Marinerds, etc.

Hip hip hooray! The 20th of May! Lots of things about today!

First, birthdays:
Hawks manager (and living legend) Sadaharu Oh turns 68 today.
Marines catcher Tomoya Satozaki (who is sadly having some arm trouble) turns 32 today.
Chunichi outfielder Atsushi Fujii (who got called up in the wake of Morino's injury) turns 27 today. He is 0-for-15 on the season so far.
Seibu relief pitcher Atsushi Okamoto (who got called up last weekend) turns 27 today.
Fighters AWESOME SECOND BASEMAN Kensuke Tanaka turns 27 today. ♥♥!
Giants' number one college draft pick from last year Tooru Murata turns 23 today.

Second, interleague!
Today starts the interleague season across Japan. It'll go for the next month or so and end on approximately June 22nd. I say approximately because June is tsuyu, the rainy season, in most of Japan, and I would be surprised if a few of those empty days left for makeup games are not used as such.

Of course, naturally, it is raining right now in Kanto and Tohoku, which means there's a chance the Eagles-Dragons game and the Marines-Giants games might get rained out. (Hawks-Carp, Buffaloes-Tigers, and Fighters-Baystars are all in domes.)

It'd be a real shame to see the RAKUTEN-CHUNICHI SHOWDOWN get rained out:


(From Rakuten's site: Boxing match of Doala, Iwase and Araki vs. Clutch, Takeshi Yamasaki and Ma-kun.)


(Also from Rakuten's site: And now we see their secret plan for how they're going to win... seriously, I would bet on the Big Man to win any such fight :)

Read full interview here. It's pretty funny from what I went through so far. After all, Yamasaki is from Nagoya, played for Aikodai Meiden (same HS as Ichiro), was drafted by Chunichi before Ma-kun was even born, and won his first Best Nine in 1996 as an outfielder with Chunichi who hit a bazillion home runs. And now he's almost 40 and kicking butt again, which is neat.

Naturally, Rakuten-Chunichi is also a fun showdown because the two managers, Nomura and Ochiai, are two of the best hitters in Japanese baseball history, and are also two of the craziest men to ever grace the game over here. かかってこい！

Shukan Baseball put out a rather nice Official Program for interleague. I've been too lazy/cheap to buy it, but it's quite nice, actually, has a lot of interesting breakdowns of numbers and whatnot.

Third: Shinjo
This isn't really today, this is actually Sunday, but I was too busy watching college kids play baseball on Sunday to catch this one as it was happening.



So, before the Hawks-Fighters game on Sunday (you know what's really sad? A few weeks ago I had actually considered going down to Fukuoka this weekend for this very game! Fukuoka is the only city I haven't seen a home game in), as a promotion for bringing the Olympics to Tokyo in 2016. Being Shinjo, he couldn't just go out in normal clothes and throw a ceremonial first pitch. No, he had to go out there WEARING A FULL FUKUOKA HAWKS UNIFORM and actually throw an entire CEREMONIAL FIRST AT-BAT to his protege Hichori Morimoto. And his pitches were clocked at 90mph!

He got Hichori to ground out to short on a 2-2 pitch -- and really, that last pitch was high and outside and if this was a real game I would be pretty annoyed that Hichori isn't laying off those :)

Before you ask, what number did he wear? Why, he wore Number Shinjo:


(From Sankei Sports.)

This is, of course, a little bit like the last time he did a stunt around interleague time in 2006 and ran around Koshien before the game wearing his old Hanshin Tigers uniform with "Shinjo #5" on it, despite that it was Hamanaka's number at the time. The difference is that Hanshin was Shinjo's first team -- aside from growing up in Fukuoka, he doesn't have any affiliation with the Hawks.

But I think everyone enjoyed the performance as it were -- after the at-bat he throws a ball from the mound into the outfield stands, then after running off the mound, he high-fives all the Fighters, high-fives and/or hugs most of the Hawks, throws his Golden Glove -- which he brought to wear for the at-bat -- into the crowd, bows to Oh-kantoku, and leaves. I know a lot of people get angry at Shinjo for his stunts, but I believe now as always that he really just wants to entertain people and make baseball more exciting, and I'm pretty sure this helped to do that.

(Also something somewhat frightening is that with his hair in this style, and being so tall and skinny, at first he actually reminded me a lot of what Kazumi Saitoh looked like back in 2006. Sigh.)

I guess this means his new career as the forgotten 6th member of SMAP isn't working out, though...

Thanks to The2Belo informing me about it, I went and watched the November 20th episode of the TV variety show SMAPxSMAP. (Everyone loves SMAP, right?) Recently-retired Fighters outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo was the guest, and it was probably the funniest episode of any Japanese TV show I've ever seen. I literally was laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair.

Shinjo started off the show by coming out and pretending he was the owner of "Bistro SMAP", the Iron-Chef-like food competition they do on the show... as the real owner Masahiro Nakai walks out, dressed in an identical host outfit, wondering what the hell is going on. Shinjo's just like, "There's been a change in ownership here." The other four SMAP guys are like "Yeah, I heard that too." After the gag, Shinjo says that the food he wants to eat is "nippon ichi oishii ryouri", which could be interpreted as "the best cooking in Japan", or more likely, "tasty food for a Japan Champion!"


(screen capture from SMAPxSMAP 11/20/2006, Fuji TV)

They went down to the kitchen for a while after that to chat while the SMAP guys prepared a feast for champions. Takuya Kimura and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi were one team, and Shingo Katori and Goro Inagaki were the other. Shinjo talked about various stunts he'd pulled and other details about the team (at one point he was talking about Hichori, and the other guys are like "Hichori... is that a nickname?" and Masa and Shinjo are both like "No, it's his real name! Did you see when he dressed up as Piccolo at the All-Star Game?"). Katori even said how he didn't really follow baseball, but watching Shinjo made him think it looked really fun and exciting, and Shinjo said, "Hearing that from people makes me really happy."



The food they made was really really yummy. Despite that Kimura and Kusanagi won, I liked Shingo and Goro's arrangement better, partially because I've had a weird craving for good omurice lately, but mostly because they made this awesome dessert that was basically a baseball in a glove bowl, the ball being made out of strawberry mousse and cake, and they even decorated it with a "Shinjo HT 63". So cool! (So yummy-looking...)



Shingo Katori came out dressed up in a Fighters uniform when Shinjo was trying the desserts, and he was like "Look, I'm manager Hillman! 1, 2, 3, SHINJIRARENAAAAAIIII". It was pretty funny.



Now, here's the scary part. After the Bistro SMAP half of the show, they did this second half where it was almost like they were parodying themselves or something. They were initiating Shinjo into an idol group called the "Skate Boys", where they were all dressed up as an 80's boy band, in pink tank tops with a glittery "S" on them, and white shorts, and high white knee socks, and headbands with cutesy nicknames on them. First they sang and danced to a song. Shinjo really did try pretty hard to follow the routine.



Then, uhhh... they practiced doing their smiles as "cute boy band idols". It was pretty frightening. Shinjo's in the middle of the bottom row here as they all pose together.



Then they went and did this gag where all six "boy band members" had caricatures drawn on this carnival-board thingy, and they all had to throw baseballs to try to knock out the faces. Shinjo's is in the bottom right. Since there was another Tsuyoshi in the band, Shinjo became "Tsuyo-tsuyo", as Kusanagi was "Tsuyo-chan".



At one point Kimura threw a few baseballs and utterly missed the board, which was funny enough, but then he got down on one knee and put his glove on his head in the same pose Shinjo and Hichori and Inaba used to do all year in the Fighters outfield, and Shinjo cracked up and joined him here too:



Yeah.

Well, anyway. This was a tremendously funny episode of SMAPxSMAP. To be fair, the last time I watched it was when Orix's Kiyohara and Nakamura were on it, and they aren't anywhere near as charismatic. The disturbing part was how well Shinjo fit in with SMAP -- he's about the same age as the older members, has similar looks (they all have disturbingly white bright teeth and smiles), and similar mannerisms and charisma. I think he's going to be pretty awesome if and when he ends up as a TV personality somewhere. I'd almost like to see him teamed up with Kazushige Nagashima for something. Maybe they could be a pair of cops and have to hunt down Kazuhiro Kiyohara as a yakuza lord. That'd rule.