Marinerds, etc.

Monday, I decided not to go to the 3rd game of the Meiji-Hosei series and instead did a doubleheader of the Lions vs. Fighters at the Seibu Dump, then the Swallows vs. Baystars at Jingu.

I guess I arrived at Seibu around 12:30pm. First thing I noticed was a lot of people taking photos of the Seibu train cars. This is why:



I'm assuming it must be a new makeover for the cars or something. Remember, if 20 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it must be special.

I tell you this because I went into the stadium, put down my stuff in the spot my friends had saved for me, and then noticed another huge group of people clustered by the outfield fence taking photos of something. This is why:



Apparently Yuki Saitoh is working on a new pitch. I dunno. Clearly if 50 Japanese people are all taking a photo of something, it REALLY must be special. Me, I spent 4 years watching Saitoh pitch for Waseda, so I'm kind of already over the hype, you could say.

Seibu still sucks for actually getting decent food within the stadium, at least if all you have is an outfield ticket, so like most people, I went back OUTSIDE of the stadium to find lunch. They had a lot of fancy bento boxes for various players, but what caught my eye was their "special limited edition Sapporo vs. Tokorozawa" bento:





Interesting mix of stuff, though I have to admit I don't really get how it was either Hokkaido-themed OR Saitama-themed except for the potato croquette (that's a typical Hokkaido thing). I'm a sucker for these kinds of bento boxes, though; I love how you get a filling healthy meal with such a wide variety of stuff for such a reasonable price.

I guess we spent the next hour before the game either chatting, doing opening cheers, or watching the Lions fans do their new chance theme which reminds me of a weird cross of MVP-era Lotte plus the Fighters Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cheer, as it had a lot of "LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAA" stuff going on, as well as a split part where men sing first and then women.

Shota Ohno was playing in this game, and hadn't at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday, so I spent a while studying his cheer, too. Fortunately, one of my friends who's a college student and fluent in English was sitting next to me, so I made him help me figure them all out.



Brian Wolfe started for the Fighters, and Kazuhisa Ishii for the Lions.

The first half of this game was pretty awesome from a Fighters fan perspective. We got on the board in the 3rd inning when Bobby Scales hit a home run, and then added two more runs to it in the 4th inning on a Sugiya hit, stolen base, an RBI double by Koyano, and an RBI single by Inaba-sama. 3-0.

We loaded the bases in the top of the 5th, even, when Ishii hit both Yoh and Itoi with pitches. Unfortunately, we didn't DO anything with that.

Even so, things seemed good going into the bottom of the 5th. But Yutaro Ohsaki led off with a close single to second. Shogo Akiyama followed that up with a single, and Ginjiro bunted them both up to 2nd and 3rd. Yasuyuki Kataoka, batting 9th (??) singled in Ohsaki, making it 3-1. Well, okay. But then Takumi Kuriyama followed that with another hit, bringing in Akiyama, 3-2. And Takuya Hara followed that with YET ANOTHER HIT, bringing in Kataoka, 3-3.

Naturally the only other thing that could possibly happen then was a 3-run homer from Hiroyuki Nakajima, right? Right. 6-3. By this point I'd had enough and got up to go to the bathroom, expecting that Wolfe would be taken out and I'd have some time, but apparently that isn't what happened, and instead, while I was in the bathroom I could hear a really big roar of Lions fans cheering... as Okawari-kun Nakamura had hit his 41st home run of the year. 7-3.

I've joked in the past that Seibu should hang me from the ceiling as an omamori for their players hitting homeruns, because BOY do they hit a lot of homers when I'm there.

(Side note: I don't know if it's this new ball or what, but it's kind of insane that Okawari has 41 homeruns, the next highest in the PL is Softbank's Matsuda with 23, then Seibu's Nakajima with 16. Even in the CL, the leader is Wladimir Balentien with 27 right now. There are some TEAMS -- I'm looking at Lotte with their 39 and Hiroshima with their 43 -- that barely as a WHOLE TEAM have as many homers as Nakamura does.)

Got back to my seat to see the inning end, anyway. And I got to see Kazuhito Tadano pitch the 6th, and I'm a relatively big fan of his all things considered, so it was nice to see him get into a game, at least.

The Fighters managed to take back 2 runs in the 7th from a Sugiya double, an Itoi single, a Koyano RBI single and an Inaba fielder's choice, making it 7-5, but that's all they'd get as the Lions won the game.

To nobody's surprise, the game hero was Nakajima:



But I didn't stick around for the post-game at all because I was running off to Jingu. I basically quickly gathered up my stuff, packed up my bag, had Taicho make fun of me for having an Iihara jersey, and then ran to the Seibu train station. Quite frankly, my legs were killing me after 3 hours of sitting/standing on the slanted Seibu outfield turf -- I'd forgotten how painful that gets when you're not used to it.

The only other comment I have about the Seibu game offhand was that I'm not sure how to explain the exact difference, but without Hichori and Hichori fans in the outfield, there's a slightly different feel to things at Seibu. He was always a really big showman of sorts and always waved to fans and threw them baseballs and did antics and climbed on the fences, and his fans also kind of had goofy banners and lots of crazy green stuff, and I guess with Hichori gone and Kensuke injured, it felt like a lot of the goofiness was gone, and mostly replaced by a sort of glumness. And lots of Saitoh jerseys.

But anyway.

Onward to Jingu -- I managed to get a Seibu train that went straight from there to Shibuya, and then took the subway to Gaienmae, and I got into Jingu at about 6:30pm, or in the bottom of the 2nd inning.

Now, the nice thing about being late is that I deliberately decided not to keep a scorecard, which means that as a result, if you really want to read a more detailed log of what happened in the game, you ought to go read the official Tsubamegun writeup on their blog.

I mean, what I recall is:

- It was 1-0 when I arrived
- I saw Aoki hit his homer into the foul pole shortly after that to make it 1-1
- I had gotten back from my first jaunt around the concourse (more on that in a second) in time to see the WTF moment of the game when Fukuyama balked in a run to make it 2-1
- I saw Aikawa's home run too, which made it 3-1.



Now anyway, for what really happened to me during this game:

Kozo and I went hunting for food at some point in the 3rd or 4th inning. I bought a Shingo Kawabata t-shirt first, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, and then we surveyed a bunch of the places in the left field stands before Kozo decided to just get bulgogidon at the yakiniku-place that I forget the name of.

HOWEVER, when we got to the end of the stands, I saw Hossiezo, one of the Baystars mascots, posing at the food counter and with some fans! I went to take a photo and one of the "diana" girls was like "Would you like your picture with him?" and I said sure. I also told her how my name is ALSO Deanna, pronounced the same as their "diana", but spelled different.

I was so super-psyched about this, except GET THIS, the "diana" girl didn't press the button on my camera hard enough for the flash to fire, and the picture DIDN'T TAKE!

SIGH.

I was really bummed out about that. It's silly because usually I wouldn't have even had the chance to get a photo with a mascot anyway, this was just dumb luck, and I did get a photo with a Baystars star mascot a few years back. But it still kind of sucks to have that chance and to pose and all and then not get a picture. I realize that part of it is that I have a really cheap camera, but...

Anyway, we got food and went back to the stands. Shortly after that, I decided I wanted some soft serve ice cream, and went back hunting for that. The stupid thing there is that they sell it literally right underneath where we were sitting, but I didn't notice, and walked all the way to the other end of the outfield and back before figuring it out.

So, public service announcement: IF YOU WANT SOFT ICE CREAM AND ARE SITTING IN THE RIGHT FIELD BLEACHERS AT JINGU, IT IS IN THE SAME STAND ALCOVE AS THE PLACE WITH THE SAUSAGES. Which makes it right under the ouendan, basically.

Though I have to admit that the Belgian waffle place that just opened this year looks pretty damn good too. I'll try to report on that at a future time.

Anyway, I think that I had a decent time at this game, relaxing for once and not keeping score, mostly hanging out with Kozo and our friend Kentaro, who wants me to come to a Carp game with him sometime (and I really should, since I brought my Carp Saitoh jersey with me to Japan). Though I dunno, I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to Jingu in the first place -- the Fighters game took a lot out of me. So I was mostly at Jingu to hang out, really, and so the Swallows win was nice, but since I was zonked and since it was against the Baystars, I guess it didn't really feel like that big a deal.

Oh, one final photo from the day, along the same sort of "Spot what's wrong with this" variety:



DEAR THE SEIBU LIONS:

I AM FAIRLY SURE YOUR LITTLE SCHEDULE BOOK DOES NOT INFACT SAY WHAT YOU THINK IT SAYS. ARE YOU PLANNING TO INCINERATE ALL OF YOUR PLAYERS?

LOVE, THE MARINERD

After spending all afternoon Saturday at Jingu dying of heatstroke, and being unable to endure the pro game that evening, I came up with the brilliant idea to only watch 1.5 games of Big 6 ball on Sunday and go home for 2-3 hours to change and shower and cool off and become human again. Then I came back to Jingu for the pro game in the evening.

I was at this game with Kozo and David from Tsubamegun, and also Ben, a a friend of ours who used to live in Tokyo and come to games sometimes, but now lives in Osaka. I had bought Ben's ticket that morning, so I met up with him at the subway station, and when we got to Jingu, guess what we saw -- fans taking photos with Swallows mascots! So I made Ben line up with me and take my photo with Entaro:



Then spent the hour before the game basically greeting people and getting food and learning the new songs and so on. (No, I'm sorry, but Hatakeyama's cheer is right out. His old one was hard enough, why did they have to change it?)

I will say that it was a spectacular sunset over Jingu, as usual:



And actually, apparently, due to it being some kind of Yakult Family Night thing where they were giving out tickets or selling cheap tickets to Yakult company employees, a lot of the stadium was PACKED. The outfield was REALLY PACKED and even the infield on the 1st-base side was pretty full. Here's a view during the 7th-inning stretch:



Now uh... the bad thing is that the first time anyone got out their umbrellas WAS infact the 7th-inning stretch.

(If you don't know, when the Swallows score a run, the Swallows fans get out umbrellas and sing "Tokyo Ondo" and dance around with umbrellas. If you don't know Tokyo Ondo, you might know it as "the 'Kutabare Yomiuri' song". The other time that Swallows fans get out the umbrellas is always for the middle of the "Lucky 7"th inning.)

The Baystars' starter was Kentaro Takasaki, who I was saying is their "ace". This is because he had 4 wins to his name (5 now!), which is more than anyone else on their pitching staff. He also has thrown more innings than anyone else on the team, and, honestly, were he on any other team in the league, he'd probably have a winning record rather than his current 5-12, 3.08 mark. 115 strikeouts and 34 walks in 155 innings is really not bad at all. Also, he's a pretty decent soccer player, which I learned this winter. But that's beside the point.

Takasaki, for better or worse, basically was just mowing down the Swallows lineup left and right. He pitched 4 PERFECT INNINGS before finally giving up a base hit to Shinichi Takeuchi. And it didn't stop there -- in eight innings, Takasaki allowed two baserunners. TWO. That Takeuchi hit, and a Kawabata hit that was barely a hit, if it hadn't gone off Tsutsugo's arm. Seriously.

In the meantime, the Swallows starter was Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi. Don't get me wrong, I loved Masubuchi as a reliever, and always looked forward to seeing him come into the game, and not just because he uses that Taio Cruz "Break Your Heart" song as his entrance music. (True story: I was in a store in Seattle, and that song came on the radio/whatever, and I just stopped in my tracks and said "Masubuchi??" Several people looked at me really weird. But I digress.) I don't know, though, I've never really thought he's all that great as a starter. Or maybe he just has bad starts whenever I see them.

In this case, he gave up a home run to Shuichi Murata in the 4th inning -- and we'd just been saying how Murata's power numbers are down this year. Then he had a disaster of a 5th inning, where even pitcher Takasaki led off with a single, and then Aranami tried to bunt him up but replaced him on base instead with a 1-6 FC. Ishikawa also singled, and then Shimozono walked, which loaded the bases for Murata... who didn't hit another homer, but instead was HIT BY A PITCH to give the Baystars another run. To add insult to oshidashi, then Tsutsugo hit a sac fly to center, and Tatsuhiko Kinjoh (!!) singled in another run. It was 4-0 by the time everything cleared.

Everything was looking great for Takasaki even into the 9th inning -- Aikawa led off with a single, but a pinch-hitting Whitesell hit a pop out to second, and then Aoki hit into a fielder's choice -- almost a double play but not quite. With two outs and Hiroyasu Tanaka at bat, Aoki ran to second base on defensive indifference. Unfortunately, that might have made the big difference in the game -- Hiroyasu then hit a solid single to center which scored Aoki to make it 4-1. Having lost the shutout, the Baystars pulled Takasaki and put in Shun Yamaguchi, their closer. Yamaguchi then walked Kawabata, putting runners at 1st and 2nd for Hatakeyama... who hit a REALLY HIGH POP FLY right over the mound and would you believe it, whoever fielded it (Tsutsugoh?) DROPPED THE CATCH. Oh man. Hiroyasu scored. 4-2.

But that was it -- Takeuchi then hit a pop fly to right that even Kinjoh couldn't possibly not catch, and that was the game.



Most of the people in the group we were cheering with fell asleep up on the tarps for half the game. They at least woke up for the 9th inning.

Takasaki was, understandably, the game hero. And he mentioned how it was the first time since June that the Baystars had won 2 consecutive games, and how he was proud of the whole team's effort in the game. I think I'm finally over my anger at the Baystars administration to the point that I now just feel bad for them.

Epic weekend at Jingu, but I haven't had any time to write about it. So here are some photos with a little bit of text context.

Saturday

I showed up at 11, and made the mistake of going into the stadium first rather than meeting Kozo outside. So he stayed in section D while I went to do the donation line thing by myself. He'd said there was a huge line at 11am, but by the time I got there, there was pretty much no line, and just some players standing at tables. They had it set up such that a few of the Swallows cheer girls were holding out the donation boxes, and after that were some players, so you put money in the box and then shook hands with some players.

Yasushi Iihara wasn't out there when I went, so I basically saw Oshimoto and picked his line. It was him, Hashimoto, and Carp player rep Ishihara. So I shook their hands and said "Ganbatte kudasai!" to all three of them. Oshi and Hashi are former Fighters so it was kind of funny to me.



(Shortly afterwards they condensed down to 2 lines with more players. Ishikawa and Kyuko moved from the other table to the one I'd been at. Doh! And on my way out, I saw the coaches all showing up -- a few people were like "Hey that's Shiroishi! I want to go shake hands with him!")

There are a bunch of new cheers this year, so the ouendan spent some time before the game teaching them. Iihara, Hamanaka, Kawabata, Hatakeyama, they have new ones, and of course there's one for new guy Balentien. There's also one for manager Ogawa (apparently similar to the one he had in his playing days).


(Teaching Hamanaka's cheer.)


Also, the ouendan held up these signs several times during the game. It says "Our hearts are one, good luck Tohoku, Japan", basically (I guess it's part of the "Ganbare Nihon" slogan stuff).


There were no trumpets or drums, but there was still plenty of singing. And of course it wouldn't be Jingu without the umbrella dancing. Here we are in the middle of the 7th inning, singing Tokyo Ondo, without any trumpets or loudspeaker music or dancing girls on the field.





The Swallows won the game 3-0 on the Kawabata sac fly, Hamanaka solo homer, and an error throwing to 3rd in the 8th inning that allowed Miwa to score. Tateyama pitched well.


Final score.


Our group at the top of section D.

After the game, rather than the "we won" cheering, there was a yell exchange between both sides, although we hadn't really been warned about it in advance. It mostly degenerated into the entire outfield yelling "NIPPON!" like the soccer cheer.

Kozo and Ben and Mac and I walked to Yoyogi Park to just see what the hanami (cherry-blossom viewing parties, basically people drinking under sakura trees) scene was like, and to get a nice walk. As you can see from this picture, there are plenty of cherry blossoms in bloom, and also plenty of people hanging out under them. Though it's true that maybe there aren't as many people as in past years -- usually you can't move at all during this season, but not this time, we were able to walk through the park just fine.


BTW, if you want a cool hat like mine, go talk to Christopher Pellegrini. :)

Actually, a (Japanese) guy heard us talking in English outside Jingu and was like "do you guys do the Tsubamegun blog? I want one of those caps." He spoke surprisingly good English, I'm used to people staring at our group of English-speakers in a combination of awe/disgust, but he just wanted to say hi.

We also got stopped by several random people in the park like "YEAH! GO SWALLOWS!" or whatnot. One girl even high-fived us all in the subway station afterwards.

Sunday

Sunday, I met up with Kozo by the train station and we walked to Jingu together. We went to do the earthquake relief donation thing first -- there was a huge line since it was just starting at 11am! But I saw that Yasushi Iihara was out there, and I was wearing my Iihara jersey, so I wanted to be in his line. We waited... we walked... we waited... we walked... and just as we were getting towards the donation area, we see these two white guys with cameras and they yell out to me "Hey, we're from NBC. Can we talk to you a bit?" and I'm like "Sure, can you catch me AFTER the donation line?"

We go through the line. I steer us towards the table that turns out to just be Yasushi and the mascot Tsubakuro. Fortunately it turns out Kozo really wanted to shake hands with Tsubakuro and I really wanted to shake hands with Yasushi so we both got what we wanted. :) I said "Ganbatte kudasai!" and smiled. We didn't plan well so I don't have a photo of me shaking hands with Yasushi, but I do have Kozo with Tsubakuro...



And THEN the NBC guys caught us. They mostly wanted to talk to me until I'm like "You really ought to talk to Kozo too, he also speaks English."

Mostly they asked things like, "Why are you here today? What do you think of all of the donation stuff? What do you think of the earthquake and the way things are now?" Me being me I just babbled all this stuff about how much I love Japanese baseball and go to a whole ton of games and how I think that the donation thing is EXACTLY what they should be doing -- bringing people together, lifting up spirits, collecting money to help the earthquake victims, etc. I babble a lot and sound like an idiot when I'm under pressure like that. Kozo, on the other hand, with his years of debate and speech practice, sounded really good and eloquent. (Take that, foreign press -- the gaijin is a moron but her Japanese friend that you never would have noticed is the well-spoken one!) He pointed out that I probably gave the reporters a lot of good information, even if I sounded like a big big dork.



Me being interviewed.


Kozo being interviewed.

We have no clue if either of us were actually on the news, though. The guy who interviewed us was Lee Cowan, and he said he was with NBC Nightly News. He also said that he'd been in Japan for 3 weeks covering the earthquake stuff and that I was the happiest person he'd talked to -- mostly because they'd been up north, I guess. I told him I was just happy to be back at a game, to see my friends again and to watch baseball and to help the earthquake and all. It turned out their crew had never actually been to a Japanese baseball game, so we were like "We'll be at the top of section D in the outfield with some other English-speaking friends if you want to come chat with us later!" But they were kinda iffy because it was unclear they'd be able to actually bring their equipment into the park.

And for the record, they must have raised a fortune this weekend -- it was PACKED! I think the whole "get to shake hands with baseball players" thing really motivates people to go give money, certainly.


See how packed it was?




These are two boards that were signed by all the Swallows players, that will be sent up to Tohoku as a "we are supporting you" gesture, I believe.

Then we went into the park, sat down, hung out for a while, because most of the people we know weren't there yet. I went to get lunch and ended up finding the new Pizza-La, but since I hate Pizza-La got some butadon from the place next to it, which was really good.


The new Pizza-La. I suppose this means Pellegrini no longer has to list his home address with them as "Jingu Stadium, Gate 19".

Oh yeah, and I bought an Aoki cellphone strap and shitajiki. I figure that well, he's likely to jump to the MLB next year so it was my last chance, even though I'm not paticularly a fan of his or anything.

After a while, we got a decent group of friends there. This time I actually went down to practice with the ouendan for the new songs but still couldn't get the hang of all of them.

Also I saw this while people were singing:


I guess this is the virtual trumpet in lieu of the real ones...

Yuya Fukui started for the Carp, which was exciting since I saw him play so much with Waseda. Kyohei Muranaka started for the Swallows. The game was kinda just average until basically the 4th inning when the Swallows blew it wide open with Wladimir Balentien hitting a 3-run homer. He also hit another homer later on. So, the Swallows won 6-1 eventually.

It was mostly just fun to be there with friends and cheering and watching baseball!


Umbrellas!


Final score.

And here's a bonus video...



This is on Sunday -- the cheer exchange between the Swallows and Carp fans, rather than our usual postgame "we won" kinds of cheering and singing. On Saturday we didn't know it was happening but on Sunday the ouendan leaders explained it to everyone, so I filmed it instead of participating because I'm a dork like that.

First we'd yell "GANBARE GANBARE TOHOKU!" and then the Carp side would yell Ganbare Nippon, then both sides would yell a Nippon cheer together, and then we'd yell Ganbare Carp and they'd yell Ganbare Swallows. It worked out pretty well -- a nice show of solidarity how even though we're two separate baseball cheering groups we're still united in a love for baseball and a desire to help the folks in the north.

It was quite a weekend. It's been quite a trip, really :)

Thanks to the rain stopping at 10:30 instead of 10am, the Tokyo Big 6 games for Sunday got "rained out", which made me more than a little annoyed as I sat home during the beautiful sunny afternoon and watched the Seibu-Lotte playoff game instead. I told Kozo, "I'm leaving when this game ends... or finishes 9 innings..." and naturally, Lotte tied it up again, and by the time I got to Jingu, that game had been decided, as I found out...



Congrats to the Chiba Lotte Marines and good luck in Fukuoka! My only regret is that I was vaguely hoping for a Chunichi-Seibu Japan Series because I'm fairly convinced it would be possible to actually get tickets to that, unlike a Lotte series, which won't.

Anyway, despite that this was the actual LAST REGULAR SEASON NPB GAME OF 2010, I just couldn't get excited about it for some reason. Maybe I was just tired, or still bummed out for the lack of college ball, or something. This game didn't actually have any meaning at all for either team; the Carp are in 5th place and the Swallows are in 3rd. The only POSSIBLE things that could happen at this game would be that if Swallows starter Kyohei Muranaka got 14 strikeouts, he could edge out Kenta Maeda for tops in the CL and take away Maeken's Pitching Triple Crown. Alternately, if somehow Aoki got 7 ABs and got 7 hits he could tie Matt Murton's 214 hits... yeah, that wasn't happening either.

Or, uh... did you know that Aaron Guiel leads the Swallows in home runs with 16, despite that he hasn't played at ichi-gun since July? No, seriously; D'Antona and Iihara and Whitesell all sit there with 15, and Aoki and Hatakeyama both have 14. So, it's possible that maybe at least Jamie or Yasushi could have hit two homers and gone ahead... but, no, the only Swallows player to hit a homer in this game was Shingo Kawabata, his only one of the season. Go figure.

The big billing for this game was that it was Yuki Tanaka and Munehiro Shida's retirement game. If you're not a dork like me who has many years of NPB stats in her head, you're probably wondering, "Who?" But plenty of people showed up with signs and stuff, because in Japan, people will support the players on their team, no matter how insignificant they may actually be.

Anyway, this was a fairly fast game. The Carp took an early 2-0 lead in the first inning on a Kenta Kurihara homer, made it 3-0 when speedster Masato Akamatsu stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on an Ishihara single. D'Antona narrowed that to 3-1 by doubling in the 2nd, advancing on a Yasushi single and then scoring on a stupid yet effective fielder's choice groundout by Shinya Miyamoto.

Tetsuya Kokubo singled to lead off the 4th. Ishihara singled to right and then some throwing stupidity happened; Yasushi threw in the ball and somehow Kawabata and Miyamoto got confused about who was the cutoff man, and in the meantime Kokubo scored and Ishihara reached second as they recovered the ball, 4-1. Shogo Kimura singled in Ishihara when a fly ball fell in center with 3 guys staring at it, 5-1... and then got himself caught stealing to end the inning. Duh.

Yakult narrowed that lead to 5-3 on a Hatakeyama 2-RBI single in the 5th, and Kawabata's improbable homer cut it even more to 5-4 in the 6th.

Then the pitching juggling began on both sides. Ueno and Ohshima and Umetsu and Yokoyama would finish out the game for Hiroshima; I was kinda hoping to see Hisashi Takeuchi (former Hosei boy) make a triumphant return to Jingu, but no dice.

After 5 innings by Muranaka, the Swallows brought in Yuki Tanaka, aka just "Yuki", for his retirement appearance. The right-field stands went nuts cheering for him, and he struck out Ishihara on three pitches, before making way for a real reliever in Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi.


Patrick Yu with some Yuki fans between the 5th and 6th innings. Foreshadowing?


Scoreboard showing Yuki coming in for the last time ever.

For the record, I'm sure that for the rest of my life, whenever I hear the strains of Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart", I'm going to think of Jingu. I'm sure I'll be somewhere, like in a cafe in Seattle, just minding my own business eating lunch, the song will come on the radio, and I'll look up like "Masubuchi?"

Anyway.

The other retirement appearance happened in the 8th inning; with there still being a one-out difference at the time, and me feeling all clever because I deliberately wore my Furuta t-shirt instead of my Iihara jersey to reverse Yasushi's luck (he went 2-for-3!), they pinch-hit the also-retiring Munehiro Shida for Yasushi. He grounded out pretty much on the first pitch he saw. Go figure.

And then he took the field for the 9th inning, playing right field in front of the Yakult stands. As he walked out to his position and looked up at the Shida banners being wielded by the ouendan and fans, THEN I understood why Yasushi was pinch-hit for.


Shida's at-bat picture on the board for the last time too.


Shida takes the field for the 9th.

But anyway, the rest of the Yakult pitching was done by Oshimoto and Matsuoka. Matsuoka was making his 73rd appearance of the season, which is 2nd in the league behind the Giants' Yuya Kubo. (I actually didn't realize that Oshimoto only made 61 appearances; I think he pitches every time I see the Swallows.) Actually, it's 2nd in the COUNTRY given that the highest game count in the Pacific League was Tadashi Settsu with 71.

And appropriately, Matsuoka gave up a homer to Shigenobu Shima to make the game 6-4 before retiring the next 3 guys. Sadly the Swallows managed very little in their half of the 9th and that's how the game ended.


Final score. (Taken way afterwards but I liked this shot.)


And by the way, Fan Day will be on November 23rd, if you are thinking to go.


The rest of this is just "screenshots" from the Final Game and Retirement Ceremonies, by which I mean photos I took of the scoreboard.


First, an "otsukaresama" to the Carp's Ken Takahashi, retiring after 16 years as a pro player between the Carp and his one year with the New York Mets.


Flowers for Mr. Takahashi, though I can't tell which player gave them to him.


2010 Final Game Ceremony Start!


Manager Ogawa giving a speech. He is not nearly as charismatic as Shigeru Takada, but we are vastly more happy with his results as a manager.


Retirement Ceremony START!


Shida and Yuki come out in front of everyone.


People in the bleachers hold up signs for both players.


Introducing Shida.


Yuki when he was drafted.


Yuki's career (mostly not with Yakult; he was with the Buffaloes for a long time until he got injured and then released.)

Yuki made a speech first but I don't really have pictures of it, he looked just very tired, and he even started off with "I've been trying to think of what to say here for a while but it's difficult."


Shida cried during his speech. He'd been with the Swallows his whole career.


And of course there was a lot of flower-giving. Both players received flowers from their families and also from players on the team.


And just like every other big occasion of celebration, this required a doage, where the Swallows team members threw the retiring players up in the air 5 times.


People in the stands watch the ceremony; even the Carp fans stayed, so I kind of figured there might be a cheer exchange, but there wasn't. They did their own post-game cheering and final game goodbyes and left.



Afterwards, the people in the stands threw tons of streamers onto the field. The players had to leave the stadium via the separation between infield and outfield, so as they came by, people yelled out stuff or waved or cheered for various guys. Tateyama and Ishikawa bothered actually walking to the outfield fence and bowing to the bleachers; most guys just waved goodbye from the door by the bullpen before leaving. Jamie D'Antona waved at the outfield and bowed too. Shinya Miyamoto paused before leaving, put all of his stuff down, and got out a few baseballs and threw them into the stands.

Yuki and Shida both came out to the bleachers before leaving, and threw a ton of baseballs out to the crowd, though Shida went one better -- before leaving, he took off his jersey and threw THAT into the outfield stands. I didn't see where it landed or if a fight ensued, but some fan was really lucky!


I went down towards the field and grabbed some streamers for a silly photo.


You know what else is silly? Every Central League team except the BAYSTARS lost their final home game, so they undoubtedly were all similarly doing Final Game ceremonies without actually having won. (And come to think of it, I was AT the losses for the Giants and Dragons and Swallows... and the Swallows beat the Giants and Dragons in their final home games, but couldn't win their own!)

Oh, while I'm at it -- the last time I saw Shida in a game was 3 weeks ago, at Kamagaya, playing for the Swallows ni-gun team, on September 20. He came in as a pinch-runner to DH, and then also got a single of his own off Tomoya Yagi.


Early in the game I spotted him in the Yakult dugout. It was odd because I didn't recognize him at first, so I zoomed in like "Who's that guy?"


Then I realized, "That's Munehiro Shida! Why does he look so old and tired?"


In the on-deck circle.


Shida batting against Yagi.


Kozo pointed out when we were walking to Sendagaya station after the game, though, that "in the MLB there is no way in hell a team would give a retirement ceremony like this to two marginal players." Like, you wouldn't see them get called up for one game and allowed to pitch to one batter, or get one at-bat and play in the field for an inning. And there certainly wouldn't be 20 minutes after the game devoted to them, or the entire team coming out to give them a doage, or all this other stuff. It's funny, I guess I have forgotten just how much more personal baseball is in Japan.

I mean, Yuki actually had a decent career potential before getting injured right in his prime and missing the 2008 season and getting released and picked up by Yakult. Shida, he came along as an all-field no-hit outfielder a year or two before Yakult got Aoki and didn't really NEED a bunch of Shida-type guys anymore. I remember Shida really well from ni-gun though, he was very popular with the minor-league fans.

I guess what is kind of scary is that they are both younger than my little brother (he was born in Feb 1979, both of these players were born in June 1979).

And, that was probably also my final pro baseball game for the year. I have no clue whether there is any chance in hell that I will be able to get tickets to any playoff or Japan Series games, should they be happening anywhere near here anyway.

It's a little funny because the Fighters finished up in Kanto in early September, so then I spent a month going to a lot of Swallows games, and then I'm still going to spend the rest of this month buried in college ball before that ends. THEN winter will hit, and I will get depressed and realize why moving back to the US is a good idea.

But until then...