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Weekend of some baseball and other stuff
Oct. 12th, 2010 01:33 pmSaturday was technically not my weekend, since I had to come to school and teach. But it turned out to be a pretty awesome day somehow. If you're on my friendslist you can read why (since I lock all of my school stories).
Afterwards, the game at Jingu got rained out. It turns out that the gang planning to go to the game ended up, for the most part, at Ben's Cafe in Takadanobaba, for food and beer. However, because of the rain and because I was so tired, I decided that I didn't feel like wandering around in the rain in Baba looking for a restaurant where it would probably be smoky and where I wasn't going to drink beer anyway. So I bought food at Ito Yokado and came home for the evening and crashed around 7pm. Woke up around 11:30pm, was up until maybe 3-something writing my LJ entry about school, then went back to sleep.
Woke up at 9am on Sunday for college ball, only to find out it got CANCELLED WTF. Now, yes, it was raining at 9am, but it stopped by 10:30am, which is when the games were supposed to start. So it was sunny and beautiful all day, but the games were cancelled due to rain. So very sad :( I was really excited to have two days of watching Hosei, especially because that meant I would get to see Mishima pitch from the proper side of the stadium for once! (I wanted to make him a photo book too, but I always see him from the 1st-base side and he's a righty.) But the weather had to go wreck my plans. Sigh :(
So I stayed home and washed my sheets and blankets (it's rare that I have a day with an hour or two in the morning to do that and hang them up for the day), and watched the Seibu-Lotte playoff game on TV.
There was an evening game at Jingu that I planned to go to (the makeup for Saturday being rained out, Swallows-Carp). I sent Kozo an email like "I'm coming to Jingu when this game ends," but then the Lotte-Seibu game got tied up in the 9th yet again. So I just left home at 4:30pm regardless, and got to Jingu around 5:20 for the 6pm game, at which point Kozo told me "I can't believe Lotte pulled off ANOTHER come-from-behind win!" So, Seibu is done and Lotte is going to Fukuoka. And Seibu's shortstop and francise face Hiroyuki Nakajima wants to go to the MLB now too, but it would be idiocy for Seibu to post him. (And the Pro Yakyu Ai magazine would have to find another model to fill 40% of their pages with. Have I mentioned that I stopped buying PY-Ai because I don't need a magazine full of photos of Hayato Sakamoto and Hiroyuki Nakajima, cute as they may be?)
So, this game was a little less crazy. Infact, I just don't remember a lot of it. I sat with Kozo, and Garrett and a friend of his were in the row behind us, and the stands were fairly full but not with the people I usually know from this group, beyond that the leader guy (who, I feel terrible, after two years I am still not sure what the hell his name is, I usually refer to him as Megaphone Man) and Suzuki-kun were there, and a few others I don't know well but recognize. Oh, actually, Oji was there, but I never knew him to begin with. He was a big Swallows fan who sold beer at Jingu for 4 years while in college, and made a lot of money off the Section D gang, since they would ONLY buy from him -- and would also buy him beers when they met him at away games. (Apparently there are commissions and such for outselling the other vendors.) Anyway, Oji graduated last year, so I hadn't seen him this year, but he's apparently been at a bunch of games, he just sits in a different part of the Yakult ouendan, so. I don't know his real name, anyway. I talked to the kid who was supposed to be Oji's successor a little, he wears #777, and had also been at the Tokyo Dome for the nutso game on Friday. But other than that I know nothing.
The Carp won the game 6-4, but after the game was a Last Game Ceremony for the Swallows. Here's something funny: Every team in the Central League LOST their final home game EXCEPT the horribly hapless last-place Yokohama Baystars, who won their last home game 2-0 over Hanshin. It kinda sucks to have your last-game ceremony after losing the game, you know?
This ceremony featured the retirement ceremonies for Yuki Tanaka and Munehiro Shida, both of whom are basically career minor-leaguers here for the most part. Well, 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)
Kozo pointed out when we were walking to Sendagaya station, 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 (throwing a guy in the air for a celebration), or all this other stuff. It's funny, I guess I have forgotten just how much more personal baseball is in Japan.
Oh, and after the ceremony there were lots of streamers thrown at the field when Shida and Yuki came out to the outfield. And I ran into my friend Hemayani, who I know from Fighters stuff but I forgot also likes the Swallows. Why she always finds me AFTER games instead of before is beyond me, but whatever. So I made either her or Kozo take this photo, I forget who:
Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeamers.
I came home and finished my Tokyo Big 6 Week 3 entry and then crashed.
Woke up on Monday morning -- which was a holiday -- and went to Jingu, arriving around 10:40am for an 11am start time. I found that, unfortunately, my normal spot (front row near the ouendan and in back of where Kagami throws between innings) was completely unavailable as some kids' baseball team had shown up and taken up the first four rows of that area. I got a seat in the front row behind the Hosei dugout instead and went to say hi to Suda-san, who was sitting behind them -- and he pointed out that it was the Zushi Senior Little League team (meaning JHS students), which is the team Kagami played for when he was in junior high school. So I guess they were there to cheer for their big sempai... and Zushi is a good hour away from Jingu, down near Kamakura, so it seems they got to the game very early and took up that area.
My area ended up being interesting anyway. Two people to the left was a guy who graduated from Tokyo University like 50 years ago, and to my right was another Tokyo Big 6 fan who just goes to all the teams. So the older Todai guy first tried to talk to me in English, but as it turns out, in the long run, as usual, my Japanese is much better than his English. So he explained to me some stuff about the songs, and also asked me a bunch of questions about the US and the MLB (I think he was, as usual, surprised by my saying that I enjoy Japanese baseball 90 billion times more because it is so much more interesting and fun and supportive and personal rather than negative and just a big money machine). In return, I asked him about a particular player in Todai's history that I have been quietly researching the last few months, and he was actually even at the game I was particularly curious about, but being as it was several years ago he didn't have much to say that I didn't already know from my reading. (Though he was pretty impressed that I asked at all.)
Hosei lost the first game to Meiji 4-1, which was very painful for me. They were leading 1-0 for a while but couldn't add any more runs and then Kagami had one bad inning and... yeah. I was really hoping he could add a 5th win, but alas.
The other Big 6 fan didn't really talk to me much during the first game, but his friend left for the second game so he warmed up a bit after Todai had a disastrous 1st inning of two guys in a row both walking AND getting caught stealing; I muttered "ばかやろ！東大は頭がいいけど野球センスは全然ない！もったいないよ。" and he started laughing like "そうだね！" ("Dumbass. Todai guys may be smart, but they have absolutely NO baseball sense. What a WASTE." / "No kidding!") so we got to talking during the second game; he was as surprised to find out that I wasn't a current university student as I was to find out that he wasn't affiliated with any of the teams. But we were both hoping to see Shota Suzuki, the Todai freshman, get another win... which of course he didn't because Todai's batters couldn't come through with anything. Sheesh. So they lost like 3-0 to Rikkio.
After the game I waited for players to come out; I had no Rikkio stuff with me but had my heart set on getting an autograph from Todai freshman Shota Suzuki. I ran into Kobayashi, and told her "I wanna get Suzuki's autograph but I'm not sure I will recognize his face!" So she offered to stand with me and help me not be afraid to yell out things to players. I got captain Yoshihiro Maeda's autograph; he was like (in Japanese) "is it okay to sign in Japanese?" and I'm like "...of course!" and while signing, he said, "by the way, you speak Japanese very well!" and I was like "...not really... but I am doing my best... just like Todai is doing their best this semester! Keep it up!" I also got Takashi Kihara to sign a photo... and missed getting Yohei Tachi because I *thought* I recognized him but wasn't sure. Iwasaki-kun pretty much bolted from the stadium or I would have maybe tagged him too, instead we just said "otsukaresama!" to him as he was walking by.
Finally the freshmen DID come out! They were in a big big gaggle though... but Kobayashi's like "there's your chance! go! go!" so I went up and just asked Suzuki for his autograph. He was a little stunned, or maybe just tired, but said okay and signed the photo. He's so little! I think he may actually be shorter than me! (Of course, a 19-year-old Japanese college freshman, what am I expecting.) I would have liked to talk to him more but didn't want to keep him from the group of guys he was with. But I did give him a bunch of photos -- I had printed out 6 or 7 photos from his debut game at Jingu on Sept 12, so I gave him those, babbling at him like "these are from opening weekend, I saw you pitch and was very impressed, please do your best from here on, good luck!". And he was just kind of very much like I have no idea how to deal with this crazy gaijin fan but I guess I will just smile and nod. Since the Todai players don't actually know me, they're probably still in WTF mode about it, but whatever.
For context, Tokyo University is pretty much the most elite university in the country, academically. But their baseball team is pretty lousy, at least compared to the rest of Tokyo Big 6, which is one of the top college leagues in the country.
Oh yeah, I got a photo with outfielder Hisanari Takayama because he's the tallest dude on the Todai team, listed as 192cm, which is like 6'4. He's REALLY tall :) But I forgot to get it off my camera so it is not in this entry.
Went back to Gaienmae with Kobayashi and she asked for my email address, like "Let me know if you're coming next week and we'll save you a seat on the Meiji/Waseda side." If she can seriously get me a seat in the front row of the Waseda side for Saturday on 3rd base I would be pretty delighted as it would be a chance to see Tatsuya Ohishi up close for the first time in ages, but I'm not expecting it. (It's pretty much impossible to ever get front row to a Waseda game, especially now that Saitoh's in his last semester.)
And Ogura was at the game, but she never came out to the front of the stadium so I didn't see her. Whoops. She was on the Meiji-Rikkio side and I was, appropriately, on Hosei-Todai.
I ate katsudon for dinner when I got back to Akabane, grabbed a newspaper from the convenience store on the way home, and then had another evening of being too tired to accomplish anything but too awake to fall asleep. I mostly looked through photos and backed up some files and stuff. I have this feeling that my laptop is going to die around the same time I come back to the US; now I just have to hope it lasts that long. (I would not be unhappy getting 3 years out of it. 1.7 years was a bit too short for my tastes when I thought it was dying then.)
Yawn.
Huh, today is Nishijima vs. Mikami, not vs. Mishima. So maybe I don't need to feel THAT bad.
Afterwards, the game at Jingu got rained out. It turns out that the gang planning to go to the game ended up, for the most part, at Ben's Cafe in Takadanobaba, for food and beer. However, because of the rain and because I was so tired, I decided that I didn't feel like wandering around in the rain in Baba looking for a restaurant where it would probably be smoky and where I wasn't going to drink beer anyway. So I bought food at Ito Yokado and came home for the evening and crashed around 7pm. Woke up around 11:30pm, was up until maybe 3-something writing my LJ entry about school, then went back to sleep.
Woke up at 9am on Sunday for college ball, only to find out it got CANCELLED WTF. Now, yes, it was raining at 9am, but it stopped by 10:30am, which is when the games were supposed to start. So it was sunny and beautiful all day, but the games were cancelled due to rain. So very sad :( I was really excited to have two days of watching Hosei, especially because that meant I would get to see Mishima pitch from the proper side of the stadium for once! (I wanted to make him a photo book too, but I always see him from the 1st-base side and he's a righty.) But the weather had to go wreck my plans. Sigh :(
So I stayed home and washed my sheets and blankets (it's rare that I have a day with an hour or two in the morning to do that and hang them up for the day), and watched the Seibu-Lotte playoff game on TV.
There was an evening game at Jingu that I planned to go to (the makeup for Saturday being rained out, Swallows-Carp). I sent Kozo an email like "I'm coming to Jingu when this game ends," but then the Lotte-Seibu game got tied up in the 9th yet again. So I just left home at 4:30pm regardless, and got to Jingu around 5:20 for the 6pm game, at which point Kozo told me "I can't believe Lotte pulled off ANOTHER come-from-behind win!" So, Seibu is done and Lotte is going to Fukuoka. And Seibu's shortstop and francise face Hiroyuki Nakajima wants to go to the MLB now too, but it would be idiocy for Seibu to post him. (And the Pro Yakyu Ai magazine would have to find another model to fill 40% of their pages with. Have I mentioned that I stopped buying PY-Ai because I don't need a magazine full of photos of Hayato Sakamoto and Hiroyuki Nakajima, cute as they may be?)
So, this game was a little less crazy. Infact, I just don't remember a lot of it. I sat with Kozo, and Garrett and a friend of his were in the row behind us, and the stands were fairly full but not with the people I usually know from this group, beyond that the leader guy (who, I feel terrible, after two years I am still not sure what the hell his name is, I usually refer to him as Megaphone Man) and Suzuki-kun were there, and a few others I don't know well but recognize. Oh, actually, Oji was there, but I never knew him to begin with. He was a big Swallows fan who sold beer at Jingu for 4 years while in college, and made a lot of money off the Section D gang, since they would ONLY buy from him -- and would also buy him beers when they met him at away games. (Apparently there are commissions and such for outselling the other vendors.) Anyway, Oji graduated last year, so I hadn't seen him this year, but he's apparently been at a bunch of games, he just sits in a different part of the Yakult ouendan, so. I don't know his real name, anyway. I talked to the kid who was supposed to be Oji's successor a little, he wears #777, and had also been at the Tokyo Dome for the nutso game on Friday. But other than that I know nothing.
The Carp won the game 6-4, but after the game was a Last Game Ceremony for the Swallows. Here's something funny: Every team in the Central League LOST their final home game EXCEPT the horribly hapless last-place Yokohama Baystars, who won their last home game 2-0 over Hanshin. It kinda sucks to have your last-game ceremony after losing the game, you know?
This ceremony featured the retirement ceremonies for Yuki Tanaka and Munehiro Shida, both of whom are basically career minor-leaguers here for the most part. Well, 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)
Kozo pointed out when we were walking to Sendagaya station, 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 (throwing a guy in the air for a celebration), or all this other stuff. It's funny, I guess I have forgotten just how much more personal baseball is in Japan.
Oh, and after the ceremony there were lots of streamers thrown at the field when Shida and Yuki came out to the outfield. And I ran into my friend Hemayani, who I know from Fighters stuff but I forgot also likes the Swallows. Why she always finds me AFTER games instead of before is beyond me, but whatever. So I made either her or Kozo take this photo, I forget who:
Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeamers.
I came home and finished my Tokyo Big 6 Week 3 entry and then crashed.
Woke up on Monday morning -- which was a holiday -- and went to Jingu, arriving around 10:40am for an 11am start time. I found that, unfortunately, my normal spot (front row near the ouendan and in back of where Kagami throws between innings) was completely unavailable as some kids' baseball team had shown up and taken up the first four rows of that area. I got a seat in the front row behind the Hosei dugout instead and went to say hi to Suda-san, who was sitting behind them -- and he pointed out that it was the Zushi Senior Little League team (meaning JHS students), which is the team Kagami played for when he was in junior high school. So I guess they were there to cheer for their big sempai... and Zushi is a good hour away from Jingu, down near Kamakura, so it seems they got to the game very early and took up that area.
My area ended up being interesting anyway. Two people to the left was a guy who graduated from Tokyo University like 50 years ago, and to my right was another Tokyo Big 6 fan who just goes to all the teams. So the older Todai guy first tried to talk to me in English, but as it turns out, in the long run, as usual, my Japanese is much better than his English. So he explained to me some stuff about the songs, and also asked me a bunch of questions about the US and the MLB (I think he was, as usual, surprised by my saying that I enjoy Japanese baseball 90 billion times more because it is so much more interesting and fun and supportive and personal rather than negative and just a big money machine). In return, I asked him about a particular player in Todai's history that I have been quietly researching the last few months, and he was actually even at the game I was particularly curious about, but being as it was several years ago he didn't have much to say that I didn't already know from my reading. (Though he was pretty impressed that I asked at all.)
Hosei lost the first game to Meiji 4-1, which was very painful for me. They were leading 1-0 for a while but couldn't add any more runs and then Kagami had one bad inning and... yeah. I was really hoping he could add a 5th win, but alas.
The other Big 6 fan didn't really talk to me much during the first game, but his friend left for the second game so he warmed up a bit after Todai had a disastrous 1st inning of two guys in a row both walking AND getting caught stealing; I muttered "ばかやろ！東大は頭がいいけど野球センスは全然ない！もったいないよ。" and he started laughing like "そうだね！" ("Dumbass. Todai guys may be smart, but they have absolutely NO baseball sense. What a WASTE." / "No kidding!") so we got to talking during the second game; he was as surprised to find out that I wasn't a current university student as I was to find out that he wasn't affiliated with any of the teams. But we were both hoping to see Shota Suzuki, the Todai freshman, get another win... which of course he didn't because Todai's batters couldn't come through with anything. Sheesh. So they lost like 3-0 to Rikkio.
After the game I waited for players to come out; I had no Rikkio stuff with me but had my heart set on getting an autograph from Todai freshman Shota Suzuki. I ran into Kobayashi, and told her "I wanna get Suzuki's autograph but I'm not sure I will recognize his face!" So she offered to stand with me and help me not be afraid to yell out things to players. I got captain Yoshihiro Maeda's autograph; he was like (in Japanese) "is it okay to sign in Japanese?" and I'm like "...of course!" and while signing, he said, "by the way, you speak Japanese very well!" and I was like "...not really... but I am doing my best... just like Todai is doing their best this semester! Keep it up!" I also got Takashi Kihara to sign a photo... and missed getting Yohei Tachi because I *thought* I recognized him but wasn't sure. Iwasaki-kun pretty much bolted from the stadium or I would have maybe tagged him too, instead we just said "otsukaresama!" to him as he was walking by.
Finally the freshmen DID come out! They were in a big big gaggle though... but Kobayashi's like "there's your chance! go! go!" so I went up and just asked Suzuki for his autograph. He was a little stunned, or maybe just tired, but said okay and signed the photo. He's so little! I think he may actually be shorter than me! (Of course, a 19-year-old Japanese college freshman, what am I expecting.) I would have liked to talk to him more but didn't want to keep him from the group of guys he was with. But I did give him a bunch of photos -- I had printed out 6 or 7 photos from his debut game at Jingu on Sept 12, so I gave him those, babbling at him like "these are from opening weekend, I saw you pitch and was very impressed, please do your best from here on, good luck!". And he was just kind of very much like I have no idea how to deal with this crazy gaijin fan but I guess I will just smile and nod. Since the Todai players don't actually know me, they're probably still in WTF mode about it, but whatever.
For context, Tokyo University is pretty much the most elite university in the country, academically. But their baseball team is pretty lousy, at least compared to the rest of Tokyo Big 6, which is one of the top college leagues in the country.
Oh yeah, I got a photo with outfielder Hisanari Takayama because he's the tallest dude on the Todai team, listed as 192cm, which is like 6'4. He's REALLY tall :) But I forgot to get it off my camera so it is not in this entry.
Went back to Gaienmae with Kobayashi and she asked for my email address, like "Let me know if you're coming next week and we'll save you a seat on the Meiji/Waseda side." If she can seriously get me a seat in the front row of the Waseda side for Saturday on 3rd base I would be pretty delighted as it would be a chance to see Tatsuya Ohishi up close for the first time in ages, but I'm not expecting it. (It's pretty much impossible to ever get front row to a Waseda game, especially now that Saitoh's in his last semester.)
And Ogura was at the game, but she never came out to the front of the stadium so I didn't see her. Whoops. She was on the Meiji-Rikkio side and I was, appropriately, on Hosei-Todai.
I ate katsudon for dinner when I got back to Akabane, grabbed a newspaper from the convenience store on the way home, and then had another evening of being too tired to accomplish anything but too awake to fall asleep. I mostly looked through photos and backed up some files and stuff. I have this feeling that my laptop is going to die around the same time I come back to the US; now I just have to hope it lasts that long. (I would not be unhappy getting 3 years out of it. 1.7 years was a bit too short for my tastes when I thought it was dying then.)
Yawn.
Huh, today is Nishijima vs. Mikami, not vs. Mishima. So maybe I don't need to feel THAT bad.
