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My birthday, part 2, apparently
So today I went down to Jingu for some college baseball. Namely, I wanted to see Kisho Kagami pitch for Hosei, even though it was against Tokyo University, which is like a guaranteed win. However, the Hosei-Todai game was the second one of the day, so I showed up at like 10:30am for the first game of the day too, which was Keio vs. Rikkio. That also worked out well, because the Keio side for the first game was the Hosei side for the second game -- and it was the 1st-base side -- and Keio's ace right now is a left-handed sophomore named Daisuke Takeuchi, who threw a no-hitter a few weeks ago (even though it was against Todai).
Thus I was in the absolute perfect place to watch this kid pitch. It kind of reminded me of how I used to come to Keio 1B side games to see lefty Nobuaki Nakabayashi pitch before. (But Nakabayashi was handsome... this Takeuchi kid is more of the "cute" variety, I think.)
The lady sitting to my left was a Keio fan, she likes Naohiko Tadano -- one of the two pitchers from the summer 2008 Keio HS Koshien team. So we chatted about them for a while (I prefer Tamura because he's left-handed and really good-looking and tall), and for most of the game as well, and we sang some of the Keio cheers together and yelled "GANBARE DAISUKE!!!!!" every time he ran out to pitch, since he was throwing right in front of us. The guy on my right was a Meiji alum from years ago and he kept babbling stuff at me too, and then I saw two of the regular old dudes from Ogura's group further down the row from me, Okanaka and Drunk Tanaka. It was a relatively good game, and Daisuke Takeuchi pitched a complete game as Keio won 4-1 over Rikkio's chubby-cheeked pitcher Kenya Okabe. My new Keio friend said she always sits in that same spot to cheer for Keio and to come find her if I'm at another game on their side again.
For the second game, the people next to me both left and an older Hosei alum I'm vaguely friends with named Suda came down and sat with me. We both keep scorecards and I first started talking to him last fall, I think. He knows I'm a big Kagami fan so he was kinda picking on me about it. I told him that my goal today was actually to say happy birthday to Mishima since we share May 7th as a birthday. But I didn't succeed, unfortunately.
Kagami pitched a complete game win over Todai, which should surprise nobody. What is perhaps more surprising is that they only won 5-0. Hosei's batting sucks this year and Todai's pitcher today was Yoshihiro Maeda, their team captain, who only mostly sucks instead of entirely sucking. But yeah, so I sat in the front row, took photos, and yelled a lot of "GANBARE KAGAMI!!!!" and whatnot. There was at least 2-3 times where I had to confirm my scorecard with Suda, because I was too entranced watching Kagami throwing on the sidelines that I missed seeing the actual plays in the game :)
Ogura showed up at around 4pm actually, but she was on the Todai side for some reason (not sure why, since Todai fan Osaka Tanaka didn't come up today). So after the game she caught up with me and Suda and Drunk Tanaka and we were hanging out outside Jingu for a bit. A lot of the Todai players came out, though I recognize very few of them by face. HOWEVER, AND I STILL HAVE TROUBLE BELIEVING HE WAS REALLY THERE -- we were standing 10 feet away from Yuichi Suzuki and a bunch of other former Todai players! Holy fucking shit! I used to totally be in love with Suzuki-kun like 2 years ago -- he was this tall lefty pitcher who actually won a bunch of games for Todai, which is unheard of. Then he blew his arm out and dropped out of the baseball club. So Ogura's like "OMG you should get your photo with him!" but I was like "...he doesn't even remotely look like a baseball player right now, he looks like just some random dude". I mean, seriously, if you weren't a Big Six bleacher bum like the rest of us you would totally have no clue that the group of normal college-age-looking kids standing there were all former Todai players and cheer/ouendan people. So, I missed my chance to go up and say anything to him -- but really, what the hell would I say anyway? "Excuse me, are you Yuichi Suzuki? The former lefty pitcher? I was a big fan of yours two years ago. Um."
I really wanted to wait for the Hosei guys to come out, and to wish Mishima a happy birthday and say hello to Kagami -- but everyone else wanted to go get coffee. Drunk Tanaka had managed to get himself caught up talking to a random Hosei kid, who was named Ryosuke Maeda (this guy, it seems) and while DT was babbling about how he wanted to meet Hosei freshman Kanji Kawai from Chukyodai Chukyo -- quite frankly, so would I, but it seems that Kawai-kun got injured or something -- we got to talking with Maeda, who told us that all the players from the game were still in a meeting, so they wouldn't be coming out for a while. He was also like "Please remember my name and face and cheer for me if you see me in a game, okay?" So after chatting a bit, and then everyone was dragging me off to get coffee, I said "I have the same birthday as Mishima, which was yesterday... could you please tell him happy birthday from his weirdo gaijin fan?" He laughed and said he'd try to.
So, whee.
Anyway, so Ogura and Suda and Drunk Tanaka and I went to a cafe down the street from Jingu, and without me asking for it at all, Suda ended up buying us all coffee AND he bought slices of chocolate cake for me and Ogura and declared it to be a birthday party! That was pretty funny. So the four of us sat around at a cafe for like an hour or so and talked about baseball and other stuff. Suda and I exchanged scorebooks to look through and he was like "The American scorekeeping system is SO WEIRD" and I said "The Japanese one is SO WEIRD" and he said "I don't do the standard system, this is my own system" and I said "But so do I!" So it was kinda funny. He asked me to get him an American scorebook next time I go back to the USA and I said I'd see if I had enough extras to just give him one.
So, next week I have to remember to bring a scorebook for him (I have 4 more AFTER my current one and I doubt I need 100 more games worth of scoresheets this year) and also, I want to make a photo album for Kagami, now that I have photos of him batting from the proper side of the plate, assuming they came out well. Wonder if I can get that done this week or not. We were all making plans to meet up next week -- basically, Ogura is going to show up super-early and save like 6 seats in the front row on the first base side -- the first game of the day is Meiji-Keio and the second is Waseda-Hosei, so we're going to cheer FOR Meiji in the first game and I'll cheer for Hosei in the second and they'll all basically be cheering AGAINST Waseda :) It should be awesome though, the first game will be Daisuke Takeuchi vs Yusuke Nomura and the second should be my Kisho Kagami against Yuki Saitoh, the most famous college baseball player in the country. So, exciting. But we have to get there really early since it'll probably be pretty damn crowded. At least we're trying for the NOT WASEDA side so it shouldn't be quite as terrible.
I rode the train home with Ogura since she also lives in Akabane. Hooray.
Now I'm figuring things out for my baseball tomorrow -- I'm going to go even FURTHER off the beaten path and go watch some Little League :) My friend's 11-year-old son has been playing in a league run by the American School in Japan (I think some MLB Japan guys are also involved in it, actually) and so I'm going come watch his game tomorrow! They told me to bring a glove and maybe I can even help out the kids with their practice! I'm pretty psyched for that.
Thus I was in the absolute perfect place to watch this kid pitch. It kind of reminded me of how I used to come to Keio 1B side games to see lefty Nobuaki Nakabayashi pitch before. (But Nakabayashi was handsome... this Takeuchi kid is more of the "cute" variety, I think.)
The lady sitting to my left was a Keio fan, she likes Naohiko Tadano -- one of the two pitchers from the summer 2008 Keio HS Koshien team. So we chatted about them for a while (I prefer Tamura because he's left-handed and really good-looking and tall), and for most of the game as well, and we sang some of the Keio cheers together and yelled "GANBARE DAISUKE!!!!!" every time he ran out to pitch, since he was throwing right in front of us. The guy on my right was a Meiji alum from years ago and he kept babbling stuff at me too, and then I saw two of the regular old dudes from Ogura's group further down the row from me, Okanaka and Drunk Tanaka. It was a relatively good game, and Daisuke Takeuchi pitched a complete game as Keio won 4-1 over Rikkio's chubby-cheeked pitcher Kenya Okabe. My new Keio friend said she always sits in that same spot to cheer for Keio and to come find her if I'm at another game on their side again.
For the second game, the people next to me both left and an older Hosei alum I'm vaguely friends with named Suda came down and sat with me. We both keep scorecards and I first started talking to him last fall, I think. He knows I'm a big Kagami fan so he was kinda picking on me about it. I told him that my goal today was actually to say happy birthday to Mishima since we share May 7th as a birthday. But I didn't succeed, unfortunately.
Kagami pitched a complete game win over Todai, which should surprise nobody. What is perhaps more surprising is that they only won 5-0. Hosei's batting sucks this year and Todai's pitcher today was Yoshihiro Maeda, their team captain, who only mostly sucks instead of entirely sucking. But yeah, so I sat in the front row, took photos, and yelled a lot of "GANBARE KAGAMI!!!!" and whatnot. There was at least 2-3 times where I had to confirm my scorecard with Suda, because I was too entranced watching Kagami throwing on the sidelines that I missed seeing the actual plays in the game :)
Ogura showed up at around 4pm actually, but she was on the Todai side for some reason (not sure why, since Todai fan Osaka Tanaka didn't come up today). So after the game she caught up with me and Suda and Drunk Tanaka and we were hanging out outside Jingu for a bit. A lot of the Todai players came out, though I recognize very few of them by face. HOWEVER, AND I STILL HAVE TROUBLE BELIEVING HE WAS REALLY THERE -- we were standing 10 feet away from Yuichi Suzuki and a bunch of other former Todai players! Holy fucking shit! I used to totally be in love with Suzuki-kun like 2 years ago -- he was this tall lefty pitcher who actually won a bunch of games for Todai, which is unheard of. Then he blew his arm out and dropped out of the baseball club. So Ogura's like "OMG you should get your photo with him!" but I was like "...he doesn't even remotely look like a baseball player right now, he looks like just some random dude". I mean, seriously, if you weren't a Big Six bleacher bum like the rest of us you would totally have no clue that the group of normal college-age-looking kids standing there were all former Todai players and cheer/ouendan people. So, I missed my chance to go up and say anything to him -- but really, what the hell would I say anyway? "Excuse me, are you Yuichi Suzuki? The former lefty pitcher? I was a big fan of yours two years ago. Um."
I really wanted to wait for the Hosei guys to come out, and to wish Mishima a happy birthday and say hello to Kagami -- but everyone else wanted to go get coffee. Drunk Tanaka had managed to get himself caught up talking to a random Hosei kid, who was named Ryosuke Maeda (this guy, it seems) and while DT was babbling about how he wanted to meet Hosei freshman Kanji Kawai from Chukyodai Chukyo -- quite frankly, so would I, but it seems that Kawai-kun got injured or something -- we got to talking with Maeda, who told us that all the players from the game were still in a meeting, so they wouldn't be coming out for a while. He was also like "Please remember my name and face and cheer for me if you see me in a game, okay?" So after chatting a bit, and then everyone was dragging me off to get coffee, I said "I have the same birthday as Mishima, which was yesterday... could you please tell him happy birthday from his weirdo gaijin fan?" He laughed and said he'd try to.
So, whee.
Anyway, so Ogura and Suda and Drunk Tanaka and I went to a cafe down the street from Jingu, and without me asking for it at all, Suda ended up buying us all coffee AND he bought slices of chocolate cake for me and Ogura and declared it to be a birthday party! That was pretty funny. So the four of us sat around at a cafe for like an hour or so and talked about baseball and other stuff. Suda and I exchanged scorebooks to look through and he was like "The American scorekeeping system is SO WEIRD" and I said "The Japanese one is SO WEIRD" and he said "I don't do the standard system, this is my own system" and I said "But so do I!" So it was kinda funny. He asked me to get him an American scorebook next time I go back to the USA and I said I'd see if I had enough extras to just give him one.
So, next week I have to remember to bring a scorebook for him (I have 4 more AFTER my current one and I doubt I need 100 more games worth of scoresheets this year) and also, I want to make a photo album for Kagami, now that I have photos of him batting from the proper side of the plate, assuming they came out well. Wonder if I can get that done this week or not. We were all making plans to meet up next week -- basically, Ogura is going to show up super-early and save like 6 seats in the front row on the first base side -- the first game of the day is Meiji-Keio and the second is Waseda-Hosei, so we're going to cheer FOR Meiji in the first game and I'll cheer for Hosei in the second and they'll all basically be cheering AGAINST Waseda :) It should be awesome though, the first game will be Daisuke Takeuchi vs Yusuke Nomura and the second should be my Kisho Kagami against Yuki Saitoh, the most famous college baseball player in the country. So, exciting. But we have to get there really early since it'll probably be pretty damn crowded. At least we're trying for the NOT WASEDA side so it shouldn't be quite as terrible.
I rode the train home with Ogura since she also lives in Akabane. Hooray.
Now I'm figuring things out for my baseball tomorrow -- I'm going to go even FURTHER off the beaten path and go watch some Little League :) My friend's 11-year-old son has been playing in a league run by the American School in Japan (I think some MLB Japan guys are also involved in it, actually) and so I'm going come watch his game tomorrow! They told me to bring a glove and maybe I can even help out the kids with their practice! I'm pretty psyched for that.