Marinerds, etc.

Dear Kazuhiro Hatakeyama:

Look, here's the deal. Apparently, the more I rant about how much you suck and I hate you, the better you do. So let me tell you that when you hit that 2-run homer in the 6th that made it 4-3, still in favor of Gomiuri, that you are going to be directly responsible for several thousand stomachaches when people go redeem those "double arch" coupons for free Big Macs next week, since you and Rami-chan both managed to slam one out. And do NOT get me started on how totally lame you are for DARING to hit a game-tying two-out RBI single off Marc Kroon in the top of the 9th. Jesus. If only you weren't on the Swallows, they wouldn't have won today's game, or last Saturday's game against the Dragons either. What the hell were you THINKING?

Oh, I know. You were thinking, "Next time I come up to bat I'm going to hit a go-ahead 3-run homer to win the game for us."

Well, guess what -- you're so lame that RYOHEI FREAKING KAWAMOTO beat you to it in the top of the 10th. Ryohei Kawamoto. You know, the guy who hasn't hit a home run since April, although one must admit he certainly has a flair for the dramatic.

Though if you really wanted to not be lame, you could thank Hisayoshi Chono for being nice enough to strike out 4 times today, including with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th. Matsuoka certainly appreciated it.

Anyway, I must admit that even though the Giants were even lamer than you are for not allowing a nice post-game joint hero interview between Kawamoto, who is the obvious game hero, and you, who were obviously only hitting that home run so you could get free cheeseburgers, it was still a nice game to watch. And hey, you also succeeded in managing to get the Central League playoffs completely the hell out of the Tokyo area! Nice going!

See you again tomorrow, Hatake. I'll be the one at the top of Section D with a towel wrapped around my head during your at-bats.

Love,

Deanna the Marinerd


Dear Yasushi Iihara:

The more I cheer for you, the worse you do. Why can't you go back to hitting home runs at every game I show up at in my #9 Iihara jersey? That was really sweet of you at the time and made me feel like my feelings were being reciprocated. Now I am feeling more and more like this is a one-sided relationship where I pour my adoration and support at you, and you just ground out or fly out or strike out. It makes me very sad. Can't you give a girl something to smile about?

No love,

Deanna the Marinerd

Tickets for the Oct 8th Swallows game at the Tokyo Dome went on sale around September 4th. A week later, I stopped by, and outfield cheering seats were entirely sold out, so I got two seats in the upper deck instead. Then, on a whim, I checked whether there were any outfield seats for the Carp game on the 7th, and it was possible to get 1 seat, so I figured, what the hell, I have this Yuki Saitoh #21 jersey, might as well wear it one last time and do some more anti-Giants cheering.

A Yakult friend of mine was supposed to be at the game too, in the standing area behind the Carp cheering section, but he couldn't go due to work, so I was all by myself.

This was actually my first time in the real Carp cheering section -- I've been to bunches of Carp games over the years and to their old home stadium and their new home stadium, and even been on the Carp side, but I'd never done the outfield thing, just watched it from afar.

Well, I confirmed several things:
1. Your legs will HURT the next day. Specifically, your quadriceps. At first, it seems nice that you are sitting down rather than standing 90% of the time, BUT when you sing the cheer songs, you are supposed to alternate sitting and standing with the people next to you, and all the standing and sitting eventually totally hurts more than it would to just stand the entire time.

2. It is not very much fun to cheer for the Carp by yourself. You really need to have a friend or acquaintance sitting next to you who you are alternating standing and sitting with. No wonder a single seat was available; I bet no sane person would normally bother with it. Though to be fair, I think I was unlucky in being in the 10th row, right in front of the ouendan, so all the guys in my row were old old Carp guys, possibly former ouendan themselves, who were a bit frightening. (And despite this one empty seat being between their groups, they all seemed to know each other and kept talking across me.) If I had been down with younger people or female people I might have been able to bond a little more with my surroundings.

3. You truly do not actually have to know the words to any of the songs. After the first round of the song, people start the sitting/standing thing, where you just yell the player's name a lot, and none of the lyrics of the songs. A few are slightly different (like Takahiro Iwamoto's, which has no standing/sitting and instead of "kattobase" uses "atsuku moero Iwamoto") but overall, if you are accustomed to cheering in Japan and have seen the Carp before, you can pick up on everything they do within an inning, as I did.

Here's us cheering for Takuro Ishii (my former favorite Baystars player, who I suppose is now my favorite Carp player, although he probably will retire in a year or two given that he turned 40 this year):



Amusingly, they use the same cheer song he had with Yokohama, but the style is, obviously, somewhat different. Still, Takuro! Yay!


Anyway, this game featured the Giants' Shun Tohno going up against Hiroshima's Kenta "Maeken" Maeda. Maeken is one of the best young pitchers in Japan right now (he leads the CL in victories, strikeouts, innings pitched, etc... and that's playing for a 5th-place team). Tohno is a decent pitcher too, I suppose, though he seems to be having a rough year except when I see him (the last time I was in the cheering section at the Dome was also a Tohno start, against Yakult)

Unfortunately, Tohno was on, or more on than Maeda, or the Carp batters just aren't all sluggers like the Giants. Tohno went 8 innings of shutout ball. The Carp managed 3 hits and a walk off him, and two of those hits were erased by the batter being caught stealing second.

The Giants, on the other hand, got their first run in the 2nd inning when Shinnosuke Abe homered to right to make it 1-0.

Maeda settled down after that and didn't even allow another runner until the 7th inning, striking out 7 guys over the next 4 innings. At one point he even struck out 5 batters in a row; Sakamoto/Yoshinobu/Furuki for the 5th inning and Tohno and Chono to lead off the 6th.

In the 7th, with two outs, Shinnosuke Abe singled to right, and then Hayato Sakamoto hit a 3-2 pitch into the left-field stands... in foul territory. The refs called it a home run, the scoreboard registered 3-0 as such, and EVERYONE in the Carp section was like "WHAT?" and Shigenobu Shima was like "WHAT?!" and manager Nomura was like "You gotta be kidding me", and so the four refs actually went and reviewed the video replay.

And they came out and said "Uhh... we looked at the video and sure enough, that was a foul ball. Our bad. Carry on."

Of course, what ended up happening is that Sakamoto walked on the next pitch and then Yoshinobu Freaking Takahashi went and hit a double to center and that scored the first two guys anyway. 3-0.


"We're gonna check the video. One sec."


Scoreboard reverts to 1-0.


Yoshinobu redoes the undone damage.


This was a fast game, too -- the top of the 9th started at 8:15pm, with closer Marc Kroon taking the mound for the Giants. Soichiro Amaya pinch-hit to lead off but struck out. But Eishin Soyogi followed that up with a solid double to center. Shogo Kimura ALSO struck out. So here we are with 2 outs in the 9th, Takahiro Iwamoto coming up to bat against Marc Kroon, and just like last time I saw it, Iwamoto made solid contact off Kroon for a single to center that scored Soyogi. 3-1!

Kurihara followed that with another single, and Kroon was taken out of the game to be replaced with Tetsuya Yamaguchi.

So the Carp put up a pinch-hitter too... Justin Huber.

I feel really bad but everyone around me was basically like "You have got to be FREAKING KIDDING ME".

And well, they were right, and Huber grounded out to end the game.



Shinnosuke, Yoshinobu, and Tohno were the game heroes.

Here are a few more shots from the Carp bleachers...




Hirose Fanfare.


Tokyo Carp ouendan flag -- had never been so close to it before to actually read it.


This girl spent quite a while trying to take cellphone shots of Kenta Maeda through her binoculars. I don't think it worked.

And here's a shot of me. I don't feel like direct linking it.


This game was over by 8:30, but somehow I still didn't get home until after 10pm; I bought a Draft 2010 magazine at Yamashita and read that through my train rides, including when I decided to take a 15-minute detour at Ueno in order to sit on a less crowded train rather than get crushed all the way home on the normal train. Being Hochi, it is all about Saitoh, Ohishi, and Sawamura, and not so much about other players. The biggest "why is he not mentioned?" to me was Chukyodai's Yoshitaka Isomura, who did just file his letter of intent. If you're curious, so did Meitoku's Andrew Singh. The draft is in only 3 weeks and I'm guessing I didn't get picked to attend since I still haven't heard from them. Sigh.

It was still cold and rainy in the morning when I woke up, so I decided to skip the Keio-Rikkio game and instead do my double-header of Waseda-Meiji plus the Swallows-Giants game in the evening.

I saw about 10 minutes of the Keio-Rikkio game over justin.tv (thanks to Ken Dick for the pointer), and apparently by dumb luck I managed to see almost all the scoring in that game anyway. While watching on TV, I saw the 6th inning for Keio, where they got their first run when Rikkio pitcher Kenya Okabe overthrew 3rd base on Takao's at-bat and the first run came in, 1-0. Then with the bases loaded (Itoh #9, Takeuchi Kazuma #8, and Takao #7), Takayuki Matsuo hit a double and the other three guys scored, 4-0. Masahiro Nagasaki bunted Matsuo up to third, and pitcher Daisuke Takeuchi executed a perfect squeeze bunt to make it 5-0.

I got to Jingu at 1pm, and the score was 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Keio had the bases loaded, so Yamaguchi scored on a sac fly to left by Aoyama, 6-2. Then Ren Yamasaki hit a bases-clearing triple into the right-field corner with Itoh and Tamaki scoring, 8-2.

Rikkio, for their part, didn't give up, even with two outs (Yusuke Yamada pinch-hit! But he struck out!). Naoshi Hasegawa duobled to left and then Yuji Naka cranked a long fly ball to left field... that apparently hit the foul pole for a homer. 8-4. Koichiro Matsumoto got on base on an error by Fuchigami (WTF), but Okazaki flew out to left to end the game.



I was sitting in the outfield because it's free if you're female, and because I was late and because I didn't want to deal with the Saitoh crowds and the Meiji crowds.

So between the games I wandered out to see if I could find any of my friends or to find the Nikkan Sports people who put out the Tokyo Rocks! papers, but to no avail. I did get my ticket to the Yakult game, which turned out to be a good move as it was CROWDED later. And I ran into the Keio ouendan leader and said hi; it's important to greet people, even if I wasn't actually in the cheering section.

It was also crowded on the 3rd base side, for this reason...



...tons of Giants fans waiting to see if they could get autographs or even get players to notice them at all. And this was 5 hours before game time!!

Anyway, back on into the outfield..







...where it was sparsely attended, so you could spread out and all, BUT the problem was that the sun was in my eyes the entire game. I put up my umbrella to keep the sun out a little, but it didn't help much. It was also HOT as a result -- I think it was still 20-21 degrees in the shaded infield, but the keychain thermometer I carry said it was around 30 where I was. Ouch.

Anyway, the second game was Waseda-Meiji. Yuki Saitoh started for Waseda and Yusuke Nomura started for Meiji. And well, Saitoh pitched a good game and Tatsuya Ohishi finished it up for him and Waseda won 4-2. Gota Nanba finished out the game for Meiji.

(I will add more details later.)

It was a LONG game though -- Nomura threw 138 pitches in 7 innings and the game went until 4:55pm. This was a bit of a problem for a pro game starting at 6pm...



It was amusing to me, because I was in the outfield until 5pm... and then by 5:20pm I was back in the outfield! I left, walked around to the front of Jingu, and walked back. Meiji and Waseda both had gated-off buses, so it wasn't possible to talk to players at all anyway. I couldn't find my usual group of friends, but I did run into my friend Kobayashi on her way out and she gave me this HUGE stack of photos she printed out of Kagami and Itoh from the World University Baseball Championships and they are AWESOME. Seriously, like 70 photos, that must have cost her a bunch to print. I'm not sure what I can do in return. I think her camera is better than mine.

While walking past the Swallows facility (there's no clubhouse IN the stadium, the players have to come in from outside), I heard a bunch of people yelling "WHITESELL! WHITESELL!" or more like, "HUWAITOSERRU!". So I put my camera up and snapped into the clubhouse parking lot, and later on saw...



...Kazuhiro Hatakeyama. WHY DOES HE HAUNT ME?

Anyway, when I got back into the stadium, the outfield was already packed with Swallows fans. I sat with Kozo, and his friends Aki and Charles, and the rest of the gang at the top of Section D, and we had a grand old time yelling crap at the Giants.

Kozo already summarized the game, including that we saw Aoki's 198th and 199th hits but not his 200th because he got plunked in his last at-bat. So let me just add a few photos I snapped from the outfield:


This is a scheme to get you to give them your cellphone email address. It says "The 2011 Manager will be _ _ _?" You're supposed to enter "O ga wa" and maybe you will win a prize. The amusing part is that I was saying, "TA KA DA? FU RU TA? A RA KI?" They all fit.


New and creative way to raise your umbrella for Tokyo Ondo -- attach it to a 2-year-old kid on your shoulders. Awwww.


Crowded.


This game started at 6:10pm and ALSO went long, until 10:10pm or so. Around 9:45 they reminded us that you can't use ANY instruments to cheer after 10pm at Jingu. (You can't use drums after 6pm.)


Final score. Alex Ramirez hit a homerun off Hei-Chun Lee in the 7th, after the Swallows had gone to great lengths to tie up the game in the bottom of the 6th. Sigh.


Game hero Rami-chan.


I will add more to this post later, but I'm already two great stories backlogged from last weekend. Sigh. And now I'm off to watch some hockey, and maybe another game at Jingu if I'm up for it...

I went to Jingu last night for a pro game, for a change; it was the Yomiuri Giants playing against the Yakult Swallows, which is a matchup I go to fairly often, mostly for the sake of singing "kutabare Yomiuri" during the umbrella dance. I sat with Kozo and Mac at the top of section D where the Tsubamegun guys usually sit. Watkins wasn't there but he already summarized the game.

I'm just going to add that, see, Kazuhiro Hatakeyama is probably one of my least favorite players on the team. I can't really explain exactly why, other than that he's big and kind of slow and that he pretty much sucks it up every time I see him play in person. It might just be that everyone kind of needs to have a favorite player and least favorite player in a lineup at any given time, and now that I have Iihara as my new favorite, Hatake is getting the short straw.

What's funny, though, is that after slamming Hatake the entire game, around the 7th or 8th inning I stopped by a pinbadge machine and guess which player I got? Hatakeyama, of course. I came back to the seats and foisted it off on Mac, who immediately attached it to his hat... and in the 9th inning Hatakeyama managed to ground out but push ahead one run. Which wasn't enough, and the Swallows lost 3-2.

After the game, walking to the train station with Kozo, I ran into my friend Jim Allen, who writes for the Daily Yomiuri, and he said his deadline was actually at 7pm, before the game, so I'm like "What did you write about?"

"Oh," he says, "I wrote an article about Kazuhiro Hatakeyama."

Kozo, fortunately, doesn't chime in about how much I hate Hatakeyama as I politely ask what the article's about. Seems that Hatake is no longer afraid of striking out and can get more meaningful swings when he's got two strikes against him. (It's kind of neat to talk to Jim in the evening and then see the article on the site the next day, certainly.)

I was mostly grumpy since Yasushi Iihara seems to be in a slump and he struck out three times in a row during the game. The high point of the evening was probably that Shingo Kawabata went 2-for-3 with a walk and a run scored; I liked Kawabata a lot at ni-gun and it would be nice to see him succeed even though I know it's at the cost of opportunities for other players I like such as Onizaki, Araki, and Keizo Kawashima.

It's a little odd that I've been to 5 Fighters games in 4 different prefectures in the last week and yet I feel compelled to braindump about this game before actually posting any of the stuff from the others. But I feel like if I don't get this one "down on paper" before I go to sleep tonight, it'll lose something later on. This game was really truly crazy in so many ways.

So I'm in Hiroshima, on my way to Matsuyama for the Big 6 All-Star Game at Botchan Stadium tomorrow. I really wanted to stop back at the Mazda stadium sometime, and interleague this year didn't work out, so a Friday night Carp vs. Giants game sounded as good as any -- I knew that if nothing else I am a very convincing member of the Anti-Giants clan, which usually works out at CL stadiums even if I don't know the home team's songs.

I got to the stadium around 4pm, but first had to go to the Carp store to make sure I had something acceptable to wear. Ended up getting a Takuro kanji t-shirt and held off on a Yuki Saitoh #21 replica jersey. I changed t-shirts in a bathroom and then went about my way of wandering through the stadium looking for adventure and excitement.

Most of the excitement involved a few statues of Soichiro Amaya in the outfield that they have set up specifically to pose with for pictures; I ended up meeting a couple from Tokyo who had come to cheer for the Giants and we exchanged photo-taking a few times (they'd snap one of me and I'd snap one of the two of them). The adventures mostly involved getting food; I had some delicious cold custard taiyaki from a stand in the outfield, and then ended up getting a Kenta Maeda bento from a stand in the infield. Several elementary-school boys at the stand were trying to do the "Hello hello hello" thing at me, so I just replied in Japanese, and they gasped like "You speak Japanese? I have never heard a gaijin speak Japanese before!" and I'm like "...you've GOT to be kidding." This isn't even anything like the countryside I was wandering through for the last several days.

For the record, the Maeda bento is FANTASTIC. It had this "potato-in-hamburg" thing that was essentially exactly that; a hamburger that was hollowed out and filled with mashed potatoes, and it also came with yakisoba and some sausage and vegetables and rice and some grapefruit for dessert. I've been astounded by how good the bentos are in places that aren't Tokyo, or more like, the amount and quality of food you get for your buck is pretty good.

I went down to behind the dugout to take photos, but only had my small camera. I watched the guys work out; I tried to yell a happy belated birthday to Takuro Ishii (he just turned 40 on Wednesday) but couldn't get his attention. There were a LOT of people yelling encouragement at Takahiro Iwamoto; someone told me that this past week he hit home runs in 3 consecutive games and was making quite a name for himself for smacking the tar out of the ball.

For me, the last time I saw Iwamoto play was Draft Day 2008, at which time it was like "Hey, that kid at bat just got taken in the first round by the Hiroshima Carp. But who cares, THAT catcher crouching behind him just got taken in the first round by the FIGHTERS!!"

A Japanese couple shows up and sits to the left of me about 20 minutes before game time. I'd guess they're slightly younger than I am but not by much. The starting lineups are announced and I get out my scorecard, and the guy, who is sitting next to me, is like "Dude, you keep score?" and so we get to talking; clearly he thought I was just some random white person, but within 5 minutes we're swapping baseball stories and he's telling me how he grew up a Giants fan because his family always watched them, but when he grew up he switched to the Carp despite living in Nara (which is clearly Hanshin territory), and he's a longtime Tomonori Maeda fan. Me, I joke that I cheer for "the Fighters, and whoever is playing against the Giants", but that I'm familiar with a bunch of Carp players, especially since so many went to college in Tokyo, and I mention having seen Komatsu and Takeuchi and Iwamoto and all. The girl in the couple is clearly just along for the ride, but is decked out in very cutesy Carp clothing and says she thinks Kurihara is really hot. The end result of this is that rather than just sitting there on the end of the row by myself, I have people to cheer with and to high-five after stuff, and to talk to about the game, which I wasn't expecting.

So, the game starts. I've been to Mazda Stadium before, last year, but never sat on the first-base side for a game, and it strikes me as being vaguely reminiscent of Safeco Field in that you can see mountains in the distance and there are train tracks literally running along the side of the left-field wall. The main difference is that in Seattle, you HEAR the trains going by all the time, and in Hiroshima, you SEE them go by. Coming into Hiroshima by shinkansen from the north, you get a fantastic view of the field for about 40 seconds.

Ren Nakata started for Hiroshima; like Iwamoto, he's a 2nd-year player, drafted in fall 2008; like Iwamoto, he was a Hiroshima-area high school star; but unlike Iwamoto, he was drafted out of high school, not college, so Nakata just turned 20 last month. Dicky Gonzalez started for the Giants.

To be fair, the main thing I recall from the first 8 innings of the game are:

1) I got "shaved ice" in the 3rd inning from a vendor who came by, which is basically grape-flavored ice in a plastic bag. The bag started coming apart before I finished "eating" all of it. It's a nice enough idea in the heat but not recommended.

2) There are very few cola vendors. I got a cola before the game that was flat, and then gave up waiting for another and went up to get one in the 5th inning, only to see a kid with some bottles of Coke walk by a bit later. (But I'm betting his were even warmer and flatter than what I got. And 300 yen for a bottle of coke?!)

3) I was telling the guy next to me how I hate Ogasawara, he was recounting the Johnny-Damonness of it to his girlfriend, and then Ogasawara launched a homer, in that first inning. Edgar Gonzalez followed that with another homer in the 2nd inning that bounced in the left-field walkway and then bounced out of the stadium.

4) But the Carp came back in the 3rd inning on a Soyogi double and Akamatsu single to tie it up, and a Kurihara single put them ahead 3-2.

4a) This is relevant because they do this thing on the screen where they search with the camera like "If we choose you, and if we win, YOU GET TO COME UP TO TAKE A PHOTO WITH THE GAME HERO!!!". So lots of people wave their arms and dance and try to get chosen, including the people sitting next to me... well, someone only 3 rows ahead of us got chosen, a kid with a Kurihara sign! So at this point we're like "Lucky kid, maybe he'll get his photo with Kurihara!"

5) Naturally Ramirez had to hit a 2-run homer that actually went out of the stadium with NO bounce, in the 5th, and put the Giants up 4-3.

5a) Vinnie Chulk took over in the 6th to pitch for Hiroshima and gave up another run on a Wonder Boy Sakamoto double, making it 5-3.

6) Rather than doing "YMCA", they do this bizarre "C-A-R-P" dance, not to the tune of YMCA or anything, but very similar feeling. It's quite odd.

7) TAKURO ISHII GOT TO PINCH-HIT!!!! It was just in the bottom of the 7th and he basically literally grounded the ball straight to first base, but you know what rocks? Hiroshima uses the same cheer song for him that Yokohama did! I literally haven't seen Takuro at bat in person in two years, so when they started playing his song I sang along. It was weird, I almost felt like I wanted to cry; I miss cheering for him in Yokohama.

As an aside, cheering for the Carp is easy, you don't need to know any of the words; after the first round of any player's song, you and whoever are sitting next to you just alternate standing up and yelling the player's name. "Soyogi! SOYOGI! Soyogi! SOYOGI! Soyogiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-- SOYOGIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-- [clap, clap, clapclapclap], kattobase, Soyogi!"

8) An awful lot of people deserted the stadium in the 8th and 9th innings. They are idiots. I understand that many of them are Giants fans and don't actually expect to ever lose, and I'm sure some are Carp fans who wanted to beat the traffic; unlike in Tokyo, they actually have parking lots here and there are undoubtedly lots of people who drive to the game.

So those people missed the excitement of the 9th inning. Sucks to be them.

Basically,

9) the Carp came up at 5-3 in the bottom of the 9th with Marc Kroon on the mound (who is explained as "He throws really fast but sometimes he has control issues. Hopefully our guys won't swing at everything.") But Shigenobu Shima manages to lead off with a single. Jun Hirose swings at everything and strikes out. Takahiro Iwamoto, who I had mentioned several times earlier in the game and in the post, comes up to bat, and

and

and takes a big swing and

OH MY GOD THAT BALL IS OUTTA HERE!

No, I mean, I dropped my scorecard, I stood up so fast, and just watched that thing sail out to the right-field stands. The entire stadium went crazy. All the people around me were jumping and yelling and cheering, I high-fived a ton of people, it was great. The game was tied at 5-5!

Aizawa popped out after that but a pinch-hitting Kura doubled to center-left! And Soyogi walked!

I may have mentioned that the crazy guy next to me, who stood for the entire inning after that, was also a huge Tomonori Maeda fan. And I'm like "Someone's pinch-hitting -- dude, I think it's going to be your Maeda," and he's like "No way, this is an infielder's slot," and no, sure enough, it was the 39-year-old veteran Maeda. Who struck out unceremoniously.

10) So, extra innings. Ryuji Yokoyama dealt with the Giants for the top of the 10th, and their Yasunari Takagi (WTF?) dealt with the Carp for the bottom of the 10th. It was, by this time, getting on towards 10pm, and drums and trumpets had to stop playing in the stands. Onward at 5-5. What sucked is mostly that Amaya led off with a walk in the 10th and then Kurihara, Shima, and Hirose struck out in succession, leaving Iwamoto in the on-deck circle. And what REALLY sucked is that Kurihara's strikeout, the third strike was DROPPED. Amaya ran to second, Kurihara didn't try to run to first at either, which was lame, he seriously might have made it.

But I remember thinking that maybe Iwamoto would come up and hit a walk-off home urn in the 11th, then...

11) Except that SHIGEYUKI FREAKING FURUKI, former Fighter, came up and HE hit a 2-run homer off Yokoyama in th top of the 11th. What sucked about that was mostly that Wakiya got on base with a REALLY close safe call, it really did look like a double play and should have ended the inning, but it didn't, so that was sad, and then the run, making it 7-5.

So Takahiko Nomaguchi takes the mound for the Giants to close out the game in the 11th.

AND TAKAIHRO IWAMOTO LEADS OFF WITH ANOTHER HOME RUN TO THE EXACT SAME PLACE!

No, really! That was nuts, he just comes up there and BLAM. Hara challenged the homer and thought it was a ground rule double, so the umpires went back to look at the video, and they come out like "No, dude, that was a homerun." Woohoo! But sadly it was just 7-6, not a 6-5 walkoff. And Tetsuya Kokubo grounds out after that.

But Kura walks, and Soyogi ALSO walks. The pitcher's slot is next and I think Ishihara was literally the only guy left at ALL to pinch-hit, so he does, and he strikes out on 3 straight pitches. 2 outs, bottom of the 11th, one-run game...

Soichiro Amaya comes up. He has been sucking lately and thus was dropped from the starting lineup, apparently. With his whopping .217 average and 5 home runs it does not seem hopeful.

A ball. Another ball. A fouled-off pitch. Another ball. It's a 3-1 count and if he walks, the bases will be loaded for Kurihara... who hasn't really succeeded in doing much tonight anyway.

The next pitch comes in, Amaya swings, and

BLAM

You could actually tell that one was a homer right off the bat; I think it went into the cushion seats in deep centerfield. I'm not really sure because again the 6-7 of us cheering like crazy all bolted to stand up and watch it, I dropped my scorecard again, and as that ball fell, everyone went CRAZY yet again.

3-run homer. Carp win 9-7.

The people sitting ahead of us who were picked for a photo with the game hero disappeared a while back. I thought they went home, and mused about that to the people next to me, but he's like "Nah, I bet anything that at the 9th inning they went to wait for the Game Hero photo. Watch," and sure enough that little boy with his Kurihara sign comes out to take a photo with the game hero, who is Soichiro Amaya. Which was a bit odd. But I bet the kid was beside himself with joy anyway.

I was a little ticked that Amaya was the only game hero and they didn't honor Iwamoto, without whom they don't win the game too -- that 2-run homer in the 9th was HUGE. HUGE, in so many ways. And very exciting. But whatever, Japan is weird.

After a little bit of postgame cheering I say goodbye to the people around me and tell them to enjoy the rest of the weekend series and may the Giants burn in hell and all that sort of stuff, and they tell me to enjoy the rest of my trip.

21) I go buy that Yuki Saitoh jersey. I figure that even if I don't get to wear it in Japan, it'll be pretty funny to wear to games in the US of teams that wear white and red uniforms. Plus, I've joked about being a "Lefty Red Handkerchief Prince" fan for ages, and I really do like the kid. Though I have to admit I seriously considered an Iwamoto jersey instead. Eh.

So.

What a game.

It was kind of fun to get back to the hotel and see a bunch of Giants fans sitting in the lobby looking a lot more subdued than they did this afternoon. Very satisfying, really.

And now I am off to Matsuyama! I'll add pictures to this post later, maybe.

The story behind this photo is kind of funny.
See, it was raining pretty hard during the morning and afternoon on Wednesday, hard enough that my school had to cancel after-school sports because our schoolyard was a mud pit. But the game itself was fine, the seats were wet when we arrived but no rain fell at all during the game.

Anyway, the Swallows were down 3-1 in the bottom of the 4th inning, after starter Shohei Tateyama gave up two runs in the 1st inning on an iffy double and a wild pitch and whatnot. Yakult's Shinichi Takeuchi hit a home run to right field and Yomiuri's Shinnosuke Abe answered it with one of his own.

But we had D'Antona and Takeuchi leading off the 4th, and there was this STELLAR sunset going on -- it was really beautiful, really bright pink over the left-field stands. I said to Kozo, "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if Jamie or Takeuchi hit a home run RIGHT NOW so the umbrellas would come out and I could get a shot of them in the sunset?"

Unfortunately, Kentaro Nishimura walked them both.

Fortunately, Ryoji Aikawa hit an RBI single to score D'Antona, and rather than getting out my umbrella, I got out my camera and took photos!



Even more fortunate, right after that Shinya Miyamoto ALSO hit an RBI single, scoring Takeuchi and tying the game 3-3. I got out my umbrella for that one. The Giants changed pitchers to Masumi Hoshino, who got the next two outs but then hit Aoki with a pitch and gave up a grounder to Kazuki Fukuchi which turned into an error and scored Aikawa. Swallows up, 4-3!

Shohei Tateyama hit a walking double to lead off the 6th -- yes, the pitcher -- and then he got himself tagged out when Aoki lined out to short. Worse, it turns out he injured himself twisting to get back to the base. Ugh.

Fortunately, Yakult handed off the ball to their bullpen of Masubuchi, Matsuoka, and Lim, who totally got the job done -- 9 Giants batters up, 9 Giants batters down. Woo.

This is not a real final score photo because Jingu sucks and REFUSES TO SHOW THE SCORE AFTER THE GAME SHEESH:



But, two outs in the 9th and then Tani hit a pop fly out to end it. The Swallows won 4-3.

The game heroes were the bullpen, who looked thrilled to be up there:



Good fun. Anything that involves beating the Giants is great in my book.

I waited around for the entire postgame cheering stuff, hoping they'd put the damn score back on the scoreboard, but they never did. Screw you, Jingu -- why do you ALWAYS insist on taking the score off the instant the game ends, or not even bothering to put it on at all? Really -- I love Jingu, it's my second home, but this is one thing that has majorly pissed me off since they got their new scoreboard.

Thankfully, there was no rain. Went to the Giants-Swallows game with Mac and Kozo and Pellegrini and Australian Chris, and the Japanese friends of the Tsubamegun guys. It was my first game in the Yakult outfield this year, so everyone was like "long time no see!" and "oh, of course you came to cheer against the Giants!"

The good:
- Still haven't reached my quota of free tickets on my fan club membership.
- KFC right by the Gate 1 entrance, so I could quickly grab food and run out to section D.
- Hadn't met Kozo before, he seems like a cool guy, he knows most of the words to the Swallows ouenka
- I remember enough Swallows ouenka to be effective
- Spent a while talking to Crazy Carp Dude, who told me that he wants Shinya Tsuruoka to play for Yakult "because his face is interesting".
- Swallows scored a run, so I could sing "Kutabare Yomiuri"
- The crazy clarinet dude who yells heckling stuff into a megaphone spent a good 5 minutes yelling obscenities at Hisayoshi Freaking Chono in right field

The bad:
- Hisayoshi Freaking Chono hit a 2-run home run as well as an RBI single and was game hero
- The Giants won
- The Swallows ONLY scored 1 run, so I didn't get to sing nearly enough "Kutabare Yomiuri"
- The Swallows ouendan has changed some of their songs since last year so I got a little bit confused (more on that in a sec)
- Forgot my cheer sticks, Mac lent me his since he was too busy drinking beer
- Mikinori Katoh is back in ni-gun :(


GO HOME HISAYOSHI!


The "Gomiuri" t-shirt was designed by Crazy Carp Dude, I think -- it shows someone throwing a Giants G logo into a trash can.
I forget who pulled the Shinnosuke Abe card from the Calbee pack, but I believe one of the Japanese guys in the back taped the, uh, F-word on it before taping it on Zombie Pellegrini, who wasn't too happy about this game.


I don't have a lot to say about the game itself. You can read summaries here or here.

As for the ouenka, fortunately I checked the official Yakult ouendan site to remind myself of the words... only to find that a whole bunch of them had changed. Notably I remembered Shinya Miyamoto as being "Shinya is the best shortstop in Japan" which changed to 慎也よ導け日本一 or "Shinya's GUIDANCE is the best in Japan". Aoki's cheer also changed a little, it changed from "leadoff man" to "number one" as well as I think it was "shouri no tobira wo hirake", or "opening the door to victory" and is now "asu he no tobira wo hirake", or "opening the door to tomorrow". There are also obviously a few new players that I don't know the songs for yet, like Atsushi Fujimoto, and there is a new Lupin the 3rd chance theme that was pretty fun.

They haven't changed Yasushi Iihara's song though, which is all that matters :)

Dear Mascot Makers: A bear should be bigger than a bunch of mutant orange rabbits. Seriously. Even if they are Giant Rabbits.


Everything was going so well. Shinya Tsuruoka even actually hit a home run, which is basically a once-a-year event. The Fighters had a 5-3 lead after 6 innings, on the pitching of Keisaku Itokazu, and had actually managed to knock up Giants starter Shun Tohno pretty well.

And then lefty Masanori Hayashi came in to pitch the bottom of the 7th, presumably to face lefties like Seung-Yeop Lee, Yoshinobu Takahashi, and Michihiro Ogasawara.

And Hayashi walked the first batter he faced, pinch-hitter Yoshitomo Tani, on four straight pitches.

Then after a few more balls to Hayato Sakamoto, Sakamoto singled to center.

Yoshinobu Takahashi was the next batter, and he'd already hit a monster 2-run homer in his last at-bat, not to mention the night before.

So it should surprise nobody that Yoshinobu took the first pitch he saw and drove it deep into the right-field stands to put the Giants ahead 6-5.

I seriously considered just going home at that point, being as I had to be up at 6:30am Sunday morning to go to work, but I've pretty much never left a game early unless I had no choice (like last trains or having to go to work or whatnot).

But, I stuck around to the bitter end. Yamaguchi got the win and Marc Kroon got the save and I got nauseous.



Seriously, being in the Tokyo Dome for Giants games just sucks. This game was sold out upon sold out, and I was lucky to have a seat in the Fighters cheering section, I realize, but being as it was so full of people, AND the standing room area was also full of people, it was just a big hot sweaty mess of people. And while cheering was fun and it was nice while the Fighters were ahead, I kept getting dizzy from standing up for too long for some reason. In addition, this was some kind of "eco series", so I guess that means that rather than turning on the air conditioner, they just gave out fans to people to wave, so it was probably even hotter and more horrible than it would be otherwise.

Though, I did something I rarely do -- I videotaped us doing our opening cheer songs. There are a lot of these "1-9" lineup videos on Youtube, but this is my first, usually I'm not in a good vantage point for one:



And another video I took is of all of us singing "Shiroi Ball Fantasy", which is the official Pacific League song. We sing it before the 3rd inning in all interleague games.



In general, though, I spent most of this game being crowded and uncomfortable. My legs actually hurt by the end of the game from having to stay in such a small space to stay out of everyone's way.

I saw a lot of Fighters friends there, though -- people from Hokkaido and people from Osaka and even people from Fukuoka. So that was kind of cool, except that it was too crowded to actually SEE anyone, except for a few minutes after the game, during which everyone said "Will you be at Yokohama Stadium tomorrow?" at which point I said "No, I'm not -- have to go work at my school's Sports Day," and which everyone replied, "Oh, that's too bad!" to...

...until I pointed out, "Hey, I won't be there. So the Fighters will definitely win."

And they did.

I'm heading to Sagamihara on Monday night. I bet the Fighters won't win there either.

Similarities between this game and Game 5 of the 2009 Japan Series:

- Shugo Fujii was one of the starting pitchers (but this year he's a traitor)
- The game was really close and the Fighters held a narrow lead for most of it
- The Giants won the game on a walk-off home run
- The walk-off home run was given up by Hisashi Takeda
- Was sitting in the Fighters cheering section with Team 52.. but we were all split up all over the place
- Went to a nearby izakaya after the game in a big group, got mocked by Giants fans

Seriously, Fujii has been pretty good this year, but what do you expect when you are playing for a team that is likely to turn the game around with a 3-run homer at any minute?

The Fighters' starting pitcher was Takayuki Kanamori, making his first start of the 2010 season (usually he's been used in relief). A lot of people thought that Darvish was going to start Friday's game; it would make sense given the schedule and the rotation, but it seems that maybe he'll be starting Saturday instead.

You know what ROYALLY sucked? Just as I missed seeing Imanari play at ichi-gun because of Jingu getting rained out, he got sent down just before this game too. ARRRRGGGGHHH. I even made special cheering signs to bring to this game; I ended up holding them up during the Lucky 7 interlude anyway. People were calling me "Imanari Taicho".

Uh, anyway, the best way to sum up this game, at least the Giants half of it, is: Homerun! Homerun! Homerun! Homerun! Hit batter! Homerun! Fly ball! Fly ball! Homerun! Homerun! Hit batter! Homerun! Fly ball!

No, really:

             PA  BB  HB  K   H  HR    FB  GB 
Fighters     39   1   1  8  10   2     7  11
Giants       37   0   2  6  11   5    15   3

The other Fighters out was Kensuke Tanaka getting caught stealing in the first inning, and the other Giants out was Hisayoshi Chono getting his retarded ass picked off first base in the 8th inning.

Anyway, this is basically what happened:
Kensuke got caught stealing, and then Inaba hit a "whoa, it went over" home run to right in the 1st inning. 1-0.
Yoshinobu Takahashi hit a much more decisive home run to right field in the bottom of the 1st. 1-1.
Shinji Takahashi walked, stole second (!), and scored on a double by Shota Ohno. 2-1. Why on earth they were pitching to Ohno with two outs and the pitcher up next is beyond me, but Kanamori singled anyway... unfortunately Ohno couldn't score on it.
Shinnosuke Abe led off the bottom of the 2nd with a home run to right. 2-2.
Michihiro Ogasawara hit a huge homerun to center in the 3rd. 3-2.
Kensuke Tanaka got hit by a pitch in the 5th, then Hichori Morimoto TRIPLED to center, tying the game as Kensuke scored. 3-3. Koyano doubled to center and scored Hichori, 4-3. Then Yoshio Itoi hit a 2-run homer to right, scoring Koyano too and knocking Fujii out of the game. 6-3.
Shinnosuke Abe hit another solo home run to right in the 6th, off reliever Masanori Hayashi. 6-4. Chono-baka singled and advanced on a wild pitch after that, and scored on a single by pinch-hitter Masakuni Odajima. 6-5.

Yuya Kubo and Kiyoshi Toyoda and Tetsuya Yamaguchi filled in the second half of the Giants pitching without giving up any more runs, although Kubo got into a bases-loaded pinch in the 6th before striking out Inaba to end it.

Hayashi pitched two innings for the Fighters, and Naoki Miyanishi pitched an inning and an out, and then Hisashi Takeda came into the game in the 8th inning with one out; Chono singled and then Hisashi picked him off first, which was pretty funny.

Hisashi stayed in to pitch the bottom of the 9th, and save the 6-5 game. He struck out Ryota Wakiya leading off, which was promising, but then Seung-Yeop Lee pinch-hit, and was apparently hit by a pitch (from the outfield it always looks weird). Takahiro Suzuki pinch-ran for Lee at first base...

...and it didn't matter as Hayato Sakamoto slammed a huge fly ball to center. The outfielders chased it back and the ball landed about 5 feet beyond the centerfield wall and bounced back onto the field for a walk-off 2-run homer, and the Giants won the game 7-6.



I have now been to 8 Fighters season games this year, and they have not won a single game. However, I believe they have won every single pre-season and minor-league game I went to. WTF?

I'm stuck at work again today (Saturday), and don't have a lot of time to write this, and will head off to the Tokyo Dome again tonight, so let me just leave you with another photo and a movie:



This is a Yomiuri news flash about halfway through the game. These are normal, but what amused me here is:

The first part is talking about Eri Yoshida's uniform and hat from her debut with the Chico Outlaws being sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The second part is talking about Japan having a new prime minister, Naoto Kan.

Apparently these are equivalently important to Japanese people.



And this is an Inaba Jump in the 5th inning or so, from behind the ouendan. I should try to film an Inaba Jump in as many stadiums as possible...

I know, you're probably wondering what the heck I was doing at the Tokyo Dome for a Buffaloes-Giants game. But as you can see from this shot of the "out-of-town scores" from the middle of the game...



...the Fighters-Yakult game got rained out, as did pretty much every outdoor game in the country, so this was the only indoor option in the Tokyo area. I had two friends in town from Seattle this past week, and I'd promised to take them to a baseball game here. They wanted to sit in a cheering section, so the Fighters game today seemed like the best idea, until the Tokyo skies decided to open up and start raining around 9am, and they're not supposed to stop until sometime on Tuesday. So instead, I said we could go to the Tokyo Dome and see if there were any tickets, and if there were, at least my friends could see a game, even if it was going to be between the team that I hate the most in the country (the Giants) and the team in the Pacific League that I care the absolute least about (the Buffaloes).

We even ran into another friend of mine outside the Tokyo Dome, who was like "Wait, is that really Deanna? At a Giants game? WTF?"

Anyway, we did manage to get 3 pretty good seats in the upper deck on the 3rd-base side. I got to at least explain the whole ouendan deal, and also got to explain pretty much why I despise every single member of the Giants lineup. ("This guy, Chono, he turned down the Fighters and the Marines for drafting him. And this guy, Ogasawara, he was my favorite player... when he was on the Fighters. Now he's some clean-shaven doppleganger. Think Johnny Damon. Oh, and this guy, he hit a sayonara home run off the Fighters at Game 5 of the Japan Series last year. And this starting pitcher, Nishimura? I totally DESPISE him. My favorite Fighters player, Hichori Morimoto, had a 2-year streak of playing in every single game, until this jerk over here hit him with a pitch and broke his hand, and Hichori has never really been the same player since.")

The nice part is that the Buffaloes actually smacked the hell out of Nishimura for a change. In the first inning, Arakane got hit by a pitch, Gotoh singled and then "T" Okada singled home Arakane, 1-0. Aarom Baldiris followed that up with another single that landed in shallow center, and Takeshi Hidaka grounded to second, only Edgar Gonzalez ate the ball and Gotoh scored on the error, 2-0. Koji Yamasaki hit into a fielder's choice, but it wasn't a double play and so Okada scored, 3-0.

Then in the second inning, Shogo Akada got on base, and Gotoh walked, and then "T" Okada slammed a home run into the Orix cheering section! 6-0!

It was a nice start to the game.

I amused myself by yelling alternate things to the Giants cheers, like "GO HOME HISAYOSHI" instead of "CHONO HISAYOSHI". One of my friends decided that "Shinnosuke" sounded like they were cheering "IMHOTEP!" so he started yelling that instead. And so on.

Ogasawara got hit by a pitch in the 3rd inning and had to leave the game. There were mumblings that he might have broken his wrist, though reports on Yahoo indicate that no fractures was found and he was just bruised up pretty badly.

Alex Ramirez pounded one of the most impressive home runs I've ever seen at the Tokyo Dome, in the 6th inning. I think it almost hit the roof -- and it hit the left-field back wall of the stadium above the IIJ sign, right below the roof. It was said to be 140 meters, which is 460 feet or so -- but it was to LEFT, not to center, so you can imagine how high that thing was going. It would have gone straight out of some other stadiums like Jingu. No, really. 6-1.

Tomotaka Sakaguchi hit another home run off of reliever Takahiko Nomaguchi to lead off the 9th inning, which made it 7-1.

Yoshinobu Takahashi pinch-hit in the bottom of the 9th -- I feel like I haven't seen him at bat in YEARS at this point -- he singled to center, and then Hayato the Kid hit a home run to left field to make it 7-3, off Mamoru Kishida.

But, fortunately, that is where the game would end.



(And the Yahoo box score.)

Something odd I just realized is that Takahiro "T" Okada went to the same high school, Riseisha, as Hosei's Ryo Imai, and was one year ahead of him... which means Okada didn't play at Koshien, but Imai did. I think Okada is obviously having the slightly more successful baseball life these days, though.

I enjoyed this game despite not really caring about either team involved. I mean, I got to hang out with my friends, babble about all the nuances of Japanese baseball, and see the Giants get slammed down. What else could I ask for? We ate churros and Tokyo Dome ice cream sandwiches, and one of my friends drank 4 beers and a hi-ball. Really. He had a goal of trying to flag down a beer girl from each one of the major companies, though I think he got Suntory, Kirin, and Yebisu, and didn't manage to get Sapporo. Alas.

The only sad part is that we never got to see the Orix Towel Dance, which I had been telling my friends was the only cool thing Orix fans really do. I only had my Tokyo Big 6 towel with me, but I was totally ready to dance with it. I guess the 1st inning was too early to start doing it; not sure why they didn't do it in the 2nd inning when there were a lot of guys on base and very few outs, but whatever. They never really had a "chance" moment later on. Too bad.



Actually, see that IIJ sign over my friend's head on the left? That's where Ramirez's home run hit the back wall, above that sign. No joke. That thing was SLAMMED.

The weather forecast is calling for the rain to continue through Monday too, which has me a little bit worried. The Fighters-Swallows games didn't actually HAVE a makeup day scheduled, and Yahoo shows the other 3 rained out games today as being made up on Tuesday, but not Swallows-Fighters, so I wonder what'll happen -- maybe they'll be tacked on at the end of interleague? That'd kind of suck. The Big 6 college games also get shoved back a day, and if they can't play on Monday, I think they get to bump Tohto League out of Jingu on Tuesday, although all that remains in Tohto is the Asia-Rissho catfight, as Toyo already clinched the league. We'll see, I guess.

TLDR version: Morino went 4-for-5 including a double and a homerun, scored 3 runs, Tony Blanco also had 3 RBIs in 3 hits, the Dragons scored a bunch of runs off Dicky Gonzalez and except for the 5th inning where Dragons starter Kazuki Yoshimi gave up 4 runs to the Giants culminating in Ogasawara's Clean-Shaven Doppleganger hitting a 3-run homer, which made it kinda close at 5-4, but the game eventually widened to 7-4 and Iwase closed it out successfully to put the Dragons in first place, half a game up on the Giants! Hooray!

Cheering for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome is pure awesome because there are so many added little "DIE GIANTS DIE" kinds of things into the standard cheers. It'd be even better if the Chunichi ouendan could get their act together and actually get licenses to have trumpets and drums and leaders at games in the Kanto region, but whatever. (Seriously, this will now be the 3rd season without ouendan at the Tokyo Dome if it goes on like this, since the yakuza episode.) I happened to be sitting behind a few guys I recognize as being unofficial cheer leader types, or more like, they're really freaking loud and know all the songs and despise the Giants and coordinate with another group of similarly loud people sitting a few rows back.

I showed up at the Tokyo Dome a little after 5pm wearing my favorite t-shirt, which I covered up fairly quickly with my Morino #31 jersey and all my other Morino #31 stuff. Masahiko "Dragonbutt" Morino wears #30 this year, but I noticed that very few fans of his actually care and almost all still had #31 jerseys for him. See, the team offered Morino #3 after Tatsunami retired, and he briefly said yes, then a few days (weeks?) later said "Wait a minute, I can't dishonor Tatsunami like that. I am nowhere near as great as he is and cannot wear #3 properly." But by the time that happened, they had already re-assigned #31, so they gave him #30, vacated by Nomoto who took Kazuki Inoue's old #9. But Morino has changed numbers so many times in his career that I think most people have just given up on changing their replica jerseys.

Anyway, I got to talking with the guys sitting behind me, since they had ouenka papers and I had no clue where to get one; turns out I'd missed someone handing them out. They were nice enough to give me one of theirs, "we can share ours, the only new cheers we don't know are Blanco and Nomoto's, really." It turned out they were both from Aichi prefecture but just started college in Tokyo, and one of the guys went to the same high school as outfielder Atsushi Fujii, so we reviewed his cheer song together, "just in case he actually plays today", and then they were like "Why the hell are YOU a Dragons fan?" and I had to explain that I'm really a Fighters fan, started cheering the Dragons several years ago thanks to a close friend in Gifu, and now I really just love Morino and despise the Giants. They were cool with that.

So, anyway. Amidst the chaos of the discombobulated ouendan, I managed to kinda pick up Tony Blanco's new ouenka. It has a fanfare which I decided was irrelevant, and then a semi-catchy actual song...


Ima da koko de misero, aoki toushi tagirasete
Teki o hirumaseru ichida, hanate, haruka kanata
Kattobase, Blanco! (Yomiuri taose o!)

You gotta love this video because of the guys in front of me giving the middle finger to the Giants bleachers every time they yelled the last part, which means "DEFEAT THE GIANTS!"

The cool thing is, Blanco led off the 2nd inning with a single, and then Wada followed it up with a single, and then Ibata followed THAT up with a double to score Blanco and make it 1-0! We changed to the Uchimakure chance theme and that led to consecutive sac flies to center by Kei Nomoto and Motonobu Tanishige to make it 3-0!

The Dragons widened their lead to 5-0 in the 5th inning when Araki led off with a single, Ohshima bunted him up successfully (in the first inning Araki had led off with a double and then got out at third on a terrible bunt by Ohshima, so), and then Morino singled to right-center! Araki almost scored but had to go back and hold at third, and in the meantime as the ball was thrown towards home, Morino managed to stretch it into a double, headsliding into second base safely. Woo! Tony Blanco then hit a single that scored the other two guys, and Wada walked, and THEN the Giants took out Gonzalez, put in Satoshi Fukuda (seriously, "dare aitsu?") who got a double play to end the inning.

Then, yeah, Yoshimi ran into a bit of a rough spot in the Giants' half of the 5th. Shinnosuke Abe led off with a double, and then Seung-Yeop Le singled, which put Abe at third. Sakamoto also singled, which scored Abe to make it 5-1. Matsumoto, who is having a monster start so far, grounded out to third and advanced the runners (I'd hoped Morino would make a play at somewhere besides first, but it didn't work out that way), not that it mattered as OCD hit one of his signature low line drive home runs into the Giants' cheering section to make it 5-4. Grumble.

But it worked out okay. I got out my towel to cheer for Morino again in the 7th inning, the guys behind me were like "Your guy is kicking butt tonight!", and then Morino hit a double into the gap in left-center! Immediately after that Tony Blanco also hit the ball to center. Morino scored, and Blanco tried to stretch it into a double and found himself out at second, but at least he got the run in. 6-4.

And the last Chunichi run was Morino's 5th at-bat, and 4th hit, which was a beautiful home run into the right-field stands hit off of Kiyoshi Toyoda. The entire stadium was silent, and then suddenly we realized it was a home run and all went crazy. Everyone around me was high-fiving me because I had been going so crazy for Morino the entire game. So, 7-4.

Hitoki Iwase closed out the game 1-2-3. We all stood up for the final batter, which was Edgar Gonzalez, and just yelled "I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE! I-WA-SE!" until it was over.



Not a lot of postgame celebrating though, because there isn't really a cohesive ouendan, which makes it difficult. Plus, the Giants games at the Tokyo Dome don't show hero interviews for the visiting team, which is SUPER lame. (I did learn later that the game hero WAS infact my boy Morino, though.) So we did the 1-9 lineup songs, then an Ochiai cheer, a round of Moe Yo Dragons, and... dispersed.

It was a pretty good evening, really.

Oh, incase any of Tyrone Woods's fans or friends still read this blog... one of the guys sitting in front of me still was wearing this jersey:



I swear I was tempted several times during the game to just start singing the "T!" ouenka.

That guy was also waving this apparatus around from time to time:



Which is a Jaws shark chewing up a white Giabbit doll that they were writing nasty stuff all over.

It might just be that I mostly only cheer for the Dragons at the Tokyo Dome these days, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the difference in the mood in the Dragons cheering section as opposed to like, the Fighters; Dragons fans tend to do a lot more booing and swearing, certainly, and have a lot less family and a lot more scary-looking dudes. On the other hand I have found that passionately hating the Giants will usually get me at least tolerated in the crowd, so.

And on one last note: I really like Kei Nomoto's cheer song this year quite a bit. It ends in this line of "KagayaKE, HabataKE, Nomoto KEI!" Very catchy. Given that Nomoto is pretty much the only regular on the team under the age of 30 (scary, huh?) it's good that they have something like that to be around for a while.

Tomorrow (or more like, in about 8 hours) the Tokyo Big 6 league starts! I better get like 3 hours of sleep and go to Jingu!

Very sad. I'd mentioned in my previous post that he collapsed on the field during pre-game fielding practice in Hiroshima on Friday, essentially with a stroke, and had been in a coma for the past several days with "very little hope of recovering". This morning, he passed away. He leaves behind a wife and three kids, and a host of Giants and Carp fans.

This is pretty much the only decent photo I ever took of him (I rarely get close enough to Giants players; this was during batting practice before a game in May 2008):



The saddest thing, to me, is that he would have turned 38 next week. That's just too young for a recently-retired baseball player to be dying of a stroke.

Mainichi has a photo gallery of his career here.

Nikkan Sports has the progression of his condition here.

The Japanese baseball cards blog has a bunch of cards over his career here.

I vaguely wonder if Takuya Kimura of SMAP will make any comments. Haven't seen any yet, but there was a long ongoing joke about their sharing the same name, and the Giants player even used "Kimutaku" as a nickname just like the SMAP guy.

Saturday, November 7th, my half-birthday, the Yomiuri Giants won the Japan Series by beating the Nippon Ham Fighters 2-0 at the Sapporo Dome. Yet again, just as in 1981, the Giants beat the Fighters in the Japan Series 4 games to 2, and for the Giants, this was their 21st Japan Series title, which of course is still almost double the next-highest winning team, the Seibu Lions with 13 titles.

If you want to know about what actually happened in the game, I recommend reading up on it in other places:

Japan Times: Giants scratch seven-year title itch
Daily Yomiuri: Giants finish off Fighters / Capture 21st Japan Series title as 6 hurlers combine on shutout, MVP Abe provides punch
Japanball: Giants down Fighters in Game 6 to win Japan Series title
Yakyu Baka: Giants shutout the Fighters 2-0 to take the Nippon Series in 6!
and even Bleacher Report: Japanese Yankees Win Their World Series Too, where I want to punch the author by the end but he does have a valid point: have the damn Yankees and the damn Giants play each other already! Seriously!

As for me, what I'm going to share with you is the fan experience of watching the game at Fighters town Kamagaya on Saturday night, since I didn't keep a scorecard and the only moments of the game I really remember very well are Shun Tohno getting knocked down in the first inning and being replaced by Utsumi, and I remember when Ejiri came out to pitch, and I kinda remember the Giants scoring their runs because we were all like "OMGWTFINABA", and of course the last inning, where we really hoped the Fighters could put one or two of the guys on base into home plate for once but I think we all knew in our hearts it wasn't going to happen.


(More photos and videos at the end of the post.)

Kamagaya, for those tuning in for the first time, is a small town in Chiba prefecture, about 30-40 minutes out of Tokyo by train. The Fighters built a minor-league stadium and training center and dormitory there back in 1996, when their major-league team was still based in Tokyo. When the team moved to Sapporo, they kept the minor league team in Kamagaya, and as such, it has become a bit of a gathering place for the relatively large remaining contingent of Tokyo-area Fighters fans.

I read on the Fighters website that they would be having a free "Public Viewing" of Game 6 (and 7) at Kamagaya. They would set up a big TV and seating outside the stadium, and they advertised that there would be merchandise tables with special postseason stuff, and food stands and "fun events" and the minor-league mascot Cubby and some "presents" and whatnot.

So I emailed Hiromi and she emailed Ojisan, and by the time we arrived at Kamagaya around 5:30, we found Ojisan and another friend Chizaki sitting at a picnic table, and they had also saved some seats up front for us as well!

Before the game, I wandered around, said hi to friends I saw there, looked through the merchandise (there was a LOT, but none of it screamed out to me that I HAD to buy it), went to the food stand and bought some curry and rice, and sat down with my friends to have a little mini-picnic, since we had all brought snacks and whatnot to share with everyone. Chizaki had even brought a huge thermos full of hot water and some packets of powder to make coffee out of.

The "presents", by the way, turned out to be plastic folders, which you could get for free if you wrote your name and address and phone number on an information form for Tokyo Dome and Kamagaya 2010 season tickets. The PL championship folder is pretty cool though, has the entire team on it and says "WE DID IT" in big letters.

I was interviewed by a lady reporting for Chiba TV. Or more like, Ojisan dragged her over like "You HAVE to talk to Deanna! Get the international angle!" So after clearing up that yes, I can speak Japanese, I was filmed for about 3-4 minutes. Oddly, most of what she asked me was things like, who is your favorite player? Why is Imanari your favorite player, what do you like about him? Do you come to Kamagaya a lot? How long have you been a Fighters fan? Stuff like that, rather than about the Japan Series itself or anything. I'm just hoping that it didn't actually make it onto TV, or at least that nobody I know SAW it.

The pre-game festivities included having EVERYONE throw out an imaginary first pitch, and then singing the entire Fighters sanka (team song), all three verses, with the lyrics up on the big screen karaoke-style. They also lit up some strings of Christmas lights behind the screen to look like Mt. Fuji, and we did some cheering with Cubby, the mascot. Almost everyone had brought cheer sticks and wore jerseys, usually over several layers of jackets. Some people brought signs. A group of guys in the back even had big Fighters flags on poles that they waved as if we were in a real ouendan at the stadium.

During the game itself, the atmosphere was not entirely unlike being spread out in the Fighters side of the Seibu Dome outfield, just without the trumpets and drums. Most of us tried to do the cheer songs along with the TV as we could hear them, including the Kensuke call and Inaba jump and the chance themes and even just clapping and yelling "Kattobase" and "Go go let's go" and so on. Guys waved flags in the back when Fighters got on base, and we all generally cheered as appropriate, although for the most part people stayed seated rather than standing up to cheer, partially because the seats were on flat ground and standing up would really get in other people's way.

Between innings, the TV display kept showing Kamagaya mini-commercials. Occasionally, there were even little mini-events between innings. Notably, we did YMCA at the same time they did it at the Sapporo Dome, and another time, they called out, "We have a special timed discount starting now! It's the 38 discount! Does anyone know what 38 is for? Yes, it's Masaru Takeda's uniform number! So from now, we'll be selling hotdogs for the next 38 minutes for 100 yen each! So hurry up and buy some!"

(You would be surprised how many people don't want a hot dog for 200 yen, but when you make it 100 yen, the entire place storms the food counter.)

They also often walked around yelling out advertisements for the merchandise there. "See the super-warm and comfortable Fighters 2009 Pacific League Champions parka she's wearing? Oh, it's very comfortable and so fashionable! And if you buy it now, along with a scarf and bag and cheer sticks, it only costs 5000 yen! What a deal!"

Cubby was out there for pretty much the entire game, cheering along with everyone. In the 8th and 9th innings when things were starting to look pretty bad, Cubby was going up to people and patting them on the head and high-fiving and making motions of "Come on, we can do it!"

Anyway, here are some photos and videos from the evening...


Here we are about 10 minutes before the game, doing the "first pitch" together.


Lighting up "Fuji".


And this was the view from my "seat" in the front.


Utsumi coming into the game after Tohno was knocked down and out.


Here's another view from sitting at our picnic table, towards the side.


One of the flag-waving guys way in the back.


Out in back, near where some charcoal grills were set up for people to come warm their hands by, people had hung out all of the normal big banners that they hang in the stadium during games during the season.


I got a photo in the midst of the "We Love Fighters" one.


Here's the merchandise tents.


A display of Fighters bears in various outfits, on a table with Japan Series programs. They also had the Cubby pinbadge capsule machines out as well.


Food stand.


Food stand being swamped by 600 people trying to get 38 hot dogs.

And, as promised, some videos...


Here we are doing the Inaba Jump in the 9th inning. (It starts with us waving cheer sticks for "I Was Born To Love You" though.)


And the Kita no Kuni Kara chance theme, for Naoto Inada's at-bat in the 9th inning. He eventually walked, and you can see how excited the crowd got every time Kroon threw a ball instead of a strike.


In case you are wondering, by the way, I do believe there were a few Giants fans watching the game there, but for the most part, they weren't vocal. (One guy was fairly vocal in the first inning, and he was either escorted out or told to stop it by the police.) I don't think there was any particular ban on Giants fans, but as someone else put it in Japanese, "Can't that idiot read the atmosphere? This is NOT a place to be cheering for the Giants."

(Seriously, if you're a Giants fan, shouldn't there be a better place to watch the game than sitting out in the cold with 600-700 Fighters fans at their minor-league facility?)

And overall, it was actually a pretty neat experience to be sitting out in the cold with a few hundred Fighters fans. I had been waffling about going because it takes me almost 2 hours each way to go there, but in the end I think it was worth it to finish off the season with my friends.

Thus the 2009 season comes to an end, and in theory in the worst possible way, having the Giants beat my Fighters and the Yankees beat my hometown Phillies, but really, I think I'm already over it for the most part, and focusing on how unbelievable the year actually was. Sometimes I think being a Fighters fan has actually turned me into a nicer person and mellowed me out a lot.

And don't worry, there's still more baseball on the horizon for me in 2009, even if it's not pro yakyu. Jingu Taikai next weekend, fanfests and the JUBF-U26 game after that, Master's league and other crazy things after that. Also some hockey, hopefully. I love this place!