Marinerds, etc.

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.

And so Waseda goes DOWN and Keio wins in a blaze of glory! Whee!

I was at Kamagaya today for the Fighters-Eagles ni-gun game, because I had an exchange day off from work and I missed my "summer family". Kamagaya was a ton of fun, but I'm going to need a while to crop photos and write up that one. The Fighters won and I spent half the game talking to people. I kept checking my phone to see the Soukeisen score, though, and when it was over, I tagged another college baseball fan at Kamagaya like "Keio won!" and he agreed, "Hooray!"

But over at Jingu, Keio beat Waseda 6-4 to take home their first championship since the fall of 2004.

It was a rematch of the starters from Saturday, Yuki Saitoh for Waseda and Daisuke Takeuchi for Keio. Saitoh's control was apparently pretty lousy; in the second inning after Hayata Itoh scored a legitimate run on an RBI single by Kazuma Takeuchi (who was out stretching it into a double), Saitoh walked both Yamasaki and Nagasaki. They advanced to 2nd and 3rd on a wild pitch to Daisuke Takeuchi, and then there was ANOTHER wild pitch, where Yamasaki scored, and Nagasaki ALSO tried to score on the wild pitch and was out. So it was 2-0.

Saitoh was out of the game after 3 innings, and Yuya Fukui took over for him, and in the 5th inning, Naoki Yamaguchi hit a 2-run homer off Fukui (trying to disprove my claim that he is the worst leadoff batter in Keio history, though today he was batting 3rd) to make it 4-0.

Waseda finally got on the board in the 5th inning, when Yuya Watanabe and Ayuki Matsumoto found themselves standing on 2nd and 3rd base after a wild pitch to Hiroki Matsunaga... who then hit a 2-RBI single to center to cut the lead in half and make it 4-2.

Tatsuya Ohishi came out to the mound to kick ass and take names in the top of the 6th; but he got two quick outs and then Yamasaki singled to right, and Nagasaki walked. Ryuta Iba pinch-hit for Takeuchi and singled to center; Waseda centerfielder Koki Sasaki misplayed the ball and Yamasaki and Nagasaki scored, making it 6-2.

Waseda's Koji Udaka hit a 2-run homer off Keio's Koji Fukutani in the bottom of the 8th to make it 6-4. But that's all Waseda would get. Fukutani gave up a hit to Yuya Watanabe in the bottom of the 9th, then got Matsunaga and Habu to fly out. For whatever reason, Hironori Tanaka pitched the last out of the game and got Shota Sugiyama to ground to short, and that's how it ended, at 6-4.

Ohishi played centerfield for the 9th inning in order to keep his bat (and maybe his arm) available for later use. Clever that, Ohtake-kantoku.

Tomorrow starts the rookie tournament! I wish I could go, but I can't. Only 1st-years and 2nd-years can participate, and it's generally guys you don't see playing much during the regular season.

And next week is the All-Japan College Ball Tournament, which is also a lot of fun to watch, even if Yutaka Ohtsuka made fun of me today for seeing him LOSE there last year. Whatever. It's between June 8th and 13th, between the Tokyo Dome and Jingu, and between the winners of all the college leagues in the country. Keio's first game is on the 9th at 4:30pm at Jingu. I may make it for part of that game, but after that can't go until the semifinals on the 12th; I'm *hoping* the final four are Tokai, Keio, Tohoku Fukushi, and Toyo, but who knows what will ACTUALLY happen.

This weekend is the traditional Waseda-Keio deathmatch, a rivalry that goes back as far as there has been a Waseda and a Keio, pretty much. I ranted a few weeks ago that whoever wins Soukeisen wins the league, which is good for bringing tons of Saitoh fans to Jingu, but bad for causing a completely meaningless Week 7. Either way, I had a feeling that this game was going to draw a really big crowd, between the Saitoh fans, the normal Waseda nutcases, AND the Keio students/alumni, because this series was going to be playing for all the marbles.

I generally don't plan to go to Soukeisen because I don't like dealing with the crowds, but it seems I've ended up there the last few semesters regardless, for various reasons. This semester was no different, as Saturday morning I awoke to vaguely rainy weather and an email from a friend asking if I'd be at Jingu and saying they had an extra ticket if I wanted to go. So I figured, what the heck.

As it turns out, the game was a sellout, and people were actually standing in the standing-room-only area in the back of the outfield, even:



(Though, despite the "special infield seats" being sold out, there were plenty of empty seats in that area. My best guess is that either people didn't come due to the weather, or more seats were allocated than necessary due to season passes and club passes and whatnot. We actually ended up moving down there in the 4th inning or so, because the upper infield seats were actually all full, and quite uncomfortably crowded.)

As always, Waseda had separate ouendan and brass bands in the infield and outfield. But Keio ALSO had them this year, which was kind of crazy. So instead of having 3 bands out of sync with each other, this time we had 4!

Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda, as expected, and Daisuke Takeuchi started for Keio. Takeuchi, a sophomore lefty who is still in this mode of "Wait, I'm the ace? Really?" really got lucky more than anything else -- for whatever reason, Waseda didn't start batting champion Yuya Watanabe, and I honestly truly can't come up with any excuse other than that he bats left-handed. Everyone else in the lineup except for Shohei Habu bats either righty or is a switch-hitter:

Keio                  Waseda
----                  ------
Yamaguchi, lf         Matsunaga, ss
*Yumoto, 2b           Udaka, 1b
*Fuchigami, ss        *Habu, rf
*Itoh, rf             Sugiyama, c
Takao, 1b             Yamada, lf
Matsuo, 3b            #Matsumoto, 3b
Aoyama, cf            Gotoh, 2b
Nagasaki, c           #Sasaki, cf
*Takeuchi, p          Saitoh, p

* denotes lefty, # denotes switch-hitter

Unless they were sitting him to protect his batting title -- which ALSO doesn't make any sense at all if they were trying to win this series in order to win the championship.

Anyway, Keio started off this game looking pretty pathetic. Takeuchi was letting runners on base left and right (okay, mostly right), but they weren't getting around to score. Meanwhile, the Keio batters were just looking stupid in front of Saitoh for the first 3 innings. Saitoh literally threw 3 pitches in the 3rd inning as the bottom 3rd of the order went down on two fly outs and a groundout.

But then captain Tatsushi Yumoto managed to get a single in the 4th inning, and shortstop Hitoshi Fuchigami grounded out to advance Yumoto to 2nd, and he moved to third on a wild pitch, and then Saitoh hit Hayata Itoh in the upper thigh with a pitch -- that looked pretty painful, but Itoh managed to stand up and limp to first base, and then Yasuhiro Takao hit a double to center! Yumoto scored easily on the play and Itoh was running and running and running, and the 3rd-base coach stopped him at 3rd, but with two outs they probably should have sent him, even though he had taken a fastball to his leg a bit ago. I dunno. Either way, it made it 1-0 for Keio.

Waseda continued to almost get things there, but still fall short each time. Shohei Habu got himself picked off in a rundown. Shota Sugiyama hit a foul ball that was only meters away from being a home run. Toshiki Yamada hit a liner up the left side that Ren Yamasaki happened to make THE best play of the game to stop, catching it on a dive.

Then things got interesting in the 9th.

Yumoto left off with a double to right, and Fuchigami naturally bunted him to third. Then Hayata Itoh -- who ALWAYS seems to come through in these situations -- hit a TRIPLE down the right-field line, just this shot into the corner that had Habu scrambling to the wall. Yumoto scored easily, (2-0), and Itoh made it all the way to third base, and then pretty much collapsed; I think his legs had all they could take of abuse for one day. He pumped his fist at the crowd as he limped off the field, and Takuya Shintani pinch-ran at 3rd... but stayed there as the next batters struck out and grounded out.

Takeuchi stayed on the mound for the bottom of the 9th; in the grand tradition of Keio lefties, he wasn't budging if Saitoh wasn't budging. Or something like that. After all, he had a whopping 2-0 lead to protect.

Yuki Jihiki pinch-hit for Sasaki to lead off. He struck out. (On a tangent, he has had exactly 2 at-bats for Waseda ever, both at Soukeisens, and both strikeouts.) Freshman Satoru Ezuka then pinch-hit for Saitoh, and standing at a whopping 191cm/90kg may be one of the biggest guys in the league, period.

He grounded to short.

And Fuchigami lofted the ball over first base and Ezuka was safe on the error.

Then Hiroki Matsunaga followed that up with a grounder to short.

And Fuchigami lofted the ball over SECOND base and Matsunaga was safe at first AND Ezuka was safe at third on the error.

Suddenly things weren't looking so good for Keio anymore. Daisuke Takeuchi surrendered the mound to righty Koji Fukutani, who I rambled about having a pretty good fastball, as I'd seen him hit 149 on the Jingu guns before, and he didn't disappoint in this game either, getting as high as 151. BUT, unfortunately, the first thing that happened to him is that the aforementioned batting champ Yuya Watanabe suddenly entered the building, and he hit a fly ball to right field... and Tomohiro Tatsumi, who had replaced Itoh, took off for the ball and misjudged it and the ball landed 10 feet in front of him for a single. Fortunately, only one run came in, to make it 2-1.

Habu grounded into a fielder's choice to put runners at the corners and two outs... but then Sugiyama walked to load the bases. Lefty-batting Keisuke Kawanishi pinch-hit for Yamada, and...

...and struck out! Keio WINS!



Whew.

A slight rain had been falling off and on during the game, and there were approximately 3638948239843 billion people in the stadium, so we pretty much bolted the minute the game ended.

It was a pretty good game nonetheless. I still wonder what was up with Fuchigami that last inning -- he made something like two errors in the entire 2009 YEAR, so two in one game -- two in one INNING at that -- was pretty crazy.

Now, it is Sunday night.
I hoped to be able to write that Keio swept Keisousen and won the Big 6 title, and that the Rookie Tournament would be starting tomorrow, since I have Monday off from work and could actually go. (I have to work next Saturday and Sunday instead, though.) Unfortunately, I can't write that, as today Yuya Fukui started for Waseda, and Koji Fukutani for Keio, and Fukutani gave up 3 runs in the first inning, and Keio never caught up from the deficit, although Hayata Itoh was apparently well enough to smash a home run in this game. Tatsuya "Thank god they didn't make me start today" Ohishi did his usual thing and pitched 3 innings of relief and struck out a whole bunch of guys, and Waseda won 4-2.

So, the series carries on to Monday.

I'm debating going, but I'd also kind of like to get to Kamagaya for a Fighters ni-gun game already -- it's been way too long.

Oh, on one last note, Keio was going all out with selling stuff for this game -- t-shirts, towels, thundersticks, special newspapers, etc. I bought a t-shirt, because I thought it was really cool, and I rarely ever see Big 6 teams selling this kind of stuff. (I'd love a Hosei baseball t-shirt, but don't think they're available to the general public.) This one featured a K and a "Keisousen 2010" thing on the front, and the fight song on the back.





They should still be selling them for tomorrow's game, if you wander by Jingu, I suppose. You can also get Tokyo Big 6 merchandise at the stadium as well.

GO KEIO! BEAT WASEDA ALREADY! YOU HAVEN'T WON THE LEAGUE IN 5 YEARS!

I kind of assume people reading this know what Soukeisen is, but in case you don't, let's get that out of the way first: it's the word used for any competition between Waseda and Keio, and in this particular case, it's the bi-annual baseball match between the two universities, which has been going on for over a hundred years, and is probably the single most famous college rivalry event in the entire country. (Think like Harvard and Yale, only a lot more of the country cares about it than in the US.)

It's a big enough thing that I first heard of it way back when I was still in college in the mid-90's. I had a Japanese conversation partner that was an exchange student from Keio, and she didn't really care about baseball at all -- we played volleyball together sometimes -- but even she told me she was happy that the US college semester ended in mid-May so she could come back to Japan in time to go to Soukeisen with her friends and get totally drunk and sing their school songs together at Jingu.

Unfortunately, it's also a big enough thing that it gets ridiculously big crowds of people, especially since Yuki "Handkerchief Prince" Saitoh, the most famous college pitcher in recent history, enrolled at Waseda. The Saturday games of Soukeisen have been drawing crowds of around 26,000, which is pretty huge. Me being me, I prefer to go to the less-crowded games and sit right up front and take photos and really see and hear the players, rather than having to hunt and claw for an empty seat up high and face huge lines at the food stands and the bathrooms. On the other hand, it is kind of fun when both teams have ouendans set up in the infield and outfield. Waseda even splits its brass band, so you get TWO groups playing music and yelling during their inning halves, and a lovely not-really-echo when the two groups are singing "Konpeki no Sora" after scoring a run.

Anyway, I hadn't been to a Soukeisen in a few semesters due to scheduling and the crowds. And last semester, I really regretted it after the incident known as "Ohishi Theater" where Tatsuya Ohishi, Waseda's closer and my favorite college player, started the Sunday game at shortstop and played there for most of it before pitching the last few innings, also getting in a few hits, and essentially being a one-man show for the team.

On Saturday night, I looked at the game results for the game, where Keio TRAMPLED Waseda 11-2 behind the ever-steady Nobuaki Nakabayashi. I checked the Waseda pitcher list -- Saitoh, Matsushita, Kusuda, Fukui, Ohno. There was one name glaringly missing from that list, so I came to two conclusions:

1) Something really freaking bizarre was going to happen on Sunday
2) It was going to involve Tatsuya Ohishi.

I was still waffling about going up until around 11:40am, when I left my house to go to the train station. I was riding the train downtown, and I checked the Tokyo Big 6 page around 12:25 to see if the starting lineups were there, and they were!

AND IT WAS GOING TO BE KEIO'S KOMURO AGAINST WASEDA'S OHISHI.

Oh, this was going to be good.

Junpei "JP" Komuro is a 4th-year who basically split pitching duties equally with Nakabayashi in the spring, and had a couple of good games in the fall too, but he basically spent his entire career at Keio not pitching in league games thanks to Katoh, Aizawa, and Nakabayashi. He's a righty sidearmer from Omiya and he's actually a lot of fun to watch, but I would never call him an overpowering pitcher per se.

And Ohishi... well, I've babbled about him a ton. He's been known to top out at 154km/h on the guns at Jingu. He throws a slider, a fork... when he's on, he's unhittable. In 106 innings pitched in college, he's notched 153 strikeouts. (He had an 11-strikeout game this semester... in relief.) And up until Soukeisen, he had allowed one earned run this semester. If he'd wanted the league ERA title, all he had to do was sit on his butt and not pitch at all for the weekend and run off with his nice little 0.37 ERA.

But well, that's not really his style.

So I get to Jingu around 12:40pm, and see the huge lines to get into the seating behind home plate, and I see a huge line to get into Waseda ouendan/student seating, but surprisingly, there is NO line to go sit on the Keio side at all, so I basically go in and walk up the stands and ask, "Is this seat empty?" at the first place I see a promising seat, and it is. So that worked out well, at least.

This was my view:


You can see that the stadium is fairly full.


My view of Waseda's cheering group. That's this year's big Waseda Bear, which only seems to surface for Soukeisen.


I was much closer to Keio's cheerleaders, though still a few sections over.

I should also mention the somewhat bizarre ramifications of this game:

1) If Keio won this game, they would win Soukeisen, and Meiji would win the Tokyo Big 6 Fall 2009 championship.
2) If Waseda won this game, there would be a third game on Monday. If Waseda could win on Monday too, THEY would win the Tokyo Big 6 Fall 2009 Championship.
3) If Soukeisen went 2 days, the Rookie Tournament would start on Monday, but if it went 3 days, the Rookie Tournament would start on Tuesday.
4) Tuesday is a national holiday. But the interesting matches of the Rookie Tournament don't start until the 2nd day, once Todai is eliminated.

So, the best-case scenario was really for Keio to win this game. Especially since Keio hadn't actually won Soukeisen since 2006, so that would DEFINITELY be a strange occurrence.

(I'm really not a Waseda fan. I'm just an Ohishi fan. I don't really HAVE a college I root for per se, but if I had to pick one I'd probably go with Hosei.)

Anyway, Ohishi came out there and started working his usual magic. Urushibata, strikeout! Fuchigami, strikeout! Yamaguchi... okay, Yamaguchi singled to right. And then he stole second, and Waseda freshman catcher Shota Sugiyama chucked the ball into centerfield, so Yamaguchi got all the way to third base. But then, Hayata Itoh... STRIKEOUT!

I briefly wondered if the day's bizarre event would be Ohishi striking out 18 guys, which is what he would need to pass Kenji Tomura's strikeout total of 46.

But, no, that is NOT what would come to pass.

Kazuya Onodera led off the top of the 2nd inning for Keio, and hit a solid double to right. Tatsushi Yumoto followd it up with another single to right, moving Onodera to third. And then Ryosuke Yamamoto followed that with ANOTHER single, this time to left, scoring Onodera. 1-0. These were all pretty hard-hit balls, I should add, and Ohishi was only throwing in the 130's and low 140's, not his usual flamethrowing stuff when he's pitching in relief.

Masahiro Nagasaki then made the first out of the inning, trying to bunt, failing, trying to bunt again, failing, and on the third try first baseman Hironobu Hara just watched the bunted ball roll foul.

Junpei Komuro came up and bunted, but this time Ohishi was ready for it and fired the ball to third base, getting Yumoto on the force. Two out, runners at first and second...

...and Keio captain Tetsuya Urushibata hit a huge one out to centerfield. It wasn't a home run, but it went to the wall and Hiroki Kojima was scrambling for it as Yamamoto scored, Komuro scored... and Urushibata made it to third for a triple! 3-0. Hitoshi Fuchigami then walked on four straight pitches. (This was ALSO strange.) There was activity in the Waseda bullpen, but Ohishi continued pitching... and Yamaguchi got ANOTHER hit, this time a double to left. Urushibata scored, 4-0. Yamaguchi would eventually be 4-for-5 on the day with 3 doubles.

Hayata Itoh walked, and it was back to Kazuya Onodera again, who had led off the inning. Onodera grounded out to first, though, the throw to Ohishi covering the bag, and that crazy inning came to an end.

Meanwhile Komuro was just setting down the Waseda batters like it was no trouble at all. It was surreal.

The 4th inning saw Keio go postal on Ohishi yet again. Urushibata led off with a single and stole second. Fuchigami bunted... and Ohishi threw out Urushibata at 3rd base yet again. Oops. Yamaguchi doubled again, and Fuchigami had to hold up at 3rd. Itoh struck out, but then Kazuya Onodera, the Fall 2009 batting champ, hit a single up the middle and that scored Fuchigami and Yamaguchi. 6-0. Yumoto walked before Yamamoto hit a pop fly out.

Ohishi was up to 96 pitches through four innings, and moved to play centerfield at that point as Yuya Fukui entered the game as pitcher.

Things settled down between both teams for a few innings at that point, so I'm going to interrupt this post for a minute to just point out that before Soukeisen, in 24.1 innings this semester, Ohishi had given up 13 hits and 4 walks and 1 earned run, and in this game alone, in 4 innings, he gave up 9 hits and 4 walks and 6 earned runs.

My conclusion? Ohishi can throw fast! He can hit! He can run! He can field! He can play centerfield or shortstop! He can fly through the air with the greatest of ease!

However, he CAN'T effectively be a starting pitcher.

I wonder what the difference really is in mentality, since he's been able to do things like pitch 5-6 innings in relief in his alter ego as Superman, but every time he's been a game starter, it's been a diaster. Is it just in his mind, or is there something he's seriously doing differently that makes it impossible? I worry, because you know I think he's a fantastic pitcher, and I really enjoy watching him pitch, but I also come from a mentality of "Relief pitchers are the guys who aren't good enough to start", and I'd rather think of him as being a lights-out closer rather than a pathetic failure as a starter.

Anyway, Komuro had a shutout through 7 innings, until the bottom of the 8th when Masato Fujiwara pinch-hit for Kenta Matsushita as an "obligatory 4th-year" appearance, and ended up SLAMMING one out to right field, I thought it was gone but it bounced at the wall over a jumping Yamaguchi and dropped for a triple. Taketo Shinsako, also a 4th-year, pinch-ran for Fujiwara, and then Ayuki "Keijiro's Little Brother" Matsumoto hit a sac fly to center which scored Shinsako to make it 6-1.

(The obligatory appearances by 4th-years is because Soukeisen is effectively the retirement game for these guys -- many of whom will probably not continue playing baseball once they graduate -- so in a lot of cases you'll see a whole bunch of 4th-years put on the roster for the last game, and they work their way in as pinch-runners or whatnot, just to make a last appearance.)

Yuki Saitoh came out to pitch the 9th, I guess since he only made it through 4 innings on Saturday and it was a blowout, they figured he might as well make the crowds happy. And he did... only it was the Keio crowds, as he gave up an infield single to Itoh. Itoh then stole 2nd base on the 2nd pitch to Onodera... and the third pitch to Onodera was wild and moved Itoh to third. The 4th pitch to Onodera hit him on the back. Yikes. (It was 4 straight balls, too.) So then Yumoto grounded out, and Itoh scored on the play. 7-1.

I was surprised to see Komuro still pitching the 9th given that he was up to 103 pitches and there were plenty of seniors who should have been able to get their obligatory last appearances in, but he continued. With one out, he hit Shohei Habu in the leg with a pitch, though, and then Yusuke Ohmae pinch-hit for Hara. Ohmae is a pitcher as far as I know, but I guess in this case he was just a lefty bat in a blowout game. But Ohmae ALSO surprised everyone by singling to right, moving Habu to 3rd! A freshman, Koki Sasaki, pinch-ran for Ohmae, and stole second during Shota Sugiyama's at-bat. Sugiyama, also a freshman, hit a sac fly to right, scoring Habu. 7-2. And before the out-of-sync ouendans could finish a round of "Konpeki no Sora", Toshiki Yamada singled to center, scoring Sasaki. 7-3.

And Komuro kept pitching. After all, there were two outs.

Captain Yosuke Yamakawa, another dude we've barely seen this semester, pinch-hit for Saitoh in the 7-spot, and fouled off pitches. Foul, foul, foul. After 4 fouls and 10 pitches total, he singled to left, moving Yamada to second.

That was 128 pitches for Komuro, and he came out of the game.

People saw a big lefty coming in from the Keio bullpen and were like "Oh my god, is that Nakabayashi?" but no, it was Takumi Matsuo, #17, also a 4th-year lefty.

So Yuya Watanabe pinch-ran for Yamada at second base, and Koji Udaka pinch-hit for Little Brother Matsumoto.

And naturally Udaka slammed a double to right, scoring Watanabe. 7-4.

Now, if the Bizarre Ohishi Effect was truly to take place, he should have come to bat at that point and hit a 3-run home run and tied the game, right?

Except the Waseda manager thought differently and pulled their lefty-batting closer-turned-centerfielder and put in a pinch-hitter, righty sophomore Daisuke Ichimaru, whose first and only appearance this semester was on Saturday.

And Ichimaru grounded out. Game over, Keio wins 7-4. And so Keio won Soukeisen as well, for a change.



Both teams went to bow and wave goodbye to their respective cheering sections. Urushibata, the Keio captain, was BAWLING. Players kept coming over and playfully hitting him or turning his cap or whatever. The thing is, for him and Nakabayashi and a few of the other guys, this marks the end of SEVEN YEARS playing baseball in a Keio uniform, since they were all together at Keio high school as well. That's got to be pretty overwhelming.

I was kind of bummed to be sitting so far back though, because the postgame interview was Urushibata, Komuro, and Onodera. Urushi was still wiping his eyes, and Onodera kept waving to random people in the stands. And I couldn't really see/hear any of it.

Anyway, I left shortly after that, with the interest of getting something to eat and getting home in time to watch the Japan Series game 2, which would start at 6:15pm and supposedly have Darvish pitching. The good part is, I got home in plenty of time. The bad part is, I apparently missed the closing ceremonies and the Meiji victory announcement. I kind of realized that on my way out of the park when I saw the Meiji baseball club bus parked out there, but wasn't about to head back in or whatever.

(But there are a few photos from it up on the Meiji baseball team blog, and it looks like I would have had to stay until past 5pm, which was just not happening.)

I'll probably try to go to at least some part of the fall Jingu taikai, which involves both high school and college teams -- if nothing else, to see Meiji (U), Soka (U), and Teikyo (HS)...

I didn't actually make it to Soukeisen this weekend for various reasons, mostly weather-related -- not really worth braving the Handkerchief Posse crowds to sit out in the rain, basically. Instead, I went to Fighters Town Nippori (aka Yakiniku Erika) with Pau (who is a Hanshin fan) and we watched the Tigers-Fighters game there. The Fighters won and we got to chat with Hichori's dad a bit -- and even he said that Hichori's in kind of a slump these days. Very sad.

My school had its Sports Day on Sunday, so I couldn't go to Jingu that day, and it rained pretty hard in the late afternoon anyway. But I had Monday off in exchange for Sunday, so I planned to go to Jingu no matter what -- either for the third game of Soukeisen or for the first day of the rookie tournament. And well, Waseda won the second Soukeisen game on Sunday, so there was no third game.

When I heard about Sunday's Soukeisen game, though, I was REALLY sad that I couldn't be there. Not because Waseda won, but because of what some newspapers have dubbed Ohishi Theater.

If you somehow don't know already, I've been a huge fan of Waseda's pitcher Tatsuya Ohishi (大石達也) for the last few seasons. He can throw 155 km/h and strikes batters out left and right. Last fall he seriously struck out 34 batters in 16 innings, and that was without facing Tokyo. He allowed 5 runners all season. As a reliever, he's really amazing. This season Waseda tried having him start a game and that didn't work so well (probably because it just so happened that they tried it against Hosei, who were the eventual champions), but he still came out of the season having struck out 22 in 20 innings, a WHIP of 1.0 and an ERA of 2.70.

For a while it always felt like nobody really paid attention to him because they were so busy going nuts over Yuki "Handkerchief Prince" Saitoh, but lately I've noticed a lot of stuff about Ohishi-kun in the press. The cover story for the S09 issue of Daigaku Yakyu has Waseda's Ohishi, Saitoh, and Fukui-kun. The "featured interview pair" in College Base Heroes magazine is with Saitoh and Ohishi. Everyone generally agrees that he's going to be a high draft pick next year; me, I want to see him as the Fighters' closer in a few years, of course. I can dream, right?

But nothing, nothing, NOTHING tops what he did on Sunday.

At first when I looked at the box score from Sunday's Soukeisen game, where Waseda won 6-5, I did a double-take: why was there a [6] next to Ohishi's name? Did he START at SHORTSTOP? They put their CLOSER in as the STARTING SHORTSTOP? Whaaaaaat?

And as reported in several places, that is exactly what they did. There's even photo proof.

Not only that -- he was apparently GOOD as the shortstop. He made diving catches to stop grounders, turned double plays, and to add to all of that, he also HIT A TRIPLE at the plate and scored a run. I didn't actually watch the game so it's hard to say, but I'd bet he was actually better than Gotoh out there. Ohishi was quoted as saying, though, "This was my first time as a shortstop in an official game. I'm not very good at fielding grounders. I had to work very hard and was really worried."

Then during the bottom of the 7th inning, while Waseda was at-bat, and in the midst of the rain that was falling, he was told to go to the bullpen and warm up to pitch, which he did, and he took the mound for the 8th and 9th innings, allowing no runs and no hits (though no strikeouts). All that AFTER having played the first 7 innings of the game as the shortstop.

Waseda's manager Ohtake apparently said that he was a "treasured player" and remarked, "I'd like to bat him in the 3-spot. If he devoted himself to playing shortstop, I think he could win a batting title!" and pointed out that players like Ichiro, Toritani, etc, all started out as pitchers. Ohishi, for his part, said something to the effect of "Well, now that I've tried being a shortstop, I think I've discovered that I truly do want to be a pitcher..."

Yeah.

Well, on that note, the Tokyo Big 6 season is officially at an end. By taking Soukeisen 2-0, Waseda actually managed to technically finish the season in 2nd place, having only lost a series to Hosei, the champions. Keio finished in fourth place, behind Meiji. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, as Keio and Meiji are facing off for the rookie championship tomorrow. I'll post about Monday's rookie games in a bit. (Though for the other Koshien nerds, before you ask: I saw Yusuke Yamada play for Rikkio, but did not see Kei Tamura pitch for Keio except in the bullpen.)

Also, the Best 9 for this season were announced:
Pitcher: Kazuhito Futagami, Hosei
Catcher: Shuhei Ishikawa, Hosei
First: Shogo Shashiki, Meiji
Second: Masatoshi Matsumoto, Hosei
Third: Tetsuya Urushibata, Keio
Short: Hiroshi Taki, Hosei
Outfield: Shingo Kamegai, Hosei
Outfield: Toshiki Yamada, Waseda
Outfield: Hiroki Kojima, Waseda

I don't think this actually has a damn thing to do with what position they play at all -- this is basically the best batters in the league by position, plus the Hosei Championship Factor. I'm pretty sure Hiroshi Taki wasn't the best shortstop in the league by fielding, as I believe he led the league in errors, but he certainly was by batting.

The brackets are full for the big college tournament next week, by the way. A lot of the usual suspects are there, but some others too; will be interesting to see how that goes.

ラストゲーム 最後の早慶戦 [official site]

If you are expecting to watch a movie about baseball, you will find that this is a movie about World War 2. If you are expecting to watch a movie about World War 2, you will find that this is a movie about baseball.

Soukeisen is a word meaning "Contest between Waseda University and Keio University", and while it can be used to describe pretty much any sport in existence, since the two universities have a long-standing rivalry in every sport, by far the best-known sports rivalry, and best-attended game, is the annual meetong between the two universities' baseball teams, which started over a century ago. Nowadays, the Soukeisen series is the last weekend of the Tokyo Big 6 University League season, and with the recent surge of stars on both teams, is a sellout event at Jingu Stadium.

But, that's not how it always was.

This movie takes place in 1943. After the 1942 season, in the midst of the war, the Japanese ministry of education dissolved the Tokyo Big 6 League, claiming that baseball was the "sport of the enemy". Despite that, the Waseda baseball club continued to practice baseball at Totsuka Stadium, mostly due to the leadership of a man named Suishu Tobita, who had been a player for Waseda near the turn of the century, and then spent years and years coaching the team afterwards. He was famous for a phrase, "一球入魂", which basically means "pour your soul into every pitch", and he tried to teach his players the spirit of baseball, as it were.

The movie opens with a beautiful breathtaking panorama of a reconstructed Totsuka Stadium, complete with Waseda baseball guys wearing the antique style uniforms and equipment, happily playing ball. You wouldn't even realize anything was strange about the situation, until one student, Junji Toda, goes home to meet with his family. His brother, a former star pitcher for the Waseda team, is dressed in full Japanese army uniform, and is apparently on leave to see his family for a few days. The brothers talk together, joke together, even note the old notches on the wall from where they used to measure height, seeing that they are now the same exact height.

After you've been introduced to the main character and his family, you meet his second family, the Waseda baseball team: his roomate, Kurokawa; the old housekeeper Wakasugi and her daughter (granddaughter?) Tomoko; the good-looking baseball manager/upperclassman Aizawa; and of course, the head coach and faculty sponsor of the team, Mr. Tobita.

Junji's brother heads off to war. They go to the stadium one last time, Junji holding his brother's sword like a bat, and his brother pitching the ball to him. "Take care of our family," he instructs him, and then he is gone.

Shortly afterwards, we see the newspaper headlines: the Japanese government will no longer allow university students to be deferred from the draft. Starting in December, all men aged 20 or above must prepare to go to the front lines of battle in the war. (You see, it's a war movie after all.)

The president of Keio, Mr. Koizumi, comes to visit Mr. Tobita. He has a request from the Keio baseball team: "We'd like to play against Waseda one final time before we go off to war. Let's make some good memories." Tobita agrees, and when he tells the team about the proposal, they are overjoyed.

Unfortunately, there's two major things blocking the event from progressing. One, the president of Waseda University won't allow the game to happen, because of the serious situation in Japan brought about by the war. Two, they can't do it at Jingu stadium, since it's being used for army training.

Even Totsuka Stadium gets taken over by army training; there are scenes where the baseball club is practicing on the same field as the military training for students. A baseball rolls over and the military captains yell at the ball players to "stop disturbing their important work", before Tobita steps in to prevent any further problems.

Well, Waseda's team continues practicing baseball anyway, because they believe in Mr. Tobita, and they believe in baseball, and it's really the only happy thing they have anyway, in the light of having to go off to war. (Well, the only thing, aside from every member of the baseball team writing a love letter to the housekeeper's daughter, but that's beside the point.) The Waseda president continues to insist that there will be no game, but in the meantime, the events keep building up to everyone telling Tobita they're counting on him to make it happen, such as Junji's brother dying and his whole family getting into a huge dramatic argument over whether Junji should be allowed to continue playing baseball.

So naturally with some perseverance and a lot of talking, and eventually just agreeing to go ahead and have the game behind the backs of the Powers That Be, as an "unofficial friendly game" the final Waseda-Keio game is scheduled to be held on October 16, 1943, at Totsuka Stadium.

In the movie, as in real life, the Waseda team plasters the Keio team 10-1 (as the story goes, the Keio team hadn't been practicing and the game happened with very short notice), but that isn't the important thing. The important thing is that the players got together for that final game and created a memory before going off to die in war. The scenes were reenacted as they supposedly happened in real life: the president of Keio sits with the students instead of in the nice seats. The teams got up and sang EACH OTHER'S fight songs as a salute after the game.

And naturally, footage of these guys is made to blur into the actual footage of the students taking part in military training five days later, to give some "names to faces", as it were.

The only thing is, aside from Tobita and Koizumi, none of the names of players in the movie are actually of real people from the real Soukeisen. The closest is probably that they had a guy portraying Keio's legendary player Kaoru Betto, but that wasn't the name they used for the character.

I watched this movie on a Friday afternoon in Urawa, and I would guess the average age of the patrons in the theater was around 60. Most of them were crying by the end (including this older woman down the row from me who was outright bawling). I have to admit that I had to bite back tears at a few scenes near the end; if nothing else, the movie really did capture the urgency of playing the final game plus the strong bonds that these players had to each other and to baseball itself, and how many obstacles they had to overcome just for that one final day in the sun before going off to die in the war.

I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this movie to non-Japanese people, to be honest. If you are interested in historical baseball movies and just want to see some gorgeous reconstructions of college ball from the WWII era, it's definitely worth it for that aspect, but if you really start thinking about all of the ramifications of the war, you'll get really depressed, I think. I felt distinctly uncomfortable leaving the theater, just for being an American, and I have to admit I'm almost worried about whether it's politically incorrect for me to review this movie at all.

I do think it is an important story to be told, though.

Another English preview of the movie is here in the Daily Yomiuri, written a few months before the movie came out, but has good background.

And here is an English article from Waseda's newspaper from a few years ago, reflecting on the last Soukeisen, including quotes from Takeo Mori (the real second baseman in the game) and some photos and a shot of a scorecard from the game.

Wikipedia article in Japanese about the final game: 出陣学徒壮行早慶戦, which means "farewell Soukeisen game to send students off to the battle front", essentially.

On that note, today is the first day of baseball for the Tokyo Big 6 University League! The weekend opens with Meiji playing against Tokyo and Keio playing against Hosei, and next weekend Waseda and Rikkio will join the fray. The season continues until the weekend of November 1st, when we can see a much less depressing Soukeisen. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing some exciting college baseball games this fall.