Marinerds, etc.

I created a special tag just for this team: Sanko 畔上組, meaning the "Azegami Team". I needed something to specify that I meant this particular Sanko team; it's a strong baseball school in general, but like I've been saying, this year's particular group of 9 boys are particularly special.

Anyway, in case you didn't already hear, this morning was the final match of Koshien, and your 2011 Koshien champions are none other than Nichidai San!



Blatantly stolen from Mainichi. Go see their photos of the final game.

Really, this all started slightly less than a year ago, when a couple of 9th-grade boys at my JHS and I were reading the sports news and talking about high school baseball, and two of them had been at a Sanko game for the Tokyo Fall Tournament and told me that I HAD to see this Yoshinaga kid (and that Yokoo kid too). Unfortunately, I missed the end of that tourney thanks to Big 6, but I did make it to the Jingu Taikai a few weeks later. And sure enough, that Yoshinaga kid was worth seeing. I'd give anything to be able to go back and talk to my JHS kids about this, since it's partially their fault I went nuts over this Sanko team.

Anyway, the upshot is, I'm really overjoyed to see Sanko win. They were clearly the best team in the tournament, from the top to the bottom of the lineup. And I'm also horribly sad that it's all over.

Not to say that Kosei wasn't a decent opponent, because that's not true. Their pitcher Akita actually seemed to have a lot more energy than Sanko's Yoshinaga, who was clearly exhausted. But, just like he's done the last few games, when he really, really needed to, he could reach back and get something extra for a strikeout, and wait for a patented Sanko Big Inning to blow the game open.

Which they did.

Sanko took the lead in the 3rd inning when Azegami got hit by a pitch, Yokoo hit a bloop-ish single to right (just out of the reach of the running 2B), and then Shun Takayama blasted a home run over the wall in dead center to make it 3-0.

(Nevermind that the inning really started with Shimizu getting hit in the foot by a pitch, but since he swung at it they called it a strikeout.)

Takayama then made the play of the game in the top of the 5th, when he fielded a single and gunned a runner out at the plate to preserve Yoshinaga's shutout. In the bottom of the 5th, Kaneko got a hit, Azegami tried to bunt him over but failed (forceout at 2nd), moved up on a wild pitch to Yokoo, and then to 3rd on Yokoo's single. Runners at the corners again for Takayama, who grounded out into a 4-6 fielder's choice at 2nd (which was actually a really nice play, the 2nd baseman scooped it off the ground and threw to 2nd while still down). Azegami scored on that play, 4-0. Takayama then got himself caught stealing to end the inning. :P

But then Takayama made a running sliding catch of a fly to right to end the top of the 6th, and all was forgiven.

The Patented Sanko Big 7th Inning started with Shimizu singling, and Kaneko bunting him over to 2nd (why?!?!!?). Azegami then hit a double out to right-center and that brought in Shimizu to make it 5-0. Yokoo then legitimately blasted one out to the left field wall for a double, scoring Azegami, 6-0. Takayama followed that up with a single to right, scoring Yokoo, 7-0. Suganuma grounded out, but then Takahiro Suzuki hit a homer over the left field wall and that made it 9-0 and also took Kosei's pitcher Akita out of the game. Yoshinaga then struck out to end the inning.

Whatever.

Sanko added two more in the 8th when Shimizu reached on an error, Kaneko walked, and Yokoo hit a 2-RBI single to right, making it 11-0 and making him 4-for-5 on the day with 3 RBI, second only to Takayama's going 2-for-5 with 5 RBI. Infact, every Sanko batter reached base, although Taniguchi got there on an error and Yoshinaga got there on a walk.

Somehow Yoshinaga finished out the last 3 Kosei batters with a popout and two strikeouts, and that was it! 125 pitches, 8 strikeouts, complete-game shutout...



To steal another one from Mainichi, of course :)

Here's the game log / article on Asahi's site in Japanese.

(I'll add a little more to this in a bit, hopefully)

Oh, this article from the semi-finals has the BEST PICTURE OF SUGANUMA EVER in it, when he hit that 3-run homer :)

I have been so swamped by work in the last few weeks, including a 2-week period where my group actually went off-site and holed up in a hotel in order to work on our project, that I've barely seen any of Koshien EXCEPT Nichidai Sanko and the occasional outlying game like Kyukoku or Teikyo or Yokohama.

I kept holding off on making the Yoshinaga mega-photopost because I wanted to write something significant about him, being as he captured my heart last November at the Jingu taikai and has been at the forefront of my "irrational emotional attachment to high school pitchers" this past year. I've probably read way more about him than any sane person would, from his tribulations learning how to throw a sinker to his obsession with actress Erika Toda.

But right now I don't have the time. And in about 16 hours, assuming no rainout, he's going to be pitching in the final game of Koshien 2011. The Azegami-team, which I've been writing about here on and off for the last several months, will come to an end in a few short days no matter what the outcome is. I find that so very sad. Part of why I love Japanese high school baseball, but definitely don't usually spend the time getting to learn the players as much as I do in college or the pros, is because the teams are so ephemeral, it's so hard to learn them and really grow any attachment to them. By the time the kids truly mature, it's time for them to step down after the summer of their 3rd year, and let the underclassmen take over.

So this Sanko team has been truly special for me, watching these boys over the last year, seeing Suganuma mature into a power hitter, seeing Suzuki show how to play through the pain, seeing Azegami's leadership on the field. And most of all, seeing Yoshinaga mature as a pitcher. He's got stuff, sure, but he's certainly not the most overpowering pitcher out there. He has his moments of weakness, which make him that much more human. But he also has a fantastic team behind him, and they score more runs than he gives up, and they back him up on the field. And he comes through when they need him most, and they come through when he needs them most.

What can I say, I love this team, and I love this guy.

These are from Senbatsu, but does it really make a difference? :)












(oh, that smile!)




(oh yeah, he can bat too, you know)


I don't know for sure if I'll get to watch tomorrow's game live, but I'll certainly be frantically checking the scores either way. I haven't been this into a team since Saga Kita. Seriously!

This boy...



is going back to this place!



:)


So yeah, fairly close final game to close up the West Tokyo qualifiers, between Nichidai San and Waseda Jitsugyo. In 2006, these two teams also faced off, and Waseda's ace at the time was this kid named Yuki Saitoh. You may have heard of him. Waseda won in the 11th inning and went to Koshien, and the rest is history. Saitoh went on to beat Ma-kun and Komadai Tomakomai and stop their 3-peat, and set the rest of the country on a rage for blue handkerchiefs. Half of Sanko's team went on to attend Meiji University and spent the next four years still trying to beat Saitoh and Waseda. (Fumiya Araki did a fairly good job and found his way back to Koshien as a Hanshin Tiger.)

This year's Sanko team, aka the Azegami squad, has been pretty magical. They've got all the parts of a successful team there -- a strong-hitting and strong-fielding outfield in Taniguchi, Azegami, and Takayama, a bunch of power bats in Yokoo and Suganuma, a strong infield in Shimizu and Kaneko, a rock behind the plate in Suzuki, and most importantly, something else Sanko's lacked in the last few years -- a true ace in the form of Kentaro Yoshinaga. As long as he could keep things together, they would win. And today he certainly did -- 14 strikeouts to win it 2-1.

It was a deadlock of a 0-0 game until the 5th, when Yuta Taniguchi, batting 9th, got hit in the head by a pitch -- literally, it was just a high curve that curved into the front of his helmet. Taniguchi stole second, and 2nd-year Ryoya Kaneko hit a double to center to score Taniguchi to make it 1-0.

The boy I've dubbed "Secret Power", Kenichi Suganuma, launched a homer in the 6th to make it 2-0.

Waseda threatened in the top of the 7th when Watanabe led off with a double and was bunted to 3rd; during Shigenobu's at-bat, Yoshinaga threw a wild pitch into the dirt that bounced up and Watanabe was able to score on it to make the score 2-1. But fortunately Yoshinaga then struck out Shigenobu and Manabe to end the threat, and that was kind of the game right there.

I was able to watch the game on justin.tv (though with no sound, so I had to guess that the men they were interviewing in the stands were Yoshinaga and Suzuki's dads, for example), and it was really great to see them win. Yoshinaga couldn't stop crying afterwards. It's got to be a big weight off his shoulder -- the ghosts of the last time Sanko and Sojitsu faced off in addition to what people have called the "Jingu Taikai curse", meaning that the team who wins the Jingu Taikai can't have further success at Koshien that year. Who knows?

Anyway, this is the high school team that I irrationally fell for this year, and you have no idea how tempting it is to get a plane ticket to Osaka. Alas. (And yes, that second photo is me at Senbatsu this spring...)

I'm calling this a "fake photo" because I didn't take these photographs. No, these are from one of the gems of my tendency to always look through the baseball magazines of any Book-Off I went to in Japan, just to see what oddball stuff might end up there. One time, I found a copy of the 1987 issue of 甲子園の恋人たち, a Koshien photobook magazine that seems to have mostly been around in the 1980's, for 350 yen.

Guys who went to Koshien in 1987 are basically all 41 or 42 years old now, so it's pretty amusing to look back at the photos of them as teenagers. (What's even weirder is, while I recognized a whole bunch of the players in here, I'm sure there were even more guys that went pro but were already finished way before I would have heard of them.)

So in honor of the fact that Koshien is starting in slightly over a week, and for another reason that'll become obvious at the end of this post, I decided to scan in a few things from this magazine. Some are just magazine pages, others are from the 3x3 "cards" pages they had in the back of the book. (Not real cards, though they called them that in the table of contents.)

Some Young Whippersnapper Catcher From Shimane


Proof that Motonobu Tanishige is not, infact, a robot from another planet. (And may be infact be the best catcher of the last 20 years in Japan not named Furuta.)

A Pro Golfer. You've Probably Heard Of His Brother


Izumi Kuwata, who also played baseball at PL Gakuen, two years behind his brother Masumi, though Izumi was an outfielder, not a pitcher. He's still an active pro golfer in Japan.

Here There Be Dragonlings


Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, who seems to have been the biggest superstar of this Koshien class, judging by this magazine and others from the time period. Also one of the greatest Japanese baseball players of all-time.

Another Spaceman From Teikyo To The Fighters


Hiroshi Shibakusa, who had a long career pitching for the Fighters, a few years of doing other stuff, and is now back with the team as a pitching coach. (His name is pronounced "hiroshi" but the kanji are for "space". I think it had something to do with him being born in the summer of 1969.)

Some Pitcher From Tochigi, or A Whale Of An Infielder


At the time of the 1987 Koshien, this guy was named "Tadanori Ishii" and he was pitching for Ashikaga high school. 4 years later, after winning one game as a pro pitcher for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, he converted into an infielder and changed his name to Takuro Ishii, and went on to get over 2000 hits in an excellent career as a shortstop, mostly with Yokohama. He'll be 42 next month and is still occasionally in the starting lineup as a 3rd baseman with the Hiroshima Carp, because he's JUST THAT AWESOME.

When Tigers Fade


Patrick and I were just talking about Atsushi Kataoka, so this is for him.

Kokorozashi, or Barnstorming All The Way To Lancaster


Toshihisa Nishi was a Koshien star with Ibaraki's Joso Gakuin HS, then Waseda, then the damn Giants. I'll still remember him best leading off for the Baystars, though. He retired last year after playing in the indie leagues in the US.

He Shocked Us In Many Ways, Including His Last.


This is a boy named Hideki Irabu, who you may have heard of. His career was always one of ups and downs, and his life probably wasn't easy a lot of the time as a half-Japanese kid trying to hide that fact, but it's interesting to look back and see him smiling out from a page like this, and think of what kind of future people imagined for this big fireballer back then...


I'm intending to do an Irabu photopost sometime soon, since I never did get around to doing one when I saw him pitch in the summer of 2009, on what was my first great Koshien roadtrip, so this seems like an appropriate time for it anyway.

Part 3 in a series. See Part 1, See Part 2.

As we close in on the finals of the summer taikai, I find myself wanting to revisit and finish my monster Nichidai San posts from the spring. They did infact go on to win the entire Tokyo spring taikai, though that shouldn't really surprise anyone, and now they're contending for a spot at summer Koshien. I started this series of posts as a sort of glorified "Sanko Senbatsu Photopost", and then got distracted.

Last time I covered the first 4 of the lineup -- oddly, the lineup I saw at the Jingu Taikai last year, and the lineup at Senbatsu, and the lineup in the West Tokyo Qualifying Tournament, hasn't significantly changed between then and now, although the last 5 spots tend to get switched around a bit. The only thing is, I found a lot more stuff written about the first four guys in the lineup than the next four, to be sure. They're certainly all strong players though -- none of these guys is a weak spot in the lineup at all, and every one of them is prone to launch a homer at any time (and has).


The Youngster, Ryoya Kaneko
(HS meikan)



This year's power team is almost all 3rd-years with the exception of Kaneko, the sole 2nd-year in the starting 9. (Which practically guarantees he'll be team captain next year, although there are certainly a few other 2nd-years on the 18-man roster.) Despite being one of the youngest on the team, Kaneko is also listed as being one of the tallest on the team, at 180cm. He's said to have a really good batting eye and is expected to develop into a power hitter when he fills out, which bodes well for him as a lefty-batting first baseman.

Kaneko also played for the All-Tokyo team when the Urban Youth Academy came over for a few friendship games in June, again being one of the only underclassmen.

Shortstop Koki Shimizu





Voted by the rest of his team as the biggest "yancha", which kinda means "pain in the ass", Shimizu is a solid shortstop with strong footwork. You probably wouldn't notice how good he is because he's one of those stealthy shortstop types like Hirokazu Ibata.

The Secret Power, Kenichi Suganuma





Suganuma didn't particularly appear to be a huge power threat when I saw him, and he batted only .235 during that Senbatsu, but then he went on to hit 4 homers in the Tokyo Spring Taikai, which was pretty insane. Shimizu claims that Suganuma's become a "weight baka", and he said (in the Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine) that he went from being able to lift 45kg to 90kg in a year.

Suganuma usually wears uniform number 7, and was ostensibly the left fielder at some point, but has been playing second base in pretty much every official game Sanko's had in 2011. I'm guessing that he works together well with Shimizu, though I recall him being a decent 2nd baseman in the games I saw him in...

Taking One For The Team - catcher Takahiro Suzuki
(HS meikan)





Here are your normal photos of catcher Takahiro Suzuki -- smiling by the dugout, bunting up the runner, both of which he's good at. But what really made Suzuki a hero in the eyes of many high school baseball fans is what happened in the top of the 8th inning of this game, on March 25, 2011. I happened to be sitting behind the dugout for this just because I wanted to see Sanko, so I also had a great angle for what happened.

Edwin's blog recount and the Sanko blog recount (in Japanese).

Basically an errant throw to the plate bounced and hit Suzuki in the face, and it allowed Meitoku to score a go-ahead run. The game paused for a while as Suzuki kind of got knocked out, and they put a towel to his mouth as he appeared to have a bloody lip and might have lost a tooth. I was using my zoom lens as a binoculars to figure out what was going on, and got the following shots...







The game paused for a bit, and then Suzuki did what was way above and beyond the call of duty -- he came back out after a few minutes, finished the inning, and then in the bottom of the 8th, with runners at first and second, he said he wanted to bat, went to the plate, and SMACKED ONE to the center field wall, scoring Suganuma and Yoshinaga to bring Sanko up 6-5 over Meitoku, which is where the game would end.

The Sanko blog describes it as "Covered in blood and sweat, Suzuki showed his fighting spirit and hit the go-ahead 2-RBI double."

Here's a Youtube Video recap of the game. If you go to about minute 10:45 you can see what happens -- Suganuma's throw to the plate and Suzuki going down. Then at 12:04 Suzuki comes up to bat, clearly with a bloody lip, and BAM. I've seen players play through a lot of random things, but this was definitely up there.

Anyway, the great postscript to this is that Suzuki -- who has been described more as "the guy catching Yoshinaga, a solid but not spectacular player", in the Tokyo Spring Taikai final game against Kosei... the game went into extra innings, and Sanko even brought in Yoshinaga to pitch, who had largely not been pitching in that tournament. Anyway, Sanko does win the game... on a walkoff grand slam by Suzuki.

Awesome.

And now that I'm finishing this, Sanko and Waseda Jitsugyo are slated to face each other in 2 days. I'll try to put my Yoshinaga monster photopost out before then...

Part 2 in a series. See Part 1.

Due to time constraints, I only managed to get through the first 4 batters in the lineup for today's photopost. Sorry.

I started to write an introduction to this post but then found that captain Sho Azegami had clearly written it for me already. This is from page 35 of the spring 2011 Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine, the "Captain's Team Check":

戦力的には、去年のチームと比べ、長打力では少し劣ります。 でも、去年になかったタイプの谷口が、足を絡めたプレーをしてくれたり、今年は9人全員で一点を取りにいく野球ができます。 1番の高山が出塁して、谷口が送って自分と横尾がかえす。
そのパターンが秋はうまく機能しての優勝でした。 でも、もう少し走塁を絡められたら、ラクな展開で勝てました。 冬は、走塁練習にも力を入れています。 エースの吉永も成長し、自分が抑えるという気迫であふれています。 昨年、なしえなかった優勝に向け、全員１つになって戦います！

(And my translation:)
"If I compare this year's batting to last year's, our power numbers may be a little smaller. But, last year's team also didn't have a speedster type guy like Taniguchi, who has caused our team to play more of a running game. This year our play style is more like, any guy of the 9 in our lineup can score a run at any time. Leadoff man Takayama gets on base, Taniguchi moves him up and then either I or Yokoo bring him in. That was the pattern we used to earn our championship in the fall. But, making our baserunning a bit better, that also helps us win in general. This winter, we put a lot of effort into baserunning practice. And our ace Yoshinaga has also gotten better, his mound presence is amazing. (lit: his self-control and determination is overflowing) So, coming back to the Senbatsu crown we couldn't quite win last spring, this year our team fights together as one to win it!"


He's not kidding about the "winning formula". The top of this lineup is certainly one of the best in Japanese high school baseball, currently.

Leadoff man Shun Takayama
(draftrepo HS meikan)





Takayama lists his favorite baseball player as being the Fighters' Atsunori Inaba, and it's not surprising -- Takayama himself is a very similar player, a guy who can hit for a combination of power and speed from the left side, and has a decent arm and glove in the outfield as well. He became the leadoff man and regular right fielder for Sanko as a sophomore, already standing almost 6 feet tall.

Takayama was my introduction to this Sanko team, as a matter of fact -- I showed up at the Jingu Taikai slightly late, the first time I was seeing them play in person. I found a seat as Takayama was coming to the plate for the second time of the day, and no sooner had I sat down than he was launching a 2-run homer into the right-field bleachers. At least it was an easy at-bat to write in my scorecard.

Koshien no Hoshi mentions that he's the #1 モテる man on the team, meaning popular/well-liked: "Takayama has a lot of fans -- he sure fills out a baseball uniform well!"

Number 2, Speedster Yuta Taniguchi
(mainichi)





Everyone agrees that Taniguchi is not only the fastest runner on the Sanko team, but he very well might be one of the fastest high school baserunners out there in the current field. He's not a particularly flashy player, and hasn't been written up in the draft notes like most of the other regulars on the team have (although check out this draft repo page -- look at stolen bases). But clearly he's been a contributor to the team both in his fielding and his hitting, and apparently he and captain Azegami have worked out together for their entire time at Sanko ("Azegami called out to me when we first joined the team as freshmen, 'Wanna practice together?' Now, two years later, we just always practice together. It's our habit. If team practice was cancelled, we'd probably still go out and run together or something.")

An interesting side story about Taniguchi is that he has one sister 4 years older than him, and she went to Koshien before him with her high school as a team scorekeeper/assistant).

The Heart of the Team: Captain Sho Azegami
(HS meikan draft repo)





I started talking about Azegami, a rare non-catcher captain, in my last post a little. Basically, when I was sitting behind Sanko's dugout at Koshien, from the minute he emerged from the dugout before the game, I immediately saw him and was like "Ah! That's Azegami, the captain." He somehow manages to carry this air of authority; a somewhat serious, almost professional attitude, but at the same time he's shouting at his teammates with a smile on his face like "Come on guys, it's time to PRACTICE! Up and at 'em! RUN RUN RUN! We can't win today if we don't get in a good pregame!" You could see the other guys kinda laugh like "Yessir!" and fall into line around him.

One scout's report calls him "自主練習の量も自他ともに認めるナンバーワン", or "the team's number one guy when it comes to personal training", basically. In other words, the dude works his butt off and inspires others to do the same. Which makes it no wonder he's in sync with Ogura-kantoku and the team slogan of "practice makes perfect".

Azegami tied a Senbatsu record with 6 hits in one game against Kakogawa Kita, and was overall 11-for-16 for a .688/.722/1.000 line for the tourney. So far in the Spring Tourney he's already 6-for-13 with 2 homeruns as well.

What else can I possibly say? He lists math as his weak subject. Guess that means he's not overly concerned with figuring out his exact batting average, though I'm guessing he can certainly count to 6.

The Okawari Wannabe: Cleanup Man Toshitake Yokoo
(HS meikan draft repo)









If you look up the word "akogare"　(憧れ） in a Japanese-English dictionary, the definition it'll probably give you is "yearning", which will sound a little bit weird. The word, when applied to a person, usually actually means "I want to be like them" or "I look up to them".

The first time I heard of Yokoo was from one of my JHS students, who basically used that exact phrase to describe him: 三高の4番横尾はすごい！憧れます！ Even after said JHS student enrolled at a rival baseball high school, when we chatted a bit about Senbatsu and Sanko, he was still like "You saw Sanko? Cool! Did you see Yokoo play? He's the man. I wanna be like him. I'm gonna be a cleanup batter and hit a bazillion homeruns someday just like Yokoo too."

A guy who inspires that in his peers is a little frightening.

Yokoo started playing baseball at a very young age; both his older brother and his father also played. Apparently even as an elementary school student, his father put a lot of pressure on him; supposedly they'd be riding back in the car from his little league practice and his dad would recap the day and berate him for mistakes he made in the game and then make the brothers do more baseball practice at home afterwards as well. Weekday evenings, when his father got home from work, they might also go to a batting cage and practice together as well.

As a result, when Sanko manager Ogura tagged Yokoo as a sophomore and basically said, "You're our cleanup batter. If you don't hit, we don't win. Got that?", Yokoo was already used to such pressure and responded in kind by hitting.

Yokoo's hero is apparently Takeya Nakamura of the Seibu Lions, otherwise known as "Okawari-kun", the man who eats way too much and hits way too many homeruns. As a result, I think Yokoo is already starting to get kinda big, and maybe he'd be better off not continuing that path. Though, in the games I saw him play, he moved just fine over at third base. I wouldn't say he's an astoundingly good fielder (and he got a lot of heat for making a big error at last year's Senbatsu that allowed Konan to win the game) but he's not terrible.

The only thing is, his hitting was kind of on the downturn at this year's Senbatsu. Last year he mashed for a .458/.480/.708 line, and this year was .200/.333/.200 instead. I think I saw 2 of the 3 hits he managed to get. He walked a few times too, but still, the real batter at Senbatsu was Azegami. I read that Yokoo got a slightly heavier bat over the winter to improve his power swing; maybe he's still adjusting to that. In the Tokyo spring tourney he's managed a 5-for-13 average with a homer, although that's against weaker pitching than he faced at Senbatsu.

Amusingly, as a 2nd-year Yokoo wrote his future dream as "major leaguer", but as a 3rd-year, he wrote just "pro ballplayer". Coming down to earth, maybe? He also lists English as his strong subject and math as his weak subject.


(This is proving more difficult to write than I thought it would be, because I keep getting sidetracked reading through Koshien magazines and websites. So, Part 3 will be coming in a day or two. Hopefully by then I can tell you all how Sanko won the Spring taikai...)

First part in a series, I hope. I've wanted to make a monster Nichidai San post since a month ago when I sat behind their dugout at Senbatsu (or since the Jingu Taikai last fall), but didn't really have time.

Your first question might be, "...what the heck is a Nichidai San? Why do you call it Sanko half the time?"

The full name of the school is 日本大学第三高等学校, or Nihon University Number Three High School, usually shortened to either 日大三 ("Nichidai San") or 三高 ("Sanko", and their school seal is a stylized version of that latter abbreviation, which is also what's on the baseball uniform). The 2-character abbreviation 日大 "Nichidai" is short for 日本大学 "Nihon Daigaku". Many universities in Japan have one or more affiliated high schools, which either end up numbered or named after the type of school or the location the campus is in. For example, "Nodai Niko" (numbered), "Waseda Jitsugyo" (type), "Tokaidai Sagami" (location).

Nihon University is the largest university in Japan (something like 70,000 undergraduates spread among all of their campuses), which kind of makes sense, given that it's kind of "the University of Japan". Though the university's baseball team has produced several solid pro players in recent years (Shuichi Murata, Shohei Tateyama, Mitsuru Manaka, Eiji Ochiai, Hirotoshi Kitagawa, Takumi Nasuno, Naoyuki Shimizu... and that idiot Hisayoshi Chono), in general they actually haven't been THAT great in about... 50 years. Heck, in my 4 years of watching college ball in Japan, Nichidai was only in the top division of the Tohto League for 2 semesters, and promptly fell back out of it.

But bizarrely, the Nichidai high schools are pretty much almost always in Koshien -- you'll rarely see a tournament that does not involve at least one high school with 日大 attached to it, kids wearing uniforms with "NIHON" across their chests. And I've been told that how closely attached they are to the university itself also depends on whether the Nichidai comes first or last in the school's name -- that is, the ones that are Nichidai 1, 2, 3 are the highest, then the ones like Nichidai Tsurugaoka, Nichidai Fujisawa, etc, and then after that, Ogaki Nichidai, Sano Nichidai, Nagasaki Nichidai, etc. What this really means is how much more of a chance a student has of getting into Nichidai itself based on attending a Nichidai high school, really. (Unlike how supposedly with Keio high school, if you manage to graduate, you'll just get into the university automatically.)

Sanko in particular has been a Tokyo high school baseball powerhouse in recent years -- they've consistently managed to end up Best 8 or higher in most regional tournaments for the last decade or so; if they're not representing West Tokyo at Koshien, they're making it awfully hard for someone else to get there. When they do go to Koshien, they're a force to be reckoned with. It was almost unfair in 2010 when the first two teams they faced were 21st Century teams -- schools invited for reasons other than stomping all of their opponents. "Welcome to Koshien. Meet Nichidai San. It won't hurt for more than 9 innings, we promise."

Since 1997, the Sanko team has been under the leadership of this man:



Masayoshi Ogura, born in 1957, went to Nichidai San HS, was an infielder in the baseball club but never made it as a regular. He continued on to Nihon University, but didn't even join the baseball club there, instead working towards becoming a teacher so he could coach high school baseball. After graduating, he became the manager for Kanto Daiichi HS, and took them to several Koshien and Senbatsu tournaments in the mid-80's. Eventually, in 1997, he became manager at Nichidai San, which was his life's goal, and he's been there since. In that time they've been to Koshien 10 times and compiled a 19-10 W/L record, winning it all in summer 2001 (behind Kazuki Kondoh, who now pitches for Orix).

One of Ogura's slogans as a baseball coach is 練習はうそをつかない, meaning loosely "Practice makes perfect". Other things he teaches as a coach and social studies teacher are for self-restraint and to have a caring heart; that is, to put others before yourself (you can go see his lectures on the subject if you want to, in mid-June). One of his comments about this 2011 team is that they were just an unusually solid unit as a team, working together very well, and not only that, they'd built a solid 1-9 lineup where all of the batters were strong, behind a real ace in Yoshinaga. Which is definitely what I saw last fall and what drew me to this team in particular. No weak links. A well-oiled machine. Welcome to Koshien, meet Nichidai San.

Every year in the Koshien magazines, they ask the players various questions, like their favorite food, favorite baseball player, future dream, etc. Most of the answers are predictable; a lot of "pro baseball player" for future dream, some AKB48 member as favorite celebrity, etc. But two of those categories are always also "person I most respect" and "favorite word or phrase". You can actually kind of guess how united a team is and how much they follow their manager by how they answer these questions. The 2010 Nichidai San team had 10 out of 18 players put Ogura as the person they most respected, and 4 put "練習はうそをつかない" as their "favorite phrase". With 2011's team, FIFTEEN of them have Ogura as their "person I most respect". And 10/18 have "練習はうそをつかない" as their favorite phrase.

In recent years, Sanko's team captains have mostly been catchers. In 2006 it was Shuhei Ikenaga (incidentally my favorite Meiji University player, a super-likeable bespectacled catcher), in 2007 it was catcher Yohei Kurosaki, now at Meisei University. In 2008 they took a break and had an outfielder, Kenta Nakashima (now at Nihon Taiiku University). That didn't work so well, so back to a catcher captain in 2009 with Yuta Yoshida (now at Rissho Univ). 2010's team had catcher Kazuki Ohtsuka as their captain (who just entered Nihon University).

Oddly, despite that catcher Takahiro Suzuki seems like total captain material, the captain is centerfielder Sho Azegami. Who is even MORE captain-like:



(Suzuki and Yokoo are the co-captains, actually. Suzuki describes Azegami as being "a natural leader type with a booming voice in the dugout that you can't help but follow." and Yokoo adds, "The three of us work together to make sure the team runs smoothly. So far we haven't had any disagreements.")

It doesn't hurt that Azegami is one hell of a hitter, in addition to being one hell of a leader. He hit well as a sophomore, continued it with a 5-for-11 run in the Jingu Taikai, tied a Senbatsu record when he went 6-for-6 in one of the games this spring, and has continued his assault in the Tokyo Spring Tournament now.

Speaking of which, the final game of the Tokyo Spring Tournament (tourney brackets) is on Sunday -- May 1st -- at Komazawa Stadium.

And said final game pits Nichidai San against Kosei Gakuen HS... whose campus is right by the Salvation Army headquarters out in Suginami. (I only know that because I was out there donating stuff from my house before I left Japan, bizarrely.)

However, as far as I can tell, Kosei hasn't won a game against Sanko for at least the last 4 years. I hope I'm not jinxing anything by pointing that out.

Hopefully I'll get the second half of this post up tomorrow as a Friday Foto, before the final game starts.

Got to Koshien a little too late -- 8:30am. Ended up in the 2nd row instead of the first row, behind the 1st base dugout. Doh. But I have a new lens that I bought last night (still the same cheap 70-300 zoom, but at least it doesn't have chips and scratches and dirt like my old one did).

They've really sped up the pacing, so you barely have time to do anything between games anymore. I did manage to buy souvenirs and donate money to earthquake relief before the first game, but between games, all I had time to do was go to the bathroom, pretty much. It's like, they sing the winner's school song, then it's OFF the field for you, ON for the next two teams, very short pre-game warmup, and next game!

First game was Tenri, a Nara powerhouse, vs. Odate Homei, an Akita newcomer. Homei, as a matter of fact, were pictured with their baseball team posing in a huge snowfall, in the Senbatsu magazine. So, it was an expectation that Tenri would win. And they did. The funny thing in that game was that Tenri's #11 pitcher, the lefty Nakatani, was pretty good, while their #1 "ace" righty Nishiguchi was terrible (he threw the last 2 innings when it pretty much didn't matter).

The second game was Yokohama vs. Hasami. Tatsuya Yamauchi started for Yokohama. He's a lefty freshman-upcoming-sophomore (this time of year is so annoying to refer to years by). I saw him pitch last summer, and was psyched to see him again since it sounded like he'd just gotten better in the fall and spring. Except, apparently, not so much... he gave up 2 runs in the first inning, both oshidashi runs where he walked in or hit by pitch in the run. And Yokohama never really recovered from that. Hasami's starter was a tall sturdy boy named Ryoma Matsuda who also batted cleanup (this is usually a BAD sign), and he basically pitched a whole game and somehow Yokohama's batters just never managed to capitalize on the chances they had. (I think Matsuda's strategy was to walk captain/cleanup batter Kensuke Kondoh, that worked out well for him.) So, if you consider that Tenri never wins when I see them the first upset of the day, then Yokohama losing to Hasami was certainly the second.

What was crazy about Game 2 for me was that I inadvertantly ended up sitting with Yokohama right-fielder Tomo Otosaka's family. If you don't know who Otosaka is, this is him...



Yeah, a half-Japanese kid -- father's American. I actually am not sure what his English name romanizes as (乙坂・ルーセロ・智・ニコラス - "Nicholas Lucero"?). They've been calling him "Yokohama's Ichiro" because he steals ninety bazillion bases. (It's true. He stole two in today's game even.) I'd seen him in Kagayake Koshien no Hoshi magazine, and from afar at last summer's Kanagawa taikai, but that was it.

Anyway, his entire (Japanese) family had come down from Fukui Prefecture, so his grandma was next to me, a high-school-aged cousin was next to her, and an aunt was next to her, and various other family members were in other nearby rows. They were all at Koshien for the first time ever, but BOY were they psyched. I think the cousin girl didn't even really understand the game very well, but she kept yelling "TOMO-CHAN! GANBATTE!!!" at the top of her lungs.

I kinda regret not asking more questions about him while they were there, but I'm never quite sure how much is or isn't rude to ask. Cousin said something like "Tomo's dad is from Kansas. I heard he might be here today but we don't really know." And Grandma showed me a family photo from a while back, and also pointed out where some other family members were sitting ("there's my son over there, he's a high school teacher...") and so on. She told me how Tomo's older brother is studying abroad in England right now and wants to be an interpreter. And I guess she felt bad that I wasn't eating anything, because she even gave me an onigiri (rice ball with nori) when the rest of them were eating lunch!

And despite Yokohama losing the game, Otosaka's family was remarkably chipper. I think they were mostly just very psyched to be at Koshien and to have a relative of theirs on the field. They were like "oh well, that's too bad that first pitcher gave up so many walks and runs. Everyone tried their best, it's too bad they lost. We're gonna go try to catch up with Tomo-chan." I joked, "See you at summer Koshien!" and they laughed.

Game 3 was Kanazawa vs. Kakogawa. Kanazawa had a boy I'd heard of quite a bit already named Yoshinao Kamata, who could supposedly hit 150km/h on the radar gun. Well... he CAN infact do that! His pitching speed was basically pro speed, like in the mid-140's on just about every pitch. He struck out a bazillion guys over the first few innings. And then... well... Kakogawa's pitcher Inoue, while not as fast and not as much flair, managed to outpitch him, because, quite frankly, I don't think Kanazawa's team can actually hit or field. So once Kakogawa had a few points on them, it just kinda fell apart from there. I think Kanazawa was the favored team in this match because of the flashier, more famous pitcher, but well, this is a team sport, see, and one guy can't do it all. Still, I was totally in love with Kamata for the first few innings, and I expect to see great things out of him in the future, assuming he can get onto a good college/shakaijin team. Kanazawa always has these awesome pitchers and this crappy team behind them for some reason.

Anyway, if you want full logs/commentary for these games, you should look at Edwin's Koshien blog, because he wrote them all up (I even had to look at his writeups a few times to figure out things like WTF WAS WITH THE KAKOGAWA BASERUNNING IN THE 7TH AND 8TH INNINGS). Me, I was sitting behind the dugout with a camera, so clearly what I've got to offer you all is photos.

I didn't have time to really tailor this set; I took over 1000 photos today so I just kinda picked out ones I like. They're Game-2-heavy because Yokohama is Yokohama. They've been churning out pro players left and right since the Matsuzaka heyday, after all.

Game 1


Tenri's Nakatani, the lefty pitcher. He was pretty good.


Komei's starter Saitoh, a little lefty kid.


I just like this photo of Tatsuki Kameda jumping.


Tenri's "ace" Nishiguchi. I am not sure why he is wearing #1 when he doesn't seem like that great a pitcher, although he LOOKS like he should be.

Game 2


Naoki Date


Hasami captain Yudai Yamaguchi


Hasami pitcher Ryoma Matsuda batting


...and Matsuda pitching






Yokohama lefty Tatsuya Yamauchi, who had a rough first inning


Yokohama captain and cleanup and catcher Kensuke Kondoh, who was pretty solid (here he is tagging out yet another runner at the plate)




Yokohama's righty pitcher Yuya Yanagi


View of the final score from behind the Yokohama dugout.

Game 3






Kanazawa's fireballer Yoshinao Kamata


I didn't catch him getting 150 km/h, but here's a 149


Kakogawa's starter Maito Inoue, who had a much more solid team behind him


"Guys, uh, look, you know that, uh, baseball thing? You're supposed to hit it with a bat when you're at the plate. And get it with your glove and throw it to the proper place when you're in the field. Uhh... guys?"