Marinerds, etc.

I spent the entire week writing about the draft instead of about last Sunday's games at Jingu. Whoops. So this entry is about October 24. I really wanted to clear it out of my pile before starting on more Soukeisen stuff, because it was ALSO a very interesting day.

On that Sunday, I showed up at Jingu at 10:30am. On my way in a bunch of high school ballplayers were jogging past me... they were from NICHIDAI SANKO! I didn't take a photo, and now I am kicking myself, as they went on to beat the crap out of Kokugakuin Kugayama 4-0 and claim a Senbatsu berth. (Their game was at Jingu #2 stadium, which is used mostly for high school ball, lower college leagues, and doubles as a golf shooting range as well.) Sanko is one of THE powerhouse baseball high schools of the Tokyo area, they regularly go to Koshien and steamroll everyone for the first few rounds, though though they also rarely make it past Best 8 for some reason.

But, the reason I was there early was that a friend of mine was giving me a free ticket to the games, and I wanted to get a front-row seat because I'd promised Kazuki Mishima that I'd take some nice photos of him one of these days, and this was my last chance, since he was the starting pitcher and it was Hosei's last game. Mishima actually saw me in the front row and kept looking my way, which was both awesome and yet disconcerting. I saw his girlfriend there too, but she was sitting behind home plate for this game. (Instead, this time it was backup bullpen catcher Tomoaki Kuroda's girlfriend sitting a few seats down from me, also taking photos.)

On the other hand, it made for some nice shots. I rarely ever actually get any with the player facing my camera, but it wasn't a problem this time:




The starting pitcher for Todai was Shota Suzuki, the freshman who actually WON A GAME this semester. Suzuki went into this game with a 1-4 record and a 2.83 ERA, which is actually ridiculously good for a Todai pitcher. By comparison, captain and "ace" Yoshihiro Maeda went into the weekend 0-4 with a 5.48 ERA. Maeda, the true hero of Sunday's game, came out of the weekend 0-5 4.91, while Suzuki came out 1-5, 4.58.

Yes, you read that right. Suzuki's ERA went up almost 2 points in this one game, because he faced 9 batters, managed to record one out, which was a sac bunt, and gave up 8 runs, 7 of them earned, in that 1/3 of an inning. OUCH.

The top of the 1st inning lasted 33 minutes and took 13 batters and 2 pitchers to get through. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not:

Kawai singles to center. Runner at 1st.
Nanba sac bunts to 3rd. One out, runner at 2nd.
Hasegawa singles to left. One out, runners at 1st and 3rd.
Hasegawa steals second during Taki's AB.
Taki walks. Bases loaded.
Narita singles to right, Kawai and Hasegawa score, Taki to 3rd. 2-0.
Hiromoto singles to center, Taki scores, Narita to 3rd. 3-0.
Tatebe walks. Bases loaded.
Matsumoto doubles to left, Narita and Hiromoto score, Tatebe to 3rd. 5-0.
Mishima ALSO doubles, to right. Tatebe and Matsumoto score. 7-0.

Suzuki is "mercifully" relieved of his duties and captain Yoshihiro Maeda takes over on the mound, despite starting and losing Saturday's game too.

Kawai grounds out to second; Mishima moves to 3rd. Two down, runner at 3rd.
Nanba grounds to second but Utsumi boots the ball for an error; Mishima scores. Two down, runner at 1st. 8-0.
Nanba steals second during Hasegawa's at-bat.
Hasegawa doubles to left. Nanba scores. 9-0.
Taki grounds out to second for real to end the inning.


Shota Suzuki.


Yoshihiro Maeda.

I'm going to tell you something very funny: from that point in the game, Maeda actually allowed less baserunners (6) and earned runs (1) in his 8 2/3 innings pitched than Mishima did in his 7 innings pitched (10 baserunners, 2 earned runs).

Infact, if the Todai batters could run a little faster, or had a little more baseball sense for that kind of thing, I think they should have even gotten more than 2 runs off 10 hits!

Takashi Kihara led off the bottom of the 2nd with a single, was bunted up by Horiguchi. Shota Utsumi also singled cleanly to center, but rather than scoring from second, Kihara only made it to third. He finally scored when the next batter Atsushi Tanaka singled as well, making it 9-1.

The other Todai run came in the bottom of the 4th, when Horiguchi led off with a single, and two batters later advanced to second on another single by Tanaka. Then pitcher Maeda went to bunt up those runners... and laid down such a perfect bunt that he ended up being safe, loading the bases! Unfortunately, Yamakoshi grounded into a fielder's choice 6-2, getting the runner at home and keeping the bases loaded. But Hisanari Takayama singled to bring home Tanaka, making it 9-2.

That was all Todai could string together in the form of offense, though.

Hosei got two more runs in the top of the 8th; Tatebe got on base via a throwing error by Todai shortstop Iwasaki, and Matsumoto walked. (Tatebe stole second during Matsumoto's AB and then advanced to third on a pop fly out by Seiya Ohyagi.) Matsumoto also stole second during Kanji Kawai's at-bat, so Kawai's single to center brought home both Tatebe and Matsumoto to make it 11-2.

Hosei sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama pitched the 8th inning and lefty Ryoto Yoshikoshi pitched the 9th. I was originally going to go up to the Hosei cheering seats when Mishima left the mound, but Kitayama is way too interesting to take photos of, so I stayed up front for the entire game. (I had the same problem with sidearmer Kohei Nishi before he graduated last year. So WEIRD!)

I felt terrible for Maeda-kun though. I moved my stuff over to the 1st-base side after Game 1, and my friends were like "Maeda was crying and could barely address the fans -- it was his last game and he tried so hard," and I said "He DID. I was really impressed."

(The next day I saw this article in the paper, where Maeda's quoted as saying "I really wanted to win ONE game. Pitching from the mound at Jingu was the best and I don't want to ever forget the way this looked and felt." In his 3 years pitching for Todai, Maeda appeared in 38 games and his record was a whopping 0 wins and 23 losses. You have to feel bad for a guy like that. And here's another article about Maeda, as the "Akamon Ace". (Akamon is the red gate landmark in front of one of the Tokyo University campuses.) Since he's quitting baseball after college, it's just really a shame.


Teams line up to bow to each other.


Then they bow to their fans (and you can see the 11-2 scoreboard here). This was the last game for the 4th-year players. Even some guys who weren't officially on the active roster, like Yoh Sasaki, were still there in the dugout with the team.


Hosei captain Seiya Ohyagi gets interviewed.

And a few more shots from during the game...


Mishima on the mound.


Mishima at bat.


Todai's Maeda-captain at bat.


Shuhei Iwasaki, who I am betting will be captain next year.


Of course no day at Jingu is complete for me without stalking Kagami.


Sidearmer Fumiya Kitayama.


He not only holds the ball at a weird angle that makes you wonder why his wrist hasn't fallen off yet,


but also makes you wonder why his elbow hasn't fallen off yet either.


It's the last game of the semester for the ouendan too -- and the last game ever for the graduating seniors -- so they also addressed the fans after the game.


So, Game 2 was Meiji-Rikkio, starting 30 minutes after Game 1 ended. As I mentioned, I moved my stuff to the Meiji side where my friends were sitting, and then went outside for... I'm not sure what exactly. I guess I wanted to try to say goodbye to some of the Hosei players, and to some of my friends who cheer for them. A few people had mentioned to me that there would be a retirement ceremony outside Jingu for the graduating seniors, so I figured I should check that out too.

You'll never believe what happened, though -- on my way over to the Hosei gathering place, I saw a boy walk by in a Rikkio blazer and I'm thinking WAIT A MINUTE I KNOW THAT FACE HEY ISN'T THAT and before I was really aware of what I was doing, I said to him, "Hey, you're Hirahara-kun, aren't you? From Teikyo?"

He stopped, looked at me quizzically like "...yes, I am..."

My brain just spilled forth, the most surprising thing probably being that I didn't stutter but managed to get this all out in reasonable Japanese. "OMG I was a huge fan of yours in high school I went to Koshien last summer and saw you play I've cheered for Teikyo for a while I thought you were a great pitcher and 3rd baseman I saw you guys beat Tsuruga Kehi um, can I get a photo with you? Please?"

He seemed surprised, maybe confused, but flattered, and said sure. I ended up tagging a random Hosei-related friend of mine I saw go by at the moment to take the photo. It didn't come out so well, but I'm still really happy about it:



As usual, ballplayers don't smile in photos with fans usually... and also as usual I am totally on the wrong plane rather than standing next to him. Whoops. BUT... who cares! I mean, here is a kid I watched win a game at Koshien! For Teikyo! Seriously, I was just totally psyched to meet him, even if maybe I freaked him out a little. Really, I'm pretty proud of myself for actually recognizing him and tagging him -- that would have NEVER happened a year ago.

I showed him that I have a whole bunch of Teikyo charms on my cellphone, which I think led some credibility to my story... I said that I went to Koshien to cheer for Teikyo both last summer and this spring, and to the Tokyo regionals too. I asked if he'd be appearing in the rookie tournament, but he said it was pretty unlikely, there are a lot of really good freshmen at Rikkio this year and a LOT of strong sophomores, most of whom are regulars on the normal team anyway.

So after that excitement, I continued on to where a bunch of the Hosei baseball club guys who aren't on the active roster right now were hanging out, and asked them what was up. They basically told me that there'd be a ceremony but it wasn't likely to start for a while, until all the ouendan and brass band people got set up, and the seniors all assembled and came out, since some had been playing in the game and some were just at Jingu to cheer for the team and to be part of the retirement.

In the meantime, the guys were mostly hanging out and messing around, which was amusing. Some of them were being silly and dressing in Halloween costumes. The most ridiculous was this one:



That's sophomore Soma Uendo, from Chukyodai Chukyo (a year before they won it all at Koshien, he's Daisuke Takeuchi's classmate). He's a pretty crazy kid. And his name is spelled 上戸　which almost always gets misread either as Ueto or Joko. Even in a college ball magazine they mispelled the kana as Ueto. Oops. Either way, I guess he really likes taiyaki.

I hung out for a while either talking to people or just kind of watching people set up and whatever. Eventually the seniors and current players did come out; though a lot of them were looking for vantage points to either harrass the seniors or to take photos from. And last year's student 1st-base coach Kitao was also there; it took me forever to remember who he was since in my mind he was always just "not Abe-chan".

The gathering finally started around 2:45pm, about an hour after the first game ended. By this point I knew the second game was well underway, since we could hear the Rikkio marching band. But I also figured that by that point I was committed to the Hosei thing, plus I was genuinely curious about it anyway.

Eventually when the seniors got there, before the actual procession started, things started off with a BANG! Well... that is, the seniors yelled some stuff, the underclassmen yelled some stuff, and then two of them got into a fight:


"Oi! You seniors!"


"Yeah? What do YOU want? Especially the freaks in the back dressed like Spiderman?"


FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!


"You guys better cool down. Here's some Cold Spray to help."


A sign things were going to start was first that some cheerleader girls came around handing people confetti to throw on the seniors as they paraded by:



And then things calmed down for a minute or two...


Co-captain Yoh Sasaki on the left. And the 4th-years in the ouendan club also got prepared to go through the confetti parade, at right.


Here we go! Running! And confetti! The marching band played the Hosei fight song as this was all going on, too.


I can't help but stalk Kagami; here he is kind of heading up the back of the parading seniors.

Once all of the ouendan leaders and players got into the space under the Jingu arches, the ceremony started. I was way too far back and on the side to really hear everything that happened, though I could catch some of it. The Hosei club also has a page up about the retirement ceremony with a few photos.


First guy up was Kagami; the ouendan leader spent a while extolling the virtues of our ace, about how he was a Waseda-killer and had anchored the Hosei pitching and been a leader for everyone and a role model for the younger players with his work ethic and all. The ouendan yelled a cheer for him and one of the other players gave him flowers.

And well, that's about how it went for every guy. I stayed for about 10 of them, of whom I actually knew 5 for real. But even for the players who had never appeared in a league game, they still talked about what the guy had done for his 4 years in the club, and yelled a cheer for him.


Kento Kameda... who has at least appeared in enough games that I'm familiar with him.

Due to being so far back anyway, and having already seen Kagami, I ended up giving up after a bit and found one of the guys I knew in the crowd and asked if there would be anything else after this player-introduction part, and he said no, not really, and I said that I had friends waiting for me inside the stadium, so I really ought to go join them. So I did that.

On the way in, I saw some people coming out of the Sanko game, and found out that indeed, Nichidai San had just claimed a Senbatsu spot. Good for them.

When I got back into Jingu and to where my group was sitting on the Meiji side, it was already 0-0 in the 5th inning. Fast game! This was the view to my right:



Kazuki Nishijima had started for Meiji and was still pitching. Yuho Yabe started for Rikkio but came out of the game pretty much right around when I got there, and Kenya Okabe took over for him.

But it stayed tied 0-0 for quite some time.

Meiji loaded the bases in their half of the 7th when Okabe hit both Uemoto and Katsuya Kawashima, but they couldn't get a run in.

It started raining around 4:45pm, and lots of fans made an exodus to the covered area behind home plate... while the rest of us idiots got out plastic bags and raincoats.





The score was still 0-0 in the 9th, and Meiji couldn't put up a run in their half, and the rain was falling, and it went into extra innings, with Kazuki Nishijima STILL pitching for Meiji.

Rikkio's Ryuichi Maeda led off the top of the 10th with a single to left, and Sekine pinch-ran for him... and was immediately caught stealing second. One down.
Kitada struck out after that. Two down.
But then Yuki Maeda singled to center.
And pitcher Okabe... walked.
And Koichiro Matsumoto... ALSO walked. Bases loaded.
And would you believe it but Ryugoro Mogi ALSO walked. Oshidashi! 1-0.

At this point, having walked in a run, and having thrown 134 pitches, and being completely soaking wet, Nishijima came out of the game. Takayuki Morita took the mound...

...and promptly gave up a single to captain Soichiro Tanaka. Okabe and Matsumoto scored. 3-0.
Okazaki ALSO walked to load the bases again, but Fujita hit a fly out to second to end the inning.

Meiji, to their credit, also loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th; Shimauchi got a hit, and Yajima reached base on an error, and Abe walked. So, bases loaded. But Kenji Kawabe pinch-hit, and while he isn't a bad hitter, he chose this moment to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. Game over, Rikkio wins 3-0.

As you can see, by the time it ended at almost 6pm, Jingu was quite cold and quite wet, and umbrellas were all over the parts of the stands that still had people:





Yeah.

I thought it might be neat to catch a final Meiji ceremony -- and Yusuke Nomura had promised a signature! But no, thanks to the rain and thanks to Meiji losing, there was pretty much no chance to stalk anyone, the players were in a sour mood and I didn't want my stuff getting wet anyway.

And then I found out that they don't have a final ceremony with the players and band and ouendan anyway, because they don't actually have a cohesive ouendan club, or something weird like that.

Hosei had won their series against Todai after those two games, but Meiji and Rikkio faced off a third time on Monday, where Meiji won 11-7 in what was a huge slugfest of sorts from what I heard, combined with a bunch of "must... play... seniors... and... freshmen..." All of Meiji's pitchers were either freshmen (Sekiya and Takayuki Oka, the first 7.2 innings) or seniors getting their last chance to appear in a game (Nakamichi, Kondoh, and Nagai, the last 1.2 innings). The game and series didn't actually matter for the standings at all, so. Fumiya Araki collected a double and two triples -- his only extra-base hits of the season, and raised his average to .302, though I doubt that actually had any effect on him getting drafted 4 days later.

Week 7 decided the standings for the bottom 3 teams, at least:

           G    W   L   T   SP   WP%
1  Waseda  10   8   2   0   4   .800
2  Hosei   13   8   4   1   3   .667
3  Keio    12   6   4   2   3   .600
4  Meiji   13   7   6   0   3   .538
5  Rikkio  15   4   8   3   1   .333
6  Tokyo   11   1  10   0   0   .091

Hosei was guaranteed a finish in the top half, at least. Yay!

And thus, we went into Week 8, Soukeisen/Keisousen, to determine the actual winner of the league. Waseda was favored to win, but Keio had a shot if they could win 2 games in a row against Waseda in Soukeisen to tie their W/L/SP record, and then win a forced playoff game as well... (and at the time of this finally being finished, that is EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. I love this Keio team.)

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...

This is a massive post detailing the entirety of Week 2. I was only at one out of the five games, but was doing my best to follow the games all weekend...

Day 1, Game 1: Todai vs. Meiji - The Freshman Continues To Be Fresh

Meiji 5, Todai 2

Unfortunately, I had to work on Saturday morning, so I missed the first game. 3rd-year ace Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji, and freshman apparently-new-ace Shota Suzuki started for Todai. I've talked about Nomura extensively on here; he came within 2 innings of winning Koshien 2007 with Koryo HS, was already a regular starting pitcher as a freshman at Meiji, and in his sophomore year became the anchor of their rotation. Suzuki, I just saw him for the first time last week, but he doesn't entirely suck, and has a lot of guts for a freshman. Also, apparently, they had him wearing #18 this time (not the #11 he wore opening weekend nor the #34 that he's listed with in the player book).

My friends that attended the first game were glowing about Suzuki during the second game, like "Tokyo really tried their best in that game, and it was a 1-0 score for the first 6 innings while Yusuke and Suzuki were pitching against each other!" Of course, Todai's offense is still fairly unlikely to get much off of Nomura when he's on, and he struck out 10 of them over those first 6 innings, only giving up 3 hits. It sounds like Suzuki came out of the game due to the manager worrying about his stamina more than anything else, which may actually be a good sign that they aren't going to kill him before he even turns 20 years old.

Naturally after Suzuki came out, Meiji scored 4 runs (only 2 earned) in the top of the 7th to make it 5-0. But it took 5 Meiji pitchers to get through the last 3 innings, and of them, only Gota Nanba had actually logged significant innings in league games before; Mizuno and Mochizuki were making their league debuts, freshman Sekiya pitched one game in the spring, and Shogo Shibata pitched once at Jingu back in spring 2009. So, Todai managed to get 2 runs off those guys, but still not really come anywhere close to winning.

Day 1, Game 2: Hosei vs. Rikkio - Hosei's Offense Shows Up, and Kagami Changes Up

Hosei 6, Rikkio 2

I got to Jingu just in time for the start of the second game. A friend of mine left me a free ticket with the Hosei cheerleading girls, so after a little bit of confusion finding the person with the ticket, I came in and sat with the Hosei ouendan for the first 7 innings of the game (which is why I have no photos; you're not allowed to take photos in the ouendan area and I didn't bring my big camera anyway). I spent the last 2 innings in the front row with my usual group of friends, and by dumb luck ended up meeting a guy who was the Hosei ouendan leader in 1959.

Anyway, this is, infact, the only photo I took while sitting in the ouendan area, because the cheer girls in front of me weren't looking:



Kenya Okabe started for Rikkio, and Kisho Kagami started for Hosei (he is the reason I spend every Saturday at Jingu).

I was super-worried that the actual problem would be no run support for Kagami, being as Hosei's offense has been HORRIBLE this year, but in the 2nd inning, the Hosei batters Kyosuke Narita, Shohei Doi, Kota Imamura, and captain Seiya Ohyagi hit 4 consecutive singles to bring in a run. 1-0. (It's like the Kansas City Royals joke from a few years back of "Four hits equals a run!", but worse). With the bases still loaded, Kagami himself hit a sac fly and brought in Doi; 2-0.

Rikkio's Yuki Maeda hit a solo home run in the bottom of the 3rd to make it 2-1. I hate to say this, but Kagami's biggest weakness is that he always seems to give up one home run per game.

But in this game it was irrelevant as Hosei added 4 more runs in the top of the 4th. Shohei Doi led off with a single, and stole second two batters later as Seiya Ohyagi struck out. So with two outs, Kagami came to the plate, and singled to center, bringing in Doi! 3-1. Yusuke Hasegawa was hit by a pitch after that, on his left side, and then Kento Tatebe slammed this ball to centerfield, all the way back to the wall, and by the time the Rikkio outfielders recovered it, Tatebe was standing on 3rd base for a triple and Hasegawa and Kagami had scored. 5-1.

Rikkio changed pitchers from Okabe to former ace Masahito Nihira after that... and Kanji Kawai followed it up with a single to bring in Tatebe. 6-1. Taki grounded out after that.

Rikkio's next pitcher was a freshman named Yuho Yabe ("Yabe!" being a male-speech phrase that is generally uttered to mean "Oh crap!"), who made one appearance in the spring, gave up 4 runs to Waseda in less than an inning, and was never heard from again. This time he fared much better, going 3 scoreless innings, striking out 4, and only walking 3. Hayato Saitoh (the pitcher, 斎藤隼, not to be confused with the outfielder, 西藤勇人, who batted 2nd and played right field in this game) finished out the last inning for Rikkio.

In the meantime, Rikkio managed another run in the 6th when Koichiro Matsumoto led off with a single, moved up on a groundout, and scored on a single by Keisuke Okazaki, which is what made it 6-2 -- and that would be the final score:





Kisho Kagami was, of course, the game hero, being as he pitched a complete-game win over Rikkio on 132 pitches, striking out 8... AND he also batted in two runs!

Since I could see but couldn't hear his real interview, here I'll translate his interview on the Nikkan Sports Hosei Blog:

- Let's look back at today's game.
It's good to win on a Saturday one way or another.

- You pitched a complete game win...
Well, because a starter should always be aiming for a complete game shutout, that was good. With that in mind, you try to pitch each inning without giving up hits.

- What's your impression of Rikkio's lineup?
There are a lot of power batters. So I was trying to be careful because a bunch of those guys can knock one out of the park at any moment... and one guy unfortunately did.

- Which batters were you most cautious of?
Koichiro Matsumoto, Soichiro Tanaka, and Keisuke Okazaki.

- What was your best pitch today?
My changeup.

- You also had a few RBIs as a batter...
It was after I gave up a run, so I was happy that I could get us back one or two runs on my own too.

- How are you looking ahead to your next start?
It could be tomorrow or the next day but I'll be ready whenever!


Now see, there was a Yakult-Chunichi game at Jingu in the evening, which I wasn't attending (quite frankly, after getting up at 6:30am for work, and then doing that plus 7 innings of yelling and clapping with the Hosei ouendan, I was completely zonked). But it meant that Jingu was really crowded outside after the game with people arriving for the pro game, as well as the college game fans filtering out as well.

Still, my friends and I waited for the players to come out, and they still did schmooze with people a bit.

I had some new photos from opening weekend that I wanted to get signed (most of the ones from this post). I got new autographs from Taki and Mishima (Taki with his new uniform number, and Mishima actually changed his signature!) since I know them well enough to bother them. I also tagged Kyosuke Narita and Ryoto Yoshikoshi, who were both like "...you want ME to sign something...? Really?" I was asked if I had photos of Kitayama the sidearmer and Shoya Yamamoto the senior lefty, but I hadn't printed those. Whoops. (They actually wanted to see; apparently my camera has a reputation among Hosei pitchers now.)

I also chatted up Kota Imamura and Naoki Harada for information on some current/former teammates, because we've been wondering what happened to former student coach Naoki Satoh (sounds like he's busy trying to graduate and start a job next year) and to former outfielder Shingo Kamegai, now with Toyota, who apparently broke his arm while in practice during the Toshitaiko. Whoops.)

And... having not actually heard any of Kagami's interviews, and not realizing he'd actually been saying his changeup was working for him recently and all, I went up to Kagami with this photo in hand, and said, "Because your changeup has been so awesome, can I get you to sign a photo of you throwing a changeup?" He laughed and said thanks, said it was a nice photo, and signed it.

Unfortunately after that I tried to actually ask him about some other stuff and he suddenly pretty much just excused himself and ran off. I don't really know if it was that he didn't want to talk to me, or what. I was a little freaked out at the time, wondering if I annoyed him, but I've been trying to remind myself that first, it was CROWDED out there, and second, he is very much in demand these days being as he's a likely high draft pick next month, and probably doesn't have time to just chat. One of my friends said to me, "I saw you get him to sign something and you must have said something really nice because he had a huge smile on his face... I don't think he's angry at you. I bet he's just busy."

If only I hadn't been terrified to talk to college ball players two years ago when I adored him and he was just some lanky sophomore kid who was striking out Waseda batters left and right. These days I have a lot more confidence in my ability to not sound like a complete moron in Japanese, at least. I'm not sure people realize how much nerve it takes me to go up to these baseball players and talk to them.

Day 2, Game 1: Rikkio vs. Hosei - Sophomore Deathmatch Ends in a Tie

Rikkio 1, Hosei 1

I wasn't at Day 2 at all, because I was at Olympic Stadium in Nagano watching the Shinano Grandserows beat the Niigata Albirex instead.

Sophomore righty Kazuki Mishima did get the start for Hosei after all (he'd mentioned it was a possibility on Saturday, that it would be either him or Mikami). Rikkio's starting pitcher was sophomore lefty Masato Komuro.

And it ended up being a pitcher's duel, basically. Mishima pitched 8 innings, striking out 8 and only giving up one run, a solo home run to Ryuichi Maeda, and giving up 5 hits total. But Komuro did even better, giving up exactly one hit and one walk in 7 innings. And they were both to Shohei Doi.

The scoring went as such: Maeda's homerun made it 1-0 in the 2nd inning. In the 5th inning, Doi led off with that walk. Sasaki grounded into a fielder's choice but both runners were safe as Doi reached second. Matsumoto then bunted up the runners, and captain Seiya Ohyagi hit a sac fly to centerfield that scored Doi, 1-1. And that is it. Literally.

Actually, Rikkio's Kazuki Utsui pitched the last 2 innings, and he walked the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th but then struck out Doi and Sasaki to end the game in a tie after 9 innings according to league regulations; the rules of the Tokyo Big 6 League are such that on a game day where Yakult is using Jingu in the evening, the morning game starts at 10:30 and games end in 9 innings regardless of whether they're tied.

(According to Wikipedia, the tie rules for normal days without pro games afterwards are such that a game is called a tie in 12 innings if it's the 1st or 2nd game in a series, but at the 3rd game and later, it won't be called a tie until 15 innings. Which explains travesties like this.)

So the Hosei-Rikkio series would go on to a 3rd game on Monday.

Day 2, Game 2: Meiji vs. Todai, More of the Same

Meiji 7, Todai 2

One of my friends who is a Meiji fan actually texted me the game events as they progressed, so I was following this one slightly more closely. Tokyo captain Yoshihiro Maeda started for them, and tall lefty vaguely-draft-hopeful Kazuki Nishijima started for Meiji.

Things sailed along at 0-0 until the Tokyo infield fell apart in the bottom of the 3rd inning. Katsuya Kawashima led off for Meiji with a walk, and Uemoto bunted him up to second. Masataka Nakamura grounded to third, but third baseman Yamamoto booted the ball and so both runners were safe. Yajima hit a pop out, and then Sho Nishi came to the plate and launched a 3-run homer that put Meiji ahead 3-0. Fumiya Araki then got on base via another error, this time by shortstop Iwasaki, but the inning ended when Abe hit a pop fly out to first.

In the meantime, Nishijima sailed through the first 4 innings perfectly, and gave up one hit in the top of the 5th to Iwasaki that was immediately erased on a double play.

However, in the top of the 6th, Shota Utsumi led off for Tokyo with an infield single to short, and one out later, pitcher Yoshihiro Maeda followed that with a single to left. Hiromasa Horiguchi also hit an infield single and that loaded the bases for Takashi Kihara, who grounded out to second base, Utsumi scoring on the play. 3-1.

Meiji took back a point in the bottom of the 6th; Kenji Kawabe led off with a double to left, Nishijima bunted him up, and then Kawashima hit a double to center to score Kawabe, 4-1. Maeda came out of the game at this point and Todai's freshman sidearmer Shunsuke Kimura took over and got through the next two innings unscathed.

Gosuke Hiraizumi would not have the same luck, and Meiji hit him up for 3 runs in the bottom of the 8th to make it 7-1, on an RBI double by Yuma Miyatake and a 2-RBI double by Masataka Nakamura.

It took Meiji 3 pitchers to get through the top of the 9th (Morita, Serizawa, and Oka) and Tokyo managed to get one run off of them, on an RBI double by Atsushi Tanaka. The game ended at 7-2.

Meiji took the series point for this as expected, and Todai still has no wins to their name, but aside from the slaughter during the very first game on Opening Day, they have actually been putting up a relatively good fight.

Day 3: Hosei vs. Rikkio, Kagami Leads The Way Again

Hosei 2, Rikkio 1

I wasn't at this game either because I was at the Kamagaya Festival watching the Fighters ni-gun beat the Swallows ni-gun. It was a pretty difficult decision for me, but Kamagaya would most likely be the last Fighters event for me in 2010 (It'd be nice if they made the playoffs, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much). Plus, I sat in the front row at Kamagaya with Ojisan, who happens to be a Hosei alum, so during the Fighters ni-gun game, he kept checking the Fighters ichi-gun game score and telling me, and I kept checking the Hosei-Rikkio game score and telling him.

Hosei's Kisho Kagami and Rikkio's Kenya Okabe were the starting pitchers for this game again, just like Saturday. Hosei got a run off Okabe right away when leadoff man Nakao doubled, Nanba followed it with a single to put runners at the corners, and Tatebe hit a sac fly to left to bring in Nakao, 1-0. Taki also got a hit, but Narita grounded into a double play to end the inning.

Hayato Saitoh (西藤勇人) hit a solo home run in the bottom of the 3rd to make it 1-1. It worries me that Kagami gives up one home run pretty much every game.

On the other hand, Kagami actually HIT A HOME RUN HIMSELF to lead off the 7th inning and make it a 2-1 game. I nearly dropped my phone when I read that update! (The home run was off Masato Komuro, for the record.)

So yeah, he not only pitched ANOTHER complete-game win, he also hit the game-winning home run. How cool is that?

His interview on the Nikkan Sports blog this time is a little more sparse, but they have a picture of him receiving his home run ball, at least...

- Let's look back on today's game.
It's great that we won the series point!

- How was your condition today?
Relatively good.

- What was your best pitch today?
My fastball.

- Which Rikkio batters were you most cautious of?
Matsumoto, Tanaka, Okazaki.

- In the 8th inning, Hayato Saitoh, who'd hit the earlier home run, came up to bat with runners on and a very good chance to tie up the game. How did you feel when you pitched to him?
I absolutely did not want to give up a run at that time, so I had to really give it my all, I thought.

- Your fastball was clocked at a personal best of 153 km/h, how does that feel?
Honestly, I feel happy.

- How are you looking forward to your next start?
I want to win another series no matter what it takes!


And that's how Hosei managed to get their first Series Point of the season.

I want to point out something that's somewhat frightening, and that would be the league pitching stats for this semester so far. We're only two weeks in, but Kagami's already had 4 starts and pitched 3 complete games -- his 31 innings and 3 wins is already more than some guys had all SEASON in the spring. And he's also pretty much putting up the exact same rates he did last semester -- walking 5% of the batters he faces, striking out 20%. I just hope his home run rates go down from here on in. (That is, home runs given up. I wouldn't mind getting to see him hit another one in person someday!)

But last fall, when the draft was looming, Kazuhito Futagami went from being Hosei's Saturday-Monday pitcher to being the Sunday-only pitcher. I kind of hoped/expected they would do that for Kagami this year too, but apparently not. I wonder whose choice it was in both cases...