NPB in English: Royster, Kroon, Yonamine, Darvish, Brazil
Yakyu links from the English side of the ‘net for tonight:
- Dan at mykbo.net interviewed former Lotte Giants manager (and former White Sox player) Jerry Royster about his time in Korea.
- Andrew Baggerly of the San Jose Mercury News writes about Marc Kroon’s first save opportunity of the spring with his new Giants.
- Our friend Deanna writes about her experience meeting the recently departed Wally Yonamine. I confess I have yet to read Rob Fitts’ book on him.
- The prolific Gen produces so much content at Yakyubaka.com it’s hard to choose an article to link to. I settled on two: a chart of Yu Darvish’s pitches in his most recent spring appearance, and Senichi Hoshino’s idea of quieting Rakuten’s ouen-dan for a game this season.
- This isn’t explicitly NPB related, but MLB is sending a contingent of coaches and former players to Brazil for an instructional camp. I would love to see baseball become more popular in Brazil.
05/03/2011 at 9:41 am Permalink
Jerry Royster made Lotte baseball enormously fun to watch. It seems KBO’s on the verge of making a 9th team in their league. If they suceed, they’ll need some good management and I personally hope to see Royster take the job.
06/03/2011 at 7:00 pm Permalink
Reading the Yonamine book right now and it’s excellent bar a few Japanese misspellings. It’s fascinating reading about Japanese Hawaiians and Japanese Americans in the first half of the 20th century, and also about Nisei in Japan. RIP Wally.
06/03/2011 at 9:43 pm Permalink
simon,
Don’t forget Japanese Canadian baseball players, too.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ãƒãƒ³ã‚¯ãƒ¼ãƒãƒ¼æœæ—¥
http://asahigun.com/
07/03/2011 at 12:41 pm Permalink
Yeah, the mispellings were the reason I didn’t review the Yonamine book back when it came out — I found myself constantly not trusting the information due to things like “I know that a bunch of the things in here are wrong — ‘Matsumoto’ Shoriki…!?!?” The writing is good and the stories from Wally are real, though.
BTW, my comment on this series of links: WTF is Hoshino thinking with quieting the ouendan? They’re already pretty damn quiet in Sendai to begin with (I dunno about other teams in the PL but the Fighters, we have an entire set of special singing ouenka only for Sendai to make up for the fact that you can’t bring trumpets in, and you can’t even HEAR the visiting ouendan if you’re sitting more than 10 rows in front of them).
Plus, IMO, the ouendan is one of the best things about the Japanese baseball experience.
07/03/2011 at 5:58 pm Permalink
The no ouendan thing is tried once a year or two by one club or another.
The problem is that Japanese fans don’t know what to do without the ouendan if they’re suddenly silenced for one game. If they do it for a whole season, then the fans can build up their own natural reactions, but just for one game, no chance. It’ll be like a funeral.
Then again, Chunichi fans lost their ouendan when the yakuza related ones were shut down and the rest of them protested in solidarity. And the fans just sort of led themselves on by singing the standard ouenka (Deanna knows this much better), so maybe nothing new will come of a whole season without the ouendan for any club.
07/03/2011 at 6:01 pm Permalink
Yeah, the Asahi are well known in the Japanese Canadian community, and probably received wider exposure with the induction to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Interesting that both the Canadian team and the Hawaiian team both went by the Asahi moniker.
07/03/2011 at 7:40 pm Permalink
simon,
I agree. It’s a habit and tradition for the J-fans, like going to a temple early morning on New Year’s day. They don’t know how to enjoy the game to its purest essence–“crack of bat” and such–the “daigo-mi” (é†é†å‘³) of baseball on the field, says Hoshino.
I’ll add that unless I personally know someone in the oendan, I’ll avoid the outfield as far as possible, because I can’t stand the instruments and noisy plastic toys that they use. I was at a Yomiuri game, sitting outfield at Yokohama, and boy, they are annoying. The Lotte Marines has been great because it’s just human voice singing.
Hoshino, in any event, always comes up with interesting ideas. Perhaps nothing new (I’m sure yakyu fans noticed how their American counterparts react to Nomo’s no-hitter), yet renovative, his comments are always fun to hear.
07/03/2011 at 11:59 pm Permalink
Why does it matter how American fans behave at games? This is Japan. Japanese fans like to sing and chant and play drums and horns throughout the game. I have lived here many years and I have yet to find a Japanese fan that has a complaint about this. If the noise bothers your American ears, turn down the sound on your TV or watch Major League games instead. No one is forcing you to watch Japanese baseball.
08/03/2011 at 3:55 am Permalink
Just go to any mixi community for an NPB club, there’s always endless threads on cheering. Japanese fans who aren’t into group cheers tend to occupy infield seats, but they still complain that there are no cheap and relatively quiet (non-cheering peer pressure, depending on the team) seats.
08/03/2011 at 5:02 am Permalink
Simon:
I have not visited mixi, but I don’t doubt you are right. Of course, there must be some Japanese people that do not like the cheering. I don’t like it much, either. My point, though, is that Americans bitching about how people cheer at Japanese baseball games seem to be forgetting that we are talking about a different country where people sometimes do things differently. Not better or worse, just different. Just because some American prefers the way American baseball fans cheer does not mean Japanese fans need to change. Frankly, it sounds rather arrogant suggesting the American fans are somehow better or that they appreciate the game more than Japanese fans.
08/03/2011 at 10:14 pm Permalink
EJH,
I’m talking about watching it in person. I’ve been to a couple of ballparks in Japan already. The opening day of the romantic Koshien high school tournament was my latest journey.
Anyway, I don’t think you got what Hoshino was trying to say. It was interesting that he talked about “daigo-mi” in baseball. It’s not about American or Japanese style, just what baseball is, and what it has.
I also hope that you are not like 12 years old, because getting hyped up and sniping after some other fan’s personal experience and opinion on Hoshino’s comment are really out of character.
09/03/2011 at 1:01 pm Permalink
Some stuff from Brazil.
https://picasaweb.google.com/yurijm/MLBEliteCamp#
http://www.youtube.com/yurijm#p/u/1/MZJYGRgJv7s