just used to mean "Good job.") They all pretty much looked like they wanted nothing more than to get back to their dorm and take a nice long bath and a nice long nap. I was happy that I could see them and say hi though, since I'd missed the entire weekend of Big 6 ball while down in Nagoya. And it was also good to get to congratulate them on finally ending the series, and on winning it as well. Hooray!

Of course, now that I'm finally done writing Week 3 up, I still have Week 4, and Week 5 is about to start tomorrow (Monday) after raining out the entire weekend.

Fighters

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

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

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

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

Big 6

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

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

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

Draft

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

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

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

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

It was still cold and rainy in the morning when I woke up, so I decided to skip the Keio-Rikkio game and instead do my double-header of Waseda-Meiji plus the Swallows-Giants game in the evening.

I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. While watching on TV, I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.

I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.

Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa duobled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.



I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds.

So between the games I wandered out to see if I could find any of my friends or to find the Nikkan Sports people who put out the Tokyo Rocks! papers, but to no avail. I did get my ticket to the Yakult game, which turned out to be a good move as it was CROWDED later. And I ran into the Keio ouendan leader and said hi; it's important to greet people, even if I wasn't actually in the cheering section.

It was also crowded on the 3rd base side, for this reason...



...tons of Giants fans waiting to see if they could get autographs or even get players to notice them at all. And this was 5 hours before game time!!

Anyway, back on into the outfield..







...where it was sparsely attended, so you could spread out and all, BUT the problem was that the sun was in my eyes the entire game. I put up my umbrella to keep the sun out a little, but it didn't help much. It was also HOT as a result -- I think it was still 20-21 degrees in the shaded infield, but the keychain thermometer I carry said it was around 30 where I was. Ouch.

Anyway, the second game was Waseda-Meiji. Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda and Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji. And well, Saitoh pitched a good game and Tatsuya Ohishi finished it up for him and Waseda won 4-2. Gota Nanba finished out the game for Meiji.

(I will add more details later.)

It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...



It was amusing to me, because I was in the outfield until 5pm... and then by 5:20pm I was back in the outfield! I left, walked around to the front of Jingu, and walked back. Meiji and Waseda both had gated-off buses, so it wasn't possible to talk to players at all anyway. I couldn't find my usual group of friends, but I did run into my friend Kobayashi on her way out and she gave me this HUGE stack of photos she printed out of Kagami and Itoh from the World University Baseball Championships and they are AWESOME. Seriously, like 70 photos, that must have cost her a bunch to print. I'm not sure what I can do in return. I think her camera is better than mine.

While walking past the Swallows facility (there's no clubhouse IN the stadium, the players have to come in from outside), I heard a bunch of people yelling "WHITESELL! WHITESELL!" or more like, "HUWAITOSERRU!". So I put my camera up and snapped into the clubhouse parking lot, and later on saw...



...Kazuhiro Hatakeyama. WHY DOES HE HAUNT ME?

Anyway, when I got back into the stadium, the outfield was already packed with Swallows fans. I sat with Kozo, and his friends Aki and Charles, and the rest of the gang at the top of Section D, and we had a grand old time yelling crap at the Giants.

Kozo already summarized the game, including that we saw Aoki's 198th and 199th hits but not his 200th because he got plunked in his last at-bat. So let me just add a few photos I snapped from the outfield:


This is a scheme to get you to give them your cellphone email address. It says "The 2011 Manager will be _ _ _?" You're supposed to enter "O ga wa" and maybe you will win a prize. The amusing part is that I was saying, "TA KA DA? FU RU TA? A RA KI?" They all fit.


New and creative way to raise your umbrella for Tokyo Ondo -- attach it to a 2-year-old kid on your shoulders. Awwww.


Crowded.


This game started at 6:10pm and ALSO went long, until 10:10pm or so. Around 9:45 they reminded us that you can't use ANY instruments to cheer after 10pm at Jingu. (You can't use drums after 6pm.)


Final score. Alex Ramirez hit a homerun off Hei-Chun Lee in the 7th, after the Swallows had gone to great lengths to tie up the game in the bottom of the 6th. Sigh.


Game hero Rami-chan.


I will add more to this post later, but I'm already two great stories backlogged from last weekend. Sigh. And now I'm off to watch some hockey, and maybe another game at Jingu if I'm up for it...

Game 1: Waseda vs. Hosei

After losing the home opener, and after getting lit up in his hometown of Ehime at the Matsuyama All-Star Game, Yuya Fukui manages to throw a complete-game win against Hosei, striking out 11.



I thought it was rather appropriate as both starters were wearing #11 that he got 11 strikeouts. It would only have been better had the game been on the 11th instead of the 12th, but what can you do.


Waseda starter Yuya Fukui.


Hosei starter Tomoya Mikami.

This game started off kind of slow; it was hot and both starters seemed to be taking their time out there. Both teams scattered a few runners in the first two innings, and in the 3rd inning, Waseda pushed ahead a run. Yuya Watanabe walked to lead off, and Daisuke Ichimaru bunted, with the force throw to second failing and both runners being safe. Hiroki Matsunaga grounded into a double play, moving Watanabe to 3rd, and Shohei Habu's single to center brought him in. 1-0.

They added another run in the 4th inning, Toshiki Yamada leading off with a single to short. Keisuke Kawanishi bunted him up, and two batters later Yuya Watanabe came through with a single to left to bring Yamada home, 2-0.

Tomoya Mikami came out of the game and was replaced by Ryoto Yoshikoshi, a 3rd-year lefty pitcher making his second-ever appearance at Jingu. Yoshikoshi got out of the 4th inning but then hit Matsunaga to start off the next inning, and was the victim of another failed attempt to get the leader on a bunt, so he came out in the next inning and freshman Kazuki Funamoto came in to get a 4-3-2 double play out of Yamada to end the inning.

Hosei finally added a run of their own in the bottom of the 5th when Kento Tatebe singled to lead off, moved up on a bunt and moved up on a wild pitch to captain Ohyagi. Kyosuke Narita came in to pinch-hit in the 9-spot and singled to right to bring Tatebe home and make it a closer game, 2-1.

Kazuki Mishima took the mound for Hosei after that. Mishima was the Big 6 ERA title winner last semester; he's a little guy (5'9") who throws a big fastball (95mph or so). His control is only so-so though, and so he ended up walking Ichimaru, and then Shohei Habu hit a 2-run homer to left to make it 4-1. Bizarrely, that means that Mishima gave up more earned runs in this game (2) than he did all last semester (1).

Fumiya Kitayama and Shoya Yamamoto pitched the last two innings for Hosei, and Yuya Fukui finished out his complete game on 152 pitches, and that brought the series to an equal 1 game each Waseda won 4-1.

The ouendan implored everybody to please take off work or skip classes on Monday and come to Jingu and cheer for the third game of the series. I, naturally, did not take off work, but I did follow the game between classes and whatnot. Kagami and Saitoh had a rematch. Once more, Saitoh only went 5 innings, but this time Kagami was knocked out after 4. Tatsuya Ohishi also gave up his first earned runs of the year. While Waseda took a lead early and Hosei slowly clawed their way in, they never QUITE caught up, and so Waseda won the third game 6-5 and took the Series Point. Bleh.

Anyway, here are a bunch of photos from Sunday's Hosei-Waseda game:






Some more Tomoya Mikami. Dear god he's tall.


Ayuki "Keijiro's little brother" Matsumoto trying to bunt.


Hosei second baseman Masashi Nanba.


Hosei catcher Shohei Doi.


One of the Hosei ouendan leaders, Takahashi. I met him in Matsuyama.




Ryoto Yoshikoshi.


Kyosuke Narita bats in the only Hosei run.


And the reaction back in the dugout.




Kazuki Mishima.


High-fives at the Waseda side after Habu's homerun.




Sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama.


4th-year lefty Shoya Yamamoto.


Hiroshi Taki playing first base for a change (he usually plays shortstop).

Game 2: Keio vs. Todai

Keio beat Todai 4-0 in the second game with Fukutani pitching a complete-game shutout. However, this game was closer than the normal Todai bloodlettings are, mostly due to reasonably strong pitching from Todai freshmen Shota Suzuki and Shunsuke Kimura.



It was really hot out this weekend and I'd picked up a pretty nasty sunburn during Saturday's games, so I was hiding in the concourse between the two games on Sunday, putting on more sunscreen and deodorant, buying the Big 6 baseball card set, getting another Coke, and basically avoiding the sun for the 20 minutes or so. As a result I had no clue who would be starting the game until I came out and saw the lineup.

Yes, somehow I managed to be sitting on the 1st-base side for 4 righty starters. Go figure. Keio's starter was the ever-solid sophomore Koji Fukutani, and Tokyo's starter was a freshman making his first ever appearance at Jingu named Shota Suzuki. Suzuki is majoring in Spanish, bizarrely, and says that his dream is to go back to his high school, Jishukan, and be the baseball club manager and take them to Koshien. (For the record, Jishukan hasn't gone to Koshien since 1953, and that was Senbatsu anyway, and being in Aichi they would have to go through a ton of powerhouses to get there.)


Keio starter Koji Fukutani.


Todai starter Shota Suzuki.

I am, of course, partial to Todai starters named Suzuki, after my former favorite player on the team, a tall lefty guy named Yuichi Suzuki who was a really good pitcher until he blew his arm out pretty much throwing EVERY day.

This Suzuki did not start off particularly well; he walked the Keio leadoff man Hitoshi Fuchigami, and then captain Tatsushi Yumoto singled to right. A fielder's choice by Hayata Itoh two batters later put runners at the corners with two outs; Itoh stole scond and Takao walked to load the bases for Takayuki Matsuo, who hit a bases-clearing triple to right to make it 3-0. To be fair, that "triple" would have been a single or maybe even an out with a competent right fielder, and Aoyama hit a pop fly out to end the inning.

Bizarrely, that was all Keio scored for quite a while, as Suzuki settled down. They had two runners on base in both of the 2nd and 3rd innings but didn't bring them in, and then the bottoms of the 4th and 5th innings were both 1-2-3, with Shuhei Iwasaki making some fine plays at shortstop.

In the 6th inning, Keio brought in another run on an RBI double by Masahiro Nagasaki to make it 4-0. Nagasaki was thrown out at home two batters later on a somewhat ridiculous play where first baseman Yohei Tachi booted a grounder and it went off him into right field. Understandably, Nagasaki took off from second base and was running on the play, and you can't blame anyone for running home on the Todai arms, but for once Hiromasa Horiguchi managed to actually fire the ball home in time to get Nagasaki at the plate and end the inning.

What was funny about this is that one inning later, Keio found themselves victims yet again of an unexpectedly good play by a Todai outfielder; with runners at first and second and one out, Yasuhiro Takao hit a pop fly to left, and Hisanari Takayama not only caught the ball but managed to throw it to second in time to double off the runner coming back, who had clearly not even expected a Todai fielder to be able to catch a fly ball in the first place.

So sidearming Shunsuke Kimura not only prevented two inherited runners from scoring in the 7th, but also pitched a scoreless 8th.

Of course, this is all somewhat irrelevant as you might notice I haven't mentioned the Todai offense at all. The reason for this is that there was none; they had exactly two baserunners the entire game, both on singles, and Horiguchi even got himself picked off first, so Keio's pitcher Fukutani faced only 28 batters total, one over the minimum, throwing his complete game on 103 pitches. The game lasted just under two hours.

Still, I have to wonder if maybe this semester we'll actually see Todai win a game? It's been two years, surely they must be due for one again sometime.

More photos from Game 2:






Some more of freshman Shota Suzuki.


Koji Fukutani, a little closer up.


Fukutani at bat, for a change. Although he didn't get a hit in this game, he actually looks like a pretty reasonable batter at the plate -- and he even hit a home run last semester off Rikkio's Okabe.


Takayuki Matsuo batting in the first few Keio runs.


Keio ouendan 2nd-in-command Kitada. I met him in Matsuyama too. But he didn't have this weirdo hairstyle then.


Masahiro Nagasaki reacting to striking out. (He wasn't happy about it!)




Nagasaki getting thrown out at the plate in the 6th inning.






Todai freshman pitcher Shunsuke Kimura.

Day 2: The after-game antics...

I went outside Jingu with two of my friends to wait for the players to come out. My friend Kobayashi wanted to get her Big 6 box set baseball cards signed, though I decided I would rather get photos of mine signed since they're bigger (and quite frankly, the photography isn't so great in this semester's card set, IMO). I was really shy about bugging the Keio guys at first so eventually Kobayashi was like "Let's go over there. I'm going to kick you into asking Fuchi for his signature." So we did. In the end I managed to get signatures from Hitoshi Fuchigami, Hayata Itoh, Kazuma Takeuchi, Daisuke Takeuchi, Masahiro Nagasaki, and Koji Fukutani, and got photos with a few players too. I'm actually astounded that I managed to get a signature and photo with Itoh. I love Itoh, he's an amazing ballplayer, easily the best pure hitter in the Big 6 league right now and also a solid outfielder as well with great range and a great arm. I'm kind of afraid of him because I don't think he seems like a particularly nice guy, but I think he's just really, really good at baseball and love watching him play.

I did not, however, get photos with Nagasaki or Daisuke, which is a little sad, maybe I will try to get the courage to bug them some other time. Daisuke is one of my favorite players these days even if I think he thinks I'm stalking him. I gave Nagasaki a photo of him that I took at Botchan Stadium, but couldn't tell if he liked it or not.

Oh, a funny thing, too. When I went to ask Koji Fukutani for his autograph, it went sort of like this, him first being surprised that I even knew who the hell he was, I think:

Me: Umm, Fukutani-kun...
Him: Err, yes?
Me: Would you sign something for me, please? (I'm not sure how to properly translate the polite way of asking for an autograph, which is really more like "Would it be okay for me to receive your signing this?")
Him: Whaaa? Me? Really?
Me: Yes, you.
Him: Are you sure you want MY signature?
Me: Please! You pitched a good game today.
Him: Thanks. [signs the photo]

You have to understand something about Fukutani. He is a freaking GOOD pitcher. The kid is like 6' tall, can hit 94-95mph on the Jingu gun, is a sophomore... he pitched a great game in the All-Japan tournament this summer and in Soukeisen last semester as well. I don't talk about him nearly enough, but that is not because he doesn't rock, trust me.

Well, maybe he will get an ego by the time he's a senior :) Daisuke's also a sophomore and already has a bit of an ego, but he's allowed.


With two of the tallest guys on the Keio team, Hitoshi Fuchigami and Kazumasa Matsumoto.


Keio's Hayata Itoh, aka Mister Clutchy McClutchitude. His arms are HUGE.


Tokyo University 3rd-year infielder Shuhei Iwasaki, who was hanging out with the Keio guys. He's probably one of the better players on their team, I'm betting he'll be the team captain next year; I remember seeing him play in the rookie tournament as a freshman.


This guy is Yoshihiro Maeda. He's the Tokyo University team captain and theoretical ace pitcher, by which I mean he's kind of okay at pitching but he wouldn't be starting games if he went to any OTHER university in Big 6. I think we're about the same height.


Now THIS older guy is Shozo Etoh. He's the Keio manager. And unlike the other current Big 6 managers, he actually played in the NPB for several years, for both the Yomiuri Giants and the Chunichi Dragons, before being a coach various places. He just came to Keio to manage this year and they won the spring championship, so I wasn't sure what to expect from him -- like would he be a "I am this great former big leaguer and championship manager" type, or what? But when I asked him for a photo together he basically said something to the effect of "Certainly, if you're willing to be seen in a photo with a crazy old man like me!" So the consensus was that he also seems like a nice guy.

(Honestly, I should probably find out sometime why Hosei's manager Koji Kanemitsu turned down Kintetsu when they drafted him out of college in the 1st round, besides just "they're not the Carp"...)

And one last story from Jingu...

On the train in the morning on my way there, I saw this guy on the same train as me and I could have SWORN he was Kitada, the Keio ouendan leader that I met in Matsuyama. But he had this CRAZY-ass hairstyle, like shaved on the side and wavy/permed on top, which he didn't have there. So I was like "hmm... maybe that's not him..."

Well, after Etoh-kantoku left, the Keio ouendan dude walked by us, and one of my friends says "otsukaresama!" to him, since she was in the Keio ouenseki. And he stops and chats with us a bit. My friends were joking about how funny his hair looked, like "WTF ouendan style is this, you can't dump water on your head and keep THAT style..." and he started going on about something like how he did his hair different ways for different ouendan occasions, like spiked hair during the All-Japan tournament.

And I'm like "Okay, dude... you WERE in Matsuyama, right? And we got a photo together in front of the castle?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Were you on the same train as me this morning?"

"I was. I noticed you too but didn't say anything. Then I saw you in the stands during the game today."

"So it WAS you! But your hair was different and I was tired so I thought 'nah... that can't be the same guy...'"

"It's me. Will you come cheer with us in two weeks?"

"Uhh... sure!"

Well, at least it's nice to be remembered.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend at Jingu. I'll probably only be going to one day next weekend, but this semester is looking to be interesing, to be sure.