![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last few days updatey thing because this is how I roll
Last time I wrote was around the 4th of July. It's been a busy few days since?
Thursday was Game Night at our house. I busted out Torres again, this time with Jenny, Stelma, and Sameer. I actually won this game but it was mostly because Jenny went before me and her good moves always gave me better moves, go figure. Chris took a long time to think between all of his moves but that's kinda normal. Pretty Hair showed up for a bit but didn't play anything due to timing (though, when he got there, the other group was breaking up from Seven Wonders to do other things...) oh, and my coworker Savage also showed up for the first time so it was nice to introduce him to the games day as well. Phil gave people lots of beer, and some of it tasted like Skittles. Oh, and at the end of the night there was a weird incident involving some drunk dude down our street yelling and pounding on the taxi that Chris had called for. Oops.
Friday after work I went up to San Rafael again to watch the Pacifics, only this time it was also to watch the Maui Na Koa Ikaika... because Eri Yoshida was starting for them, and I figured I just HAD to go up there if she would be pitching so close to home! I thought the game was at 7pm, left work after our team meeting, hit the road around 5:45pm, got to San Rafael around 6:20pm... was surprised that the stadium wasn't more crowded when I showed up, but then found out the game started at 7:30. This worked in my favor because I got a SUPER seat, I was in the dugout side area again at a table RIGHT against the field. My left was a lady who modelled in Japan like 30 years ago and the rest of my table was a Japanese family, the father was from Nagoya, the mother from Shizuoka, and the kids born and grew up in California. But they spent the whole game speaking Japanese anyway, which was amusing because it took them a bit to realize I was fluent and could understand/speak with them. (I started explaining the intricacies of independent league baseball in Japanese...)
But yeah, I went around before the game a bit, to get food and look around and take photos. I noticed Tsuboi wasn't in the lineup again, and asked a staff guy, who thought he'd been released! OH NO! But then I ran into the team trainer, a Japanese guy who kinda serves as a translator as well, and he was talking to a Japanese chick, and I was wearing my 野球道 shirt and just kinda asked in Japanese something like "you're the trainer right? What's up with Tsuboi?" and he's like "Oh yeah, you were here a few weeks ago in a Fighters hat, right? Tsuboi got injured... we'll see what happens but..." there was a whole conversation about Eri Yoshida, and THEN Trainer-san told me something VERY interesting, namely "There's another Japanese pitcher on the Maui team here, this is his first day, he's a lefty, former pro yakyu guy with the Seibu Lions..." and I'm like "WAIT A MINUTE IS IT DOI!?!?" and he's like "Maybe?" and I totally freak out because I had heard Doi was released from the Orioles system, etc... so...
Anyway, the game happened. And like 1500 people were there. For a stadium that seats something like 800 people. They had bleachers set up behind the dugout area, and standing-room only arrangements. The local papers apparently wrote about Eri Yoshida so a bazillion people came out to see her pitch.
Of course, the sad part is, she had a kind of bad outing - only 3 innings, 5 walks, 1 strikeout (and the 3rd strike was dropped so the runner advanced, I was all like "what do you call that in Japanese, nige... nige... furinige?") and a hit batter, so she was taken out after walking in a run. Bizarrely it seems she was only charged with 1 earned run out of the 5 she gave up.
Still, it was pretty cool to watch a 20-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE GIRL throwing pitches and having BIG AMERICAN DUDES SWING AND MISS.
The other fun is that Yoshihiro Doi DID pitch 2 innings! It was exciting, after he finished his innings I yelled out to him in Japanese "Hey Doi, good job, nice pitching!" (お疲れ様！） and he looked over surprised but then smiled like "Huh? Oh, thanks!" （ああ、どうも！） And the people around me were all like "holy shit! do you know him?" so I explained about him as well :)
After the game I went over with the Japanese family to try to get a photo/signature from Eri Yoshida. And she stayed and signed for a BAZILLION people, I swear. It was really nice of her considering how bad a start she had, but she was really pretty mobbed. What was also fun was, since nobody was talking to Doi or the trainer guy, I came over and chatted up Doi for like 10 minutes. He used to pitch for the Seibu Lions for yeeeeears, so I was all like "I'm a Fighters fan but..." and even WEIRDER, we were talking about Saitama and it turns out I almost literally lived around the corner from where he grew up when I was in Kawaguchi, we were talking about riding our bicycles over the Warabi track crossing. I'm pretty sure this was a "this only happens to Deanna" kind of moment.
Oh yeah, AND a random guy came up to me like "You're Deanna the Marinerd right? I've been reading your stuff for years. I knew you lived down here now but never thought I'd meet you at a game!" I know I'm mostly "retired" from baseball writing now but it's still pretty neat when people recognize me and say hi.
The only downside was, the game was 7:30, I rented the Zipcar from 5pm-11pm initially because I thought the game was at 7, then I had to extend to midnight and then even 12:30, and I couldn't figure out how to use the gas card. But it had about 3/8 of a tank of gas so I don't feel TOO bad. We'll see. There are some SUPER sketchy gas stations near me at midnight. I dropped off my camera and stuff at home first because I took the Zipcar from near work, and didn't want to be going on MUNI that late with my dSLR and all.
Anyway, awesome:
Saturday I spent the afternoon in the south bay of all places, at Tim and Jenn's new house, for a board game party slash housewarming slash baby shower? I got a zipcar again so actually spent an hour or so first shopping, including stopping by IKEA. The party itself was pretty cool, I got to see a TON of my old CMU friends who I hadn't seen in ages! And I also borrowed Tim's "I <3 MJS" shirt and took a photo for the Stehlik project... in front of all of Tim's arcade games and pinball machines. I didn't really play many games except that I looked up The Big Idea since I'd just been trying to explain it to someone the other day, and Tim also showed some of us "We Didn't Playtest This At All" which was kinda amusing I guess. There was a party game that involved candy bars and pregnancy during the baby-gifts-unwrapping but that was about the extent of babyshowering that I really felt I was part of.
But I had to get the car back to the city by 6pm because that's when I did the reservation, so, alas. I should plan these things better next time.
C came into the city and we went to dinner, though we intended to go to Blue and apparently IT IS CLOSED FOREVER? I mean, it's unclear but it is closed closed, with no signs up saying anything about moving or reopening. So sad :( I really love Blue and so does everyone else, I can't figure out what might have happened. So we walked around Castro and ended up at a place called Fork, that had fantastic food but GODAWFUL service, we were like one of two tables in there at the time and they took forever to get us food, and we ordered stuff without cheese and they brought it out with cheese, and things like that. Bleh. Also we watched Animaniacs after.
Sunday we went to the Cheesecake Factory! Wheeeeeeee! The one in downtown SF is on the top floor of Macy's and has a pretty neat view. Also Uniqlo is coming to SF, very close to there! Exciting. We walked up to Japantown after lunch and wandered around various things there too, and eventually walked back to the Mission.
I feel mostly caught up now. The Eri Yoshida story was the most exciting thing in the last few days.
Thursday was Game Night at our house. I busted out Torres again, this time with Jenny, Stelma, and Sameer. I actually won this game but it was mostly because Jenny went before me and her good moves always gave me better moves, go figure. Chris took a long time to think between all of his moves but that's kinda normal. Pretty Hair showed up for a bit but didn't play anything due to timing (though, when he got there, the other group was breaking up from Seven Wonders to do other things...) oh, and my coworker Savage also showed up for the first time so it was nice to introduce him to the games day as well. Phil gave people lots of beer, and some of it tasted like Skittles. Oh, and at the end of the night there was a weird incident involving some drunk dude down our street yelling and pounding on the taxi that Chris had called for. Oops.
Friday after work I went up to San Rafael again to watch the Pacifics, only this time it was also to watch the Maui Na Koa Ikaika... because Eri Yoshida was starting for them, and I figured I just HAD to go up there if she would be pitching so close to home! I thought the game was at 7pm, left work after our team meeting, hit the road around 5:45pm, got to San Rafael around 6:20pm... was surprised that the stadium wasn't more crowded when I showed up, but then found out the game started at 7:30. This worked in my favor because I got a SUPER seat, I was in the dugout side area again at a table RIGHT against the field. My left was a lady who modelled in Japan like 30 years ago and the rest of my table was a Japanese family, the father was from Nagoya, the mother from Shizuoka, and the kids born and grew up in California. But they spent the whole game speaking Japanese anyway, which was amusing because it took them a bit to realize I was fluent and could understand/speak with them. (I started explaining the intricacies of independent league baseball in Japanese...)
But yeah, I went around before the game a bit, to get food and look around and take photos. I noticed Tsuboi wasn't in the lineup again, and asked a staff guy, who thought he'd been released! OH NO! But then I ran into the team trainer, a Japanese guy who kinda serves as a translator as well, and he was talking to a Japanese chick, and I was wearing my 野球道 shirt and just kinda asked in Japanese something like "you're the trainer right? What's up with Tsuboi?" and he's like "Oh yeah, you were here a few weeks ago in a Fighters hat, right? Tsuboi got injured... we'll see what happens but..." there was a whole conversation about Eri Yoshida, and THEN Trainer-san told me something VERY interesting, namely "There's another Japanese pitcher on the Maui team here, this is his first day, he's a lefty, former pro yakyu guy with the Seibu Lions..." and I'm like "WAIT A MINUTE IS IT DOI!?!?" and he's like "Maybe?" and I totally freak out because I had heard Doi was released from the Orioles system, etc... so...
Anyway, the game happened. And like 1500 people were there. For a stadium that seats something like 800 people. They had bleachers set up behind the dugout area, and standing-room only arrangements. The local papers apparently wrote about Eri Yoshida so a bazillion people came out to see her pitch.
Of course, the sad part is, she had a kind of bad outing - only 3 innings, 5 walks, 1 strikeout (and the 3rd strike was dropped so the runner advanced, I was all like "what do you call that in Japanese, nige... nige... furinige?") and a hit batter, so she was taken out after walking in a run. Bizarrely it seems she was only charged with 1 earned run out of the 5 she gave up.
Still, it was pretty cool to watch a 20-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE GIRL throwing pitches and having BIG AMERICAN DUDES SWING AND MISS.
The other fun is that Yoshihiro Doi DID pitch 2 innings! It was exciting, after he finished his innings I yelled out to him in Japanese "Hey Doi, good job, nice pitching!" (お疲れ様！） and he looked over surprised but then smiled like "Huh? Oh, thanks!" （ああ、どうも！） And the people around me were all like "holy shit! do you know him?" so I explained about him as well :)
After the game I went over with the Japanese family to try to get a photo/signature from Eri Yoshida. And she stayed and signed for a BAZILLION people, I swear. It was really nice of her considering how bad a start she had, but she was really pretty mobbed. What was also fun was, since nobody was talking to Doi or the trainer guy, I came over and chatted up Doi for like 10 minutes. He used to pitch for the Seibu Lions for yeeeeears, so I was all like "I'm a Fighters fan but..." and even WEIRDER, we were talking about Saitama and it turns out I almost literally lived around the corner from where he grew up when I was in Kawaguchi, we were talking about riding our bicycles over the Warabi track crossing. I'm pretty sure this was a "this only happens to Deanna" kind of moment.
Oh yeah, AND a random guy came up to me like "You're Deanna the Marinerd right? I've been reading your stuff for years. I knew you lived down here now but never thought I'd meet you at a game!" I know I'm mostly "retired" from baseball writing now but it's still pretty neat when people recognize me and say hi.
The only downside was, the game was 7:30, I rented the Zipcar from 5pm-11pm initially because I thought the game was at 7, then I had to extend to midnight and then even 12:30, and I couldn't figure out how to use the gas card. But it had about 3/8 of a tank of gas so I don't feel TOO bad. We'll see. There are some SUPER sketchy gas stations near me at midnight. I dropped off my camera and stuff at home first because I took the Zipcar from near work, and didn't want to be going on MUNI that late with my dSLR and all.
Anyway, awesome:
Saturday I spent the afternoon in the south bay of all places, at Tim and Jenn's new house, for a board game party slash housewarming slash baby shower? I got a zipcar again so actually spent an hour or so first shopping, including stopping by IKEA. The party itself was pretty cool, I got to see a TON of my old CMU friends who I hadn't seen in ages! And I also borrowed Tim's "I <3 MJS" shirt and took a photo for the Stehlik project... in front of all of Tim's arcade games and pinball machines. I didn't really play many games except that I looked up The Big Idea since I'd just been trying to explain it to someone the other day, and Tim also showed some of us "We Didn't Playtest This At All" which was kinda amusing I guess. There was a party game that involved candy bars and pregnancy during the baby-gifts-unwrapping but that was about the extent of babyshowering that I really felt I was part of.
But I had to get the car back to the city by 6pm because that's when I did the reservation, so, alas. I should plan these things better next time.
C came into the city and we went to dinner, though we intended to go to Blue and apparently IT IS CLOSED FOREVER? I mean, it's unclear but it is closed closed, with no signs up saying anything about moving or reopening. So sad :( I really love Blue and so does everyone else, I can't figure out what might have happened. So we walked around Castro and ended up at a place called Fork, that had fantastic food but GODAWFUL service, we were like one of two tables in there at the time and they took forever to get us food, and we ordered stuff without cheese and they brought it out with cheese, and things like that. Bleh. Also we watched Animaniacs after.
Sunday we went to the Cheesecake Factory! Wheeeeeeee! The one in downtown SF is on the top floor of Macy's and has a pretty neat view. Also Uniqlo is coming to SF, very close to there! Exciting. We walked up to Japantown after lunch and wandered around various things there too, and eventually walked back to the Mission.
I feel mostly caught up now. The Eri Yoshida story was the most exciting thing in the last few days.