Marinerds, etc.

Oh man, where to start with this one.

I think there are two major things I took out of this game:
1) JR East's ouendan is freaking awesome!
2) Toshitaiko tie-breaking rules are freaking retarded!

If you don't already know, JR Higashinihon, or JR East, is the Japan Railways arm that runs all the passenger trains in the Tokyo area and up through Tohoku. (Wikipedia actually has a reasonable explanation of the JR evolution.)

I think that in order to properly talk about this game I have to start at the end and work back to the start.

So I went to the Tokyo Dome on Thursday night for a game in the Intercity Baseball Tournament, and saw Toshiba beat JR East 8-6 in 11 innings.

If you don't really know Japanese, you'd look at that box score like "What's the big deal? Toshiba scored 2 runs in the top of the 11th and won. So what."

Well, there is a line there that says 連盟規定によりタイブレーク, or "League regulation tie break".

I don't know whose brilliant idea this is, and it wasn't the first game in the series to have it happen -- the 11-inning 3-2 walkoff win by Mitsubishi Yokohama that moved back Tuesday night's game was also on a "tie break".

But basically, after 10 innings, the game effectively enters sudden death mode. Each team starts their offense with the bases loaded and 1 out.

So in this game, Toshiba led off the 11th with Katoh, Igawa, and Ichikawa on base already; Ryoichi Adachi hit a double to right and that scored 2 runs right there. JR switched pitchers from Katayama to Takumi Kon, who struck out the next batter, walked another and then got a groundout to end the inning.

JR came up in their half of the 11th with the same thing, Keiji Fujita leading off with Tsukuura, Matsumoto, and Genki Satoh on base and one out. Unlike Adachi, Fujita leads off by hitting a grounder up the middle, which shortstop Adachi promptly grabs, steps on second base, and throws to first to complete the double play. Game over.

It just felt like a really anticlimactic end to what really was a very exciting game.

Basically, I sat on the JR East side for this one, for a few reasons. First, I had already seen Toshiba's ouendan and wanted to get a good look at JR's, which I heard was top notch. Second, JR East has several players that I saw play in college or followed through college, and I was especially hoping to see Shuhei Ishikawa and Takuya Tsukuura play again.

This game was also moved back from 6pm to 6:45pm after the earlier games in the day went long, so by getting there around 5:30pm, I was actually downright early; some nice JR employees gave me a big green JR uchiwa fan and a player's list on my way in, despite that I wasn't in employee/team seating, and I actually got to watch the ouendan setting up from the beginning! Like, several groups of people in green happi coats got together to do vocal warmups and then set up their piles of signboards, while others were raising the JR banner, and others were setting up stage and the brass band and so on, and more interesting props as well. Infact, I wandered downstairs to get something to eat, and saw this in the basement concourse behind the JR area:



This is the JR East huge inflatable train that comes out a few times during their performances. It is QUITE a sight to behold when it does:



That is not just a train sitting there on a whole bunch of people's shoulders, either, that is a fully mobile train unit that goes running through the stands. I took two movies of it, one while their brass band is performing YMCA and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You":



And the other is later in the game and an actual train-themed song, "Galaxy Express 999":



Truly a sight to behold.

I also watched the ouendan get all of their groups together, and they had some greetings, during which they explained a little about their group, introduced the leaders of the various factions (the dance group, the brass band, the men's ouendan, etc) thanked everyone for participating so far, and begged us all to please yell and scream as loud as possible to support the team with our cheering.

Then they sang the company song with everyone present, and even got out their flags and set off the steam engines on the stage (these things were cool, every time they scored a run they set them off):



And then a representative from the Toshitaiko organization came out to present them with an award! Apparently they had gotten some sort of honors from the "ouendan competition", for filling their side of the stadium with people, getting them all to cheer, and especially for the JR Logo wave in the outfield (more on that in a second):





By the time the game got underway around 6:45pm, the entire 3rd base side was filled with JR employees. Looking down from the balcony, it was just a huge sea of green:



There were several places where a bunch of ouendan gathered in front with signs to coordinate the crowd yelling to the music; there were groups on either side of the stage, and then another group out by the outfield as well. The signs largely said things like "Ganbare Takashi" (for starter Takashi Saitoh) or "Kattobase [player's name]" for the batters, or a lot of "GO! GO! JR!"

These, for example, say "Katsuzo Tokyo", which means "Win, Tokyo!"



And then, something else that rocked, but there was a big group of JR people who had filled up two full sections in the outfield way before the game started, and I assumed they had something to do with the ouendan but I wasn't sure what.

It became clear in the 3rd or 4th inning when they all whipped out ponchos to wear and suddenly the left field cheering area had a JR logo showing:



Of course, the Chiben Wakayama Big Red C has nothing on this JR Logo.

Why? Because this logo could also DO THE WAVE when the team scored a run!



And I present two more videos of the JR East ouendan just for the heck of it:


This video, starting about 20 seconds in, is the song "Train Train" by The Blue Hearts. I just thought it was so appropriate that the Japan Railways ouendan was playing "Train Train". Though the reason I started filming at the moment I did was because it was Shuhei Ishikawa's at-bat; while at Hosei we cheered for him as "Ishikawa", they cheer for him as "Shuhei" with JR, so that's what they're yelling as one of the cheers.


This is during the first inning; a pretty generic cheer, I was just filming for the heck of it, and then Takuya Tsukuura launched a home run into the left-field bleachers! (That moment is about 2:10 in this video.) So everybody went totally crazy afterwards.

Wheee.

For the record, Toshiba's ouendan did pretty much the exact same routine they did on Tuesday night, so it wasn't nearly as impressive the second time. It's true that JR's might not be as impressive a second time either, but they had catchier tunes and that train riding through the stands is pretty amazing, I'd totally like to see that up close sometime.

So ouendan aside, I guess there was some baseball going on too. Infact, it was just exciting all around, gamewise.

Righty Hayato Arakaki started for Toshiba, and aforementioned lefty Takashi Saitoh started for JR. And things got off to a very good start for our train heroes when Tsukuura slammed that two-run homer to left to make it 2-0 in the first. Tsukuura also took a diving leap into the field seats in the top of the 2nd to catch a foul ball for the 3rd out.

JR added another run to their total in the bottom of the 4th when Keiji Fujita doubled to right, and Tatsunori Saitoh hit this fly ball that went to shallow left... and managed to land right between the left fielder and the shortstop, whose hat had gone flying. Still, neither of them managed to get the ball in until Fujita had crossed the plate and Saitoh found himself on second. 3-0.

Takahiro Kudoh led off the top of the 5th for Toshiba with a home run to left that landed in almost the exact place as Tsukuura's to make it 3-1. Jun Yoshida hit an infield single that I'm still not sure wasn't really an error, but whatever. Ryoichi Adachi followed that with a clean single to right, moving Yoshida to second. Masaya Iseki hit a grounder to second, and it almost ended up being a double play, but the throw to first went wide, and so Iseki was safe and Yoshida scored, making it 3-2, before Shota Fujiwara lined out to short to end the inning.

Toshiba's Ryuta Matsunaga singled with one out in the top of the 6th, and Masato Ohkawara followed it with another single to put Matsunaga on 3rd base, and that's when JR pulled starter Saitoh for Taku Sakaue (or Sakagami if you look at some sites, but he had "Sakaue" on his jersey so I'm sticking to that)... who promptly gave up another one of these "it might have been a DP if we were slightly faster" grounders, and so Matsunaga scored to tie the game at 3-3.

Hiroshi Satoh took the mound for JR in the top of the 7th, and got a groundout and then got taken yard, as Ryoichi Adachi hit a ball to left that actually looked foul from my perspective, but was apparently a home run, making it 4-3 in favor of Toshiba. Satoh came out of the game and was replaced by lefty Yoshio Karasawa, who gave up a single to Iseki and walked Fujiwara, and also earned himself a trip back to the bench, with lefty Junichi Katayama replacing him. Katayama got a grounder to third out of Keiji Ikebe, but Kazuya Takeuchi bobbled the ball and it got to first base a split-second late, so the bases were loaded.

This is what they call a "dai pinch", in Japanese baseball language.

Katayama struck out Matsunaga to make it 2 outs and bases loaded, but then Ohkawara slammed a ball to left, and everyone was off running, and by the time the dust cleared, he was on second, Ikebe was on third, and the other two guys scored. 6-3. Ouch.

It didn't look promising for JR, especially since at that point Toshiba starter Arakaki had managed 10 strikeouts in the first 6 innings without a single walk (and was about to notch his 11th), but Tatsunori Saitoh managed to lead off with a single to left, and catcher Shoji Tanaka (he replaced Shuhei Ishikawa behind the plate in the top of the 7th) followed that up with a double to right, moving Saitoh to third.

So, Toshiba took out Arakaki and put in Kazuo Kido.

And Fumiaki Sawa came to the plate as a pinch-hitter...

...and hit a 3-run home run to left field, almost right to the JR logo! 6-6!

But Kido stayed in anyway, got the next two outs, and then the two teams and two pitchers (Katayama and Kido) stayed in a deadlock for the next several innings. JR got runners at 2nd and 3rd in their half of the 8th but couldn't bring them in. Toshiba had two runners in the top of the 9th (there was a really bizarre play where Ikebe grounded to the mound, and rather than throw to first or third, Katayama just RAN to the runner, Sudoh, who was stuck between 2nd and 3rd... and yet somehow Sudoh got back to the bag without getting tagged, and Ikebe was also safe!) and also couldn't bring them in. Kido struck out the JR side in order in the bottom of the 9th. And so we went into extra innings.

Katayama pitched a 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 10th, and then Genki Satoh led off the bottom of the 10th with a single! Daisuke Ikushima went to bunt him up... and hit a really poor bunt that Toshiba's catcher fielded and fired to second base to get Satoh on the force. Tsukuura hit a big fly ball to right, but it wasn't out of the park, and then, for all the stupid ways for the 10th inning to end, Ikushima got himself caught stealing second for the third out.

And then the *%$#@$!!ing tiebreaker thing happened, and well, you know what happened there. 8-6 Toshiba.



Game hero was, unsurprisingly, Adachi, for his go-ahead homer and then for his go-ahead double later on, AND he executed the double play that ended the game as well. Not a bad night for him, really.

(If you want to see game action photos from this game, actually, take a look at JR's team site.)

Also, incase you've never been in the Tokyo Dome balcony seating... this year they have the WEIRDEST thing I've ever seen up there:





I mean, I think the idea is that you're supposed to feel like you can shake hands with Wonder Boy himself, but to me, the hand just looks CREEPY. Seriously.

There were some very, very sad penguins outside the Tokyo Dome...



And I was actually so bummed out about the game that I took the subway most of the way home instead of JR. Of course, there's a Toshiba memory card in my digital camera that took all of the photos and videos for this entry, but that's beside the point.

By the way, at this point, Toshiba has made it to the finals; the final match is Tuesday night, Sept 7th, at 6:30pm at the Tokyo Dome, Toshiba vs. JR Kyushu. I don't think I'm going to go, as the Fighters are in the Seibu Dome for their last Kanto series of the year.

Now that Koshien for kids is over, Koshien for adults, aka the Intercity Baseball Tournament, has started! 32 corporate teams from all over Japan get together at the Tokyo Dome for almost 2 weeks of a big single-elimination baseball tournament! Just like Koshien, the teams bring all of their students employees to come cheer for them, and their brass bands and ouendan and dancing cheer girls and all, just that everyone is 10-15 years older than the Koshien kids, and rather than school uniforms, all the people in the stands are wearing suits and bright colored towels from their company. Also, it is played indoors at the Tokyo Dome rather than outdoors under the sweltering heat. But other than that, it's about the same.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I went to the bracket drawings for this, though at the time I was already vaguely planning to be out of town for the first weekend of it, so even at that time my thought was "The first game I can get to is Toshiba's. At least maybe I can see Waizumi and Urushibata play again."

So with that in mind, I headed down to the Tokyo Dome on Tuesday night, first stopping at the McDonald's by the dome to get a Tsukimi Burger combo. (Tsukimi Burger is a seasonal thing every September, basically a bacon-egg-and-cheese burger. It is fantastic and the only reason I will go to McDonald's voluntarily rather than "it's the only choice at this time and place" or "I want WBC folders".)



The home plate entrance was relatively empty, but you should have seen the ridiculous line snaking around the stadium for the Toshiba employees and fans. Toshiba is located in Kawasaki City, a half an hour or so from the Tokyo Dome, so they basically get their entire company to "work overtime" for the evening, by which I mean "come to the Tokyo Dome and cheer for the baseball team". Toshiba has also sent a ridiculous number of players to the pros (right now the Fighters have Hirotoshi Masui and Tomochika Tsuboi from there, but you've likely also at least heard of Naoyuki Shimizu and Hisanori Takahashi and Hiromitsu Ochiai as well as probably Kiyoshi Hatsushiba) so it stands to reason that they also have a reasonable number of fans beyond just the employees who come.

Whereas their opponent, Tokai Rika, is from Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, a few hours away even by Shinkansen. And where Toshiba has been in the Toshitaiko 32 times and is one of the best-known teams, Torika has been in it 4 times ever, and 3 of those times were the last 3 tournaments.

So first, I was inadvertantly 40 minutes early for the game; due to the 2nd game of the day going into extra innings (with Mitsubishi Yokohama winning 3-2 in the 11th over Oji Seimei), the Toshiba-Torika game was moved to a 6:30pm start to give the bazillion Toshiba employees time to get into the stadium. I bought a balcony seat for 700 yen, since this is my only opportunity to sit in the cushy balcony seats at the Tokyo Dome usually... and the Toshiba side was PACKED, no empty seats to be had short of the outfield. I gave up and went to the Torika side and got a seat in the front row right behind the ouendan, behind 3rd base. I like watching the ouendan to begin with, which is half of the reason I wanted to sit in the front row.

But well, the Torika ouendan was way outmatched by Toshiba. Torika had 6 cheer girls and 5 male ouendan, and then an assortment of about 10 other dancers who came out occasionally, and one guy and one girl who were in charge of yelling/singing into a microphone. They didn't have a particularly huge brass band, and I didn't see many cheer guys in the audience trying to get the crowd fired up, though at least they DID have inflatable cheer sticks for people to bang together.

Toshiba, on the other hand, had a BASE unit of 8 cheer girls whose main job was to hold up letter signs that spelled out "TOSHIBA" on one side and "KAWASAKI" on the other. Then they had another 20-person dance group of men and women, with varying costumes, another 5 men who seemed to be the "ouendan" types, then MORE dance women who were only in the stands, and then a troop of around 40 guys whose job was to run around in the stands and get the crowd fired up, waving uchiwa fans and yelling a lot. Their brass band was huge, they had several mascots, and they also had a bunch of people on "yelling/singing" duty as well.

Seriously, you could have gone to this game just to watch Toshiba's ouendan and probably not come out disappointed. Unless, of course, you were sitting on the Torika side.

Let me show you what I mean, anyway. For example, these two photos were taken in the 5th inning:


Tokai Rika side, seen from behind Toshiba ouendan. Note all the empty space.


Toshiba side, seen from behind Tokai Rika ouendan. Note that even the OUTFIELD and SECOND FLOOR are PACKED. Toshiba employees continued filing into the stadium well into the middle of the game.

So beyond the obvious geographical constraints in rousing up a huge audience, let's talk about these bands for a minute.

Torika had three main problems IMO:
1) Lack of people. Perhaps due to the size of the company more than anything, but there is only so much you can do when your ouendan is that small, and the ouendan does depend on how many people at the company exist to join it in the first place.
2) Lack of variety. Seriously, everything their brass band played is something you will hear being played by every high school band as well.
3) Lack of brass band repertoire even so. Almost half the time they didn't even have the brass band play, but instead played music over a tape for their cheer girls or dancers to dance to.

For example, this is one of their early innings. If you are familiar with high school baseball here, you will recognize all of these songs:



And when the band wasn't playing, they had two other dance groups; one was girls in black leotards and tutus who seemed to be hopping around and baton-twirling to pop stuff like Arashi, and then there was a more traditional Japanese group of dancers:



Here's a video of them doing Soran Bushi, which is a very very old Japanese fishing-related dance:



To be fair, they are at least as good at the Soran Bushi dance as my junior high school students who dance it every year for our Sports Day...

Anyway, for what they have, they do okay, I suppose. But they can't compare to the ouendan kickass of Toshiba, who come out in full force for this event.

One main thing is that Toshiba actually has a sort of standby "Toshiba" cheer, distinctive and with an actual tune to it, where girls hold up TOSHIBA signs that spell something else on the back. I saw a version on YouTube that were "VICTORY" on the other sides, but this is what they had for us:






And here, after the brass band does a riff of Footloose, they are actually doing that TOSHIBA cheer:



I feel a little bad for the girl holding the A, who kept getting confused about where she was supposed to be facing at any given time.

Here are two other videos I took of the Toshiba ouendan:


Dance routine.


Flag routine. Ryuta Matsunaga hit a double during this, which is why all the cheering suddenly.

Anyway...

The Toshiba band solidly defeated the Torika band, and well, the Toshiba baseball team also defeated the Torika baseball team.

Lefty Teruo Kawawaki started for Tokai Rika, and righty Takashi Fujita for Toshiba. It was actually a pretty close game for the first 5 innings, scoreless, although that was mostly due to Toshiba's guys batting into two double plays in the 2nd and 3rd innings, and then running themselves into a failed sac bunt in the 5th.

But then the floodgates opened in the 6th; with one out Ryoichi Adachi singled to center, and Masaya Iseki followed it with a single to right -- the throw came to third but Adachi slid in JUST safe there. Shota Fujiwara hit a sac fly to right and that scored Adachi to make it 1-0. Keiji Ikebe, a loan player from ENEOS, singled to right as well to advance Iseki, and Tokai Rika changed pitchers to Yuta Murai... and Ryuta Matsunaga singled again to drive in Iseki, making it 2-0.

And that was pretty much the game, aside from a Torika fireballer named Masaya Kanemaru who walked two guys in the bottom of the 8th before Ikebe lined into an unassisted double play (shortstop catches the ball and steps on 2nd base for the force).

Toshiba won 2-0, and Torika got two hits the entire game, both by right-fielder Tomoyuki Ishikawa, who I was actually pretty impressed by, even if he's no Ichiro. Toshiba's Fujita got a CG shutout with 5 strikeouts, no walks, 2 hits, facing 29 batters, throwing 84 pitches. Not bad at all.

Official score here.



Only sad thing is that the college players I was hoping to see didn't play. I'd actually seen Matsunaga before when he was in college at Toyo, but it was a little different. I am heading back to the Dome though for Toshiba vs. JR East, so we'll see.