Marinerds, etc.

Apparently I hadn't spent nearly enough times going to baseball games in the middle of nowhere during my trip across western Japan, because a day after returning home I found myself barnstorming into the western suburbs of Tokyo to watch a Fighters minor league game on Wednesday night. I figured that it was the last game at Sagamihara for the year, and I'd never been there, and maybe if I was lucky I could see Darvish or Sweeney or any of the other various Fighters who are currently hanging out with the farm team.

For the record, getting to this stadium is kind of a pain. It's adjacent to a bunch of junior/high schools and about a mile from Fuchinobe station, which is already kind of a stretch to get to. It took me about 25 minutes to walk there from the station, and I'm a quick walker. I could see the lights for a while, and even hear the announcers, but was still quite a walk away, which was really frustrating.

(Actually, to be honest, when I heard trumpets and drums accompanying the lineup, I was convinced for a few minutes that I was actually going to the wrong stadium, since ni-gun games on weekdays generally don't have those sorts of things, plus with the Baystars at home I figured most people would be down in Yokohama, but I'd forgotten that the Sea Rex actually have their own ouendan.)

Tickets were 1000 yen to sit anywhere in the park. This is a big enough stadium that they hold official top-league games there once or twice a year, so it was nice for me to be able to walk in and sit in the front row behind the Fighters dugout. Some players were taking practice swings, and people were taking photos. I yelled good luck to Yohei Kaneko, the starting DH, who smiled and nodded back at me.





The stadium is mostly bleachers with a dirt infield, not too different from most regional stadiums in Japan, actually; it pretty much completely reminded me of Omiya.

The Fighters starter was Hideki Sunaga, who's been struggling a bit lately both on the farm and on the top team. One of my friends loves Sunaga and he's from Arakawa and went to Urawa Gakuin, so on general principle I cheer for him.



Unfortunately, he gave up 5 runs on 8 hits in the first two innings alone. It started with an error and then with a couple of dubious "hits" where things happened like the ball bouncing suddenly over Nakashima at short, or the ball landing in what looked to be foul territory but was called fair, things like that. But Toshio Saitoh also hit a legitimate home run in there too. It was just kind of painful to watch all around.

The Sea Rex starter was actually one of my Yokohama ni-gun boyfriends, Atori Ohta. Atori is from Teikyo HS and has some ridiculously nasty stuff when he's really on. I love him, except when he's pitching against the Fighters, of course.



Naturally, Atori went 8 innings and gave up exactly one run to the Fighters, a home run to Atsushi Ugumori. 4 hits, 1 run, 1 walk, and 1 hit batter.

The hit batter was actually kind of sad -- it was Kenshi Sugiya, who was a year behind Atori at Teikyo HS. They were teammates at the 2006 and 2007 Koshien tournaments, and both played in that legendary 13-12 game against Chiben Wakayama. So a bunch of us were yelling things like, "Don't let your sempai defeat you, Sugiya-kun!" Atori hit him in the leg with a pitch, and Sugiya fell down and ended up half-limping, half-carried off the field. Ouch.

Sunaga lasted 5 innings, giving way to an inning each for the Fighters' bullpen of Naoki Miyanishi, Kazumasa Kikuchi, and Takayuki Kanamori. Kikuchi gave up another run, so after Sea Rex pitcher Tom Mastny closed out the game with his traditional high-kicking style, the Shonan squad won by a score of 6-1.










There were plenty more interesting things about the experience, anyway.

The Shonan ouendan did infact have drums and trumpets. 90% of their songs were totally different from the Baystars, but I did recognize a few familiar tunes, including "Winning Ball" and the melody they use for pinch-hitters.

Reck came out in the 4th inning to try to get everyone to do the Chicken Dance:



And a bit later I saw him wandering around in the stands so I cornered him for a photo. Unfortunately I had to wait until this older lady was done hanging on to him, and there were still a ton of kids trying to climb on him, so it resulted in one of the most bizarre mascot photos I've ever taken:



But that's okay.

They also did YMCA in the 5th inning, which is kind of rare for a minor-league game, and the announcers on the field actually picked "good dancers" in the stands and had ushers come give them some sort of prize. Despite my dancing debut on the Tokyo Dome field a few weeks ago, I'm still not a fan of YMCA, sorry. (I get the impression that Japanese people think it's still wildly popular in the US.)

Due to the stadium being so far from Kamagaya, I only recognized a handful of the fans there, but after the game we all went out to do "miokuri", which means "waving goodbye to the players' bus as it leaves", but in practice is actually "begging players and coaches for signatures as they're trying to get the hell out of the park".

During this time I found out a few important things, though, namely first that Darvish wasn't even IN Kamagaya this week. And worse -- my Fighters ni-gun boyfriend Ryota Imanari apparently broke his right hand during the Seibu series a few weeks ago! I was wondering why he didn't go with the team for the Hokkaido ni-gun games, and hadn't been playing recently. It seems he took a bad hit while blocking a pitch and is expected to be out for a month or so. Apparently I'm not the only one who was thinking that he had a really good shot of getting up to ichi-gun this month, so this is a huge setback, very sad.

Botts and Sweeney were around and I waved hi to Brian on the bus, so he came out to chat because he's a super-nice guy like that. Unfortunately, it turns out I'm missing him pitch by a day, as he'll be starting at Hiratsuka on Thursday night. Oops. (I'll be at Chiba Marine for a japanesebaseball.com meetup, my one time of the year to get to see a game with Westbay-san.) So, I hope he does well; I told people to cheer for him tomorrow. I felt bad because when he came out to chat he immediately got stormed by a bazillion people wanting signatures. On the other hand, it sounds like his friends and family made it back to the US okay and with tons of great video of their adventures into the Fighters cheering section, so that was good to hear, although a little sad too.

The Fighters bus left and after that some Sea Rex guys were also signing. I ended up getting Keijiro Matsumoto's autograph on a shikishi -- bizarrely, I actually asked him in English, like "Mr. Matsumoto, sign please?" He looked at me REALLY weird. I still think he's a total jackass and I thought he was a jackass at Waseda too, but whatever. The other two guys signing were Kajitani and... Takamori! Except it was dark and I didn't recognize Takamori out of uniform in time to push my way up and get something signed from him. Damn. He's my other Sea Rex ni-gun boyfriend besides Atori. Crud -- I wonder if I'll have another chance to bug him again sometime. He's WAY too good not to make it to ichi-gun in the next year or so. I might have to start going back to Baystars games once he's up with the top team, seriously.

I ended up riding a bus back to Sagami-Ono station with a lady named Tomoko who's been a Fighters fan since the mid-80's. She told me stories and some more Kamagaya gossip since I haven't been there in a month or so, and made sure I got on the right train since I'd never been to that station before. Sometimes I regret that I stick out so much as a foreigner here, but sometimes it's really a good thing.

On Saturday, July 11th, I had a rare choice of which ni-gun game to ride my bicycle to -- Fighters vs. Swallows at Yakult Toda, or Shonan Sea Rex (Yokohama's farm team) vs. Marines at Lotte Urawa. Although it seems obvious that as a Fighters fan I should have gone to Toda, I ended up choosing Lotte Urawa for a few reasons: first, there are more seats there. Toda stadium basically has a tiny set of bleacher benches behind home plate and that's it. Second, I had calculated the Searex rotation and figured out that former Fighters pitcher Ryan Glynn was really likely to start for them. I hadn't seen the Searex yet this year -- heck, I haven't been to a Baystars game since the preseason -- and was also kind of hoping to see Takahiro Matsuka, as well as my ni-gun boyfriend Yuki Takamori. It's funny, I have a favorite ni-gun player for Yokohama, but not a favorite ichi-gun player since Takuro left. Maybe Atsushi Kizuka, though it's been forever since I've seen him play.

I rode my bicycle up there -- it's about 6 miles away and took me a little less than an hour -- and got to Lotte Urawa Stadium around 12pm for a 1pm game. Managed to get a front row seat on the first base side, next to a tall Japanese guy who also had a scorecard and a camera. Bet anything he's also a blogger.

This game was just another case of tough luck for Ryan Glynn, really. He was the Sea Rex starter, and for the second straight Saturday in a row, I was watching Yuta Ohmine start for the ni-gun Marines...







And well, it was just not fated to be a good game for Glynn. It's not really his fault, it's mostly the fault of everyone else out there in the field. Glynn threw 8 innings on 114 pitches, walked 1, struck out 6 guys and gave up 1 home run. Well, and he gave up 11 hits, about half of which I have marked as "through a diving 2B" or "past a lunging SS" and so on.

The Marines took a 1-0 lead in the 2nd off a few of those very "past a diving infielder" singles, as Kanazawa singled, Muniz singled and moved Kanazawa to third, and then Aomatsu singled him in. (Okada hit into a fielder's choice and then stole second, but when Nemoto struck out the inning ended with Okada and Muniz on second and third.)

The Searex might have tied up the game in the 3rd if they didn't run themselves out of it. Toshio Saitoh hit a nice single to lead off and then for whatever reason took off stealing on the first pitch to Noriharu Yamazaki, and was out by a mile.



So then of course, Yamazaki hit a single off of Yuta Ohmine's leg, or glove, I'm not sure which, but there was no throw.



Instead, Ohmine decided he was determined to pick Yamazaki off first base.







But it didn't work and ultimately he walked Kajitani instead. Naturally, that was followed up by Hiroaki Ohnishi grounding into a double play. How many ways can you run yourself out of an inning, seriously?

Well, the Marines grounded into a double play to end their half of the 3rd too, so then in the 4th the Searex finally did something. Keijiro "Waseda's Finest" Matsumoto led off with a double, and Yuta Naitoh struck out. Yuki Takamori (!) singled to right, and Matsumoto ran to third -- I had my camera trained on the plate waiting to see Matsumoto score, but he didn't, and I don't know why he held up at third. Toshiyuki Kitagawa also singled to left, and Matsumoto actually DID finally score. 1-1. Atsushi Kita grounded to Nemoto, who threw to short for the force at second, but fortunately the relay to first was not in time for the double play, so Takamori went to third... but with runners at the corners, Toshio Saitoh grounded out for real. All of those runners and only one run.

The real turning point of the game was in the bottom of the 4th. Juan Muniz led off with a simple single to center, and Hiroshi Miyamoto followed it up with another simple single to center. Except, unfortunately, for Keijiro Matsumoto out there in center field, it was apparently not that simple a single to center, and when he went to retrieve it, whoops! Suddenly the ball was not in front of him, OR in his glove, but was infact past him and going back and he had to go run after it and retrieve it out by the wall. Poor, poor Keijiro! In the meantime, Muniz scored, and even Miyamoto was able to score by the time the ball came in.



(Shown above: Miyamoto is sliding into home plate as Muniz and Aomatsu wave him in. Saitoh is Not Amused.)

So that made it 3-1 on a pretty big blunder. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I don't have a shot of Glynn while this comedy of errors was going on. The next two batters were retired on infield grounders, and then Nemoto hit a pop fly to shallow centerfield. People were joking from the stands, "Don't drop it, Keijiro!" but then Noriharu Yamazaki ran back and made the catch anyway. Thanks, Nori.

I dunno, though, that play kind of took the steam out of both teams for a while. The next few innings went by blindingly fast -- the most exciting thing that happened was at one point between innings Shingo Nonaka came out to throw with Yuta Naitoh in right, only Nonaka somehow lost control of the baseballs he was carrying (misthrow?) and had to go chase them down towards the bullpen, and so Yuta Sekiguchi threw with Naitoh instead... everyone in the stands was laughing at Nonaka, and even Sekiguchi yelled out, "Hey Shingo, can you gimme those baseballs so I can take 'em back?"

Kei Hosoya hit a home run over the left-field wall in the 8th inning, which made it 4-1, which is where the game ended. Glynn threw a complete game; Ohmine threw 7 innings with Taiki Nakagoh and Kentaro Hashimoto picking up the 8th and 9th.

Box score here in Japanese.

On the way back from the bullpen, Glynn was walking with his translator, and his translator noticed me and kind of nodded/smiled at me, so I smiled and said, "Tough game, huh Ryan?"

Glynn looked up, kinda smiled back, and nodded. "Yeah."

I think if it hadn't been such a ridiculous series of events, I might have tried to talk to him more, but I didn't really want to be a pain in the butt after such a game.

We've talked about it before on Michael Westbay's site how Glynn is the unluckiest pitcher in Japan, and no matter how well he throws, he always seems to be doomed to lose. It's kind of sad that it's continued with the Searex -- a complete game with 2 runs that were actually his fault, and the team simply can't score any runs, or at least keep themselves out of double plays and getting caught stealing?

Anyway, since this is a photopost, here are some more photos that I took that didn't really fit into the story...


Masato Watanabe working out at first base before the game. (He didn't actually make an appearance in the game, though.)


Keijiro Matsumoto, walking to first.


TA-KA-MO-RI!!!!


Yuki Takamori and Takeshi Kanazawa at first, #62 - #62.


Keiyo Aomatsu high-fiving first-base coach Takenori Daita after hitting his RBI single to put the Marines ahead in the 2nd inning.




Yuji Hata warming up in the bullpen.


Shingo Nonaka running out to play catch or to chase baseballs or something.


Takayuki Kajitani hitting into a 3-6-3 double play and being out at first.


Kajitani, out and further out.


Yuta Naitoh.


Keijiro Matsumoto standing in front of the scoreboard in the bottom of the 8th.


Okay, so this is Takahiro Matsuka, the smartest guy in baseball... no, just kidding. But Matsuka is the 4th man in the history of the NPB to have graduated from Tokyo University and to also play at ichi-gun. It is unclear whether this is more because Tokyo University does not attract students with baseball talent, or because anyone who graduates from Todai probably has better long-term career choices than "pro baseball player", and are unlikely to be unsucky enough to get drafted anyway. Either way, he is special. I wish I could have worked up the nerve to say something to him (since he was looking at me funny). Maybe next time.

(I know that you have to have fairly good English comprehension to actually get IN to Todai, though whether anyone keeps up with it AFTER passing the entrance exams is another story, of course.)


How the mighty have fallen. Yukiya Yokoyama #99 and Michiomi Yoshihara #45. Yokoyama used to be the Fighters' closer before Micheal. He wasn't particularly good. He spent the rest of his career with Yokohama, sometimes being good, sometimes not being particularly good. Actually, I think he's a fine pitcher, just never when I'm watching.


(I meant to try to write this entry while watching today's Fighters-Marines game, but I got way too distracted. Brian had a decent start, and Shota Ohno hit a grand slam!!! and Makoto Kaneko hit TWO home runs! And Hiroki Ueno pitched and I finally got to see him and was really happy! But then Hisashi "World's Smallest Closer" Takeda gave up 3 runs to tie it at 6-6 in the top of the 9th and so the game went on until 6pm. And just when all hope seemed to be lost, and it was 2 outs in the bottom of the 12th with runners at the corners, and 2 strikes on Tomohiro Nioka, he managed to hit a single to the right-center gap which scored a pinch-running Kazuya Murata. Whew. 7-6. Anyway, that's why it didn't get finished until Sunday evening.

Not that it really matters, although today on 7/12, the Searex managed to beat Lotte 11-7. Go figure.)

Despite a lousy weather forecast all around the Kanto region last Friday (Aug 29), I used my free afternoon (no classes until 6pm) to go up to Lotte Urawa Stadium and catch the Marines minor league team playing against the Shonan Sea Rex, which are the Yokohama Bay Stars minor league team. For those unfamiliar with the system, in Japan, every team has one farm team, which generally has the same name and uniform as the top team, so when players are sent up and down, the only real difference is what stadium they're playing at. Yokohama is a rare case where the farm team actually has a different name, different uniform, and different sponsoring company than the top team, although all of the players still keep the same uniform numbers when moving between the two. Shonan's uniforms actually reminded me of one of the Seattle Mariners alternate uniforms with all of the teal, or maybe it's the Everett Aquasox I'm thinking of, I'm not sure. Either way, it was interesting to see.

Unlike the previous times I've gone to Lotte Urawa stadium, this time it was pretty much completely deserted, probably because of the weather; it's been raining off and on for what seems like forever, and even without rain, people don't really want to come sit on a muddy hillside. I arrived around 12:40pm for a 1pm game, went to the Sea Rex side since it's by first base, and could pretty much spread out anywhere on the front row bench, so I put down my bag and scorecard and camera bag and all. J.J. Furmaniak walked by on his way back to the dugout and I said "Hey, J.J., how's it going?" and he gave me a curious look and replied, "I'm okay, how're you doing?" (No, he doesn't know who I am as far as I know, but I figured it couldn't hurt to say hello anyway.)

The starting pitchers were announced a bit after that, and I couldn't possibly have been happier with the matchup: Yasutaka Hattori for the Marines, and ATORI OHTA for the Sea Rex! Wow! Not only does that ring nicely with my inner poet -- Atori vs. Hattori -- but, seriously. I'm a big Hattori fan already, I'd seen him pitch as a reliever pretty much every time I've come to Lotte Urawa, and I got to say hi to him before a minor league game in Chiba once, so that was great. But... Atori! Wow!

Atori Ohta, for those who don't know, is this big kid out of Teikyo HS, who absolutely dominated at Koshien when he was a junior, and was part of the most insane Koshien game ever, the Chiben-Teikyo game that seesawed back and forth until 13 runs were scored in the 9th inning alone between the two teams and Chiben won 13-12. Why they pinch-hit for Atori then is still beyond me, but... anyway, the Baystars drafted him in the last draft and I thought it was a really nice pickup for them. I'd just asked Westbay about him last week after our Jingu rainout, and he had no idea who I was gushing about, so seeing him on the mound at Lotte made me super-excited since I could just see for myself how he was doing. Awesome awesome.

Here's my complete photo set from the day, though I will include a bunch of photos in this post as well.




Atori!



Hattori!


Yoshiyuki Kuwahara stood in for the ceremonial first pitch, which was thrown out by some local kid baseball player (wearing a uniform I didn't recognize). The kid looked like he was about 10 or 11 years old, and in what should have been taken as an omen that it was going to be a bizarre day, he HIT KUWAHARA WITH THE PITCH. Seriously! It was a kid-fastball and just kinda went straight at Kuwahara. Everyone was laughing, Kuwahara included, though this kid must have been totally embarrassed.

Actually, first, here is my scorecard. I'll admit as usual that I may have made a few small errors (like an F9 instead of F8), but overall everything added up right. The most important detail is that SEA REX FIRST BASEMAN YUKI TAKAMORI HIT FOR THE CYCLE. Seriously. What is up with all of these cycles lately? I saw Takamori hit for the cycle here in the minors on Friday, then in America on Monday, Adrian Beltre and Stephen Drew both hit for the cycle, the first time two guys had done so on the same day since September 17 1920. Seriously. And THEN, on Wednesday night here in Japan, Michihiro "Clean-shaven Doppleganger" Ogasawara of the Giants ALSO hit for the cycle in a victory over the Hiroshima Carp.

What the heck?

Oh, right. Scorecard:

August 29, 2008 -- Lotte Urawa Stadium

                      1  2  3   4  5  6   7  8  9   R  H  E
Shonan Sea Rex        0  5  1   0  2  1   1  3  3  16 22  1
Marines (ni-gun)      1  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   1  5  1


Sea Rex               AVG  AB  R  H RB  K BB SH SB  E     1  2     3  4  5  6  7  8  9
Y.Kuwahara, rf       .274   6  1  3  1  1  0  0  0  0    G1 S7    .. F9 S8 .. S7 .. KS
Shimozono, lf        .257   6  0  3  1  0  0  0  0  0    G4 S4    .. G2 .. S8 d4 .. D9
Furmaniak, 3b        .275   6  2  2  2  1  0  0  0  0    F9 S9    .. KS .. d1 .. S7 G6
Naitoh, cf           .245   3  5  2  0  0  3  0  0  1    .. S7/G4 .. .. BB BB .. BB S7
Nishizaki, dh        .312   5  3  3  2  0  1  0  0  0    .. F7    G6 .. BB S8 .. S9 E5 
Takamori, 1b         .287   6  1  4  5  0  0  0  0  0    .. F8    H8 .. F7 S9 .. T9 D9
Kurobane, c          .261   5  2  3  1  0  1  0  0  0    .. D9    BB .. S8 .. D9 F8 G6
H.Saitoh, 2b         .148   3  1  0  1  2  2  0  0  0    .. BB    KS .. BB .. F8 KS ..
Kajitani, ss         .232   5  1  2  2  1  0  0  0  0    .. S7    KC .. F8 .. D7 G6 ..


Marines               AVG  AB  R  H RB  K BB SH SB  E     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
Hayasaka, ss         .226   3  0  0  0  0  1  0  0  0    BB .. F9 .. G4 .. .. d4 ..
Daita, lf-cf         .217   4  1  0  0  1  0  0  0  0    G6 .. KS .. .. G3 .. G4 ..
Minami, cf           .240   2  0  0  0  1  1  0  0  0    F9 .. .. BB .. KC .. .. ..
 Ohtani, cf          .188   1  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. F9
Hosoya, 3b           .276   4  0  1  1  0  0  0  0  1    T8 .. .. F9 .. f3 .. .. F8
Shinzato, 2b         .285   3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    F8 .. .. F9 .. .. F9 .. ..
 Shirakawa, 2b       .167   1  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. L6
Kakunaka, dh         .277   3  0  1  0  1  0  0  0  0    .. G1 .. S4 .. .. KC .. ..
Kanazawa, c          .290   0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
 Kohbe, ph-1b        .265   3  0  1  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. G6 .. .. F8 .. S9 .. ..
Aomatsu, 1b-c        .265   3  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. L3 .. .. G4 .. G6 .. ..
Satoh, rf            .223   3  0  2  0  0  0  0  0  0    .. .. G5 .. S7 .. .. S7 ..


Bay Stars             ERA   IP  BF   H  HR   K  BBH  RA  ER
Atori (win)          5.04    7  26   4   0   3   2   1   1
Okamoto              3.48  0.2   2   1   0   0   0   0   0
Kizuka               4.15  1.1   4   0   0   0   0   0   0


Marines               ERA   IP  BF   H  HR   K  BBH  RA  ER
Hattori (loss)       7.19  2.1  16   7   1   0   2   6   6
N.Kobayashi          4.79    2  10   1   0   3   3   2   2
Eguchi               7.71  1.2   7   4   0   0   1   1   1
Mishima              6.34    1   5   3   0   0   0   1   1
Asama               27.00    0   4   3   0   0   1   3   3
Shimoshikiryo        4.91    1   3   0   0   1   0   0   0
Tamura               7.50    1   7   4   0   1   0   3   1

You can see many of my favorite guys played in this game: Hattori and Kohbe and Shimoshikiryo for Lotte, and the best was for the Sea Rex -- I got to see Atsushi Kizuka! Yay!

So, things started out in a typical way with this game; the Marines actually got out to a lead in the first inning; Takenori Daita reached base on a failed double play and then a few batters later Kei Hosoya tripled to center to bring in the run, making it 1-0.

Little did they know it'd be the last run they'd score that day, as Atori kept them in check for the next few hours.

Hattori, on the other hand, ran into trouble in the top of the 2nd inning. Yuta Naitoh started off with a single, and then there were two pop-outs, so catcher Toshiki Kurobane came to bat with two outs and a guy on first... and he pounded a ball through to the rightfield corner, Naitoh scoring the tying run. 1-1. Hidemitsu Saitoh walked, and then Takayuki Kajitani singled in Kurobane. 2-1. Yoshiyuki Kuwahara came up and ALSO hit a single, but the runners held and so the bases were loaded for Tatsuya Shimozono.

Shimozono hit a hard grounder to second, and 2B Ken Shinzato threw to SS Keisuke Hayasaka covering second, only Kuwahara managed to slide in before the ball got there, so not only was everyone safe, but Saitoh scored on the play as well. 3-1. JJ Furmaniak came up to bat at that point and hit a single to right. Kajitani scored easily and Kuwahara scored not-so-easily; I'm not entirely sure he beat the tag at home and neither was Marines catcher Takeshi Kanazawa, who argued with the umpire for about a minute about it. Either way, it was 5-1 and the Sea Rex had completely batted around their order, just in time for Naitoh to come up to bat again and ground out to second, this time Shinzato making the safe play at first base.



Naitoh fails to get picked off first base.


And here's Naitoh sliding in with the first Searex run of the game.


Hidemitsu Saitoh at bat.


JJ Furmaniak hits his 2-run single.


Takeshi Kanazawa argues that Kuwahara wasn't safe at home.

So, apparently by arguing with the umpires, Kanazawa managed to unleash the wrath of some Bad Luck Demons, because when he came to bat in the bottom of the 2nd, he shot himself in the foot. That is, he fouled a pitch off of his right leg, and kind of fell over and yelled out in pain, and ended up being helped off the field by a few trainers after a few minutes of spraying and whatnot made it obvious he wasn't going to get back up to finish out his at-bat.

Given that being a Lotte catcher this year has not entirely been unlike being a drummer for Spinal Tap, it shouldn't surprise me too much to see a freak injury to a Lotte catcher, but it was still pretty crazy.

The only good part is, my Marines ni-gun boyfriend Takumi Kohbe replaced him at-bat and would end up entering the game as a first baseman, as Keiyo Aomatsu switched from first base to catcher.

With one out in the top of the 3rd, Searex first baseman Yuki Takamori BLASTED a home run over the centerfield wall. 6-1. Kurobane walked, and that was it for Hattori in the game, as Noriyuki Kobayashi (#123!) replaced him. I was a bit sad because as I said, I'm a Hattori fan, but it was also a nice change to watch some Baystars players actually win a game for once as well.

Kobayashi struck out Saitoh and Kajitani to end the inning.


Kanazawa fouls the ball off his leg.


Kanazawa is struck by the Chiba Catcher Curse of 2008.


Yuki Takamori HITS THE BALL.


Takamori kept looking over at the stands. I'm sure he wondered what the hell I was doing there too.


Kohbe grounds out.


Kohbe was chatting and smiling with Searex firstbase coach Jun Inoue.


Inoue-coach, who played for Yokohama for a long time and then for Lotte for a few years as well.


Noriyuki 1-2-3 Kobayashi.

In the bottom of the 3rd, while the Marines were grounding out of another inning, I saw a familiar face go by -- Sign Guy, who I usually stalk at Baystars games, had shown up at the game for whatever reason. He didn't have his signs, but he did have his normal leather pants and obscure Baystars jersey (this time a signed Manei #0 jersey) and bandana and all. I called out his name as he walked past me and he was like "Oh! Hey, long time no see!"

Saw a pretty bizarre play happen in the bottom of the 4th. Ryusuke Minami walked to lead off the inning, and then two outs later, Katsuya Kakunaka was at bat. Kakunaka grounded up the right side as Minami was running towards second and BAM, Minami actually got knocked down by the ball. Seriously. So, the thing is, I wasn't really sure how to score it -- I just wrote down a ?! in my card and a description of what happened, as Minami was just sitting there on his knees in the dirt between the bases, laughing at the absurdity of the play. It seems that Kakunaka was credited with a single, but I'm not sure who was credited with the putout on Minami exactly. It was just plain weird.

I guess Noriyuki Kobayashi ran out of steam after an inning, because he walked the first two Searex batters in the 5th -- Naitoh and Nishizaki. Takamori popped out, and Kurobane singled up the middle, loading the bases, and then Noriyuki walked ANOTHER batter, Saitoh, which brought in a run. 7-1. Noriyuki came out of the game and Ryosuke Eguchi came in. He got a popout from Kajitani, and then Kuwahara singled to center. Minami, ostensibly to make up for his previous baserunning gaffe, recovered and FIRED the ball in, so while Nishizaki scored with no problem from third (8-1), Kurobane was tagged out by a mile trying to stretch from second.

After a quick bottom half of the inning, the mid-game break time began, and the dirt zamboni came out on the field to plow the infield.

I had seen Atsushi Kizuka walk behind the bleachers from the clubhouse to the bullpen earlier, since in Urawa, the players pretty much have to walk either in front of the fans or behind the fans to get across. (It's really funny to me to see players come out of the clubhouse and go to the vending machine to buy soft drinks, but it happens.) I figured I'd climb up the hill and see who was in the bullpen, and sure enough, Kizuka was warming up! How cool! But there was a thick cloth fence inbetween so I couldn't really take any pictures. Still, that was exciting.

On my way back I stopped by to say hi to Sign Guy, who was sitting further out by the bullpens. I asked why he didn't have his signs, and he was like "Well, there aren't really all that many people here... I don't usually bring them to minor league games."

The game restarted. Eguchi remained on the mound for Lotte... and Shimozono promptly got a single off him, which JJ Furmaniak canceled by grounding into a double play. Okay. But then Eguchi walked Naitoh, and Nishizaki singled, and then Takamori singled to right. Naitoh scored, making it 9-1, but then Takamori also got himself caught in a rundown between first and second. Oops. Nishizaki took advantage of the rundown to try to score as well, and got tagged out at the plate. Boom.


Here's Minami sitting in the basepath after getting himself knocked down by a grounder.


Ryosuke Eguchi pitching.


Takamori ducks and swerves in the rundown.

Terufumi Mishima took the mound for Lotte in the top of the 7th and gave up another run, as Kurobane doubled into the rightfield corner and Kajitani subsequently doubled into the leftfield corner. 10-1.

Takamori, in further dumb luck, actually missed catching a ball during the round-the-corners tossing before the bottom of the 7th. Seriously. The ball banged up against the fence with a loud thud. A little boy was standing there wearing a glove behind the fence, and Takamori came over to get the ball, looked through, saw the little kid staring at the ball, kind of winked, and tossed the ball up over the fence to the kid. I'm not sure he was supposed to do that, actually, but maybe it gave him the good luck he ended up having for the rest of the game.

Keita Asama took the mound for Lotte in the top of the 8th, around the same time Sign Guy decided to come over and sit down next to me, since the bench had emptied out a bit by then. Sign Guy is really interesting, he's totally my kind of crazy, and he's also a walking meikan of sorts. We watched as JJ singled, Naitoh walked, and Nishizaki also singled (scoring JJ, 11-1). Then Takamori came up to bat and as a joke I softly called "TA-KA-MO-RI!!!!" the way people would usually yell for Takanori Suzuki. Sign Guy laughed, and then Takamori hit the ball way to right field... it looked to be foul, but ended up landing JUST inside fair territory, and rolled out to the corner, and the Searex runners all ran. Naitoh scored. Nishizaki scored. Takamori slid into third base for a triple. Exciting! 13-1! Asama, who had failed to even record one out, was taken out of the game at that point, and guess who came in?

Yuta Shimoshikiryo! Submarine Junior!!

I was really excited and started babbling to Sign Guy about how awesome Shimoshikiryo is... and SG babbled back at me about how he had gone to the industrial league tournament last year and seen Shimoshikiryo pitch for Nihon Seimei and thought he was super-cool. Owned. I ran up to the fence to take photos of my second-favorite submariner...


Yuta Shimoshikiryo!!!


Yay Shimoshikiryo! Yay submariners!!


And, one last parting shot of Atori Ohta, who pitched 7 excellent innings. Awwwww.


Shimo-kun doesn't suck. He got three quick outs from the Searex to end the inning with Takamori still standing on third base.

So, Atori came out of the game after 7 innings, having only given up that run in the first inning. I know I'm easily impressed, but I thought it was a great outing.

Naoya Okamoto took the mound for the Searex in the bottom of the 8th. "Ugh," said Sign Guy, "he sucks. It's not good to see him out there."

"Err... okay..." I replied, not actually really having any clue who Okamoto was. Then I counted up the score on the manual scoreboard -- they don't keep a running total, just inning-by-inning -- and continued, "It's 13 to 1! I wouldn't worry too much."

"Nono, I'm not worried about today," he said, "Just in general, I don't think this guy's ever gonna be good for us at ichi-gun."

I took the opportunity then to ask Sign Guy about how long he'd been a Baystars fan and so on. He said since he was a kid, so about 20 years (he's slightly younger than me). I asked him about Takuro Ishii's former lifetime as a pitcher, and he started talking about the 1990ish Taiyo Whales, in way too fast a voice for me to follow more than about 50% of what he was saying -- kind of like the way I get when talking about the 1980's Phillies.

Fortunately, I was saved from complete mental overload by a really awesome thing happening after two outs...

IT WAS KIZUKA TIME!

Yeah! Atsushi Kizuka came out to replace Okamoto on the mound, and I had the perfect reason to say "Excuse me, must go take photos of my FAVORITE BAYSTARS PITCHER OMG", as Kizuka started his normal mound-taking routine of jumping up and down, squatting, kicking the mound, doing bizarre stretches, kicking the mound some more, jumping again, doing some weird sign-like waving at his teammates, crouching down, and practically flying off the mound as he unleashed his warmup pitches. I love Kizuka. I would happily watch him all day, except that the Baystars generally bring him out for only one out at a time, long enough to confuse whoever is batting and to disrupt whatever footholds the opposing pitcher had in the mound.





This is Atsushi Kizuka. He is awesome.

Kizuka got a groundout to end the inning, and then the top of the 9th started, with Ryohei Tamura taking the mound for Lotte.

Tamura has an interesting story, for sure -- it seems that he was drafted out of highschool by the Hanshin Tigers in 2002, probably because he is left-handed and can throw pretty fast, and his father Masao was also a pro pitcher. Tamura, who seems to have some control issues, and whose idol is Kei Igawa (go figure), was released by the Tigers after the 2007 season. He went to the tryouts at Chiba Marine Stadium after that, and ended up being signed as a taxi squad player by Lotte, and wears #126 with them.

As it is, Tamura started off well enough by striking out Kuwahara, but then also got pounded by the Searex, just like everyone else. Shimozono doubled to right. JJ Furmaniak grounded to short, and Hayasaka threw to third and caught Shimozono sliding into the bag for the second out. But then Naitoh singled, and he and JJ both advanced on a wild pitch during Nishizaki's at-bat. Nishizaki grounded to third, and Kei Hosoya made a decent stop on the ball, but his throw to first base was WAY wide -- and when you miss a target like 6'5" first baseman Takumi Kohbe, you KNOW that's an error -- the ball went sailing away, JJ and Naitoh both scoring on the play as the Marines scrambled to recover the ball in time. 15-1.

Takamori came up to bat and he DOUBLED TO RIGHT!

The old guys behind us said, "Hey, he just hit for the cycle, didn't he?"

I looked down at my scorecard and SURE ENOUGH, Takamori had hit a home run, then a single, then a triple, and now a double!

"WOW! A cycle in the minor leagues? When's the last time THAT ever happened?" I remarked.

Sign Guy said, "I have no idea. It's pretty rare, I'm sure."

Nishizaki scored on that play to bring it to the final score of 16-1, and then Kurobane grounded out to end the inning. And Kizuka stayed on to pitch the bottom of the 9th, which made me very happy, and he got out of it 1-2-3 to end the game a little bit after 4pm.


Searex high-five each other, after what had to be one of the craziest landslide wins for them all year.


Final scoreboard. Math is fun.


I can see that Kizuka's been spending his rehab time growing a nice head of curly hair, if nothing else.

The Searex guys came out to do more exercises and workouts after the game, even though they won. I saw Kizuka talking to pitching coach Junichiro Mutoh -- yet another "hey, I recognize that coach" moment, and took the above picture. And then I felt really embarrassed just standing there with my camera staring at the players doing their post-game talks/stretches/etc, so I packed up to leave.

I walked back to Musashi-Urawa station with Sign Guy, and we chatted about the Baystars, and about rock music. He was heading to Yokohama from there to watch the evening's game against Yakult, which I sadly couldn't go to because I had to return to work. I said the Baystars would definitely win, though, and as it turns out, they did.

What a great amount of fun. I love minor-league ball.