Marinerds, etc.

Because seriously, who else in the world but Hara would put Johjima batting fourth, make Hiroyuki Nakajima bunt, and get away with it?

I watched the nail-biting, helmet-splitting final game of the WBC from the Shinjuku Minami-guchi Hub, with Simon and Pau, and Simon's other friend named Simon (but pronounced differently). The game was scheduled to start at 6pm Pacific Time, which if you're doing the math properly, is 10am Japan Time. I had some things to take care of first, so I arrived at the bar around 10:45am, which turned out to still be during the first inning thanks to a long opening ceremony. People had me try to guess the lineup, and I mostly figured by their incredulous looks that a still-jetlagged Kenta Kurihara had to be DHing. Things like that.

The bar was packed with people, smoke, and alcohol. As far as I could tell, despite it being well before noon, most of the people in there were already at least one drink down by the time I arrived. Pau was wearing his Fujikawa jersey, so I put on my Fighters Ogasawara jersey. There were a scattered few other people in jerseys -- a guy in a Team Japan Ichiro jersey, a dude at the table next to us in a Hawks Kokubo t-shirt. One couple nearer the door, the guy had an oldskool Daiei Hawks jersey and the woman had a Kintetsu Buffaloes jersey. With "Nakamura #5" on the back. I think she wins.

I ordered some fish'n'chips and a pint of beer, and was already on my way to being pretty buzzed well before noon. Which was just as well, because this game turned out to be pretty high-tension. The atmosphere at the pub was great, though -- wild applause when Japan got on base or scored a run or struck out a Korean batter... and grumbling when the Korean team started to catch up. Shin-soo Choo's home run in the 5th had the entire place pretty silent.

Nakajima bunting had us annoyed; Inaba bunting had us confused, but Ichiro getting a bunt single was just a thing of beauty. And Uchikawa's play from left field to totally nail Young Min Ko at second was fantastic. The split helmet at second was also pretty dramatic.

When they were showing Darvish and Fujikawa warming up in the bullpen, we were trying to guess which one would come out, and we were right. There was a terrible, terrible feeling of dread in the bar as Darvish walked those two batters, and then the game was tied at 3-3. I think I got either my second or third drink at that point, I've already forgotten. All I knew was that no matter what Darvish did at that point, I'd be hearing about it for weeks, if not years. If he lost, it'd all be on his head; even if he didn't, I felt like the chances of winning in extra innings was slim. Korea had several guys who could win the game in one swing of the bat, but I didn't think anyone in Japan was really capable of it that day.

And when Ichiro got that single to put Japan ahead 5-3, the entire place erupted -- people stood up and were cheering and yelling and high-fiving everyone in sight, and spontaneously started a chant of "I-CHI-RO! I-CHI-RO!" We also had a chant of "ato hitori!" ("one more batter!") and "ato ikkyu!" ("one more pitch!") when it came down to the last batter. Simon has a bizarre video up that kind of captures the atmosphere. I took a few photos...


I-CHI-RO!


I do always refer to this place as being an "Engrish Pub".


And I wasn't the only one taking photos, see.


More celebrations and photos.


We were all AMAZED that Iwakuma didn't get the MVP award. Heck, even Matsuzaka himself said Iwakuma deserved it.


I thought it was a super-nice touch that they had Sadaharu Oh come in for the team photo.

I just wish I'd gotten a screenshot of when Uchikawa took Murata's jersey and put it over the trophy as well. That was a really nice gesture for his teammate.

Another amusing thing was how, at about noon, a whole bunch of guys in suits kind of strolled into the bar and watched the game for an hour... or maybe a little bit over an hour. I was thinking how after the game ended at 2:30 or whenever, an entire NATION would be sneaking back into their offices!

Well, anyway, now half of the country's going to think Hara's a total genius, while the rest of us are going to have nightmares of Nakajima trying to bunt. But that's okay. Japan won the East Sea of Japan Double Play Classic for real, and maybe one of these years it'll make sense to people when I say I honestly find yakyuu a bazillion times more interesting and compelling than the MLB.

Korea 1, Japan 0

I don't have anything to add to that, really. Sad panda is sad.



I mean, seriously. Iwakuma was untouchable. Then he was touchable. Then he wasn't. Japan never got more than one runner in an inning, and the Korean pitchers didn't walk ANYBODY. There were some nice plays, Johjima had a nice pickoff shot to Nakajima at second at one point and later on Nakajima returned the favor with a cute 6-2-5 double play to get both runners when Korea had guys on at 2nd and 3rd and no out. It could have been a much wider game, but it would have been nice if Japan's offense had been able to do anything to the Korean pitching. Even Shuichi Murata, who I spent an hour making those cheer signs for this afternoon, didn't get anywhere with them.

I sat in the right-field upper deck with Pau and Alfredo and we cheered our lungs out for the entire game, so I don't really have any photos to share. I'll have to put up some from Game 5 when I have time.

I have eaten more Quarter Pounders in the last week (two) than I have in the past year.

McDonald's is running a WBC cheering campaign where, if you buy a Quarter Pounder with Cheese combo or a Double Quarter Pounder with cheese combo, you get a free WBC cheering folder. The front has a player or players and the back has a cheering message like "go Japan!" or "win win win!" or whatever.



My first one was a Kawasaki one that says 勝って勝って勝ちまくれ on the back. ("Win win win!" basically.)


Then my second has Iwamura on the front and the back...


...it says 日本はやる！ which means "Japan will do it!"


And for the ages-old question from Pulp Fiction, for those of you who are wondering, in Japan, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a クォーターパウンダーチーズ, or... a quarter pounder with cheese. Sorry. No suspenseful country-specific name here.

I will add more to this post later. Maybe.
What you need to know is that Kwang-Hyun Kim -- the 20-year-old who pitched Korea to a gold medal in the Olympics last year -- apparently couldn't repeat the feat at the WBC, and was roughed up for 8 runs in only an inning and a half of work, culminating in another gigantic Shuichi Murata home run, this time for 3 runs. Johjima also hit a home run later on, Ichiro went 3-for-5, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched 1 mediocre inning and 3 great ones, we got to see a 7-pitch inning out of my boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe, and an unsteady Minoru Iwata still managed to finish everything out as Team Japan walloped Team Korea 14-2 in a game called after 7 innings by the mercy rule.

Talk about a surprise -- I was sure Team Japan was going to lose after the way they played Thursday night and with Kim going for Korea, but hey, that's why baseball is awesome.

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say how it came to pass, but I ended up with a ticket to sit in the 6th row behind home plate for this game, so rather than write about the game, I'm going to just post a bazillion photos that I took. Enjoy.


The Fighters' Atsunori Inaba taking warmup swings. Inaba didn't play at all due to the lefty starter; Ogasawara was the DH and Uchikawa got the nod at first base.


The Giants' Shinnosuke Abe.


Another Giant, Yoshiyuki Kamei.


This is the lineup of Sirs Not Appearing In This Game. You can see Darvish all the way at the left and Inaba a few people down.


The actual Japan starters. I took a few of these but I liked this shot because Murata's smiling and Ogasawara looks dorky.


Managers In-Sik Kim and Tatsunori Hara shake hands before exchanging lineup cards.


Some guy who everyone kept taking photos of.


Kwang-Hyun Kim pitching to Hiroyuki Nakajima.


Some other dude that everyone kept taking photos of.


SK Wyverns infielder Keun-Woo Jeong.


Matsuzaka pitches to Hyun-Soo Kim.


Tae-Kyun Kim high-fives back at the dugout after hitting a 2-run homer.


Kwang-Hyun Kim, the Korea starter.


Kim again.


Ichiro's bunt single off of Kim. Kim bobbled the play and loaded the bases -- it really wasn't pretty.


High-fives at the Japan dugout after Shuichi Murata hits a 3-run homer.


Uchikawa: "Crap, do you think they'll take me out of the game now that the lefty's off the mound?"
Ogasawara: "You had a 2-RBI double your last time up and I struck out. I don't think you have anything to worry about."


Korea pitcher Hyun-Wook Jong takes the mound.


Matsuzaka, a little while before he finished up this outing. Otsukaresama.


The Korean fans, yelling 大韓民国！


My boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe! Wheee!


Shunsuke pitches to one of the Korean batters (Kang, I think).


Toshiya Sugiuchi takes the mound, but apparently has some sort of argument with Johjima first.


Final score and Japanese high-fives.


Japanese fans in the right-field stands with all their flags and signs.


Okay, well, I'm off to Game 5, which will be Korea vs. China. Wouldn't it be interesting if this game was also an upset? We'll see what happens, I guess.

If you've gone to baseball games in Japan, you might have noticed that any time a foul ball enters the stands during a game, tons of ushers blow whistles and an announcement comes over the speaker -- "ファウルボールにご注意下さい。" Which means, basically, "be careful of foul balls". For whatever reason, there's a history of fans getting hit by baseballs either during a game or during batting practice, and suing the team for damages, which is why most stadiums have those ridiculous fences up all over the place and these super-careful ushers. I just accept it as another part of the charm of going to Japanese baseball games.

But see, for international games, they feel it necessary to tell us this message in both Japanese AND English, just to make sure everyone knows the danger of being hit with foul balls. However, they have also traditionally translated it in a way that is rather amusing...


WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!

Ever since the Asia Series in 2007, this has actually been a running gag between me and Pau. When a pitcher is having control issues, we might even joke, "Watch out for balls!"

Which nicely leads me into talking about Game 2 of the WBC, which featured Korea's big lefty pitcher Hyunjin Ryu (and by big I literally mean big -- he's Okawari-kun sized at 98kg) from the Hanwha Eagles versus Taiwan's pitcher Chen-Chang Lee. Lee signed with the Cleveland Indians this past fall, but I don't know how much playing time he's gotten so far over in the US.

I was at this game with a few friends; Simon, who writes a fantastic Japanese hockey (and other sports) blog; Matt, who's just starting his own Japanese baseball blog, and Sakamoto, who is one of my friends from the Fighters cheering section who happened to have Friday off from work and nothing better to do than to watch the WBC. We sat on the Taiwan cheering side partially by dumb luck and partially on purpose -- we wanted Taiwan to win because we figure Japan would have an easier time beating them in the semi-finals.

As the lineups were announced, we were kind of like "Who?" for most of the players, although I certainly recognized a bunch of the Korean members from past Asia Series and other such events, as well as Shin-soo Choo, who I saw play many many times in Tacoma when he was in the Mariners minor league system. For the Taiwan side, they got up to "Batting 5th, the right fielder, Lin Wei-Tzu!" and we all cheered.

We'd gotten Taiwan flags from a cheering group around us, and our entire section was speaking Chinese and cheering for Taiwan, and when we cheered Lin, a lady turned around and asked in English, "You like Lin Wei-chu?"

"Yes, I'm a big Lin fan!" I said. This is true. Lin is probably my favorite Hanshin Tigers player that isn't Jeff Williams.

"You like Hanshin Tigers?" she asked.

"Well... no..." I had to admit.

"You cheer for Taiwan?"

"Yes!" we all said and waved our flags.

So we suddenly started chatting it up with all of the people around us, some of whom actually spoke pretty good English, some of whom spoke decent Japanese, and so on. That was pretty cool, but unfortunately the Taiwanese fans didn't bring their ouendan and instruments. The Korean fans, on the other side, had totally taken over the outfield stands on their side, had their cheer sticks and cheerleaders and everything. I guess this might be because there are probably more Koreans living in Japan, and especially ones who would come out for this series.


Crazy Korea fans.

So anyway, about watching out for balls...

The Taiwan team went down 1-2-3 in the top of the first inning, including the first double play of the night when Chih-Hsien Chiang lined a ball back to the pitcher and doubled Che-Hsuan Lin off first. Oops. But that was nothing compared to the devastation that was about to follow...

Chen-Chang Lee got up there and started throwing pitches. Or should I say, he started throwing balls -- he walked the first batter on 5 pitches.

Then he proceeded to hit Keun-woo Jeong in the back with the first pitch he threw to him.

Five pitches later, Hyun-soo Kim was also standing on first base. Bases loaded, and Tae-kyun Kim came up and hit a single to left field, which scored the first two runners. 2-0. In the first four batters, Lee threw 11 balls and 4 strikes. Seriously. WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!

Dae Ho Lee -- another huge batter -- walloped a gigantic pop fly to left, but at least it was caught. One out! Wow! But then... Shin-soo Choo came up to bat, and while it was a bigger struggle against him, it took 7 pitches for HIM to also end up walking to first, loading the bases yet again.

Jin Young Lee came up and got up to a 1-1 count before hitting one of the biggest home runs I've ever seen at the Tokyo Dome. It seriously sailed all the way to the back of the right-field bleachers, landing in the aisle next to the jersey for Nagashima's retired #3. It was measured as being 135 meters, which is about 443 feet, but this ball was hit so hard and so high that you knew it was gone before it had even sailed over the infield. 6-0.

You could definitely call that a different flavor of "Watch out for Balls", I suppose.

Anyway, Lee was off the mound, replaced by Kai-wen Cheng, and things kind of settled down after that.

On the other hand, when you're down 6-0 in the first inning, it's not exactly all that much fun to play or cheer for a game like that. We cheered anyway, though, especially for, of course, Lin Wei-Tzu, who went 0-for-3 and wasn't even the best defensive player out there; the Taiwanese centerfielder Che-Hsuan Lin had a CANNON for an arm and totally Ichiro'ed Kyung-Oan Park off of second at one point. It was great.

The rest of the game really was kind of just sailing along, as Korea eventually won 9-0. Taiwan managed to hit into a grand total of FIVE double plays, leading Garrett from the Tsubamegun Yakult blog to dub the game the "World Double Play Classic". Korea's Keun-woo Jeong also hit a home run in the 6th inning, which is funny because he's a little infielder dude -- he's about as tall and heavy as *I* am, which should tell you something.

I feel bad for Taiwan, though. They had two major issues coming into this tournament:
1) Two of their teams folded and many of their star players were banned from baseball following a series of gambling and fixing scandals during last year's season, and
2) Most of the remaining teams didn't want to let any of their players come to the WBC.

Thus, they're kind of playing at a fairly weakened state, which sucks for the honest players. As I write this, they've just gotten beaten by China, which has GOT to be embarrassing.

Anyway, the most exciting part of the evening was actually AFTER the game!

I mentioned that Garrett had dubbed it the WDPC, right? Well, Simon had been texting with him for the game, so afterwards we actually met up with Garrett and Christopher Pelligrini from the blog. Christopher turns out to not only be a crazy Yakult fan, but he's also an actor of sorts... and one of HIS friends, another actor, just happened to be the guy who was doing the English announcing for the WBC and the exhibition games earlier in the week!

The story here is that this guy's stage name is Ricky Roma, and he sang Take Me Out To the Ballgame for the games as well and has also announced other international games as well as when the MLB visited here. He also happens to be in a modelling competition and he wants you to vote for him. I normally wouldn't totally pimp out random people on my blog, but you have to understand:

1) He was totally willing to chat about things like being forced to say "Please watch out for foul balls" every time a foul ball is hit. Yes, I got to meet the actual guy who announces "WATCH OUT FOR BALLS!"
2) He also actually spent a while playing ball for Kin-chan's Ibaraki Golden Golds at one point! How cool is THAT? (He also answered one of my main questions about that team, namely whether people get paid, the answer being "mostly, no.")
3) He had tons of entertaining stories. And if you know me, I like good stories more than just about anything else except possibly age-sembei crackers.


Oh my god! It's that guy!

Right, so five of us (Garrett, Christopher, me, Simon, and Ricky Roma!) adjourned to a nearby izakaya -- Simon somehow has a sixth sense for always being able to find a nearby bar no matter where we were -- and ate monjayaki and drank beer and talked about baseball and acting and just tons of random crap. It was a really good time and it was really fantastic to finally meet the Tsubamegun guys as well as the WBC announcer.

So yeah -- lame game, but exciting night. Taiwanese people are really nice, though.

I'm off in a bit to hopefully go see Japan vs. Korea tonight -- talk about a charged-up game.

Baseball season has officially started for me once again, and I hope with it the writer's block I've felt all winter goes away. I went to the first game of the WBC last night with my friend Pau and his friend Alfredo. I brought a brand-new fresh scorecard book with me and kept score, and that's what really signifies the start of a new season, I think.

Pau is from Spain (and a Hanshin fan) and Alfredo is from Panama (and a nominal Gomiuri fan, apparently) and I'm from America (and a total die-hard Nippon Ham Fighters fan, but you probably knew that already). Which is, of course, why the guys showed up with Japan and China flags. We took some photos outside the Tokyo Dome, and a random Chinese guy even came up and wanted a photo with the guys and the China flag.


Now who do you think we're rooting for?

We walked around the Tokyo Dome towards gate 41, and while we were trying to peek into the goods tents, a lady walked up to us like "Hi, where are you guys from? Are you here for the WBC?"

We all look at each other like "Umm... we live here..."

Anyway, it turns out she was from CBS (I think) and was looking for fans who spoke English to get some quotes from, so she interviewed us. I was first, and our conversation went something like:

"What's your name and where are you from?"
"I'm Deanna Rubin, from the United States."
"...what part of the US?"
"[pauses] Uhh... most recently Seattle."
"Oh, so you must see a lot of Ichiro."
"Well, I used to have Mariners season tickets a couple of years ago, yeah..."
"Who do you think will win tonight?"
"Oh, Japan. No doubt."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because we've seen China in international competition several times now, and they just aren't that good. Plus, see the t-shirt I'm wearing? I'm cheering for this guy Darvish. He's really great."
"Oh, of course I've heard of Darvish, he's a great young pitcher. Do you think we'll be seeing him in the majors soon?"
"I certainly HOPE NOT."
"... .. .. ... What?"
"I'm a huge Fighters fan, you better not steal him from us!!"
"...?"
"Plus he always says he's not interested in going."
"Um, okay..."

...and then she turned to Alfredo to interview him. I thought it was funny because Pau's from Spain and Alfredo's from Panama, I don't think she expected that. Either way, she got our names, so if CBS quotes some random chick in Japan as saying "DON'T STEAL OUR DARVISH YOU FASCIST PIGS", that actually was me and I'm not being misquoted.


"Point spread? I'm going with 10 to 2..."

We went in and had a really difficult time finding seats. Even at a bit past 5pm for a 6:30 game, I swear the upper deck was practically full! It was unreserved seating, so... yeah. Eventually we found three seats, up behind first base, about 4 rows from the top of the freaking Tokyo Dome. Sheesh. At least we weren't sitting under the Giants sign.


"You guys are going to get us in trouble with that flag, aren't you..."

We spent an hour and a half basically waiting for the game to start. I went and investigated possible goods and whatnot, but all you could actually get inside the dome was WBC Tokyo Round programs (I bought one for 1500 yen so I'd at least know who the players were), plus cigarette lighters, and some T-shirts that had tiny letters/numbers for select players like Ichiro and Matsuzaka, and cost around 3300 yen. No thanks. I also got my traditional overpriced Tokyo Dome bento box for dinner, which was at least somewhat reassuring in a weird way.

Eventually the opening ceremonies started, and they were... interesting, to say the least. They had people dancing on the field with all 16 flags of the countries in the WBC, plus a weird tower with an inflatable baseball, and the colors of the WBC below it.


I have no clue what the heck the dancing tower under a baseball within the flags is supposed to signify, but whatever.

Eventually they introduced both teams, there were lineups, and the US Army Band played the national anthems of both teams. And to add a nice touch, Sadaharu Oh threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Munenori Kawasaki, who played for him on the Hawks for several years, caught it. Oh might be 68 years old, but to his credit, he can still throw just fine from the mound to the plate.

Something we discovered is that apparently McDonald's has a promotion where you buy a certain value meal and you get these folders with WBC cheering things on them -- a LOT of people had those. There were also plenty of homemade banners, as well as a ton of people wearing either Team Japan jerseys, or a remarkably high number of Fighters Darvish jerseys (I was wearing a specific Darvish t-shirt that I bought at the Sapporo Dome).

I'm not sure there's any point in me saying much about what happened during the game itself. You can see box scores of it on mlb.com, but essentially Japan won 4-0, which is a SUPER low margin to be beating the perennial doormat China team. We joked that it was because Terry Collins -- formerly the Orix Buffaloes manager -- was managing China and obviously had the entire scouting report on Japan -- but REALLY, I'm a bit disappointed in Japan, having expected them to totally slam the Chinese team down.

I mean, it's true the Chinese team only managed like six or seven guys on base all night, but... the only real Japanese offense happened in the 3rd inning, and most of it was due to Chinese team gaffs. Hiroyuki Nakajima walked, "stole" second or something on a dropped pitch, and Aoki then hit a single to center, only the ball went through the centerfielder's legs and so Nakajima scored to make the game 1-0, with Aoki making it all the way to third by the time anyone recovered the ball out there. Inaba managed to ground into a fielder's choice so Aoki was out at the plate, and then Shuichi Murata -- THE MAN -- came up and swung away as he had been all night, and BLAM he deposited a home run 105 meters into the left-field bleachers, making it 3-0.

The only other run of the game happened in the 6th inning, when Sun Guoqiang faked a pickoff throw at Ichiro and was called on a balk; Kosuke Fukudome was at third at the time and scored on the play.

Kenji Johjima, bless his heart, managed to ground into double plays or almost always ground into double plays every chance he got. It was really nostalgic. And flashbulbs went off every time Ichiro tugged his sleeve.

There were cheering groups in the outfield and they played cheer songs for every player regardless of what team they were on, and that included old cheers for Fukudome, Johjima, Iwamura, even Ichiro. They even did the Inaba Jump! That was great.

Unfortunately, some idiot also started The Wave before the 7th inning and it went around the stadium twice or so as well. I really don't think I've seen the Wave in Japan, though Pau tells me he has, so who knows. Maybe it's just not a Pacific League thing.

Oh, and as if it wasn't bad enough that we were in the Tokyo Dome being managed by the Giants manager, with a host of Giants players on the team, guess what they did for Japan's "Lucky 7" break?


I guess they just replaced the Giants banner for a few days or something.

Kyuji Fujikawa closed out the 9th, and Pau got out his Fujikawa jersey and we both sang Lindberg's "Every Little Thing Every Precious Thing" as Kyuji took the mound... and he seemed to be totally unable to throw a strike for a while, but eventually he got his act together and the game finished. Hara gave a manager's speech, and then the game hero was... Darvish??



I know I'm biased, and should totally be in favor of a Fighters player getting it and all, but I thought the true game hero was Murata. Not only did he hit that monster home run, but his fielding was AMAZING, he snagged two line drives out of nowhere and just played really well out there. Darvish did pitch 4 no-hit innings, but to be fair, the Chinese team didn't score against any of the other pitchers either, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'm off to go see tonight's Korea-Taiwan game. Not sure how much I'll end up writing about it, we'll see. I also went to the Fighters-Marines game at Lotte Urawa yesterday afternoon before the WBC, so I'll try to put up some pictures of the new guys I saw. Very exciting.

I went down to the Tokyo Dome today and as it is, there are still tickets available for a few of the WBC games. You can walk right up to the ticket window and buy them there, every day from 10am to 5pm.

March 5 18:30, Game 1: China vs. Japan: Sold out
March 6 18:30, Game 2: Korea vs. Taiwan: Tickets available
March 7 12:30, Game 3: Losers: Sold Out
March 7 19:00, Game 4: Winners: Sold Out
March 8 18:30, Game 5: Game 3 winner vs. Game 4 loser: Tickets available
March 9 18:30, Game 6: Game 4 winner vs. Game 5 winner: SOME tickets available on the 3rd base side

I was told that if Japan IS in Game 5, they will be on the first base side.

Games 3 and 4 were actually sold together, so basically, even though it's unlikely many people will go to game 3, the game is sold out. Bummer.

Price scale:
Games 1/2:
S - 10000 yen / A - 7000 yen / B - 5000 yen / OF - 3500 yen / 2F unres - 2000 yen, 1000 for children

Games 3/4/5/6:
S - 16000 yen / A - 12000 yen / B - 6500 yen / C - 4500 yen / OF - 5000 yen
(no unreserved -- B and C are the second floor)

You can also see prices and seat charts here, though it's in Japanese.

I'm really interested to see how Japan and Korea fare against each other this year. After the Olympics and the last WBC, there's got to be some pretty high friction between those teams going on.

On another note, if you want a Chunichi Dragons 2009 team calendar, you can get one at the Tokyo Dome store for 1230 yen. If you want a Doala 2009 calendar, you can get one for 1575 yen. In other words, the Chunichi Dragons are, infact, less marketable than their mascot.