Marinerds, etc.

I've been a giant fan of Japanese college baseball since 2007, and when I was living in Japan I pretty much spent every weekend at the Tokyo Big 6 games, sitting in the front row taking photos with some friends, going outside and chatting up players after the games, getting photos with them and getting the photos I took of them autographed, and also bringing snacks for the players and jokingly offering to be everyone's English teacher.  This resulted in things like several years in a row, I had actually been out drinking with guys who got drafted, and other shenanigans.

Somewhere along the line I became somewhat obsessed with actually being there in person for a Tokyo University win again.  (I was there when they won a game in 2008, and I was there for a few ties.)  So I started prioritizing those games, and somehow my allegiance shifted from being well-known as a Hosei/Keio fangirl to a Todai fangirl.  It means I am not buddy-buddy with guys in the pros so much anymore, but the Todai guys are always the nicest, smartest, and most interesting ones anyway. Plus, since I've been working for Google for over seven years now, and we have a LOT of Todai grads, it has also been a running joke with a lot of my coworkers in the Tokyo office.

So a decade ago I wrote a post on here called The I-Lost-To-Todai Club pointing out that, since Todai basically can go whole years without winning a game, when they DO actually win, it's a big deal (the slogan on the Fall 2016 posters literally said "We make the news just by winning one game") -- but the pitchers who lose to them aren't generally crappy pitchers -- they're the ones who often end up going into the pros.

Traditionally, the Tokyo Big 6 University League has had a Rookie Tournament at the end of each semester.  For the three days following the Waseda-Keio final weekend, there would be three days of this tournament, with each day having two games.  The first day would eliminate two teams.  The second day would result in two winners and two losers; the two winners would play each other for the championship on the third day, and the two losers would play each other for 3rd place.

The rules on who could participate in the tournament was "1st and 2nd years" with no restrictions as far as I know, although in general, the purpose of the tournament was for players who wouldn't normally get playing time in league games to get a chance to play in some real games at Jingu and all, so if a team had a bunch of star freshmen, you wouldn't likely see them in the Rookie games.

On the other hand, the Rookie Tournament also gave managers the option to try interesting things -- Megumi Takemoto made her pitching debut at Jingu in the Fall 1999 Rookie Tournament as the first Japanese woman to ever take the mound in a Big 6 game.  (The first woman was American Jodi Haller who pitched an inning for Meiji in 1995.)  Two years after Takemoto's rookie debut, she would face off against Meiji's "female Matsuzaka", Chihiro Kobayashi, in a real league match.

Anyway, this year they're going to try something different and do an entire round-robin Rookie League, with 15 games total, each team playing every other team once.  These games will be played mostly on weekends before normal Big 6 games, by the same pair of teams that play the first game that day (so you can see two games of Hosei-Waseda on April 9th, for example).  The reason for this is mainly that underclassmen wouldn't really get much playing time even in the Rookie tournament, especially if they were on a team that got eliminated on the first day, so this is a way for younger players to get more playing time without sacrificing any playing time for the upperclassmen who are trying to show off in front of scouts and prospective corporate team employers.  It's almost like a farm system!

http://www.big6.gr.jp/game/rookie/2017s/2017s_rookie_schedule.html

It sounds like for Todai, upperclassmen will be allowed to fill out the team.  This is because Todai doesn't have suisen, or "athletic recommendations", as a route to attending the university and participating in sports, unlike the other 5 schools.  The other 5 schools will have plenty of freshmen on their roster -- some of whom have been training with the university team since early in February.  In a lot of these cases, they are players who played at Koshien or otherwise had bright baseball careers in high school, and were allowed into the university with either a reduced entrance exam or in some cases, no entrance exam at all, especially if they came in through a feeder high school.

Keio is the weird case in that everyone who graduates from Keio HS can automatically attend Keio University, although graduating from Keio HS is no small feat.  I've also gotten the impression that it's rare for someone to not get into Hosei or Rikkio after graduating from their feeder schools (they just don't have that many).  Whereas Waseda has many feeder schools all over the country, and so there's no guarantee that attending one will get you into Waseda.

So if you saw a star player at Koshien who didn't go into the draft, and wondered what happened to them, chances are they already got themselves accepted to a top sports college before the normal applications for admission were even open.

Todai will get freshmen on their team, once people show up at the university and decide to join the baseball team and all, but it won't be in time for the rookie league.

Here's the schedule, translated:

Date	Start Time	Matches		Regular Games After?
4/9 (Sun)	8:00am	Hosei-Waseda		H-W, M-T
4/15 (Sat)	8:00am	Todai-Keio		T-K, R-H
4/16 (Sun)	8:00am	Rikkio-Hosei		R-H, T-K
5/6 (Sat)	8:00am	Hosei-Keio		H-K, T-R
5/7 (Sun)	8:00am	Todai-Rikkio		T-R H-K
5/13 (Sat)	8:00am	Keio-Meiji		K-M, R-W
5/14 (Sun)	8:00am	Rikkio-Waseda		R-W, K-M
5/27 (Sat)	9:00am	Todai-Meiji		Soukeisen
5/28 (Sun)	9:00am	Keio-Waseda		Soukeisen
5/29 (Mon)	11:00am	Waseda-Meiji	Keio-Rikkio	No, not even Swallows
5/30 (Tue)	11:00am	Todai-Waseda	Hosei-Meiji
5/31 (Wed)	11:00am	Meiji-Rikkio	Hosei-Todai

Kinda surprised I haven't seen ANY coverage of this in English, so as usual I guess it's my job to write about the Tokyo Big 6 happenings :)  Of course this had to happen right AFTER I came back to the US!

This past Sunday, in front of a relatively small crowd (reported as 2000), left-handed pitcher Yuhei Takanashi of Waseda University pitched the 3rd perfect game in Tokyo Big 6 history, against Tokyo University (not too surprising).  The game took slightly less than 2 hours and Waseda won 3-0.

What I find hilarious is that Waseda Sports has an article about the game with interviews with the players and all, but the only boxscore they attach is the WASEDA box, which is of course NOT the interesting one.  How annoying. I basically went and found someone's written box score on Twitter and transcribed it (the interesting half):

Waseda 3 - 0 Tokyo
Sunday, April 21, 2013

                      1  2  3   4  5  6   7  8  9   R  H  E
Tokyo                 0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0
Waseda                0  0  2   0  0  1   0  0  x   3  5  0

Tokyo               AB  R  H RB  K BB SH SB  E     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
Shimojima, 3b        3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    G3 .. .. G3 .. .. G3 .. ..
Iida, 2b             3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    f3 .. .. G3 .. .. G1 .. ..
Kurozawa, 1b         3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    G3 .. .. F8 .. .. F9 .. ..
Arii, rf             3  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. KS .. .. F8 .. .. f5 ..
Kasahara, c          3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. f5 .. .. L5 .. .. G4 ..
Agata, lf            3  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. F9 .. .. F7 .. .. KC ..
Sawada, cf           3  0  0  0  2  0  0  0  0    .. .. KS .. .. KC .. .. G6
Nakasugi, ss         2  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. G5 .. .. G5 .. .. ..
  Iijima, ph         1  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. F2
Tatsui, p            1  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. .. KS .. .. .. .. .. ..
  Nagafuji, ph       1  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. F4 .. .. ..
  Shirasago, p       0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
  Nishiki, ph        1  0  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. KS

Waseda              IP   NP  BF   H  HR   K  BBH  RA  ER
Takanashi (win)      9  109  27   0   0   6   0   0   0

There are various articles around with photos and whatnot: sponichi nikkan sports

The last guy to throw a perfect game in Tokyo Big 6 was Satoshi Kamishige, who threw one for Rikkio on October 22, 2000. He's now an announcer for NTV.

This post is about a month and a half late. I actually ran the numbers for it a while ago (I hoped to tell Hayata Itoh exactly how much he dominated the league even though he missed the triple crown by one hit, but I didn't really get to talk to him at the Japan-US tournament), but well, you know, hopping between Seattle and San Francisco is time-consuming.

When last we visited our heroes, it was just after Week 6 of the season, and there was this complex dependency chart of who had to win what to win. If Rikkio went 2-0, which they did, then Keio had to win Soukeisen to win the league, which they did.

It never gets old seeing Keio pound Waseda, even though I know that right now Waseda is pathetically bad. I caught the final game over justin.tv; Daisuke Takeuchi was Keio's starter. Just as I was watching in the 3rd, Keio got a few runners on, captain Hayata Itoh came up to bat, and I'm like "He's gonna knock one, just watch" and sure enough, BLAM, liner to right field, 2-RBI double. Waseda did threaten to catch up a little, and made it all the way to 4-3, but Koji Fukutani came in and pitched the last half of the game and was AMAZING! He even hit 155 km/h on the Jingu guns a few times -- the only other recent Big 6 guy to do that was Ohishi and I keep saying Fukutani is BETTER, and god knows I used to talk about how awesome Ohishi was all the damn time.

Keio won the league, Daisuke was crying, Itoh was smiling up a storm, etc, they had a doage, and my three favorite boys were the game heroes as well. And in Itoh's interview, when they mentioned he was one hit short of the triple crown (17-for-42 .405 to Yuji Naka's 23-for-55 .418), he's like "Oh man. Well, we won the league, that's what really counts, right?" But then he admitted something like "One more hit? Only one? Yeah... I guess I suck for being that close..." Either way, Itoh had the most RBIs in the league with 17, homers with 4, and then he also walked 12 times to Naka's 4.

Anyway, on that note, let me post some season-summarizing stuff:

Best Nine
Pos  Name                 College  Yr.  Votes  Times   High School

P    Masato Komuro        Rikkio    3    18      1     Hino
C    Naoki Harada         Hosei     4    16      1     Ube Shogyo
1B   Ikuhiro Takeda       Meiji     4    10      1     Hotoku Gakuen
2B   Keisuke Okazaki      Rikkio    4    16      1     PL Gakuen
3B   Ren Yamasaki         Keio      3    21      1     Keio
SS   Koichiro Matsumoto   Rikkio    2    17      2     Yokohama
OF   Hayata Itoh          Keio      4    22      3     Chukyodai Chukyo
OF   Yuji Naka            Rikkio    4    22      1     Osaka Toin
OF   Hiroaki Shimauchi    Meiji     4    17      1     Seiryo

Full vote is 22, and it's clear that big-hitting outfielders are everyone's favorites. I'm guessing Hosei's Hiroshi Taki took the other 1B votes that Takeda didn't (they were both up there on the batting, but Taki made 2 errors). It's also awesome to see Naoki Harada get a Best Nine -- he's a really great guy who was mostly just a random baseball club member for 3 years, and kind of had to be a backup catcher behind Ishikawa and then Hiromoto and Doi, but now as a senior and co-captain of the Hosei team got a decent chunk of playing time and really put it to good use. It's a little funny because I was positive that Meiji's Kawabe and Waseda's Ichimaru would be the ones vying for the catcher Best Nine this semester, and both of them had pretty lousy results.

I'm happy to see Komuro get a Best Nine, because he literally carried his team on his back this semester -- he led the league in IP at 66.2, and appeared in 10 out of 14 of the games his team played. The only person even close to logging that much time was Yusuke Nomura, who pitched 65 innings in 9 games, the difference being that Komuro made multiple appearances every weekend except vs. Todai. He also led the league in wins -- here are the top 4 in innings logged (and, of course, wins -- nobody else had more than 45 IP or 4 wins):

Pitcher     College     Games  W   L   IP     ERA    WHIP
Komuro      Rikkio      10/14  6   2   66.2   1.35   1.11
Nomura      Meiji        9/14  5   3   65     2.07   0.78
Mikami      Hosei        8/13  4   2   47.2   2.26   1.32
Takeuchi    Keio        11/13  5   2   46.1   2.13   1.19

Also, I stalked Komuro briefly outside Jingu during opening weekend and told him I'd cheer for him this semester, so I feel like I had to stick to that. :)

As an aside, after last semester I compared Yusuke Nomura to Koji Fukutani as a case for the Best Nine, and noted that Nomura's peripherals were far superior to Fukutani's in terms of strikeout and walk rates. I'm proud to note that it's no longer the case, but this is largely because Fukutani became Keio's closer, and still put in 30 innings for the semester, just that this time they were all the last 2-3 innings of every Keio game. He didn't even give up a run at all until 3/4 of the way through the season, though...

Here's Spring 2010 Nomura vs. Fukutani:

            IP    H  HR  BBH  WHIP   BF    K/BF  BB/BF   H/BF
Fukutani   61.1  43   0  19   1.01  237   18.1%   8.0%  18.1%
Nomura     55.1  48   0   8   1.01  216   25.0%   3.7%  22.2%

And here's Spring 2011 Nomura vs. Fukutani:

            IP    H  HR  BBH  WHIP   BF    K/BF  BB/BF   H/BF
Fukutani   30.1  17   0   5   0.73  107   37.4%   4.6%  15.89%
Nomura     65    44   1   7   0.78  243   28.0%   2.9%  18.11%

Seriously, these two are the best pitchers in Big 6 right now, at least when it comes to control. Nomura simply does not walk batters or give up home runs to them. Infact, his only home run was given up to Hosei's Ryosuke Itoh, the kid from Shinko Gakuen who hit 94 homeruns in his high school career.

Also, the craziest thing is that despite being the 9th highest in the league in terms of IP, Fukutani was the 3rd highest in the league in terms of strikeouts (Nomura 68, Komuro 43, and Fukutani 40). Those are Ohishi-esque numbers if nothing else. Of course, I've been getting a little bit of flack for having been such a huge Tatsuya Ohishi fangirl when he's been struggling to adjust to the pros so far, so maybe it isn't in my better interest to point out how similar Fukutani is developing as a closer.

Another Yusuke Nomura tidbit, just repeating here from a few months ago: his 68 strikeouts put him above 300 strikeouts in his Big 6 career. It'd take a miracle for him to get to 30 wins too, I think -- he's currently at a 24-11 record. It wouldn't be impossible, just a lot longer shot than if he went in with 25.

Batting and ERA champs

Batting champion: Yuji Naka, Rikkio, .418/.450/.527
ERA champion: Koji Fukutani, Keio, 1-0, 0.59

I don't mean to be dissing Naka at all, because a .418 batting average is nothing to sneeze at. He only had 2 hitless games all semester, 8 multihit games (out of 14), and bizarrely, those multihit games were NOT against Todai (though Todai accounts for 2 of his 4 walks).

But well, I mentioned that I started running stats in order to show exactly how awesome Hayata Itoh was this semester, right...?

Other "Relevant" Stats
I realize that 11-13 games and 50ish plate appearances are not a huge sample size, but well, that's what you get in a season here.

Top 10 Batters by OPS:

(K4) Hayata Itoh         .405/.527/.857    1.384
(R4) Yuji Naka           .418/.450/.527     .977
(H3) Kento Tatebe        .294/.390/.569     .958
(M4) Hiroaki Shimauchi   .385/.467/.487     .954
(H3) Hiroshi Taki        .320/.393/.500     .893
(M2) Hiroki Nakashima    .270/.370/.486     .856
(R3) Koichiro Matsumoto  .288/.377/.462     .839
(R4) Keisuke Okazaki     .282/.396/.436     .832
(K3) Ren Yamasaki        .269/.367/.462     .829
(K4) Masaki Miyamoto     .278/.378/.417     .794

WTF? No, really, WTF? I think this is seriously the first time since I've been doing these that a guy made it into the top ten OPS with less than .800...

Also, if it's not clear, Itoh completely dominated the Big 6 league at the plate this year. He led the league with homeruns with 4 (Hosei's Kawai had 3 but he didn't have enough PA to make it into batting leaders with his .143/.314/.500 line in 35 PA), led the league in walks with 12 (the next highest two were Keio's Fukutomi and Meiji's Uemoto with 9 each), and nobody even remotely came close to him on OBP or SLG with enough plate appearances to count.

Meiji's co-captain and all-around-nice-guy Masataka Nakamura is the stolen base leader with 10.

Team batting:

                                      HR   SB    E
Keio        .265/.335/.397   .732      9   11   12
Hosei       .256/.330/.402   .732     11   12   14
Rikkio      .284/.333/.381   .714      5   19   12
Meiji       .239/.305/.307   .612      2   22    8
Waseda      .223/.277/.277   .554      1    9    8
Tokyo       .203/.255/.237   .492      0    6    9

Despite Todai ostensibly sucking, they were actually much better than last semester. Truly impressive is the power numbers out of Keio and Hosei, IMO -- and how far Waseda has fallen.

Team pitching:

               ERA   WHIP    K/9   BB/9
Keio          1.61   1.04   8.09   3.00
Meiji         2.10   0.99   8.49   2.03
Rikkio        2.20   1.28   5.90   3.27
Hosei         2.83   1.36   6.93   3.15
Waseda        4.61   1.52   8.92   5.50
Tokyo         5.10   1.74   3.90   5.57

Again, amusing to see how far Waseda has fallen now that they don't have their Big Three... and kind of sad with Hosei. I hope Kazuki Mishima has a better semester in the fall. It'd be nice to see him and Mikami as starters but also to have Funamoto and Yoshikoshi get some quality innings in...

I dunno. The one thing is that Rikkio really pushed forward a lot this semester in most ways. If Komuro can repeat his performance and one other pitcher can step up at all (Hayato Saitoh, I'm looking at you), it's going to be a pretty serious race in the fall. Basically, I think every team has improved in some way since last year except Waseda, which took a huge punch in the face. A lot of individuals will be looking towards their own personal goals, and of course the scouts will be out there looking particularly closely at Nomura and Itoh. Some of the Koshien hero 1st-years may get some more time out on the field as well.

On that note, almost every school has posted their summer camp and preseason info. Meiji is going to KOREA for a week! I wrote a birthday card to Tomoya Kumabe and told him to have a good trip (and to convince the team to visit the US next time...)

Rikkio: Miyazaki camp from Aug 2-13 and preseason game schedule
Meiji: Nagano camp from Aug 4-13, and Korea trip from Aug 16-22, and preseason game schedule
Hosei: preseason game schedule
Waseda: preseason game schedule
Tokyo: preseason game schedule

If anyone actually does want to venture out to any of these games and wants some tips on getting to their stadiums, let me know. I've been to Meiji and Hosei's grounds a whole bunch...

On that note, I'm still glued to Koshien qualifier scores, and I even managed to watch Hosei Dai-ni's game the other day over justin.tv -- it was really nice to see a Hosei game even if it wasn't *my* Hosei team. I won't be at Koshien this year, but I should be in Japan for some of the fall 2011 semester of college games!

As for Week 7, well, it sounds like Todai fought valiantly but fell 2-0 to Rikkio as expected, so Keio has to win Soukeisen for the league championship, which seems likely.

Meiji and Hosei were basically battling for 3rd place, as both went into the weekend with 2 Series Points, meaning they weren't going to catch Keio and probably not Rikkio.

Game 1

Saturday was Hosei's Tomoya Mikami against Meiji's Yusuke Nomura. It was broadcast on Sky A, and the usual suspect rebroadcast it on justin.tv. I watched it about 3 hours after the game actually happened, but kept myself from checking Big 6 scores until I got home, so it was "live" to me, which was fantastic.

The game itself was pretty good, too, for the first half at least. Meiji took first blood in the 2nd inning when Hiroki Nakashima hit a home run into the leftfield bleachers to make it 1-0. Hosei evened that up in the top of the 3rd when Mikami led off with an infield single, he moved up on a sac bunt, and then Kento Tatebe hit a double that scored him, 1-1. Meiji came back in the bottom of the 3rd when Takashi Uemoto led off with a single, stole second, moved to third when captain Ikuhiro Takeda reached base on an error by second baseman Junpei Morimoto (aww), and then Uemoto scored on a single by Hiroaki Shimauchi, 2-1. Hosei evened it up in THEIR top of the 4th inning when freshman Ryosuke Itoh hit a HUGE homer to right field, 2-2.

Itoh, for the record, hit 94 home runs as a high schooler at Shinko Gakuen, and is one of these "golden freshman" types; I saw him play at Koshien, and then when I went to Hosei's ground in the preseason, they were already making it clear he'd be cracking the real lineup ASAP.

Also, Shimauchi got injured running during the May 7th game; as a friend described it, "he ran to 1st base and when he got there, his leg kinda gave out and he stumbled." After the game they saw him going to the hospital in a taxi, and he sat out the rest of the Todai series. But I guess it wasn't too bad, because he played the weekend after that.

Anyway, the tie game didn't last long; in the bottom of the 4th, Yusuke Nomura led off with a single (BOTH pitchers got singles in their first 2 at-bats!), Yosuke Kobayashi bunted him up, he went to 3rd on a single by Masataka Nakamura, and then scored on an RBI single by Takeda. 3-2.

Hosei would never actually score any more for the rest of the game. Mikami only pitched 4 innings before sophomore Hirohisa Umeda took the mound in the 5th. Umeda pitched one decent inning, but then gave up 2 runs in the 6th, hitting Kobayashi with a pitch and walking Nakamura; Uemoto sac bunted them up and then Takeda got two more RBIs on a blooper fly kind of single to the infield which landed behind second base. 5-2. Kazuki Mishima finished out the last 2 innings with 3 strikeouts and no runs, though, so that was good.

Nomura only pitched the first 7 innings, while Takayuki Morita pitched the last 2 for Meiji, and he also got 3 strikeouts and no runs.

Game 2

Amidst a bunch of light rain, Hosei and Meiji met for their second game, with Kazuki Mishima taking the mound for Hosei and Gota Nanba for Meiji. All was normal through 7 innings; Meiji was up 1-0 on an RBI single by Nakamura. Kazuki Funamoto took over to pitch in the top of the 8th, and THEN in the bottom of the 8th, suddenly Hosei surged for 3 runs. Junpei Morimoto singled, and Taki hit a popout, but then Hasegawa got a single to center that put runners at the corners. During Naoki Harada's at-bat, a wild pitch scored Morimoto to make it 1-1, and Harada struck out. It was, of course, at that moment that Ryosuke Itoh hit his second homerun against Meiji, a 2-run shot to right, that scored Hasegawa and him, and made it 3-1. Shogo Shibata and Tomoya Kumabe (!) got the next 3 batters out to end the threat.

But they couldn't account for the WEATHER.

Meiji had 2 on and 2 out in the top of the 9th and the game got called due to rain, with Hosei winning 3-1.

So the series was tied at 1 game each.

Game 3

As mentioned in the short post before this one, Game 3 was where Mikami and Nomura had a rematch against each other. Meiji couldn't do anything against Mikami, amazingly, and Nomura gave up 2 runs in the 7th to Shohei Doi, a 2-RBI single. So Hosei won 2-0, and Nomura didn't get his 6th win of the year, but he DID get his 301th college career strikeout!

It's possible that he could get 6 wins in the spring and get to 30 wins, but kind of unlikely as he's never gotten that many in a semester before.


(BTW, in the time it took me to write up Week 7, Week 8 happened, and Keio did infact win the league! Hooray for Daisuke and Fukutani and Itoh!)

Despite that Nomu-chan always seems to be avoiding me on purpose, I still have a great amount of respect for the kid. Hard to believe I've been watching him pitch for almost 4 years now, since he was a senior at Koryo high school and came within 2 innings of winning Koshien 2007 before running out of steam.

Meiji played their final series against Hosei this past weekend, and lost it under bizarre circumstances (more on that in another post). Nomura pitched and won Saturday, and pitched and lost Monday. But despite losing the game on Monday the 23rd, he struck out 9 Hosei batters, which put him at 68 strikeouts for the semester. He'd had 233 strikeouts before this semester, so it means he ends the season with 301. (Nikkan Sports)

He's averaged around 40-50 strikeouts per semester, so if he continues that in the fall, he'll probably be able to make it into the Big 6 career strikeout records between Mikinori Katoh's 5th-place position at 371 and the 6th-place tie between Noboru Akiyama and Kazuhito Tadano at 334. (From here.)

Weeks 5 and 6 saw all kinds of turns that I wasn't expecting. Keio beat Meiji in a 4-game slugfest of a series, which gives them 4 Series Points. Each team has one matchup left to play out, and the standings after Week 6 are...

            G    W   L   T  SP   WP%
1  Keio    11    8   2   1   4   .800
2  Rikkio  12    7   4   1   3   .636
3  Meiji   11    6   4   1   2   .600
4  Hosei   10    4   4   1   2   .444
5  Waseda  11    4   5   1   1   .400
6  Tokyo    9    0   8   1   0   .000

Rikkio kind of lucks out in that their final match is Todai, which is almost a guaranteed Series Point, even against this New And Improved Todai.

Keio's last match, on the other hand, is Soukeisen, against Waseda. But it's against a Waseda that has been sucking it up after leaning on Saitoh, Ohishi, and Fukui for several years, and not developing other players.

Anyway, here's what's up:
If Rikkio loses 1 or more games during Week 7, Keio wins the league championship regardless.

If Rikkio goes 2-0 in Week 7 against Todai, then...

...if Keio wins Soukeisen, they win the league championship (they'll have 5 Series Points as they are the only team to beat Rikkio).

...if Keio goes 1-2 at Soukeisen, there'll be another League Playoff Game between the two of them, just like the one last fall. This is actually a very rare thing and to have it happen 2 semesters in a row would be crazy.

...if Keio goes 0-2 at Soukeisen, Rikkio wins the league.


I doubt Waseda has any shot at all of beating Keio, but who knows.

Also, Junpei Morimoto, the Chukyodai Chukyo pitcher I liked, made his freshman debut for Hosei at... second base? Kinda replacing Chukyodai alum and captain Masashi Nanba? And speaking of other Chukyo->Hosei kids, Kawai Kanji has 4 hits for the season. 4. But they're all extra-base hits -- 3 homers and a double. WTF?


BTW, I started a new job, and it's not only as a programmer/writer, but it's in San Francisco for the next 2 months, which means I'm commuting to the Bay Area from Seattle for now, so I'm probably too busy to write much here, despite that I am still following Japanese baseball as much as possible and going to a few MLB games here and there, though I'm still largely feeling bored when I do.

Well, first, Sanko won the Spring Tourney though it was much closer than anyone would have expected -- it went into extra innings and catcher Takahiro Suzuki ended up hitting a walkoff sayonara grand slam. I'm still trying to finish out my Sanko photopost series, if anyone cares.

But besides that, I ended up spending a bunch of time this weekend hooked on the text updates of the Rikkio-Waseda series, which, wonderfully, Rikkio won. I didn't write about opening weekend here (was too busy moving back to the US), but I stalked Rikkio players after one of the game and managed to catch Masato Komuro, who signed a photo for me and chatted a bit. He's really nice, and I told him I hoped he'd have a good year. Seems that I've cursed him like I did Kagami last spring -- now he has to pitch until his arm falls off because his team needs him. On the one hand, he's having an ace-like season, and got the 2 wins against Waseda, to now be 4-2, 1.63 for the season. On the other hand, he's been pitching like 17 innings per weekend on average.

It's not that I'm cheering for Rikkio in particular. I'm still kind of anti-Waseda out of habit, and besides that, last year everyone had been saying how Ohtake-kantoku was pretty much screwing over the team by only playing seniors, having The Big Three of Saitoh and Fukui and Ohishi pitch all the innings, and ignoring the underclassmen because Ohtake was quitting and didn't have to care about the next generation -- so seeing them lose now is sort of an "I told you so" feeling. And whoa boy are they losing -- if they hadn't beaten Todai (and they DID nearly lose a game to them!) they wouldn't have any Series Points this season.

I think if I was still at Jingu every weekend I'd be cheering largely Hosei-Meiji, but that's just because they've been often playing on the same side of the field, and I know the most players on their teams. I think Keio's going to win the league, though -- they're simply out-batting, out-pitching, and mostly out-fielding their opposition, for the most part.

I think the keys for Keio have been
1) captain Hayata "Clutchy McClutchitude" Itoh pretty much dominating the league with his bat moreso than he ever has before
2) Koji Fukutani being converted into a closer who rocks the 8th and 9th innings even harder than Tatsuya Ohishi did
3) Akihiro Hakumura and Kei Tamura stepping up to essentially be the #2 starter
4) the emergence of Masaki Miyamoto as another bat to be reckoned with

In other interesting things that are largely irrelevant to the standings, Todai's claim that they are going to suck less this season has actually happened, to an extent. Last fall, they had a legitimate former big-leaguer -- 16-year Chunichi Dragons veteran and Meikyukai member Kenichi Yazawa -- come in and act as a batting coach in the offseason for them. Something MUST have helped, because they already in 3 weeks have almost twice as many extra-base hits as they had all season last year, and almost as many hits period, as well as walks. Last season Todai scored 13 runs total; this season they've already scored 14. Small steps, you know?

What struck me most about this is -- well, opening weekend I thought Todai first baseman Yohei Tachi was batting pretty well and even told him so after one of the games. Since then he has continued on this tear of his and, bizarrely, is NUMBER FOUR IN THE LEAGUE IN OPS right now.

No, really:

                        AVG  OBP  SLG     OPS
Hayata Itoh (K)        .522/.613/1.130   1.743
Hiroaki Shimauchi (M)  .632/.682/.842    1.524
Kento Tatebe (H)       .412/.444/.941    1.386
Yohei Tachi (T)        .391/.500/.565    1.065
Naoki Harada (H)       .500/.500/.563    1.063
Yusuke Hasegawa (H)    .308/.500/.462    0.962
Yuji Naka (R)          .412/.432/.500    0.932
Masaki Miyamoto (K)    .304/.429/.478    0.907
Ren Yamasaki (K)       .310/.394/.483    0.877
Takashi Uemoto (M)     .278/.417/.444    0.861

Itoh's just a force to be reckoned with. 31 PA, 23 AB, 12 hits, 2 doubles and 4 homers, and 7 walks, 13 RBI. Nobody wants to pitch to this man.

Tachi, for a Todai guy, though... 28 PA, 23 AB, 9 hits, 4 doubles, and 5 walks. Believe it or not, Tachi is leading Big 6 batters in doubles right now.


Keio's Hayata Itoh, now sporting the captain's #10.


Meiji's Hiroaki Shimauchi during a preseason game.


Todai's Most Improved Bat, Yohei Tachi.


Pitching-wise, I don't have a lot to say so far. I will say that Komuro is clearly pitching more than ANYONE in the league this semester, at his 49.2 innings when the next-most is 27 innings. He also has 4 wins when nobody else has more than 2. This is because he is carrying Rikkio on his back.

What's kind of cool is how Koji Fukutani is doing as a closer. When Tatsuya Ohishi was doing that for Waseda, he posted some ridiculous numbers; always a WHIP below 1, ridiculous K/BF ratios around 30%, just these totally gaudy numbers. Well, I can delightfully report that after 3/5 of the matches this semester, Fukutani is managing to out-Ohishi those numbers.

These are a few stats for this semester so far. I sorted the pitchers with enough innings to count (varies by college, but there were 12 guys) by WHIP. The top 3 are the guys under 1.0. The bottom 2 are just for kicks:

                    IP     BF   H  BBH   K  ER   ERA  WHIP   K/9   BB/9  K/BF   BB/BF
1. Fukutani (K)     16     52   7   1   26   0  0.00  0.50  14.63  0.56  50.0%   1.9%
2. Hakumura (K)     15.1   55   7   4   13   1  0.59  0.72   7.63  2.35  23.6%   7.3%
3. Nomura  (M)      25     94  17   4   28   6  2.16  0.84  10.08  1.44  29.8%   4.3%

6. Komuro (R)       49.2  201  40  16   34   9  1.63  1.13   6.16  2.90  16.9%   7.9%
10. Takeuchi (K)    18     82  24   5   18   8  4.00  1.61   9.00  2.50  22.0%   6.1%

Daisuke got REALLY unlucky in opening weekend, I think -- LOTS of hits off him by the Rikkio batters. However, he didn't give up any home runs, and his strikeouts and walk rates are still fine. If the semesters were only longer here, I'm sure it'd all sort itself out eventually.

But oh MAN, look at Fukutani. He hasn't actually walked a batter yet this semester -- that "1" in the BBH column is from when he hit Hosei's Yusuke Hasegawa with a pitch. He's struck out half the batters he's faced. THAT is NUTS. To be fair, he was aided by an insane opening weekend the way Daisuke got unlucky, but still. Fukutani pitches basically 2 innings of every Keio game, which keeps him in the running to qualify for league titles. It'd be great if he could keep this up and get a bunch of awards and make the national team and so on :)


Akihiro Hakumura high-fiving Koji Fukutani.

I guess I'm kinda sniping NPB Card Guy here, but I got this set 2 weeks ago, right before Opening Day.

I have to admit that I'm overjoyed this set exists at all, as people were really iffy on whether Tokyo Big 6 merchandise would exist at all after Yuki Saitoh graduated, and several players even told me last winter that they were fairly sure there wouldn't be anything this year. Bizarrely, however, that is not the case at all, and you can get a whole variety of goods at Jingu and from Mizuno's shop. (It's even spaced out around Jingu almost like a treasure hunt -- one stall sells towels, another sells t-shirts, another sells cellphone straps... and there's no overlap, so you have to look around.) The only thing that seems to have actually been discontinued is Nikkan Sports's college version of the "ai" magazine series, College Base Heroes. Which is a SHAME, because it was AWESOME.

Anyway, this is the first Tokyo Big 6 set in three years to not have Yuki Saitoh in it at all. Hooray? (Thanks to my sniped card friend for the correction.)

What they seem to be making a big deal of in this set is "Get Nomura and Itoh's cards before they get drafted... and by the way we've put in insert cards of a whole bunch of NPB stars when they were in Tokyo Big 6!" Even BBM's official page only seems to show the alumni insert cards.

As before, I'd still be happier if they did 9 players per team instead of 5 per team and insert cards, but I guess that's what they think sells. (I kind of felt in the past that they did this because they don't want to waste 9 cards on Todai's team, though they could have easily added Katori, Utsumi, and maybe Hiraizumi and Yamakoshi to this set to make 9, and then other teams would get some more players that really deserve cards, like Hosei and Meiji's captains Nanba and Takeda, for a start, as well as guys like Meiji's Shimauchi and Uemoto, Rikkio's Naga and other Hayato Saitoh, and much as I hate to admit it, Waseda's Matsumoto.)

Card list (the number is the card number in the set, plus school year and position, and * denotes team captain)

Waseda:
1. Kensuke Ohno (4, P)
2. Daisuke Ichimaru (4, C)
3. Yuya Watanabe (4, IF)
4. Shota Sugiyama (3, IF)
5. *Shohei Habu (4, OF)
6. Waseda Team

Keio:
7. Daisuke Takeuchi (3, P)
8. Koji Fukutani (3, P)
9. *Hayata Itoh (4, OF)
10. Ren Yamasaki (3, IF)
11. Ryuta Iba (4, C)
12. Keio Team

Hosei:
13. Tomoya Mikami (4, P)
14. Kazuki Mishima (3, P)
15. Yusuke Hasegawa (4, IF)
16. Hiroshi Taki (3, IF)
17. Kanji Kawai (2, IF)
18. Hosei Team

Meiji:
19. Yusuke Nomura (4, P)
20. Kenji Kawabe (4, C)
21. Toshiki Abe (4, IF)
22. Yosuke Kobayashi (4, IF)
23. Masataka Nakamura (4, OF)
24. Meiji Team

Rikkio:
25. Hayato Saitoh (4, P)
26. Kenya Okabe (3, P)
27. Masato Komuro (3, P)
28. *Keisuke Okazaki (4, IF)
29. Koichiro Matsumoto (3, IF)
30. Rikkio Team

Tokyo:
31. Shota Suzuki (2, P)
32. Atsushi Tanaka (4, C)
33. *Shuhei Iwasaki (4, IF)
34. Yohei Tachi (3, IF)
35. Hisanari Takayama (4, OF)
36. Todai Team

Insert Cards:
(It seems that you get them paired by university. I got 2 Waseda cards. Dave got 2 Keio cards. Another friend of mine got the 2 Rikkio cards.)

"Heroes" (current student cards)
SP01: Shohei Habu (W)
SP02: Hayata Itoh (K)
SP03: Kazuki Mishima (H)
SP04: Yusuke Nomura (M)
SP05: Keisuke Okazaki (R)
SP06: Shuhei Iwasaki (T)

"Legends" (NPB alumni cards, so I'll list where they're from and where they are)
SP07: Tsuyoshi Wada (W) (Hawks)
SP08: Yoshinobu Takahashi (K) (Giants)
SP09: Atsunori Inaba (H) (Fighters)
SP10: Kenshin Kawakami (M) (MLB Braves AA)
SP11: Daisuke Hayakawa (R) (Baystars)
SP12: Takahiro Matsuka (T) (Fighters)


And here's a few photos of my set:


Front of the box. The pictures are a very weird combination of alumni and current players; 3 cards on the left are alumni but 3 on the right are current, and the 6 guys pictured are Wada, Yoshinobu, Inaba, Nomura, Okazaki, and Iwasaki.


Inside the box -- this is from the November 3rd playoff game, where Waseda and Keio were tied for the final record after Keio won Soukeisen and forced a playoff game for the first time in 50 years.


These are the insert cards in my box, the Waseda set of Wada and Habu.


I picked out my favorite card from each team: Rikkio's Saitoh, Keio's Fukutani, Waseda's Ichimaru, Hosei's Kawai, Meiji's Kawabe, and Todai's Iwasaki.

There are others I like -- actually I like all of the Keio cards and the Rikkio ones aren't bad either. They did a pretty good job with the photography in this set, IMO.

I hope it sells well enough that they still make an autumn set and continue to make these in general. It's funny, I stopped collecting NPB cards in general after the 2008 season except for an occasional box set here and there and of course the Fighters team sets, but I've always gotten the Big 6 cards because they're special to me, almost like having a beloved favorite set of minor-leaguer cards, really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last spring, Rikkio, Meiji, AND Waseda all did spring camps in the US, representing fully half of the Tokyo Big 6.

This year, now that I'm in the US, NOBODY is coming to the US for spring camp. Go figure.

The official Big 6 site some of the spring information up:

Spring Camps:

           Camp                                  Regional Preseason
Rikkio:    3/8 - 3/19: Saito City, Miyazaki      3/1 - 3/8: Tokai Region
Waseda:    2/28 - 3/2: Urasoe City, Okinawa
Keio:      2/28 - 3/15: Ishigaki City, Okinawa   3/15 - 3/21: Tokai Region
Meiji:     2/16 - 2/24: Numazu City, Shizuoka    2/27 - 3/10: Kyushu, Kansai, Tokai 　
Hosei:     2/20 - 3/2: Kamogawa City, Chiba      3/2 - 3/4: Kisarazu (Chiba)
Tokyo:     3/9 - 3/20: Miyazaki City, Miyazaki

(The Tokai region is kind of the part of Japan between Osaka and Tokyo, so like, Nagoya and Shizuoka and such.)

And here's the entire Big 6 preseason game schedule, in Japanese. All the games are either at the colleges' home fields or at the opponents' home fields, with the exception of the 3-day industrial league exhibition at Jingu, which appears to be from March 31 (thurs) to April 2nd (sat).

I'm guessing that Opening Weekend is still April 10/11, since only Meiji and Hosei still have preseason games going on until then; they were 3rd and 4th place last fall so they don't have league games until the 2nd week of the season anyway (the opening matchups will be Todai-Waseda and Rikkio-Keio). I still doubt I'll be able to stay in Japan that long during my March trip.

Patrick pointed out that the biannual USA-Japan collegiate match is going to be in North Carolina over July 4, apparently, so I'll hopefully be able to go to a game or two of that, and I'm pretty sure a few of the Big 6 boys will make the national squad (like Meiji's Nomura and Keio's Itoh and hopefully Hosei's Taki), so I'll get to stalk them there.

And speaking of Big 6 players that I used to stalk, here's a funny article about the Baystars ni-gun squad showing up in Okinawa, for their spring camp. Kisho Kagami's mom is from there (from the Tomigusuku area, it seems) and has a bunch of sisters and a whole bunch of her family still live there, so about 11 of his family members showed up at the Naha airport to greet him with signs and t-shirts and all. The Baystars will play against the Carp in July in Naha, so his family hopes he'll be at ichi-gun then and plans to have a big family cheering section for him, an "itoko-kai" (or "Cousin Clan" basically).

As for Kagami, he said, "It was REALLY embarrassing," and laughed, "but I'm glad that my grandparents and family members were so happy. I'll have to do my best because they came to support me [and so they can in the future]."

I know that basically only two readers of this blog probably have any idea who Junpei Morimoto is in the first place, but he's going to Hosei next year! I was just idly reading their list of incoming freshmen for the baseball club and that name leaped off the screen for me.

Basically, he was Chukyodai Chukyo's ace pitcher this last year after Shota Dobayashi graduated. I saw him at Koshien last summer (wow... I never wrote up that game) and also at Senbatsu this spring. Shin and I were there calling him Hichori as a joke, because he was Morimoto and wearing #1.

(Of course, you might also remember him if you saw the landslide Sojitsu 21-6 Chukyodai game at Koshien this summer, where he was responsible for giving up 11 runs...)

Anyway, it's just kind of neat to me because the Chukyodai guys in Big 6 have notoriously been very interesting to follow; both Keio and Hosei have Chukyodai guys as captains (Hayata Itoh and Masashi Nanba respectively), Keio has Daisuke Takeuchi as an ace, and Hosei got Kanji Kawai as a freshman this past year, and I saw him hit a home run both at Koshien in HS and at Jingu as a college player! And Soma Uendo, while he still hasn't broken out as a player in league games, is also a really crazy guy with high aspirations. So we'll see.

Of course, I'm most likely not going to be around to see Morimoto play in college but I still think it's cool. Maybe I'll get to stalk him when I visit next fall.

Now, looking at Meiji's incoming freshmen list is even crazier, because this past week I not only went to a bounenkai with several guys on the Meiji team on Monday, but then on Tuesday I went to a bounenkai at Yuji Ohno's izakaya down in Tamachi. Yuji Ohno is a former Taiyo/Yakult/Yomiuri player, and his son is the cleanup batter for Yokohama Hayato HS, so they had a ton of Yokohama Hayato stuff up as well as all the stuff from Ohno's career. So I told him, "I saw your son's team play against Hanamaki Higashi! They lost... but the only guy I really remember is Imaoka-kun..."

Well, Imaoka-kun is going to Meiji next year, or so it seems! Wow! He was nicknamed the "Smiling Prince" for a bit there, Hohoemi Oji, though it obviously was not as big a media sensation as certain other Koshien princes.

The next most intriguing name to me on Meiji's list is Daiki Maehira, the cleanup batter from Konan HS, the team that won both spring and summer Koshien in 2010. I know a lot of the Konan boys are planning to go to college, which is great. Wonder if Maehira will develop kind of like Shashiki did (he also came to Meiji as a lefty slugging Koshien hero first baseman).

And they're also getting Junnosuke Takahashi from Nihon Bunri. I have to admit that it's interesting he's listed as a catcher; I remembered him as an infielder at Koshien in 2009 (there were two Takahashis on the team, and Yoshihito was a freshman at Tokaidai this year; Ken D was a big fan of his), as the Naoki-Naoki battery was the big story of that team.

Anyway, wow. That's really cool. Of course, who knows what'll happen to Big 6 in general next year. I had a long talk with Meiji's Kawashima-kun about it, and he was saying that pretty much all of the merchandising done in the last 3 years (calendars, baseball cards, t-shirts, etc) are all being discontinued now that Saitoh's gone, and instead, the teams have been asked to think of ways to get people to keep coming to Jingu without a big name. Which is really sad. Though, even the non-Waseda games last year drew several thousand people on the weekends, so you never know. Yusuke Nomura's a surefire draft pick next fall, as is Hayata Itoh, so one would hope people would at least come to see those guys play... and Shohei Habu and Keisuke Okazaki are sure to be hyped up next year as well.

On the other hand, hearing how stuff is already getting kind of crazy at Kamagaya because of Saitohmania, I'm somewhat glad I won't be around for that. Maybe I *should* be aiming to go to Yokohama more instead when I'm visiting next year...

EDIT> Photos to go with the stuff in this post:


Chukyodai's Junpei Morimoto at Koshien in the summer of 2009.


Ippei Imaoka, from Yokohama Hayato, at Koshien in 2009.


Kota Ohno, Yuji Ohno's son, batting cleanup for Hayato.


Year-end party with some of my Swallows cheering section friends at Yuji Ohno's restaurant (he's the guy in white on the right. I'm kind of behind him.)


"This is a really cool glass!" "They cost 600 yen each."


Yokohama Hayato stuff on the walls from their Koshien appearance.


Swallows jersey and other assorted stuff from Ohno's baseball career.

I've been really remiss in my Big 6 posting, but the final week was kind of traumatic for me for various reasons. As I mentioned before, Keio had to sweep both games of Keisousen/Soukeisen, which they did, and then win another forced playoff game -- the first Waseda-Keio playoff game in 50 years -- on November 3rd to take the title away from Waseda.

As you can probably guess, especially since I mentioned that Waseda was playing in the Jingu Taikai, that didn't happen. Daisuke Takeuchi had a pretty tough 1st inning and Waseda took a quick 3-0 lead, which extended to 7-0; Yuki Saitoh pitched SEVEN INNINGS OF NO-HIT BALL before imploding in the 8th and Keio scored 5 runs to bring it to 7-5. Ohishi finished out the game for Waseda, and so IMO, rather than trying to win it, Etoh-kantoku put in lefty Takuya Masaki to pitch the 9th inning with Ryuta Iba as catcher. Masaki and Iba were a battery at Keio high school, YEARS ago, so it was a "last moment" for them. I'm not sure Masaki ever pitched in college, he always played 1st base when I saw him.

So Waseda won 10-5 and won the Fall 2010 Championship. The reporters and photographers had a total party with this one, of course, and so many cameramen were set up that normal people couldn't even SEE the doage where they tossed Saitoh and everyone up in the air.

There was a Fall 2010 Closing Ceremony after that where all the teams came out and lined up, they presented Best Nines and trophies for ERA and batting champ. I sat right behind home plate for that part. I should have gone outside to say a final goodbye to some players from the other colleges, and wanted to say a congrats to Kagami, but instead I ended up at the Keio retirement ceremony, held inside Jingu. At least I got to say goodbye to my favorite Keio boys afterwards (except Daisuke, who was nowhere to be found). Still, it was a really long emotional day for a lot of people; lots of players were crying, and even I was crying a few times, since it was ostensibly my last Big 6 game for a very long time, and I'm going to miss everyone a lot.

Anyway, on that note, let me post some season-summarizing stuff:

Best Nine
Pos  Name                 College  Yr.  Votes  Times   High School

P    Koji Fukutani        Keio      2    12      1     Yokosuka
C    Masahiro Nagasaki    Keio      4    15      3     Koshi
1B   Sho Nishi            Meiji     4    17      1     Toho
2B   Koji Udaka           Waseda    4    15      1     Imabari Nishi
SS   Hitoshi Fuchigami    Keio      4    20      1     Keio
3B   Kanji Kawai          Hosei     1    20      1     Chukyodai Chukyo
OF   Hayata Itoh          Keio      3    17      2     Chukyodai Chukyo
OF   Shohei Habu          Waseda    3    19      2     Koryo
OF   Toshiki Yamada       Waseda    4    16      2     Waseda Jitsugyo

Full votes is 22. Oddly, nobody got full votes. It really was kind of a difficult season to call, in many ways, especially with the craziness at the end. What is odd is that usually the position players for Best Nine are the best batters at each position, but that didn't quite happen this time, because if it had, Soichiro Tanaka should have had an OF Best Nine. (And in all honesty he should have had one anyway -- my picks would have been Shohei Habu, Soichiro Tanaka, and Hayata Itoh, both for their batting AND fielding.)

I hate to say this about Masahiro Nagasaki, since I'm a huge fan of his -- he is a pretty good all-around catcher, but his arm is pretty weak. He handles pitchers well, he fields fouls really well, and he certainly bats better than most other catchers (though Hosei's Takuya Hiromoto was the best catcher both in AVG and OPS this semester). But a lot of the other catchers have stronger arms and are better at actually holding runners. (Nagasaki told me he's quitting baseball after college, so I guess it's irrelevant now anyway.) I foresee a battle between Daisuke Ichimaru (Waseda) and Kenji Kawabe (Meiji) for the Best Nines next year.

I think Hosei's Hiroshi Taki was probably robbed of a Best Nine due to starting the season at SS and playing the last few series at 1B. Meiji's 1B Sho Nishi got the Best Nine due to his huge batting average, which was COMPLETELY due to going 6-for-6 with two walks against Todai during their first series. Nishi was 9-for-13 (.692) in the first two series, and then 5-for-28 (.178) in the last 3 series. Without the Todai games, Nishi batted a pedestrian .228 for the season. However, Taki actually saw his average DROP in a two-game series against Todai where Yoshihiro Maeda was going all out for his final two games EVER, hoping for just ONE win against his 23 losses, and really threw the best games I'd ever seen him pitch in his Todai career. Taki batted .350 in games NOT involving Todai. Take that as you will. (Or more like, give him the Best Nine, dammit!)

I'm happy to see Fukutani get the Best Nine, because he is awesome. He's tall (182cm), smart (was a top student in HS and aced the Keio entrance exam), humble and sweet ("You sure you want me to ruin this nice photo by writing my name on it?"), and can throw 95mph. It's clear that he barely got a majority of the Best Nine votes (12 of 22) and I am guessing a lot of the others went to Yusuke Nomura, with perhaps a few going to Kisho Kagami as well. These people tend to vote based on wins and ERA alone, which would give you those 3 guys tying for the league lead of 5 wins:

          W   L   ERA       IP   ER
Nomura    5   2   1.30     55.1   8
Fukutani  5   1   1.32     61.1   9
Kagami    5   3   2.31     62.1  16

So I'm guessing that Kagami was out based on his "high" ERA, despite how he essentially carried Hosei on his back -- he had more innings pitched than anyone in Big 6. On the other hand, Kagami gave up more home runs (4) than any other pitcher in Big 6 except for his teammate Kazuki Mishima. Whoops.

Fukutani probably got a few more votes than Nomura because Keio did better than Meiji, and Fukutani pitched in some REALLY key situations and did well, including basically getting a win AND a save in the 2-game Keio-Waseda series. If Fukutani had managed one more scoreless inning, he would have had the league ERA title, actually (it's that close -- 9 runs on 62.1 innings slightly edges out 8 runs in 55.1 innings).

But, if you look at Nomura vs. Fukutani by stats that "matter", it becomes a slightly different story...

            IP    H  HR  BBH  WHIP   BF    K/BF  BB/BF   H/BF
Fukutani   61.1  43   0  19   1.01  237   18.1%  8.02%  18.1%
Nomura     55.1  48   0   8   1.01  216   25.0%  3.70%  22.2%

There are only two guys in Big 6 with enough IP to qualify who beat Nomura's strikeout percentage. One is Tatsuya Ohishi, who ALWAYS posts the best K/BF rate in the league. The other is Yuya Fukui, who usually quietly has some great strikeout rates AND some lousy walk rates. And both of those guys were drafted last month.

Nomura easily has the best BB/BF percentage in the league. The next best is Kagami's 4.88%. Nomura simply does not walk batters or give up home runs to them. By the defense-independent breed of statistics, Nomura is just the best in the league, and has been for most of his college career.

On the other hand, Nomura got a lovely trophy for the ERA title anyway, so hey, give this to Fukutani. He deserves something for being awesome too, just like Daisuke did in the spring.

Batting and ERA champs

Koryo class of 2007 in the house!

Batting champion: Shohei Habu, Waseda, .386/.472/.523
ERA champion: Yusuke Nomura, Meiji, 5-2, 1.30

These guys, who were high school teammates that came two innings from winning Koshien together in 2007, are only going to get better next year. Watch out for them. I nicknamed Shohei Habu "Habunnai", a pun on the Japanese word "abunnai" which means dangerous, because when you cheer against Waseda, he's a guy you don't look forward to seeing at the plate.

Other "Relevant" Stats
I realize that 11-13 games and 50ish plate appearances are not a huge sample size, but well, that's what you get in a season here.

Top 10 Batters by OPS:

(W3) Shohei Habu         .386/.472/.523    .994 
(K3) Hayata Itoh         .315/.406/.556    .962 
(R4) Soichiro Tanaka     .327/.448/.473    .920 
(M4) Sho Nishi           .341/.438/.463    .901 
(H3) Yusuke Hasegawa     .278/.395/.500    .895 
(W4) Toshiki Yamada      .371/.436/.457    .893 
(R4) Yuki Maeda          .268/.380/.488    .868 
(H1) Kanji Kawai         .350/.356/.500    .856 
(H2) Hiroshi Taki        .319/.418/.426    .844 
(W4) Koji Udaka          .343/.372/.457    .829 
(K4) Hitoshi Fuchigami   .362/.415/.414    .829 

Astute readers may notice there are 11 names in this list because both Udaka and Fuchigami were tied for 10th.

This time there were no crazy guys with an OPS over 1.000, sadly, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Keio's Hayata Itoh and Rikkio's Yuki Maeda tied for the league lead for homeruns with 3 apiece. Itoh also leads the league in RBIs with 11.

Rikkio's Soichiro Tanaka and Koichiro Matsumoto tied for the league lead for walks with 12 apiece.

(Interestingly, Meiji's Katsuya Kawashima was next in walks with 10, but didn't have enough PA to qualify for the batting title lists; he walked those 10 times in 28 PA. His line for the semester is a BIZARRE .167/.464/.222; I wonder how he'll do if they give him the leadoff spot regularly next year.)

Hosei's incumbent captain Masashi Nanba is the stolen base leader with 7.

Team batting:

                                      HR   SB    E
Keio        .264/.317/.390   .707     10   13    8
Waseda      .268/.328/.341   .669      5    7    6
Hosei       .262/.315/.351   .666      5   16    6
Meiji       .255/.325/.323   .648      3   14    9
Rikkio      .241/.307/.329   .636      8   13   12
Tokyo       .169/.231/.187   .418      0    4   17

League avg  .243/.304/.320   .624    5.2  11.2  9.7

Nothing weird in the patterns this semester. What's kind of sad is how truly awful Todai was at batting -- they were 55-for-326 as a team, with a whopping SIX extra-base hits. SIX. All doubles.

Team pitching:

               ERA   WHIP    K/9   BB/9
Keio          1.96   1.13   6.70   3.05
Hosei         2.44   1.12   7.48   2.36
Waseda        2.69   1.13   8.16   3.87
Rikkio        3.12   1.32   5.86   4.12
Meiji         3.19   1.21   7.63   2.96
Todai         6.41   1.95   2.97   5.74

Hosei's pitching looks really great on paper, especially since Kazuki Mishima got his walks down a lot this semester. If only he and Kagami hadn't given up so many home runs...

Naturally, Waseda has the highest strikeout ratio, being as they've got a lot of power pitchers and 97% of their innings went to the Big Three of Saitoh, Ohishi, and Fukui anyway. (Not a joke. 103 of the 107 innings pitched by Waseda staff were by those three.)

BTW, one more run in the realm of Small Sample Size Theater:

              RS   RA      G   W/L/T      Pythag W-L
Waseda        45   33     12   8-4          8-4    .638%
Keio          63   33     14   8-4-2       11-3    .766%
Hosei         57   33     13   8-4-1        9-4    .731%
Meiji         48   45     13   7-6          7-6    .529%
Rikkio        52   54     15   4-8-3        7-8    .483%
Tokyo         13   80     11   1-10         0-11   .034%

I thought this was weird because the top three teams all allowed exactly 33 runs. What's up with that? No, but seriously, it was also curious that the Pythagorean win/loss tagged a lot of teams pretty closely minus ties, except Keio; though to be fair, Hosei was the benefactor of a 23-3 weekend vs. Todai, and Keio had a 19-0 weekend against Todai; no other team had a double digit game against them, oddly.

The lesson to be learned? Slamming Todai gets you nowhere! Losing to them is the key to success! Making history by almost forcing a first-ever 6-game series due to ties and then actually forcing a 1-game playoff later on will never win you a championship, Keio!

Just kidding.

Anyway, since every team EXCEPT Waseda has decided their next captain...

2011 Team Captains!

Keio: Hayata Itoh OF, Chukyodai Chukyo HS
Meiji: Ikuhiro Takeda IF, Hotoku Gakuen HS
Hosei: Masashi Nanba IF, Chukyodai Chukyo HS
Rikkio: Keisuke Okazaki IF, PL Gakuen HS
Todai: Shuhei Iwasaki IF, Kaijo HS

What's kind of cool is that I've actually met all of these guys at least once, and even have photos with or autographs from most of them. I guarantee I have not met whoever Waseda chooses (what do you want to bet it'll be Ayuki Matsumoto?)

Also, no pitchers. I'm of the opinion that the best team captains are often middle infielders or catchers. Pitchers have more than enough to worry about without the additional responsibilities of being a team captain, honestly.

And on an outgoing note, I kept forgetting to share this, so here is as good a place as any. Seiya Ohyagi, the outgoing Hosei captain, wrote a long and touching blog entry right before Soukeisen saying how he's known the Waseda 3rd-base coach Shoji "Bob" Nozaki since they were in middle school, and for one reason or another they never got to play baseball together again after that time, but had stayed in touch through HS and college rivalries, and he was sad to learn that Nozaki had given up playing and was coaching and rookie-managing instead, but felt that his old friend still looked "cool" out there anyway, and wanted to cheer for him at Soukeisen. And at the end of the post he put a photo of himself holding a "Seiya loves Nozaki" drawing. Very cute.

So a day or two later, on the never-updated Waseda blog, Nozaki wrote a response, basically saying the same thing -- that all of these years of their supposed rivalry didn't change that they were still Best Baseball Buddies Forever.

It was just very sweet and very Seiya. I think I'm kind of being unfair to Nanba in that there's no way he can live up to the way I saw Ohyagi out there on the field and before and after games as a leader and a representative of the team.

And another one of my favorite captains, Keio's Tatsushi Yumoto, also just wrote a farewell post on the Keio blog. The last time I saw Yumoto was on his birthday... which was that final playoff game on November 3rd, that Keio lost to lose the championship. Poor guy.

On a final note, the fall issue of 大学野球 is out TODAY! and has a ton of interesting stuff in it, including the usual list of which companies players are heading to next year. I'll try to put that up sometime when I have a chance.

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.

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.)