Marinerds, etc.

I was actually somewhat specifically asked to blog about this experience, so I'm writing an entry.  I guess maybe there are still readers of this blog who don't know me in other channels, but I'm back in Japan for a month (have been from Sept 5 to Oct 8, basically).  I've already gone to around 25 games here, and have a few more to go.

Anyway, so I went to Kamagaya yesterday afternoon.  My intention for the day was to do absolutely nothing special -- I wasn't going to bring my huge camera and take photos, I wasn't even wearing a Fighters jersey (just a t-shirt), I wasn't going to spend time after the game getting photos or autographs, I was just going to go by myself and do nothing but watch the damn game for a change.

I should know by now that this sort of thing never works out, and adventure happens to me whether I like it or not.

Basically, the guy who used to be one of the interpreters for the team, Mr. Araki, works in the Kamagaya office now, which partially means he helps run all of the daily "events" at Kamagaya.  During the weekend these events can get pretty crazy -- like this upcoming weekend is the Hokkaido Festival, and holiday weekends also tend to have big things where they'll have food tents and rides for kids and a stage set up with singers and dancers and "talk shows" with the players, and autograph tables, and all kinds of crazy things.  During the weekdays, the events tend to be a lot more low-key, like a "special dessert" that might be on sale only in the 5th inning, or the pre-game ceremonial first pitch, or dancing on the field in the 7th inning, etc.

Anyway, one thing that I always saw at Kamagaya but never understood fully was a bunch of people who'd get introduced on the field before the game, just random fans.  And then another thing is that there's this huge book of daily reports from the Fighters Kamagaya games that sits on a table in the concourse, and you can look through it and see what people wrote about the games for the past 2 years or so.  Some are detailed, some are just a drawing and a sentence or two, it depends.

So Araki came up to me and said (in English) "Hey, long time no see.  Would you like to be a daily reporter today?  You get to go on the field before the game and be introduced, and then you write a report about the game that we put in our book.  Maybe you can write about it on your blog."

Well, I was super-nervous but it sure sounded like a new and interesting experience, so I said sure, and about 15 minutes later my name got called out with 5 other people and I reported to the stadium clubhouse entrance thingy.  We got a brief explanation of the Daily Report form and then were escorted into the stadium -- my first time there!  (I'd been on the field before once or twice for various post-game events, but we always entered from the outside of the stadium.)  We went through the lobby (where I saw former Fighter Komai and some other guys working on something) and down a hallway, past a bunch of rooms that had various people in them that looked like media or players getting set up to chart stuff, etc, and waited outside the Fighters dugout:



They told us a little bit about what would happen on the field... now the silly thing is, they specifically asked me if I could speak Japanese, and of course I'd been talking in Japanese up to that point.  But they thought it'd be funny if we did both languages... the suggestion was to do like a comedy routine where I'd say something in English, the announcer would look confused and call for the interpreter and then I'd just repeat myself in Japanese. 

But what actually happened is more like, we went out there, and when the guy got to me he just said in English "Oh hello how are you" and I'm thinking "wait WTF", so I just said something in English like "Hi I'm Deanna, I'm happy to be a daily reporter, I love the Fighters and Kamagaya!" and then he said "oh okay!!" and went on to the next person.

Then a friend of mine from the stands yelled down in Japanese "Oi Deanna, why didn't you say that in Japanese?" and I yelled back "He didn't ASK me in Japanese!" and then the announcer was like "Wait, you speak Japanese?  Then in Japanese please!" and so I repeated myself, kinda, like "let's have a great game today, go Fighters!"

And as a joke he asked the next guy to give his answer in English. 

The other funny thing is that the last guy in the group is actually one of my Kamagaya friends (and is one of the ouendan leaders), but he was wearing a Searex t-shirt, so they were giving him crap about that.

Anyway, that was quite a crazy experience, it was really weird looking out into the stands and realizing how many people I recognized out there -- it sounds crazy but in the last 5 years I've met a LOT of the Kanto-area Fighters fan regulars!

I made Araki-san take photos while I was on the field, so here, you can see that I'm not making this crazy thing up:

Here we are on the field, getting ready to be introduced as daily reporters.


I am looking around at all the people in the stands and definitely being like "WTF am I doing here!"


And here I am being interviewed myself.  How bizarre!  Apparently Nakahara-san didn't get the memo about the comedy thing but it sounds like it was still funny to everyone, so that's good.

Anyway, so after that we were led off the field, back through the clubhouse, back outdoors, and given clipboards with the Daily Report thingies on them, and then went back to our seats!  Lots of my friends were like "OMG I SAW YOU!  SO FUNNY!"

Oh yeah, also, before the game started I went and got a photo with Cubby.  I'd been told that the person inside the Cubby outfit has changed, and there's a new uniform too:

 

So yeah, there was a game.  Because I was a Daily Reporter, I took very careful notes all game!  (Just joking, I kept my normal scorecard, which was more than enough.)

Takayuki Makka started for the Baystars (you may or may not remember that he has my undying support since another craziest day ever of mine) and Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters (you may remember him being our Rookie of the Year in 2006 and never being quite so awesome ever again.  Sigh, I still have hope for him though.)  So two lefties, exciting.

Only thing is, Makka had a really tough time in the first inning, and so after getting two quick outs, he gave up two hits in a row to Shingo Ishikawa and Atsushi Ugumori, walked Takahiro Imanami to lead the bases, and then gave up a grand slam to Masaya Ozaki.  Don't get me wrong, I love my ni-gun Fighters, but I'm not sure the last time I ever saw anyone hit a grand slam in Kamagaya.  So this brought the Fighters out to a quick 4-0 lead.

Though Makka did go 5 innings and only give up those runs in the first inning.  In the meantime, Yagi didn't make it through 5; he came out in the top of the 5th, after giving up a run in the second inning (and then the Baystars ran themselves out of it) and then giving up 4 hits into the 5th inning... so when he left it was 4-3 and two runs had just come in on a Hyuma single that took an awkward bounce up the middle, and then runners were at the corners.  Masao Kida replaced Yagi, gave up a hit to Noriharu Yamasaki, and that made it 4-4.


Makka pitching to Masaya Ozaki.


Yes, Masao Kida turned 44 a week or two ago and actually IS still playing baseball, he hasn't retired.  My friend and I were just talking about that a few days ago.

So then both teams put out a whole bunch of relievers for the next few innings.  The Fighters put out Takahiro Matsuka (yay!!! Todai!!) and Ryuji Wakatake (booo!) and Yutaka Ohtsuka (yay!!! Soka!!) and the three of them kept the next 3 innings scoreless.  The Baystars put out Atori Ohta (yay!!!  Teikyo!!!) and Takehiro Fukuda and Shigeki Ushida (yay Meiji?) and they kept the next 3 innings scoreless.

Then we got Masahiro Inui pitching the 9th.  Look, I know Inui is doing very well on the farm even if he hasn't done a lot with the top team yet.  And I was a fan of his when he was a sophomore at Toyo University. It's just that ever since I saw Takahiro Fujioka pitch instead of him one fateful day in April 2009, I haven't been able to see Inui as anywhere near as awesome since because Fujioka is just that much better.

So when Inui pretty much immediately gave up a home run to Yuki Takamori (who I am also a big fan of), making it 5-4, I wasn't all that surprised.  He hasn't been great whenever I'm watching for quite some time now.

Tangent time!

In the 4th inning or so, my friends were all going back to get lottery cards for an end-of-game event.  Again, these are the things I think I've been aware of but just had never seen or never had anyone tell me what was going on when they happened.  So I went back and got a ticket too, and my friends explained, "At the end of the 8th inning they'll call out 5 or 6 numbers from the 100, and those people get to go on the field at the end of the game and have their photo taken with the game hero, if the Fighters win.  If the Fighters don't win, you can still go on the field but you get your photo with Cubby." 

Well, get this, it was apparently my doubly-lucky day, since my ticket number ALSO got called.

But at the time the game was tied, so everyone was joking how "you'll get to meet Cubby on the field later!"

Then Takamori hit that home run and they were like "Yeah... have fun with Cubby!"



Lottery ticket for the picture-taking at the end of the game.

Anyway.

So with that in mind, the Fighers came up in their half of the 9th, and of all of the people to pitch for the Baystars, they bring out former Fighter Masanori Hayashi, who gets a flyout from Ozaki, a strikeout from Sekiguchi, and then with a very full count and many foul balls, Yuji Arahari walked.  Konta pinch-ran for him, and then, out of absolutely nowhere, Suguru Ichikawa smacked a TRIPLE down the right-field line, scoring Konta and tying the game 5-5.  Go Matsumoto hit a pop fly out, but the game was going into extra innings!

Suddenly I had a lot more to write and no room left on my Daily Report form, oops :)

Ryo Sakakibara handled the Baystars in the top of the 10th and then the Stars sent Shintaro Ejiri to the mound for the bottom of the 10th.  Everyone loves Ejiri, he was with the Fighters for years, I was a huge fan of his then too, so we're all like "well, we want to win but does Ejiri have to lose?"

Unfortunately, yes, that's how it worked.  Murata led off with a double, moved to third on a groundout by Takumi Ohshima (whee!) and they intentionally walked a pinch-hitting Kenji Satoh, to change pitchers to Shoma Satoh.  Shoma pitched to Takahiro Imanami, who hit a single up the middle and Murata scored and that was it!  6-5!!

Apparently Imanami's parents were at the game, or at least several people told me that.


Final score.


Here I am posing with my Daily Report thingy.


And here's my Daily Report.  Fortunately, since I was a Junior High School teacher at some point, and had seen this at Kamagaya before too, I was vaguely familiar with what you were supposed to do for them.  I decided to go all out and write mine in both Japanese and English, which meant a bunch of people were staring over my shoulder like "OMG YOU CAN WRITE KANJI" and "Wow, you really took good notes today huh?"

So as I mentioned before, I won this lottery thing to go on the field.  I went down to the area by the door again and... ran into my friend Tomoko, who had another friend of hers there with her who was a big Imanami fan, and she's like "Deanna, you got a winning ticket?  Can my friend go with you?  He really wants to meet Imanami.  He made this banner and brought it today."  What was I supposed to say, no?  It's really awkward when people put me in those situations, but since I know I owe a lot to my friends here I generally go along with these kinds of things.  You know, like they do a lot of things for me like saving seats or taking photos or trading pinbadges or whatever, we all kind of look out for each other, that's how the whole group dynamic works here in Japan.  (Honestly, had it just been someone I actually knew, I would have been absolutely totally fine with it with no reservations whatsoever, but this was some random dude I had never ever seen before who had never spoken to me... and since almost everyone at Kamagaya has spoken to me at SOME point, I felt kind of weird.  It would have been a lot better if Tomoko came with us, but she wouldn't for some reason.)


On the other hand, I WAS GOING BACK ON THE FIELD!  WHEEE!  So I tried not to feel weird about the situation and just went with the other people, back through the clubhouse again, and back onto the field for the second time in a day.

We had to wait for the team meeting to be over first, so a bunch of us just went around the area behind home plate where we were waiting, taking pictures of ourselves with various things:


Tomoko's friend's Imanami banner that he made and brought that day, pretty lucky that Imanami was the game hero, right?


One of the other guys wanted to pose with the sweepermobile and I was like "OMG ME TOO!!!"  I tried to figure out how to drive it -- that looks hard, there are like 3 separate brushes on the back.


Anyway, after a while, Imanami came out, we lined up in our 6 groups/pairs, and each group took a photo with him as their group, and then all of us together took a photo with him (and the banner).  The only catch is, we weren't allowed to use our own cameras, the Fighters staff take the photo with their camera, and then they'll print out one print for you, that you can pick up at a later game.  Well, I won't *be* here for the final games this weekend, or even in Japan that much longer, so I just told the Imanami fan that he could have the photo print since it meant so much to him.

Plus, really, the nice thing was mostly just getting to say hi to Imanami, congratulate him on a good game, shake his hand, you know?  The entire experience is worth a lot more to me than the photo -- besides, I actually got a photo with Imanami once before, about four years ago, and I have met him and said hello to him after many games at Kamagaya, and even had him sign my uniform, so it's really not that big a deal to me.  Don't get me wrong, I like Imanami and hope he does well with the team someday, but since I'm also high on Haruki Nishikawa I'm not sure where Imanami fits in.

So, very very crazy day.  I got to go through the Fighters stadium building twice, I got to write a report thingy, I got to talk to someone at Kamagaya in actual English for a change, I got to see a lot of my friends, and then, even crazier, when I got on the bus to Nishi-funabashi afterwards, I ran into two MORE friends of mine from my normal Fighters cheering group, who had been sitting in the back and never came over to say hi, so we rode all the way back to town together. 

Unfortunately, when I went to the Tigers-Swallows game that evening, Ryota Imanari wasn't starting for the Tigers as he had been on Tuesday night.  Alas.  The Swallows beat the crap out of the Tigers and it was an all-around good evening with my Jingu friends too.

I should probably write some more about other games I've been to on this trip -- I wonder if maybe I'll have some time to write about them when I get back to the US instead, and whether I'll remember all the details by then.  At least I can post photos, maybe.

Last weekend I was up in Seattle for the Microsoft Puzzle Safari, but I also had a side goal of trying to go stalk Brian Sweeney.  I'd noticed a few months ago that he and Luis Jimenez were on the Rainiers, and this particular weekend both the Rainiers and Mariners were in town, so I figured that one way or another I should be able to catch them.

(Brian and Luis both played for the Fighters when I lived in Japan, see.  Brian was there for several years, even, through two Japan Series runs, and I used to talk to him fairly often, and once his family even joined me and my friends in the outfield cheering section.  Brian is without a doubt the nicest guy I've ever met in baseball.  Luis was only around for half a season, but he was also really nice when I met him.)

Anyway, the last time I went to a game in Tacoma was at least 5 years ago, maybe 6.  I used to try to make it to a few games a year in both Tacoma (Rainiers, AAA) and Everett (Aquasox, short A) when I lived in Seattle, so I could see what the newest and oldest minor-leaguers in the Mariners system were up to.  At the time, Cheney Stadium was a fairly typical minor-league park: slightly run-down, full of a 1960's flair of sorts, kinda campy, but the kind of place you go to because watching minor-league ball is fun and cheap.  And who can beat Dollar Dog Thursdays and deals like that?

Well, about two years ago they renovated the crap out of the place, quite literally.  I showed up and even from the highway, I could tell that it had completely changed.  There's a whole new front facade, mostly because there's a whole structure full of luxury suites and apparently a restaurant seating area and all kinds of new stuff.  To be honest, I'd bought a ticket a few days before coming to Seattle, because it looked like the Sunday game was almost sold out at that point!  It's crazy, but between season tickets, the renovated stadium, fan-friendly events including an autograph booth before the game, and the way they're promoting, the Rainiers seem to be doing pretty good business for themselves.



However, thanks to all the new stuff, I wasn't entirely sure how the lines and entrances and such worked now.  My seat was on the 3rd base side, so I lined up at the 3rd base gate, around noon, for a 1:35 game, where the gates apparently would open at 12:30.  It was slightly rainy, and I was getting concerned by the fact that people kept lining up on the 1st base side, but not so much on the 3rd base side.  So finally I turned around and asked the older guy standing behind me in line, "Hey, what's the deal with the gates?  Am I in the wrong place?"

"Yeah," he told me, "This side is for season ticket holders.  The middle part there's for the dugout club and suites and all.  The other side is for general admission."

"Oh crap," I said, "I haven't been here in about 6 years, and there wasn't a system like that back then as far as I remember."

"Well, that's okay," he said and winked, "You're with us, right?"

He turned out to be a season ticket holder for many years with his kids, so when I started babbling about coming to watch Felix, and Hunter Brown and all, he started telling me about all the renovations to the stadium and so on.

Anyway, eventually we got into the stadium.  And my seat, which was in the front row of section D, a single seat available there, turned out to be between two season ticket holders.  (No wonder.  But the number of season ticket holders seems pretty impressive nonetheless.)  I went down to the dugout in the hopes of catching Luis or Brian, and I basically stayed there for an entire hour until game time.

See, it was Sunday, so there was no batting practice.  Some players were coming out to stretch or run or throw in the field, but it wasn't mandatory.  A little boy down the row from me got several of the players to sign his ball, and then the guy standing next to me asked, "Do you have any idea what Stephen Pryor looks like?"

"Not really, why?" I replied.

"Well," he explained, "I was at the combined no-hitter game, and then went to the game where they gave out posters commemorating the game.  And then a week or so ago Tom Wilhelmsen was doing a signing at Fred Meyer, so I went there and got him to sign the poster.  And I saw Stephen Pryor got sent down to AAA so I thought maybe I could catch him here.  And then after that... well, maybe if I'm lucky sometime I can catch the other guys in the bullpen.  I'm pretty sure I can recognize Brandon League, and maybe if he saw what I was doing he'd help me get Furbush and Luetge.  The problem is going to be Kevin Millwood."

"Yeah," I agreed, "Millwood's tough.  I mean, I still remember seeing him throw a no-hitter for the Phillies like ten years ago too.  Guys like that are hard to catch... but I don't think it's impossible, there's always spring training, or minor-league rehabs, or maybe he'll be a coach someday?  Alternately you could try going to one of the early opening days for season ticket holders, if you know anyone who's a season ticket holder?  I got half the bullpen to sign a poster for me at one of those several years ago..."

Anyway, I explained to him that I was there waiting for Brian or Luis, and we stood around by the dugout talking for a while.  I looked at his poster and kinda tried to memorize Pryor's face; I was pretty sure I hadn't seen him go by.  A photographer came by and saw this guy holding the poster and said he'd see if he could pass the message on to Pryor, and sure enough, around maybe 10 minutes before game time, Pryor came out and signed it for him! That was pretty cool.



I waited around some more, feeling kinda confused, like "Why haven't they come out yet?"  Other players came out; the starter Andrew Carraway walked by us, a bunch of infielders like Carlos Triunfel and Nick Franklin and Mike Carp went to warm up.  For the record, Carp didn't even turn his head at all when the little boy down the row for me asked for a signature, but Triunfel and Franklin both said they'd sign on their way back in, and did.  I prefer photos to signatures, honestly, and I had the sense to ask Nick Franklin if I could get a photo with him, which he was fine with and even smiled for.  What a nice guy!  I guess this is what happens when players are coming up through the system rather than going down.  Also, no, I didn't see Danny Hultzen anywhere.

Anyway, I finally did get to talk to Brian for all of 2 minutes before the game started.  It was a little weird because I wanted to tell him how I'd been following his games this year, and hope he'll get called up to Seattle at some point, and how the Rainiers came to Sacramento a few weeks ago and he was the starting pitcher on a Sunday afternoon then but it was 106 degrees out and I was kind of sick at the time.  And so many other things, like how I'm just happy he's still in baseball since so many guys come back from Japan and have nowhere to go, and I wondered how his family was doing and all.  But, our conversation was more like "OMG HOW ARE YOU I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER!"  At least I showed off how this time I wore a Fighters shirt -- last time I saw Brian was 2 years ago and I had a Marines shirt, and promised to wear a Fighters shirt next time I saw him.  Pretty crazy, really.  He said he'd be pitching on Tuesday, unfortunately, so I wouldn't get to see him pitch this time.

I got to talk to Luis a little bit too, congratulate him on being part of the Triple-A All-Star team, things like that.  At least Luis was in the starting lineup as DH, so I'd get to see him play.

And I got a photo with both of them.  It was kind of frantic, but it's so cool that they're both on the same team! I showed the photo to a bunch of my Fighters friends back in Japan, and they're all basically like "OMG SWEENEY AND HIME-CHAN! PLEASE CHEER FOR THEM FOR US!" Everyone was really excited to hear that they were still playing baseball and doing well and looking happy.



On my way to my seat, I passed by the guy who'd gotten the Pryor autograph, and he was like "I saw Brian and Luis come out and talk to you!  Awesome that you got to see them!"  So that was good.

I spent the first 2 innings in my actual seat, and then joined up with my friend Jeff (no, not the LL one) for the rest of the game.  We'd actually made plans to meet up at the game, but I was coming down from Seattle and he was coming from further out in Tacoma, so it just worked out this way.  Jeff and I used to go to Rainiers games waaaaay back in the day, and he hadn't been back there since the last time we went to a game together either (since I went to Japan for a few years and he moved to California for a few years).  So we got to sit together and reminisce and watch the game and all.

I also spent a half inning wandering through the stadium just taking photos of the various things there like the Tacoma Hall of Fame, the concession stands, the concourse, and so on.  It was nice to really appreciate how the stadium had been completely remodelled.  The concessions are really crazy, though I ended up just getting a hot dog because I was in a hurry.

Oh, and I did watch a game.  Rob Scahill started for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, and Andrew Carraway for the Rainiers.  It was a fairly close game all the way, with each team scoring a point here or there, but no huge innings.  The Rainiers went up 1-0 in the 2nd when Nick Franklin walked and was singled around by Catricala and Triunfel.  Then the Sky Sox tied it up 1-1 in the top of the 4th as Andrew Brown singled, moved up on Matt McBride's single, moved to third on a bunt by Charlie Blackmon, and scored on a sac fly by Brendan Harris.  But Nick Franklin walked again in the bottom of the 4th, stole second on Vinnie Catricala's at bat, moved up on Catricala's fly to center, and then scored during a wild pitch to Carlos Triunfel, 2-1.  The Rainiers made it 3-1 in the bottom of the 5th when Darren Ford reached on a throwing error by short, stole second on Trayvon Robinson's at-bat and moved up on his groundout.  Then he scored when Luis Jimenez hit a single to left!  Yay!  The Sky Sox made it 3-2 in their half of the 6th, with McBride walking, moving up when Harris walked, then scoring on a hit by Chad Tracy.

I had to leave by around 5pm in order to get to the airport in time for my flight back to San Francisco, but everything seemed fine going into the 9th, at 4:15 or so.  Scott Patterson came out to pitch the top of the 9th, and the very first pitch he threw was sent over the left-field wall by Tommy Field, to make it 3-3.  Oops.

Sky Sox made it 4-3 in their top of the 10th on a double by Blackmon and another by Tracy.  But then the Rainiers tied it up 4-4 on a Luis Rodriguez pinch-hit homer over the right-field wall in the bottom of the 10th.

Normally I *hate* to leave a game early -- I'm always showing up to the park way before the game and leaving way after -- but missing my flight would really suck, so I packed up after the bottom of the 10th and left.  I stopped in the Rainiers Team Store on my way out of the stadium, to get a shirt, and while I was buying it, we saw on the TV screens in the shop that Charlie Blackmon had just hit a 3-run homer to make it 7-4 Sky Sox, which is what the final score was.

I shouldn't feel too bad, I guess -- I did watch 10 innings and 3.5 hours of the game, after all.

Anyway, here's my photo set from the day, of Cheney Stadium and many Rainiers. And as usual, a sampling in my post...



Nick Franklin!  1st-round pick in 2009 and already up with the Rainiers.


Tacoma Baseball Hall of Fame, featuring plaques for Gaylord Perry and such, and of course Ben Cheney, the businessman who brought baseball to Tacoma in the first place.


Look at this crazy treehouse... I mean grandstand full of suites and restaurants all.  Hard to believe this is Cheney Stadium.


Rainiers starter Andrew Carraway.


Mike Carp (check out that tattoo)


Sky Sox starter Rob Scahill.


Renovated scoreboard looks good, and looks better with Hime-chan on it!


Luis Jimenez at bat!


Nick Franklin slides into third base!


Score when I left the game.

I have no idea whether I'll make it to another Rainiers game at all this year -- maybe when they come to Fresno, we'll see.  The Mariners don't come back to Oakland until the end of September, and I may be in Japan then.

It's been so long since I got to do a good Tatsuya Ohishi fangirling post! Hooray!

Last Wednesday, I had planned to go to Seibu for both the minor-league Lions-Fighters game during the day, and the major-league Lions-Fighters game at night. Mostly, this was because I had a hunch that Ohishi would start for Seibu in the ni-gun game, and also, it'd be a nice way to spend a day out in Seibuland. The weather had other plans, though, and a typhoon completely cancelled every game in the area that day. The top team game still hasn't been rescheduled, but the ni-gun game got rescheduled for the 28th.

I decided to go for the rescheduled game anyway, because it'd be the last Seibu minor-league game of the year, and I still hadn't been out to a game at Seibu #2 stadium. Plus, I was at Kamagaya on Monday and it rained the whole time, so it'd be nice to see the Fighters without the rain.

I got to the stadium around 12:40pm. Seibu #2 is very close to the Seibu Dump; from the train station, instead of just turning left and seeing the dome, you go straight, up a hill and across a parking lot, up some more stairs, and there's the field. It's really barebones, but suffices for a minor-league park I guess. They have a clubhouse building behind it and then the player dormitory and indoor practice building by the outfield. Seating for fans is pretty much a row of benches along the 1st-base side in the outfield, a row of benches behind the 3rd base (home) dugout, and a lot of ground to sit on. I happened to be lucky and ask if a spot of concrete right by the dugout was taken, and it wasn't, so I sat behind a fence about 4 feet from the dugout for the whole game. It was an excellent spot to take photos as well as an excellent spot to listen in on players' conversations, AND as it turned out to talk to players, and as well, it meant the starting pitcher was throwing right in front of me between innings.

And guess who the starting pitcher for the Lions was? None other than Tatsuya Ohishi!!!!!

(If you are not a longtime reader of this blog you may not know that I had this ridiculous crush on him for his 4 years at Waseda despite that I hate Waseda. He was just lights-out as a closer, and his interviews and such were also interesting, and crazy stuff kept surrounding him, like when he was a shortstop at Soukeisen.)

Of course, this meant that I was sitting right by the Lions dugout. Cheering for a Lions starter. Against the Fighters, who have been my team for the last 8+ years.

Whatever, these things happen. I only ran into a few Fighters friends of mine, after the game, and they saw my Tokyo Big 6 shirt and were like "Ahhh, of course, you were here to see Ohishi... he was good, wasn't he?"

Anyway, it was a kind of crazy game. Ohishi started for Seibu, and the Fighters starter was Kenji Tsuchiya, a lefty from Yokohama HS who's been with the team a few years.

Lineups:

Fighters          Seibu
--------          -----
Nishikawa, dh     Ishikawa, cf
Murata, cf        Hayashizaki, ss
Sekiguchi, rf     Hirao, dh
Watanabe, c       T. Gotoh, 1b
Ichikawa, 3b      T. Satoh, lf
Taniguchi, lf     Onizaki, 3b
Arahari, 2b       Misawa, 2b
Asanuma, 1b       Takeno, c
Nakashima, ss     Hoshi, rf

Tsuchiya, p       Ohishi, p

(It's kinda crazy how the Fighters really don't have a minor-league 2B right now since Kensuke is injured and Imanami and Sugiya are up with the top team, so they've been putting all their extraneous catchers in there, like Masaya Ozaki, Ryota Imanari, and now Yuji Arahari as well.)

The Fighters got in on Ohishi first, in the 2nd inning. Ryuichi Watanabe led off with a single, Suguru Ichikawa followed that with another single, and then Yuta Taniguchi hit a double to left that scored the other two, 2-0. The Fighters put two more on that inning but left them there. They added a run in the 5th inning when Kazuya Murata led off with a triple, and then Yuta Sekiguchi brought him in on a squeeze bunt play to make it 3-0.

Tsuchiya sailed through the first 6 innings for the most part; the most he allowed was 2 runners in the 1st, and in reality it shouldn't have even been that if Arahari hadn't dropped a throw in from the outfield on a catch.

But then in the bottom of the 7th he got into a bit of a jam as he walked a pinch-hitting Kosuke Noda. It was Noda's retirement game, and so his whole family was out there cheering for him as well as a bunch of other people, so his at-bat took something like 10 pitches to get through. It probably seemed harmless enough, but then with 2 outs Mitsugu Ishikawa singled to center, moving Noda to 2nd, and then Ryo Hayashizaki doubled to left and that scored the other two, making it 3-2. Tsuchiya came out of the game and Yodai Enoshita came in to strike out the next batter (who happened to be Ryan Mulhern. More on that in a second).

Enoshita, who is generally awesome, was not awesome enough to keep Shogo Saitoh from hitting a triple in the bottom of the 8th, and then Masanori Hayashi allowed him to score on an infield single that Takuya Nakashima was amazing to get to but couldn't throw in time. 3-3.

So, it was tied in the 8th and stayed that way for the rest of the game. Amazingly, Ohishi pitched the first 9 innings. I don't think I ever saw him throw a complete game EVER in college -- he was generally a reliever and pretty good at that. But here he was, going the distance, 130 pitches for 9 innings on the Fighters, 3 runs, 6 hits, 6 strikeouts. Hironori Matsunaga took the 10th inning and former Keio guy Shuichiro Osada took the 11th.

On the Fighters side of things, after Hayashi was Kikuchi, and after Kikuchi was Masahiro Inui! Inui was lucky enough to end the game on a lineout by Ishikawa -- I was kind of wondering what'd happen if he faced Hayashizaki next. The two were teammates pretty much not only through college at Toyo University, but they were ALSO teammates on the Toyodai Himeji HS team that went to Koshien in the summer of 2006! I'm not sure if they've faced each other this summer, but it must lead to some funny conversations afterwards.

But yeah, it was a 3-3 tie game. Probably for the best for me, really -- I didn't have to see my Fighters lose and I didn't have to see my Ohishi lose.

Also, since I was sitting by the Lions dugout, somewhere around the 9th or 10th inning Ryan Mulhern, who'd looked over a few times at me before, came over like "hey, so are you American? can you speak English?" and we got to talking for a while. That was pretty interesting. He said something about working on his swing and trying to figure out what was weird about his hands; I noted that he has his index finger sticking out weird but I couldn't tell anything else. But I said I'd show him the photos I took of his AB if he wanted.

Well, after the game I stuck around for a while because I really wanted to meet Ohishi. Instead, I ended up meeting a bunch of Fighters players, and I got my photo with Enoshita and Nishikawa (!!), and eventually when it started getting dark, I was thinking to leave, and Mulhern came out again, signed stuff for a bunch of fans, and he ended up getting Ohishi to sign a shikishi for me, like "Your boy's doing his laundry, so he's not coming out." I'm happy about it, but I hope I'm not getting a reputation as a whiny gaijin (like the entire Kagami incident). Plus this means I still need to stalk Ohishi next year -- I want to meet him someday! But Waseda players never EVER interacted with fans outside Jingu during the Yuki Saitoh regime.

Anyway, I rode the Seibu train with Mulhern part of the way home. That was interesting and awesome -- but I felt kind of stupid because I really wasn't up on my Lions stuff and barely knew what he was up to in the organization at all, whereas a year or two ago I would have totally been like "Dude, can I interview you for my blog?" Overall it sounds like he's enjoying his time here and he has a really good attitude about the country, wanting to get out and see things, and interact with fans, and just do his best to help the team and all that stuff. (Plus it certainly sounds like Japan is a great step up from Mexico, to be sure.) Hopefully the team will pick up his option next year!

Alright, enough babbling out of me. Photos!

First, the man, the myth, the legend, the Tatsuya Ohishi. Fear him.





Pre-game bullpen. Bit of a true "on the farm" feeling going on here with that warehouse-looking dormitory in the background.








On the mound.






Warming up between innings. Oh, that smile :)

Some other Lions players...






Showin' some love for Yuji Onizaki, who just got traded to the Lions mid-season from the Swallows.


Hidekazu Hoshi. He was sitting like 5 feet from me for most of the game, when he wasn't in the field.




Ryan Mulhern during his at-bat in the 6th inning. I can't really tell what's up with his hands...




Kosuke Noda's last at-bat in a Lions uniform, and his cheering section.


Yoshihito "Pride of Saitama" Ishii. No, just kidding, but I do cheer for Urawa Gakuin guys in general...




Hironori Matsunaga.




Shuichiro "Pride of Keio" Osada. Probably a misnomer, I think more people can remember Tomoaki Satoh :)

And Fighters players!






Fighters starter Kenji Tsuchiya.









Yodai Enoshita. (Yes, he really looks that scary mid-throw, but other than that he's adorable)


Masanori Hayashi.


Kazumasa Kikuchi.




Masahiro Inui!


Super high-tech bullpens at this stadium...


Ryuichi Watanabe hitting a single.


And as a catcher.






Suguru Ichikawa hitting a single, striking out, and in the field playing 3rd base.


Taniguchi at 3rd, waiting to run home... where he was left both in the 2nd and 4th inning. Aww.


Kazuya Murata almost getting an inside-the-park homer but stopping at 3rd.

Misc stuff, Stadium, players, etc.


Final score, tied 3-3 in 11.


View along the pathway by the right field fence.


My view during the game (I was on a concrete bunker about 2 feet back from this fence, but I was also about 4-5 feet away from the dugout). You can see the Dome in the background.


And another shot of the dome in the background from the #2 stadium outfield.


GG Satoh signing for people. I got him to sign a shikishi too :) He wouldn't take photos with anyone, just signed stuff... most people were okay with that but one lady was really really insistent, eventually she got her friend to take a photo of her in front of GG while GG was signing for other people. Kinda funny.


I didn't ask Yodai Enoshita to sign anything, I just wanted a photo together. This is mostly to make Dani jealous if she's reading this. :)


Haruki Nishikawa!!!! I saw him play at Koshien and thought he was really awesome, and I'm happy I finally got to get a photo with him! He's super-popular, you can tell by the amount of random gift bags he's holding, stuff that his fans gave him.


With Ryan Mulhern on the Seibu train. He had just been talking about how he likes signing for fans and getting photos with them all, so I asked if I could also get a photo, even though it was not a baseball setting.


What a crazy day, really. And this was coming off of me thinking that I really ought to just stop talking to baseball players altogether after a few awkward moments at college games earlier in the week. Go figure.

(Yeah, I really don't have time to write up all the games I go to, because I'm too busy going to games every day. It's a catch-22, I suppose... BTW, if anyone's in either Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, or Hiroshima, and reading this blog, I'm hoping to head to games in your cities over the next few weeks. I'll be in Japan through the end of October. Hooray! Well, and of course I'll be at a ton of games in the Tokyo area too.)