A baseball blog written by a Fighters fangirl who moved back to the US after several years in Japan. Probably likely to continue being about Japanese amateur baseball and bashing the Yomiuri Giants, but who knows what the future holds.
Fighters games at the Tokyo Dome are really special to me. It was, infact, at the Tokyo Dome 8 years ago that I got my start as a Fighters fan. Thus, I planned my trip to Japan this fall to allow me to get to at least one Tokyo Dome game, and I'm really glad I did.
I showed up around 3:30 for the 4pm doors opening for the 6pm game, and there were already a ton of people out there, mostly because they now make Marines and Fighters fans both come in at the same gate for the outfield, which sucks. On the other hand, all of the established groups of friends I have were already out there waiting, so I basically just said hi to a bazillion people, and snuck in with one of my closer friends, who let me just get in line with him. This resulted in me getting into the stadium before the friends who were actually saving me a seat.
Mostly, people were like "Welcome back! When did you get in?" but several didn't know I'd left the country and reacted like "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THIS YEAR?!!?"
I was fortunate to run into a friend of mine who speaks fluent English and engineered it so that I ended up sitting with him for most of the game (his group and mine had saved seats next to each other). So that was great; I made him teach me some of the new cheer songs.
We went up to do pinbadges, too. (We ran into BB on the way and took the above photo then.) Of course, this is my only real chance this year to get them for sure; I want to go to Sapporo but don't know that I'll do it or not yet. My only real goal was getting an Imanari badge, since I have one for every year he's been on the Fighters. So I got my raijo badge, then went to get in line to do gatchapon badges... and while we were all there, some guy comes up to Crazy Matsuda like "I got these, they're mostly crap, anyone want to trade?" and I said "OMG YOU HAVE IMANARI!!!! I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!" so he basically just gave it to me for my Tadano, which is the one I got for just showing up. I *knew* that something would work out for me getting an Imanari badge as usual, I just had no idea what it would be. I immediately affixed it to my uniform, I was so happy:
Anyway...
I took videos of some of the new songs so I could study them later. Here's a few:
Fighters full lineup cheer before the game: 1. Scales 2. Yoh 3. Itoi 4. Koyano 5. Inaba 6. Nakata 7. Hoffpauir 8. Imanami 9. Tsuruoka
Micah Hoffpauir cheer song. 鍛え抜かれた体で 迎える敵を蹴散らせ 内に秘めた闘志 熱く熱く燃やせ kitaenukareta karada de osaeru kataki wo kechirase uchi wo himeta toushi atsuku atsuku moyase
This was actually Micah Franklin's song ten years ago, bizarrely...
Bobby Scales cheer song. 溢れる力を出し その名を刻め 希望の道を拓け Ｇｏ！ＭＹ！ＷＡＹ！ レオン afureru chikara wo dashi sono na wo kizame kibou no michi wo hirake GO MY WAY Leon!
This one was used for Andy Green for like, the 2-3 months he played for the Fighters in 2007... which was before I moved there that summer.
Atsushi Ugumori's new cheer song -- actually entirely new just for him. ひかりの中に 素晴らしい明日あすを見つけて がむしゃらに追い掛けろ 煌めく世界を hikari no naka ni subarashii asu wo mitsukete gamushara ni oikakero kirameku sekai wo
On the subject of those guys, bizarrely, this one person had some cheering props for Scales and Hoffpauir, both of which were bad puns in Japanese. For Scales he had a 助さん (suke-san) sign, which I first thought was something to do with the word "suketto", but I have since been informed that it's probably a reference to Mito Komon's bodyguard. For Hoffpauir, whose first name is Micah, this guy had a squid hat. Get it? Micah sounds like "maika" in Japanese, which is a kind of squid.
Anyway, as for the game itself, it was less exciting than it could have been. The Fighters scored runs in the first and second innings; first off Scales reaching base on a dropped fl to right field, being bunted up and scored on a Koyano single, and in the second inning, Tsuruoka doubled, and Scales doubled, and that was it. Things largely progressed like that for the next few innings, with the Marines scattering some kinda sucky plays in the field that somehow didn't let the Fighters score, and eventually in the 8th inning Shota Ishimine led off with a walk, advanced on a single and a bunt, and then scored on an error by Bobby Scales, who dropped a fly ball in shallow center. That's most of the action for the game right there and the Fighters won it 2-1.
Bobby Keppel pitched 7 strong innings and was the game hero. It was Nashida's last game managing in the Tokyo Dome so they made a big deal out of that.
On one last note, here's a photo I took out of the Tokyo Dome:
I think there are two major things I took out of this game: 1) JR East's ouendan is freaking awesome! 2) Toshitaiko tie-breaking rules are freaking retarded!
If you don't already know, JR Higashinihon, or JR East, is the Japan Railways arm that runs all the passenger trains in the Tokyo area and up through Tohoku. (Wikipedia actually has a reasonable explanation of the JR evolution.)
I think that in order to properly talk about this game I have to start at the end and work back to the start.
If you don't really know Japanese, you'd look at that box score like "What's the big deal? Toshiba scored 2 runs in the top of the 11th and won. So what."
Well, there is a line there that says 連盟規定によりタイブレーク, or "League regulation tie break".
I don't know whose brilliant idea this is, and it wasn't the first game in the series to have it happen -- the 11-inning 3-2 walkoff win by Mitsubishi Yokohama that moved back Tuesday night's game was also on a "tie break".
But basically, after 10 innings, the game effectively enters sudden death mode. Each team starts their offense with the bases loaded and 1 out.
So in this game, Toshiba led off the 11th with Katoh, Igawa, and Ichikawa on base already; Ryoichi Adachi hit a double to right and that scored 2 runs right there. JR switched pitchers from Katayama to Takumi Kon, who struck out the next batter, walked another and then got a groundout to end the inning.
JR came up in their half of the 11th with the same thing, Keiji Fujita leading off with Tsukuura, Matsumoto, and Genki Satoh on base and one out. Unlike Adachi, Fujita leads off by hitting a grounder up the middle, which shortstop Adachi promptly grabs, steps on second base, and throws to first to complete the double play. Game over.
It just felt like a really anticlimactic end to what really was a very exciting game.
Basically, I sat on the JR East side for this one, for a few reasons. First, I had already seen Toshiba's ouendan and wanted to get a good look at JR's, which I heard was top notch. Second, JR East has several players that I saw play in college or followed through college, and I was especially hoping to see Shuhei Ishikawa and Takuya Tsukuura play again.
This game was also moved back from 6pm to 6:45pm after the earlier games in the day went long, so by getting there around 5:30pm, I was actually downright early; some nice JR employees gave me a big green JR uchiwa fan and a player's list on my way in, despite that I wasn't in employee/team seating, and I actually got to watch the ouendan setting up from the beginning! Like, several groups of people in green happi coats got together to do vocal warmups and then set up their piles of signboards, while others were raising the JR banner, and others were setting up stage and the brass band and so on, and more interesting props as well. Infact, I wandered downstairs to get something to eat, and saw this in the basement concourse behind the JR area:
This is the JR East huge inflatable train that comes out a few times during their performances. It is QUITE a sight to behold when it does:
That is not just a train sitting there on a whole bunch of people's shoulders, either, that is a fully mobile train unit that goes running through the stands. I took two movies of it, one while their brass band is performing YMCA and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You":
And the other is later in the game and an actual train-themed song, "Galaxy Express 999":
Truly a sight to behold.
I also watched the ouendan get all of their groups together, and they had some greetings, during which they explained a little about their group, introduced the leaders of the various factions (the dance group, the brass band, the men's ouendan, etc) thanked everyone for participating so far, and begged us all to please yell and scream as loud as possible to support the team with our cheering.
Then they sang the company song with everyone present, and even got out their flags and set off the steam engines on the stage (these things were cool, every time they scored a run they set them off):
And then a representative from the Toshitaiko organization came out to present them with an award! Apparently they had gotten some sort of honors from the "ouendan competition", for filling their side of the stadium with people, getting them all to cheer, and especially for the JR Logo wave in the outfield (more on that in a second):
By the time the game got underway around 6:45pm, the entire 3rd base side was filled with JR employees. Looking down from the balcony, it was just a huge sea of green:
There were several places where a bunch of ouendan gathered in front with signs to coordinate the crowd yelling to the music; there were groups on either side of the stage, and then another group out by the outfield as well. The signs largely said things like "Ganbare Takashi" (for starter Takashi Saitoh) or "Kattobase [player's name]" for the batters, or a lot of "GO! GO! JR!"
These, for example, say "Katsuzo Tokyo", which means "Win, Tokyo!"
And then, something else that rocked, but there was a big group of JR people who had filled up two full sections in the outfield way before the game started, and I assumed they had something to do with the ouendan but I wasn't sure what.
It became clear in the 3rd or 4th inning when they all whipped out ponchos to wear and suddenly the left field cheering area had a JR logo showing:
Of course, the Chiben Wakayama Big Red C has nothing on this JR Logo.
Why? Because this logo could also DO THE WAVE when the team scored a run!
And I present two more videos of the JR East ouendan just for the heck of it:
This video, starting about 20 seconds in, is the song "Train Train" by The Blue Hearts. I just thought it was so appropriate that the Japan Railways ouendan was playing "Train Train". Though the reason I started filming at the moment I did was because it was Shuhei Ishikawa's at-bat; while at Hosei we cheered for him as "Ishikawa", they cheer for him as "Shuhei" with JR, so that's what they're yelling as one of the cheers.
This is during the first inning; a pretty generic cheer, I was just filming for the heck of it, and then Takuya Tsukuura launched a home run into the left-field bleachers! (That moment is about 2:10 in this video.) So everybody went totally crazy afterwards.
Wheee.
For the record, Toshiba's ouendan did pretty much the exact same routine they did on Tuesday night, so it wasn't nearly as impressive the second time. It's true that JR's might not be as impressive a second time either, but they had catchier tunes and that train riding through the stands is pretty amazing, I'd totally like to see that up close sometime.
So ouendan aside, I guess there was some baseball going on too. Infact, it was just exciting all around, gamewise.
Righty Hayato Arakaki started for Toshiba, and aforementioned lefty Takashi Saitoh started for JR. And things got off to a very good start for our train heroes when Tsukuura slammed that two-run homer to left to make it 2-0 in the first. Tsukuura also took a diving leap into the field seats in the top of the 2nd to catch a foul ball for the 3rd out.
JR added another run to their total in the bottom of the 4th when Keiji Fujita doubled to right, and Tatsunori Saitoh hit this fly ball that went to shallow left... and managed to land right between the left fielder and the shortstop, whose hat had gone flying. Still, neither of them managed to get the ball in until Fujita had crossed the plate and Saitoh found himself on second. 3-0.
Takahiro Kudoh led off the top of the 5th for Toshiba with a home run to left that landed in almost the exact place as Tsukuura's to make it 3-1. Jun Yoshida hit an infield single that I'm still not sure wasn't really an error, but whatever. Ryoichi Adachi followed that with a clean single to right, moving Yoshida to second. Masaya Iseki hit a grounder to second, and it almost ended up being a double play, but the throw to first went wide, and so Iseki was safe and Yoshida scored, making it 3-2, before Shota Fujiwara lined out to short to end the inning.
Toshiba's Ryuta Matsunaga singled with one out in the top of the 6th, and Masato Ohkawara followed it with another single to put Matsunaga on 3rd base, and that's when JR pulled starter Saitoh for Taku Sakaue (or Sakagami if you look at some sites, but he had "Sakaue" on his jersey so I'm sticking to that)... who promptly gave up another one of these "it might have been a DP if we were slightly faster" grounders, and so Matsunaga scored to tie the game at 3-3.
Hiroshi Satoh took the mound for JR in the top of the 7th, and got a groundout and then got taken yard, as Ryoichi Adachi hit a ball to left that actually looked foul from my perspective, but was apparently a home run, making it 4-3 in favor of Toshiba. Satoh came out of the game and was replaced by lefty Yoshio Karasawa, who gave up a single to Iseki and walked Fujiwara, and also earned himself a trip back to the bench, with lefty Junichi Katayama replacing him. Katayama got a grounder to third out of Keiji Ikebe, but Kazuya Takeuchi bobbled the ball and it got to first base a split-second late, so the bases were loaded.
This is what they call a "dai pinch", in Japanese baseball language.
Katayama struck out Matsunaga to make it 2 outs and bases loaded, but then Ohkawara slammed a ball to left, and everyone was off running, and by the time the dust cleared, he was on second, Ikebe was on third, and the other two guys scored. 6-3. Ouch.
It didn't look promising for JR, especially since at that point Toshiba starter Arakaki had managed 10 strikeouts in the first 6 innings without a single walk (and was about to notch his 11th), but Tatsunori Saitoh managed to lead off with a single to left, and catcher Shoji Tanaka (he replaced Shuhei Ishikawa behind the plate in the top of the 7th) followed that up with a double to right, moving Saitoh to third.
So, Toshiba took out Arakaki and put in Kazuo Kido.
And Fumiaki Sawa came to the plate as a pinch-hitter...
...and hit a 3-run home run to left field, almost right to the JR logo! 6-6!
But Kido stayed in anyway, got the next two outs, and then the two teams and two pitchers (Katayama and Kido) stayed in a deadlock for the next several innings. JR got runners at 2nd and 3rd in their half of the 8th but couldn't bring them in. Toshiba had two runners in the top of the 9th (there was a really bizarre play where Ikebe grounded to the mound, and rather than throw to first or third, Katayama just RAN to the runner, Sudoh, who was stuck between 2nd and 3rd... and yet somehow Sudoh got back to the bag without getting tagged, and Ikebe was also safe!) and also couldn't bring them in. Kido struck out the JR side in order in the bottom of the 9th. And so we went into extra innings.
Katayama pitched a 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 10th, and then Genki Satoh led off the bottom of the 10th with a single! Daisuke Ikushima went to bunt him up... and hit a really poor bunt that Toshiba's catcher fielded and fired to second base to get Satoh on the force. Tsukuura hit a big fly ball to right, but it wasn't out of the park, and then, for all the stupid ways for the 10th inning to end, Ikushima got himself caught stealing second for the third out.
And then the *%$#@$!!ing tiebreaker thing happened, and well, you know what happened there. 8-6 Toshiba.
Game hero was, unsurprisingly, Adachi, for his go-ahead homer and then for his go-ahead double later on, AND he executed the double play that ended the game as well. Not a bad night for him, really.
(If you want to see game action photos from this game, actually, take a look at JR's team site.)
Also, incase you've never been in the Tokyo Dome balcony seating... this year they have the WEIRDEST thing I've ever seen up there:
I mean, I think the idea is that you're supposed to feel like you can shake hands with Wonder Boy himself, but to me, the hand just looks CREEPY. Seriously.
There were some very, very sad penguins outside the Tokyo Dome...
And I was actually so bummed out about the game that I took the subway most of the way home instead of JR. Of course, there's a Toshiba memory card in my digital camera that took all of the photos and videos for this entry, but that's beside the point.
By the way, at this point, Toshiba has made it to the finals; the final match is Tuesday night, Sept 7th, at 6:30pm at the Tokyo Dome, Toshiba vs. JR Kyushu. I don't think I'm going to go, as the Fighters are in the Seibu Dome for their last Kanto series of the year.
Only took me like, 2 or 3 months, but I finally experienced a Fighters ichi-gun win for the first time in 2010. They never lost a preseason game I went to, nor did they lose a single minor-league game I went to, but they lost EVERY BLOODY NORMAL GAME I WENT TO this year so far, all 10 of them.
After spending Sunday helping to make sure 200 teenagers survived our school's Sports Day event, I had Monday off and decided to trek down to Sagamihara for the Fighters-Baystars game. Sagamihara itself as a township is kind of in the middle of nowhere to begin with, and the stadium is about a 30-minute walk or 20-minute bus ride from Fuchinobe station on the JR Yokohama line. I was there last year for a minor-league game; it's kind of lacking in amenities for hosting a major-league game, really. For the minor-league game the outfield stands were closed, but for this game they were open... and just like Omiya Stadium, the entire outfield is grass seating:
If you are in the outfield, as far as I could tell, you had exactly one choice for acquiring food, which was a stand behind the centerfield scoreboard selling KFC nuggets and drumsticks and stuff, and bottles of soda, and cans of beer. There was a huge line for it, of course:
Not that you really WANT to eat food if you are sitting in the outfield -- it is COVERED with bugs. COVERED. We put down plastic sheets and blankets and whatnot, and they were shortly covered with bugs as well. Although, bizarrely, the bugs all disappeared about half an hour after sundown.
A bit after I arrived, I saw Terrmel Sledge doing fielding practice with Shingo Nonaka. I went down to the field fence, ran into two friends of mine there, and since there were a ton of little boys yelling "SUREJJI! SIGN KUDASAI!!!" I yelled, "TERRMEL SLEDGE! COME BACK TO THE FIGHTERS KUDASAI!!"
On the third time I yelled it, he turned and saw me and waved hello.
"No, really!" I yelled. "Come back, we miss you!"
"I miss you guys too! The Fighters fans were great!" he yelled back.
"We're still cheering for you to do well!" I said. "But not today!"
He laughed and went back to fielding practice.
Around 5:40pm, a few more of our friends showed up to the stadium to find out that the OUTFIELD TICKETS HAD ACTUALLY SOLD OUT. How crazy is THAT? I mean, a Monday night, Baystars vs. Fighters game, in the middle of nowhere, in an outfield covered in bugs, and it SELLS OUT? Worse, there was absolutely no re-entry, no handstamping or ticket stubs, so we couldn't even try to sneak people in. And since the infield and outfield are actually separate structures, you can't go from one to the other at all. So our friends bought infield unreserved tickets and sat as close to the outfield as they could.
Bobby Keppel started for the Fighters and Naoyuki Shimizu started for the Marines Baystars. And in the first inning, the Baystars took a quick 1-0 lead on some smallballing and I was already starting to think that maybe coming out there was a bad idea, that I shouldn't have jinxed the team.
But then the Fighters launched an onslaught in the top of the 2nd. Koyano hit, and Itoi hit, and Kaneko hit, and Tsuruoka hit, and Kensuke hit, and when the dust cleared (literally -- Kensuke's hit was a liner to left field that Sledge dived for and missed by inches) the Fighters were up 4-1.
Tatsuya Shimozono hit a 2-run homer for the Baystars in their half of the second to make it 4-3, but that was the last thing they would accomplish at all for the evening. Period.
Whereas the Fighters were just getting started...
Kaneko hit again in the 4th, and Tsuruoka hit again, and even Bobby Keppel got a single which scored Kaneko to make it 5-3 before Kensuke grounded into a double play.
Former Fighter Shintaro Ejiri took the mound for Yokohama in the top of the 6th... and the first thing that happened was Jose Castillo dropped a grounder, allowing Tomohiro Nioka to reach base safely. Kaneko bunted him up, and then Tsuruoka got ANOTHER HIT to score Nioka, 6-3. Keppel bunted, and Tsuruoka slid in at second ahead of the tag, so both runners were safe. Kensuke followed that up with another hit to load the bases, so ammidst the strains of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Hichori came to the plate, and... grounded to short. Kensuke was out at second but Hichori beat the throw for the DP, and Tsuruoka scored, 7-3. Inaba doubled to center, and made it to third on a bad throw as Keppel and Hichori scored, 9-3.
My friends were like "Seems you'll finally see your first win, huh?" but I said "It's only the 6th inning, I'm not going to celebrate until the very last out."
We were also joined by some Kamagaya friends who have a 2-year-old kid named Shintaro who wears an Ejiri jersey, and by "wears" I mean "swims in". The general consensus was "I'm glad we scored runs off him but I'm also glad there was an error so it doesn't affect his ERA."
The next Yokohama pitcher was Atori Ohta, who I've been a fan of since Koshien 2006, including the craziest Koshien game EVER, where Chiben Wakayama beat Teikyo 13-12, with 13 runs being scored in the 9th inning between both teams. Man, 5 kids from that game are now in the pros and another I've seen playing regularly for the last few years too (Kameda) at Hosei. Pretty nuts. And I saw Atori play last time I was in Sagamihara too. Either way, this was Atori's first ichi-gun appearance this year, which was also exciting!
Atori is, at the ripe old age of 20, still a little inconsistent -- when he's on, he's ON, and when he's off... case in point, he struck out Nioka and Kaneko, and had a quick 7th inning.
But then, umm... you know how I said seeing Shinya Tsuruoka hit a home run is a once-per-year experience? Apparently I was wrong, because Tsuruoka hit ANOTHER home run to lead off the 8th inning. Given, the homerun barely cleared the right-field wall, and infact we didn't know for sure it was a home run until we saw the umpire signalling. But that made it 10-3, and just started another avalanche. Atsushi Ugumori had just been called up today and got to pinch-hit after that, and he singled to center. Kensuke hit into a fielder's choice, Hichori walked, and Inaba Yoh lined out...
...and then Eiichi Koyano ALSO hit a home run, this one to center. Ugu, Hichori, and Koyano all scored. 13-3. Atori then struck out Itoi to end that inning.
All's well that ends well, and my worries that the Baystars would suddenly score 10 runs in the bottom of the 9th were unfounded:
And so the cops made us all round up by the ouendan for post-game cheering, which we did for about 15 minutes before being evicted from the stadium.
In addition to doing normal cheers, I also learned the new ones for Yuji Iiyama and Takahiro Imanami.
I scribbled "first win, sagamihara, june 7th" on a paper in Japanese and had a friend take the photo that's at the top of this post, right before we had to leave the stadium. Woohoo!
Then on the way to the bus stop, we walked by the players' parking lot and saw Inaba get into a super-nice car and drive off.
Exciting.
Here are a few videos from the game:
Terrmel Sledge's dual ouenka. The Baystars were playing both his new song and his old song (from the Fighters ouendan). I've never heard that before so I had to assume it was just for Fighters games.
Cheering for Kaneko. This was amusing because the ouendan lady was like "Okay everyone... PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND UP! NOW PUT YOUR LEFT HAND UP! NOW WAVE THEM AND YELL 'HOME RUN HOME RUN KANEKO!'"
Yuji Iiyama's new cheer song for 2010. I think this is basically the new Naoto song since Naoto is on the Baystars (we saw him in the pregame too). That is, it's a fairly simple song for a player that has been around a while and barely ever plays but that is inordinately popular anyway. The main thing being that the call changed from "Kattobase Iiyama" to "Kattobase Yuji". But wow, are these dumb lyrics. You'd almost think this was a Lotte cheer:
裕志 裕志 かっ飛ばせ裕志 ラッララーラララ ラーラーラー かっ飛ばせ裕志 Yuji, Yuji, Kattobase Yuji La la la la la la, Kattobase Yuji! (Kattobase, Yuji!)
(Naoto's old song was "La la la la la la la la, Naoto home run", basically.)
This is the new cheer song for infielder Takahiro Imanami, which we were practicing even though he is currently at ni-gun. It's pretty complicated and kind of annoying to fit all the syllables in, I haven't gotten the hang of it yet... then again, after 5 years I still haven't gotten the pitcher's cheer song down yet either, to be honest.
飛ばせ今浪グランド 狭し走り回れ 今、お前の力で チャンスを呼び込め Tobase Imanami gurando semashi hashiri maware Ima omae no chikara de chansu o yobikome (Kattobase, Imanami!)
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!
Thursday the 11th was my first Fighters game of the year, as I trekked down to Yokohama Stadium to see them take on the Yokohama Baystars in a preseason game. I hadn't been to Yokohama Stadium since LAST March's preseason, nor did I actually see the Baystars in a single official season game last year. (I did watch the Shonan Sea Rex, their minor-league affiliate, but that's not the same.)
I got to the stadium, got my ticket, went in, found one of my friends up in the bleachers by the main ouendan, and apparently I was just in time for New Song Practice!
(Fighters ouendan guy holds up the lyrics for Shinya Tsuruoka's new cheer song.)
Yeah -- given the changes in the team this offseason, the changes from the 2009 Fighters cheer songs to the 2010 cheer songs basically involve: Gone: Jimenez, Sledge, Botts, Naoto, Oda Changed: Tsuruoka, Nioka Added: [nothing]
It's pretty sad, actually. I was kind of hoping maybe there'd be a new song for Shota Ohno, or an official adaptation of Noguchi's old song for Kazuya Murata, or something, but... no, nothing yet, at least.
Anyway, here are the "new" songs, changed from last year:
攻守に輝き放つ 今日も星を掴み取れ 鶴岡慎也 koushu ni kagayaki hanatsu, kyou mo hoshi wo tsukamitore, Tsuruoka Shinya
Tsuruoka's new song, which has completely new lyrics and tune.
The other new song is for Tomohiro Nioka:
静かな闘志が 今、燃え上がる 勝利の手綱を引き寄せろ 二岡 二岡 二岡 shizuka na toushi ga ima, moeagaru shouri no tezuna wo hikiyosero Nioka Nioka Nioka
And this is the same tune as last year, just new words, since last year his song was about "you have a new stage to perform on", so this one is about pulling the reins of victory with his quiet spirit instead.
New songs aside, it was a lovely afternoon to be down in Yokohama...
In the sun, it was actually downright hot, and I took off my winter coat for a while. The game started, and would you BELIEVE who was playing left field for the Baystars?
One of my friends, who is a devout follower of Kensuke Tanaka, turned to me. "It's kinda painful seeing Sledge out there in a Yokohama uniform isn't it? And wearing number 3..." she said.
I was sitting way too far up to yell anything myself, but amusingly, our ouendan leaders kept starting cheers with things like "I know you guys all want to still cheer for Sledge, but instead, can I get you all to yell a good one for Itoi, please?" And Sledge would hear his name and turn around and laugh, and everyone would yell "SUREJJIIII!!!!" and wave at him. It was kind of funny, but kind of sad, too.
As for the game itself, there was a lot of yelling and singing and stuff, but not much actual game action to report. Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters and Stephen Randolph started for the Baystars.
The Fighters started off well enough, with Kensuke Tanaka singling to center and then Yuta Sekiguchi walking, and both runners advanced on a wild pitch to Itoi! With no outs and runners at 2nd and 3rd, I kind of bounced up and down a bit like "It's a chance, right? Chance?" and looked at the ouendan guy standing 5 feet away from me, and he said something to the effect of "Patience, young one, we've got a long season ahead of us and plenty of time to sing chance music later." I bowed and pouted and said "Understood, sir. Sorry."
We really should have sung the chance music then, because the Fighters wouldn't have two guys on base at the same time again until the 7th inning.
Of course, the Baystars weren't doing much against Yagi either. Shingo Nonaka (!!!) led off with a single, then got caught stealing second. The next Baystars player to reach base was... Shingo Nonaka, in the 4th inning, with another single. And this time he got picked off first. Hayakawa walked and then Uchikawa hit into a double play.
Makoto Kaneko hit a two-out double in the top of the 5th, and then Takayuki Takaguchi followed that with a single to center; 3rd-base coach Makishi waved Kaneko in, and Kaneko was out at the plate on a bullet from CF Daisuke Hayakawa to catcher Tasuku Hashimoto. Oops. The weird part was that both of those guys were on Lotte last year.
In the top of the 7th, Konta walked, stole second, and Tsuruoka singled, with two outs. Nakashima pinch-ran for Tsuruoka and also stole second... but then Kaneko lined out to end that threat.
As for the Baystars, their greatest chance moment might have been in the 6th, with Yagi getting slightly tired, he led off by walking Hashimoto and then plunking Jose Castillo with a pitch. But then Hiroaki Ohnishi failed to bunt properly, Nonaka struck out, and Hayakawa hit a pop fly out to center. That was the only time the Baystars had two guys on base at all.
Yoshinori Tateyama replaced Yagi on the mound and pitched the bottom of the 7th. In my usual tradition of "He gives up home runs every time I see him, so I can't look!" I tied my towel around my head and proceeded to not watch him pitch to Uchikawa, Murata, and Sledge, and I still contend that's why he got out of it completely unscathed.
Baystars 2B Jose Castillo, who I think I saw play for the Pirates, hit a nice solid two-out double in the 8th off of Shintaro Ejiri -- everyone was shocked he ran so fast. Fortunately, Naoki Miyanishi came in to strike out a pinch-hitting Takahiro Saeki (Saeki!) to end that threat as well.
With the game going 0-0 into the bottom of the 9th, Fighters closer Hisashi Takeda came out to pitch, and naturally, Shingo Nonaka singled off of him too, making it 3-for-4 on the day. (I'm a closet Nonaka fan, he's one of those guys I really like but forget he exists most of the time.) Tatsuhiko Kinjoh bunted him up, and then my actual favorite Searex/Baystars player, Yuki Takamori, came up to bat! I was all excited to see him playing at ichi-gun, but worried he might win the game for the Baystars, which would kind of suck. But he hit a pop fly out. Yoshitomo Tsutsugo came up to bat then, and he's a big famous highschool homerun hitter, but this time, all he managed was a groundout to third. Game over, with an EXCITING FINAL SCORE OF 0-0!
One of my friends referred to Tsutsugo as "Hama no Gozilla", being as he wears #55 and is a hyped slugger kid and all. I joked, "Shouldn't that be 'Hama no Nakata Sho'?" which got a few laughs, and then another guy said, "Actually... I think Tsutsugo is probably BETTER than Nakata..."
The ouendan were doing their preseason gag of recycling various old ouenka for ni-gun guys who are unlikely to play much at the top level this year, so during the 8th, they started out by doing Hiroshi Narahara (now a Chunichi coach)'s song for Takaguchi, Tsutomu Ishimoto's song for Sekiguchi, and then Toshihiro Noguchi (now a Baystars catcher)'s song for Murata -- they'd done that one last year too.
But the most amusing ouenka-recycling happened with the very last batter for the Fighters in the 9th inning, Seiichi Ohhira, who surprised the heck out of me by even being at ichi-gun. Anyway, as if the ouendan had worked this out to be the funny last moment of our cheering or whatever, the dude at the front made the hand sign for "ouenka", and the trumpeters started blasting JASON BOTTS'S SONG! (I mean the one from last year, not the infamous Ponyo one or the recycled one before that.) Half the stands cracked up and the other half started singing. We even did the version where people skip half the first line and would have yelled "whoooooooaaaaaaa -- JAY! SON! BOTTS!" except this time it was "whoooooooooaaaaa -- OH! HI! RA!" Most people were laughing too hard to even notice when Ohhira struck out.
(I should note for Patrick that Chris Bootcheck pitched that 1-2-3 top of the 9th...)
To be fair, the Baystars ouendan seem to have made up a whole boatload of new songs too -- while I still know some of the player songs from a few years back, like Murata and Yoshimura and Uchikawa and Saeki and all, I didn't recognize a lot of the tunes coming from the right-field bleachers.
Anyway, good times! Onward to Saturday, where I will go watch the Fighters play a "home game" at the Tokyo Dome and take on the Chiba Lotte Marines. My Fighters Fan Club card finally showed up today, so I should be good to go on that front too.
I've said it many times before, but one of the best things about Japanese baseball is the away fan culture. No matter what game you go to, there will always, without fail, be SOME group of people there cheering for the away team, yelling their cheers and banging their drums. Sure, a Baystars game against the Giants at the Tokyo Dome will have only a tiny enclave of Yokohama blue amongst the eggful of orange towel-waving Yomiuri fans, while a Hanshin Tigers game anywhere in Japan is guaranteed to fill up one half and perhaps more of the stadium with a sea of yellow torakichi. There's always something, no matter how big or small.
The Fighters have a fairly unique away fan culture due to two main factors: first, their home is Hokkaido, which pretty much requires an airplane to travel to and from; and second, they used to be located in Tokyo, which means they still have a huge legacy of fans in the area. If you go to enough Fighters games in the greater Tokyo area, and always sit in the outfield, you simply WILL see the same people all the time. This is because a lot of us go to almost every game and we all sit in the outfield to make sure we're surrounded by other Fighters fans. Most people have a particular unique jersey they wear or a particular sign they always hold up, so you get this interesting phenomenon that happens where you'll have these acquaintances in the cheering section, where you know where they live and who they're a fan of and various other things about them, but have no idea what their name is.
I'm assuming that all teams have a subset of fans who are willing to spend their weekends travelling around the country sitting in the "visitor" section at all the other stadiums, but I sometimes wonder if it's an even larger percentage with the Fighters, especially the Kanto fans. With the Hokkaido fans, it seems like following the Fighters somewhere is a good excuse to get off the north island and go to the rest of the country. And with the Kanto fans, we're so used to being the visitors in the first place that there's no reason NOT to go other places and be that way too.
At any rate, it is not uncommon for me to show up in another city to watch the Fighters, only to find myself surrounded by other Fighters friends who ALSO don't live in said other city, and are only there for the Fighters games. Which is exactly what happened this weekend -- both days, I sat with a group of friends who live in Hokkaido (well, and one guy from Nagoya). Most of the people I ran into at the game that I know are from the Tokyo area. I did say hello to the Michinoku Fighters group, which is made up of people who ACTUALLY live in Sendai, but I think they were vastly outnumbered by the rest of us intruders!
Which is funny, because Sendai has a bunch of specific Sendai-only cheer songs, mostly due to trumpets being banned at Kleenex Stadium Miyagi. There are a bunch of short little two-line songs that we sing in place of having a trumpet fanfare after something like a batter getting on base, or the Fighters offense starting, or so on. There are also two Sendai-only chance theme songs:
"Ookina Homerun" -- Chance Theme #1
"Utte utte utte utte utte Shinji!" -- Chance Theme #2, from Saturday's game
Chance Theme #2, this time on Sunday, for Kaneko, and he hit a run-scoring sac fly in the middle, so you can also see the run-scoring celebrations, and the "vocal fanfare" of "nice batting! nice batting! mou hitotsu omake ni nice batting!"
After my first of four shinkansen rides of the weekend, I arrived at Kleenex Stadium Miyagi on Saturday around 1pm for a 2pm game. This would normally be fairly late, especially for a crowded weekend game, but I had asked some friends to save me a seat. I showed up just in time for the ouenka lessons and got one of the Sendai-only cheer song papers, and practiced some of the songs for a bit.
("Okay, and this is how the chance music goes...")
For whatever reason, they have these weird-ass goya mascots going around scaring people. Somebody told me there is a tie-in with the place the Eagles hold their okinawa spring camp, but in reality, I think they just like having bizarre mascots walking around for no real reason.
And then a little bit after the lineups were announced I had a really surreal conversation with one of my friends. He lives in Nagoya. It went something like this:
Me: "Hey, tomorrow is the final Fighters-Eagles game here of the season, right?" Him: "Yeah, I think so. Why?" Me: "I was at the game in Chiba on Thursday and we did an AWESOME cheer song exchange! Like we did Benny's song and they did Yukio Tanaka's and so on..." Him: "Oh! Yeah, we might do that again here... at least some kind of 'ganbare Eagles' and they'll reply..." Me: "Good, I really enjoyed it in Chiba." Him: "...wait a minute, you were at the game in Chiba on Thursday?" Me: "...yeah?" Him: "I didn't see you there." Me: "WHAT? You were there too?!?! Where?!" Him: "No, I wasn't there. I was watching on TV." Me: [stares blankly] Him: "I saw you on TV at Tuesday and Wednesday's games, but didn't see you on Thursday." Me: "Whaaaa.... really?" Him: "Really." Me: "That's so weird. But anyway, I was in the infield on Thursday. I came out to the outfield during the 8th inning for the purpose of the final game's ouenka exchange." Him, laughing: "Ha, just as I'd expect from you..." Me: "You always see me on TV?" Him: "Always. I watch every weekday game when I get home from work... so I'm always like 'ah! it's Deanna!' You're a very famous Tokyo fan you know..."
Oh yeah, he also told me that the series in Fukuoka, after I'd left and gone to Shikoku, apparently on Sunday the Nippon Ham company gave tickets in the Fighters cheering area to a ton of Kyushu-based Nippon Ham employees. Problem is, these people live in Kyushu, so they were HAWKS fans -- it apparently made things very weird for the Fighters cheering section. I'm surprised the company didn't get seats somewhere like 3rd base infield... that'd make a lot more sense.
Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about the game itself. I spent most of it talking to people and singing and clapping a lot. People were in a really good mood because the Fighters were winning from the 3rd inning onwards, and there were so many different cheer groups meeting in one place for once that it was just interesting to talk to people and find out more about their cheering styles.
Masaru Takeda started for the Fighters and pitched a complete game win as the Fighters beat the Eagles 10-3. He had a slightly shaky beginning as he gave up a 2-run homer to "Takeshi SMASH" Yamasaki but then settled down for a while.
Koji Aoyama started for Rakuten, and pitched two scoreless innings before getting stomped in the third inning, culminating in a 3-run homer by Terrmel Sledge which put the Fighters up 6-2.
(Flags waved for Sledge's home run.)
The Fighters squeezed out another run in the 5th (literally) and 2 more in the 6th, and eventually Atsunori Inaba also hit a home run in the 8th inning to bring the Fighters run total to 10.
Inaba flag flying in Sendai!
I was trapped in the middle of TWO groups of people holding up a ton of signs for Yoshio Itoi, so I thought I'd take a photo. They also have a special Sendai-only Itoi call where men yell "Itoi!" and women yell "Yoshio!", faster and faster until a pitch happens.
Itoi supporter groups.
Kenshi Kawaguchi managed a home run in the bottom of the 9th, but Masaru Takeda ended up with a complete game win on 120 pitches, with a score of 10-3.
We all ran off immediately at the game end and walked across town to go to a restaurant and eat grilled cow tongue, which is the local specialty of Sendai, or at least, when you go to Sendai and come back, people ask you if you ate cow tongue. I'd kind of eaten it before in that I had gyutan yakisoba last year at the stadium, but this was the first time specifically eating it. It was definitely better than the yakiniku cow tongue I'd eaten in the past, but I still don't quite understand what the big deal is.
Everyone thought I was completely crazy, but after dinner on Saturday I went back to Sendai station and took a shinkansen back to Tokyo. I had a Saturday-Sunday ticket for the weekend, which costs 18000 yen and is good for unlimited train travel on JR East, including the shinkansen. At the time, I had figured out that it was cheaper and quicker to take the shinkansen to and from Sendai twice, and not pay for a hotel room, than it was to take a night bus and stay the night in Sendai. As it is, with good shinkansen timing, it's seriously around 90 minutes from my home station to Sendai station! I think it's usually 90 minutes from my home station to Kamagaya or Yokohama too!
Of course, it turned out that Lisa actually had extra space in her hotel room on Saturday after all, but I am an idiot.
Instead, I met up with Lisa when I arrived back in Sendai again on Sunday morning, around 9:30am. We walked up to the stadium, met up with my friends who were waiting in line outside the outfield gates. I introduced her to everyone, chatted with people for a bit, and then we went off to take photos of various things.
(I'm sure I have mentioned this before, but the real key to sitting in a good place in unreserved outfield cheering sections is to go with a group of friends, where two or three people in your group show up around 2-3 hours before the gates open and hang out in line, and save seats for everyone in their group once the stadium actually opens. I often feel guilty about taking advantage of this when I show up at weekday games after work, so I try to at least arrive fairly early when it IS possible for me to.)
Lisa and I in front of a Rakuten train car thingy outside the station.
Me with one of the Rakuten mascots. I have no clue what it's called, as they change their auxiliary mascots EVERY YEAR these days.
Yes, we are RIDICULOUS DORKS for posing with cardboard cutouts of Hisashi Iwakuma and Masahiro Tanaka... and I'm not sure we care!
As the gates were starting to open, there was a kids-only signing table, and Ryo Hijirisawa was signing stuff.
We made it back to the outfield entry at 11:10am, just as the last of the people waiting in line went into the stadium, so we could just enter without waiting. As promised, people saved seats for us, about 5 rows back. I was next to my Nagoya friend again, and on the other side of us was a friend from Hokkaido. This particular friend was a Giants fan before the Fighters invaded his island, and as such always cheers for Tomohiro Nioka now. A couple of months ago I bought some boxed Fighters figurines and got a Nioka one that I wasn't too happy about, so one good thing about going back to Tokyo overnight was that I was able to go fetch the Nioka figurine and finally foist it off on my friend. He gave us bizarre bean-flavored taiyaki snacks in return. I've been told they are a Miyagi prefecture specialty, but I wasn't particularly fond of them.
I was under the impression that at Kleenex Stadium, if you sit in the outfield, and want to actually go down to the fence and try to talk to players before the game, you have to have a reserved ticket, but it turns out that until the end of BP, they let anyone down there. So, Lisa and I went down there. She just wanted to take photos, and I wanted to talk to Brian Sweeney.
Sweeney wasn't there, but the schedule said he would be coming out to do sprints at some point, so we waited around.
It's Shintaro Ejiri! He recently got a completely different haircut, and some people didn't even recognize him. I think I liked him better before.
Eventually, Brian did come out to do running -- and I yelled hello to him and chatted for a bit, told him he kicked ass at Chiba (which really was just the main thing I wanted to say) and so on and so forth. He said he'd be pitching on Tuesday at Seibu. I also introduced Lisa, and since she's from Ottawa they ended up talking a bit about minor-league baseball up in Canada (of which there is precious little these days, it seems). I actually had no clue that Brian had played baseball in Canada at all, so that was interesting to learn.
Eventually after watching pitching practice for a while, I headed back up to the cheering section to do aisatsu. Aisatsu means greetings, kind of; I've written a little about it in the past, but essentially you are required to say hello to everyone you know, or they will consider you really rude for passing them by. I'm still trying to figure out the exact rules of it.
One of the people in particular that I wanted to tag was a girl I met in Sendai last year who also loves Ryota Imanari. She even has a pair of his wristbands that he gave her last year. I brought her some stuff from Kamagaya, and we took a photo together!
(The purple sign is mine, but the blue one was given to us from one of the guys in the Susukinokai, or at least I think that's what their group was called. I tried to give it back to him after the photo, but he insisted on me keeping it!)
Then I went to talk to a guy who people call the "Sapporo Ojisan"; if you've watched Fighters games on TV, you may have seen him holding up his signs after the games. I'd seen him a few times at games before, but never up close. He's a really good artist, and has drawn caricatures and such for just about every player on the team in recent years! Take a look at these few I snapped photos of...
Sapporo Ojisan and his Yu Darvish "spirit" caricature.
Ryan Glynn in his Fighters days.
Trey Hillman, along with the 2000th hit newspaper page for Yukio Tanaka.
Lisa and I eventually went back to get food and drinks and stuff. Apparently we missed part of the pre-game ceremonies where a real live eagle actually flies over the stadium, but we randomly passed by the eagle trainer on the way back to the outfield:
(I didn't even know how to say "eagle" in Japanese until I looked it up, they're so rare here.)
By the time we were done with all of that, the game was starting.
Oddly, I'm not sure the results of the game had any effect at all on whether I actually enjoyed myself, though. It was a close enough game that the atmosphere in the Fighters cheering section was really good, and I was overjoyed to spend an afternoon hanging out with Lisa again, and also enjoyed talking to everyone around us.
And just as on Saturday, there were little Sendai-only songs to sing and cheers to yell -- and something even funnier, as well.
From the very first inning, when Inaba came to the plate with a runner on second, rather than just doing the typical Inaba Jump, the ouendan got us to all sing Inaba's at-bat song, "I Was Born To Love You", by Queen. THEN we launched into the Inaba jump.
Inaba came up to bat with runners in scoring position four times (AND WALKED FOUR TIMES, TWICE INTENTIONALLY), so we got to do this one fairly often, much to everyone's amusement.
Right, so it was a battle of the young lefties as Tomoya Yagi started for the Fighters, and Kohei Hasebe for the Eagles. Neither of them lasted 5 innings. The Eagles put a run on the board first, then the Fighters tied it up, and Hasebe came out of a tied 1-1 game, only to have Terrmel Sledge immediately drive in two of his runners off relief pitcher Satake to go ahead 3-1. But many walks led to the Eagles getting another run in the 4th to make it 3-2, and then Yagi came out of the game with one of his runners standing on base, which naturally Fernando Seguignol ended up driving in to tie the game 3-3.
After that, both teams spent the game doing their best to try to push a run ahead. The Fighters ended up having sacrifice bunts or flies in 6 innings out of 9 overall, in the end! The Eagles were not quite playing that game, with more of their hitters being big guys (Yamasaki, Seguignol, Miyade, Linden) and not so much fleet-of-foot runners. In the 7th inning, Takeshi Yamasaki walked, and Seguignol hit a double to right, moving Yamasaki to third. Daisuke Kusano then hit a fly ball to center, which would have been a decent sac fly if there had been anyone standing on third BESIDES their 40-year-old bulky designated hitter, but instead Itoi fired in the ball from the outfield and catcher Shinya Tsuruoka managed to swipe down and tag out Yamasaki on his way to the plate.
My friend from Nagoya, who had to leave the stadium by 6pm to go catch his plane home, said around 4:15pm with the game tied in the 7th, "Is this really going to be over by 6?"
I accidentally thought that it was 5:15 at that point by the way he was talking, and said "I think so, but it's not going to end well."
As an even stronger omen of their fate, Fighters erstwhile reliever Yoshinori Tateyama took the mound in the bottom of the 8th, and from that moment I knew the team was doomed to lose. I even wrapped my green Hichori towel around my head so I couldn't watch the game ("Every time I see Tateyama pitch he loses, so this way, I can't SEE it, so he can't lose, right?" "That's not going to work -- ALL of us have this problem where Tateyama loses every time we see him...")
Naturally Tateyama had to almost prove me wrong. Almost. With my Nagoya friend telling me the plays to write down in my scorecard, and a towel around my head, Tateyama managed to get to 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th. And he just couldn't finish it. He walked Seguignol, who was replaced at first base with Little Kensuke Uchimura. Daisuke Kusano singled, moving Uchimura to 2nd. Todd Linden walked too, and I knew there was no way we'd be getting out of bases loaded, even with two outs, and sure enough, Masato Nakamura hit the ball over the infield, and that was it as the Eagles won 4-3.
Nakamura was the game hero, though I think it probably should have actually been Fernando Seguignol, at least shared.
But either way, I wasn't really in all that bad a mood afterwards, having had a decent time hanging out with everyone. I have to admit that I was a LITTLE disappointed that there was no cheer song exchange afterwards, though -- all the Fighters fans were packing up and getting the hell out of the stadium to go back to Hokkaido or Tokyo respectively, and the Eagles fans were too busy celebrating, and all of the people in the orange ouendan coats were gone fairly quickly. Maybe the exchange in Chiba was a special occasion.
So we bolted with everyone else and walked back towards Sendai station, though we stopped off for a while so Lisa could get her stuff from her hotel, and by the time we actually got to the station it was around 6:30. Our original idea was to get seat reservations for the shinkansen and then go off to the Mint baseball card store for a bit, but we got sidetracked by miokuri of epic proportions.
(Miokuri literally means "to see off", but in baseball terms it usually refers to fans storming the players' bus after a game. Some people just want to talk to the players, some try to get autographs or photos.)
First we ran into a bunch of my friends from the game, who said "All the Fighters are in the station! They went to get train tickets and dinner! See that restaurant? Right inside is Kikuchi and Hisashi and Kanamori!!" Then while I was getting my train ticket, one of the women ran in and got me like "Sweeney just went by! You should go talk to him!"
So Lisa and I decided to go on in and see what was going on. I did infact run into Brian and basically say hello and goodbye (but in reality, I didn't want to bother him or anyone else). And as we were standing there, I saw Nashida-manager and Yoshii-coach walk by, in white shirts and slacks. Toshimasa Konta went by a bit later and I sort of nodded at him (keep in mind I was wearing a Yakyuudo t-shirt and carrying that huge blue Imanari signboard since it wouldn't fit in my bag -- I stuck out even more than usual) and he looked at me funny. Then Hichori came by -- you can't miss him, he was looking pretty badass in a white shirt and suit pants and pointy leather shoes and sunglasses.
We went up to the platform, where a bunch more players were all wearing suits and gathered waiting to board their train! Of course, there was also a group of about 20ish fans doing exactly what we were doing -- kind of craning our necks trying to see which players were where, while not being TOO obnoxious or obvious about it. A few fans did go up to players and ask for autographs, and most were told a polite but brief "No".
I saw Terrmel Sledge and caught his eye and waved. He waved back.
Makoto Kaneko, wearing a full suit and jacket, almost knocked Lisa over as he was walking by at a brisk pace with his suitcase, but we didn't realize who he was until a few seconds later.
The best was Atsunori Inaba, also in a suit and jacket, walking down the platform. He already looked enough like some kind of rock star, this tall handsome guy in a suit striding across, but there were around 15-20 people pretty much following him like a posse, saying "Inaba-san, Inaba-sama..."
Shota Ohno was wearing a full black suit too. For whatever reason, whenever I wasn't hiding behind the kiosk, he kept looking over at me kind of funny. I'm not sure if it was a look of "whoa! it's a gaijin!" or worse, perhaps, "whoa! it's THAT gaijin!" Much as I didn't want to bug people, if I'd had more presence of mind, I would have asked for HIS autograph -- I had a photo with me, that I'd taken during his Toyodai days and printed for another Ohno fan. Alas. (It might have been enough of a "Whoa, why do you have this?" moment for me to get away with it.)
Anyway, I surreptitiously snapped a few photos, but they didn't come out so well. You can get the idea, though:
Iiyama in the suit, and Kikuchi.
Ohno is the black suit on the left, Kaneko's the grey suit in front. Ejiri is on the right, you can kind of see Sledge in the background.
Trainstalking Sledge and Hisashi.
I was on the next train back to Tokyo AFTER the Fighters' train, so instead of going to the card store, I just hung out at the station until my train showed up. (Lisa went to get dinner with a friend of hers.)
The shinkansen ride back was nice, but I was still so hyper over the day's events that I completely couldn't sleep at all.
(I apologize for this entry being somewhat fragmented -- it was written over the course of a few days, as the last week or so has been crazy. This really was the a fantastic Fighters roadtrip though, and I wanted to make sure to share it.)
All of the photos on this site are taken by me unless otherwise indicated. I would appreciate it if you at least email me before you steal them. Thanks.