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okay, so the rest of our trip to NC
I hate the docomo mail issue where you can't send to people from gmail if they don't have their spam settings right. It's annoying as all shit.
Also, new icon. I made a Kagami one last year and I think I need a Fujioka one this year.
Anyway, so Monday's game was rained out, I kinda wrote about it on Marinerds. Stalked lots of players after the game and got lots of photos with them. Hooray. Though as for the rest of the day, we sought NC food for lunch and went to Cook Out. Nobody had warned us that they are only drive-through, so the first one we saw, we were like "That's kinda weird," went and found another, which was also drive-through, and it was like... hmm. So we got food, brought it back to the hotel and ate there. My opinion was that the food was mediocre (I had a BBQ plate) but the milkshake was amazing!
Then, for lack of anything better to do, we drove to the Duke campus, which was fairly near our hotel, and found the big chapel, and walked around for a bit and took photos. We noticed that the sky started getting kinda cloudy and it cooled off a little while we were out there, which seemed foreboding.
Got to the park at 4:30pm for a 5pm gate open for a 6pm game, and sure enough... rainout. We sat in the stands with Conor for like 2 hours and watched it rain. The team really didn't want to make a rainout because of the 4th of July and the fireworks and the tournament and all, but alas, around 8pm they gave up. Which of course meant the rain let up for a while then too. Well, at least I got to talk to some of the guys on the team a little bit. Hiroshi Taki confirmed for me that the stuff I sent to Hosei back in May made it there, at least! So that was good. And I got photos with him and Nakaushiro while still in the stadium (making my 5 set complete, I never ever thought I'd get Nakaushiro since he plays in Kansai). Got Mikami and Kanemitsu and Okazaki and Yamakawa and Yoshida outside the park. Yoshida, I'd been kinda talking to him on and off for both days, and I thought he thought I was crazy, but I finally explained to him that I remember him from Nichidai San and stuff, and maybe his attitude slightly changed from "OMG CRAZY" to "OMG CRAZY BUT HEY AT LEAST NOW I GET IT".
So the thing is, we were told over the speaker that the game would be held the next night, same time, same place, in Durham. So 6pm. And we had to fly out of Charlotte on Wednesday morning at like 9am, so it seemed like we really, really, really didn't want to go to the evening game in Durham, though we COULD if it came to that.
But -- we went and got dinner at Bojangles (Chick-Fil-A closed early for the 4th), had some fried chicken and biscuits, and when we got back to the hotel and I looked up the article about the rainout, they said that the game at the National Training Complex in Cary had been moved from 7pm to 11am, and there'd be a doubleheader -- 11am in Cary, 6pm in Durham. And the 11am game would have Fujioka starting, and the 6pm game would have Sugano.
So, the next morning we woke up early, saw the weather forecast looked sunny for the afternoon in Cary, and drove down there. It was only like 25 minutes away from Durham. 　And sure enough, it was VERY sunny, and hot. We got there and found a place to sit on the Japan side, right behind the dugout... and then ran into the Ikedas (the Japanese couple I'd talked to the last few games), who were like "We found out about this when we got back to our hotel!" and I'm like "So did we!" I also ran into some of the cameramen I'd seen at the prior games.
I got a photo with 3 guys from Team USA, who happened to be standing around by the team tent. I felt like, hey, might as well ask, it couldn't hurt, right?
Went to the bullpen to take pictures of Fujioka warming up because OMG FUJIOKA! But, as I was taking pictures, there was this older guy watching Fujioka throw too, and he sees my Chunichi shirt, and asks me in Japanese, "You a Kawakami fan?" and I'm like "Yeah, when he was on Chunichi I really liked him. Nomura's kinda like him, you know?" and we got to talking. He asked if I was working at the game and I said no, I was just a big fan, and no, I didn't get to see Kawakami on this trip, though he's still playing in the minors here, etc. He asks if I've watched a lot of college ball and I explain that I loved college ball when I lived in Japan. So he asks if I saw Yuki Saitoh, and I'm like "...well, of course..." and then I admit that I'm a Fighters fan actually, but I start going on about how frustrating the media can be for players like Saitoh, and like they were in the past for Nakata Sho, and Darvish, and so on. And my favorite player was Hichori.
Well, uh, get this... this old guy I was talking to was none other than Masao Yamada.
THE NIPPON HAM FIGHTERS GENERAL MANAGER.
Wow, do I talk too much. But, he seemed really amused by me -- and he kept saying "kuwashii!" which is Japanese for "Geez, you know EVERYTHING, don't you?" He gave me his business card! Which I unfortunately just noticed only has phone numbers and no email address. Argh :( I would TOTALLY try to contact him if there was an email address, but I'm not about to go call Japan. Or should I?
He said he was here scouting with Matt Winters, they were going to go check out some AAA players that the Fighters might be interested in bringing over to Japan. How awesome is that? He offered to introduce me to Winters, though that sadly never happened :(
I did put in my own two cents about how the first time I saw Fujioka was because I had come to see Masahiro Inui at Toyodai, and saw Fujioka instead, and honestly think he's better than Inui. (The Fighters drafted Inui in the 4th round this past fall and were really high on him.) Yamada laughed and thanked me for my input.
Fujioka finished warming up and I called out, "Fujioka-kun! Ganbatte kudasai!" and he tipped his cap at me with a slight bow.
Wheeeeee. Adorable.
So, yeah, there was a game. For the first 6 innings it was a crazy pitcher's duel. Fujioka was amazing, he struck out 9 guys in 6 innings. Conor was sitting behind the plate with the scouts and his radar gun and all, and I even asked what he thought of Fujioka, and he's like "Your boy's pretty good. Nobody's getting solid contact off him at all." Japan finally got a run ahead for 1-0 in the 6th.
I should also mention there was a small ouendan -- some people from the Japanese society at Duke came to the game and brought a real taiko drum! A dude in a Hanshin cap brought some blue megaphones, and so we were all yelling encouragement at the Japan team in Japanese. The first time the taiko drum beats happened, the entire Japan team came out of the dugout and looked up like "WTF?!" but they seemed happy about it.
I should also mention that the announcer at this game, while being SLIGHTLY better at the Japanese names than the one in Durham, was still pretty awful. He kept calling Hayata Itoh "Itu". To the point that some other guys in the dugout were yelling "ITU!!!" at him.
Anyway, so, 6 innings. And then all hell broke loose in the 7th. Fujioka gave up a few hits, then Tomoya Mikami came in, and he'd been warming up since the 3rd inning and I was positive he'd have nothing left (and I was right). Then Iwasada came in to stem the bleeding, but whatever, the US scored like 7 runs in the 7th, and eventually won 8-2. It was so depressing. Infact, I spent the 8th inning up in the concourse, because I was really overheated, a little sunburnt, and thirsty -- and I got to talking with the guys from Yomiuri and Sponichi for a while, which was pretty interesting (one was like "Have you considered writing about Japanese baseball?" and I'm like "I DID! FOR SEVERAL YEARS!") and all.
Oh, but then more excitement happened when Dominic Ficociello broke his bat and it went flying into the stands right towards us! I ducked, the bat landed a few rows back. Mike went and retrieved it, and now we have a great souvenir from the game! US College ball doesn't usually play with wooden bats, either, so it's kinda crazy. The bat was split straight down the handle part, there's still some tape on it.
Sigh.
But aside from that, eh. All the scouts pretty much left in the 7th I think, or went straight to Durham for the second game. We said goodbye to people and then got in the car and went on our way.
Well, except... we definitely couldn't take the bat on the plane with us back to Seattle, we were fairly sure.
So we tell the car navi system to find us the nearest post office, which it does, about 4 miles away.
We go to the post office and walk in with the bat, grab a long container and some bubble wrap, and go up to the counter to explain that we got the bat at the game, etc. The guy behind the counter totally freaks out like "MY NEIGHBOR'S A SCOUT FOR THE WHITE SOX! OH MAN I WAS TOTALLY GOING TO GO TO THE GAME!" He starts showing the bat to all the other employees like "Look what these lucky bastards got at the Team USA game this afternoon."
Anyway, we eventually manage to wrap the thing in bubblewrap and cram it into the shipping tube, fill out the address thingy, etc. In the process of that we talked to the counter guy, who mentioned he'd even thought of going to the 4th of July game. We tell him it got rescheduled to that night, and Mike even gave him his ticket, since we weren't going to use it, we're like "Well, this will get you in for free if you decide you want to go!"
And so our bat should show up here on Thursday sometime. Heh. I'm not really sure what to do with it per se. I have baseball boxes that I put the ball I got signed from Yamakawa in, but a broken bat? Hmm...
So yeah.
We then proceeded to find a Fuddrucker's somewhere near Greensboro and went there for late lunch or early dinner, like 3:30-4pm or so. Yum yum. Then we drove around the area of Greensboro that Mike lived in for several years. Amusingly, we found his street, and he could tell me all this stuff about random houses on the street, but couldn't remember which one was HIS house.
Then, onwards to Charlotte, where we went to Bob and Erin's place, played with the dog, talked about random stuff, got dinner later on at a pizza place called Brixx, and then played some Little Big Planet among other things, before going to sleep.
In the morning we flew back to Seattle! The end?
Also, new icon. I made a Kagami one last year and I think I need a Fujioka one this year.
Anyway, so Monday's game was rained out, I kinda wrote about it on Marinerds. Stalked lots of players after the game and got lots of photos with them. Hooray. Though as for the rest of the day, we sought NC food for lunch and went to Cook Out. Nobody had warned us that they are only drive-through, so the first one we saw, we were like "That's kinda weird," went and found another, which was also drive-through, and it was like... hmm. So we got food, brought it back to the hotel and ate there. My opinion was that the food was mediocre (I had a BBQ plate) but the milkshake was amazing!
Then, for lack of anything better to do, we drove to the Duke campus, which was fairly near our hotel, and found the big chapel, and walked around for a bit and took photos. We noticed that the sky started getting kinda cloudy and it cooled off a little while we were out there, which seemed foreboding.
Got to the park at 4:30pm for a 5pm gate open for a 6pm game, and sure enough... rainout. We sat in the stands with Conor for like 2 hours and watched it rain. The team really didn't want to make a rainout because of the 4th of July and the fireworks and the tournament and all, but alas, around 8pm they gave up. Which of course meant the rain let up for a while then too. Well, at least I got to talk to some of the guys on the team a little bit. Hiroshi Taki confirmed for me that the stuff I sent to Hosei back in May made it there, at least! So that was good. And I got photos with him and Nakaushiro while still in the stadium (making my 5 set complete, I never ever thought I'd get Nakaushiro since he plays in Kansai). Got Mikami and Kanemitsu and Okazaki and Yamakawa and Yoshida outside the park. Yoshida, I'd been kinda talking to him on and off for both days, and I thought he thought I was crazy, but I finally explained to him that I remember him from Nichidai San and stuff, and maybe his attitude slightly changed from "OMG CRAZY" to "OMG CRAZY BUT HEY AT LEAST NOW I GET IT".
So the thing is, we were told over the speaker that the game would be held the next night, same time, same place, in Durham. So 6pm. And we had to fly out of Charlotte on Wednesday morning at like 9am, so it seemed like we really, really, really didn't want to go to the evening game in Durham, though we COULD if it came to that.
But -- we went and got dinner at Bojangles (Chick-Fil-A closed early for the 4th), had some fried chicken and biscuits, and when we got back to the hotel and I looked up the article about the rainout, they said that the game at the National Training Complex in Cary had been moved from 7pm to 11am, and there'd be a doubleheader -- 11am in Cary, 6pm in Durham. And the 11am game would have Fujioka starting, and the 6pm game would have Sugano.
So, the next morning we woke up early, saw the weather forecast looked sunny for the afternoon in Cary, and drove down there. It was only like 25 minutes away from Durham. 　And sure enough, it was VERY sunny, and hot. We got there and found a place to sit on the Japan side, right behind the dugout... and then ran into the Ikedas (the Japanese couple I'd talked to the last few games), who were like "We found out about this when we got back to our hotel!" and I'm like "So did we!" I also ran into some of the cameramen I'd seen at the prior games.
I got a photo with 3 guys from Team USA, who happened to be standing around by the team tent. I felt like, hey, might as well ask, it couldn't hurt, right?
Went to the bullpen to take pictures of Fujioka warming up because OMG FUJIOKA! But, as I was taking pictures, there was this older guy watching Fujioka throw too, and he sees my Chunichi shirt, and asks me in Japanese, "You a Kawakami fan?" and I'm like "Yeah, when he was on Chunichi I really liked him. Nomura's kinda like him, you know?" and we got to talking. He asked if I was working at the game and I said no, I was just a big fan, and no, I didn't get to see Kawakami on this trip, though he's still playing in the minors here, etc. He asks if I've watched a lot of college ball and I explain that I loved college ball when I lived in Japan. So he asks if I saw Yuki Saitoh, and I'm like "...well, of course..." and then I admit that I'm a Fighters fan actually, but I start going on about how frustrating the media can be for players like Saitoh, and like they were in the past for Nakata Sho, and Darvish, and so on. And my favorite player was Hichori.
Well, uh, get this... this old guy I was talking to was none other than Masao Yamada.
THE NIPPON HAM FIGHTERS GENERAL MANAGER.
Wow, do I talk too much. But, he seemed really amused by me -- and he kept saying "kuwashii!" which is Japanese for "Geez, you know EVERYTHING, don't you?" He gave me his business card! Which I unfortunately just noticed only has phone numbers and no email address. Argh :( I would TOTALLY try to contact him if there was an email address, but I'm not about to go call Japan. Or should I?
He said he was here scouting with Matt Winters, they were going to go check out some AAA players that the Fighters might be interested in bringing over to Japan. How awesome is that? He offered to introduce me to Winters, though that sadly never happened :(
I did put in my own two cents about how the first time I saw Fujioka was because I had come to see Masahiro Inui at Toyodai, and saw Fujioka instead, and honestly think he's better than Inui. (The Fighters drafted Inui in the 4th round this past fall and were really high on him.) Yamada laughed and thanked me for my input.
Fujioka finished warming up and I called out, "Fujioka-kun! Ganbatte kudasai!" and he tipped his cap at me with a slight bow.
Wheeeeee. Adorable.
So, yeah, there was a game. For the first 6 innings it was a crazy pitcher's duel. Fujioka was amazing, he struck out 9 guys in 6 innings. Conor was sitting behind the plate with the scouts and his radar gun and all, and I even asked what he thought of Fujioka, and he's like "Your boy's pretty good. Nobody's getting solid contact off him at all." Japan finally got a run ahead for 1-0 in the 6th.
I should also mention there was a small ouendan -- some people from the Japanese society at Duke came to the game and brought a real taiko drum! A dude in a Hanshin cap brought some blue megaphones, and so we were all yelling encouragement at the Japan team in Japanese. The first time the taiko drum beats happened, the entire Japan team came out of the dugout and looked up like "WTF?!" but they seemed happy about it.
I should also mention that the announcer at this game, while being SLIGHTLY better at the Japanese names than the one in Durham, was still pretty awful. He kept calling Hayata Itoh "Itu". To the point that some other guys in the dugout were yelling "ITU!!!" at him.
Anyway, so, 6 innings. And then all hell broke loose in the 7th. Fujioka gave up a few hits, then Tomoya Mikami came in, and he'd been warming up since the 3rd inning and I was positive he'd have nothing left (and I was right). Then Iwasada came in to stem the bleeding, but whatever, the US scored like 7 runs in the 7th, and eventually won 8-2. It was so depressing. Infact, I spent the 8th inning up in the concourse, because I was really overheated, a little sunburnt, and thirsty -- and I got to talking with the guys from Yomiuri and Sponichi for a while, which was pretty interesting (one was like "Have you considered writing about Japanese baseball?" and I'm like "I DID! FOR SEVERAL YEARS!") and all.
Oh, but then more excitement happened when Dominic Ficociello broke his bat and it went flying into the stands right towards us! I ducked, the bat landed a few rows back. Mike went and retrieved it, and now we have a great souvenir from the game! US College ball doesn't usually play with wooden bats, either, so it's kinda crazy. The bat was split straight down the handle part, there's still some tape on it.
Sigh.
But aside from that, eh. All the scouts pretty much left in the 7th I think, or went straight to Durham for the second game. We said goodbye to people and then got in the car and went on our way.
Well, except... we definitely couldn't take the bat on the plane with us back to Seattle, we were fairly sure.
So we tell the car navi system to find us the nearest post office, which it does, about 4 miles away.
We go to the post office and walk in with the bat, grab a long container and some bubble wrap, and go up to the counter to explain that we got the bat at the game, etc. The guy behind the counter totally freaks out like "MY NEIGHBOR'S A SCOUT FOR THE WHITE SOX! OH MAN I WAS TOTALLY GOING TO GO TO THE GAME!" He starts showing the bat to all the other employees like "Look what these lucky bastards got at the Team USA game this afternoon."
Anyway, we eventually manage to wrap the thing in bubblewrap and cram it into the shipping tube, fill out the address thingy, etc. In the process of that we talked to the counter guy, who mentioned he'd even thought of going to the 4th of July game. We tell him it got rescheduled to that night, and Mike even gave him his ticket, since we weren't going to use it, we're like "Well, this will get you in for free if you decide you want to go!"
And so our bat should show up here on Thursday sometime. Heh. I'm not really sure what to do with it per se. I have baseball boxes that I put the ball I got signed from Yamakawa in, but a broken bat? Hmm...
So yeah.
We then proceeded to find a Fuddrucker's somewhere near Greensboro and went there for late lunch or early dinner, like 3:30-4pm or so. Yum yum. Then we drove around the area of Greensboro that Mike lived in for several years. Amusingly, we found his street, and he could tell me all this stuff about random houses on the street, but couldn't remember which one was HIS house.
Then, onwards to Charlotte, where we went to Bob and Erin's place, played with the dog, talked about random stuff, got dinner later on at a pizza place called Brixx, and then played some Little Big Planet among other things, before going to sleep.
In the morning we flew back to Seattle! The end?