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It sucks when you come home in such a ridiculous emotional state that you're unable to write an entry, but... probly for the best. I'm currently blocked on writing any more entries until I write this one, though...
So, after getting home late from the Japan Series I woke up at like 8:30 on Wednesday and was at Jingu around 10:30 for a 1pm game. Fortunately, as before, I have friends who are insane so they lined up at 7am to save seats, and they saved me one in the second row. I got there before general ticket sales started, at least, but it was still pretty damn crowded. The entire stadium was FULL by 12:30pm or so. I went up to the top of the seats to take some photos of the infield, and it was already standing-room-only up there. The attendance for this game was reported as 36000, of course.
I thought wasting 2 hours before the game started would be difficult but it actually wasn't at all. Between watching the cheer groups warming up, and watching the players warm up, and taking photos... the time actually passed rather quickly! The weather was warm, too, so sitting outside wasn't so bad, while the sun was out, at least. We yelled hi to some players and whatnot (it was Yumoto's birthday so we also yelled happy birthday to him, things like that). And Asai scolded me a few times for trying to call out to players when it wasn't the right time to, like "can't you tell when they're focusing on something? this is a very important game, it's the first time in 50 years this has happened!" There were a lot of non-roster guys playing catch on the field and in order to find out answers to my questions I ended up chatting up a 3rd-year Keio baseball club boy who came down to the front of the stands take photos of some of them too, like "who's the dude with the Marines chest protector?" and stuff, and he explained what was going on, that they were mostly just 4th-years getting their last chance to hang out on the Jingu field.
We got a photo of our group but it sucks.
I sat in the second row with Asai and with a guy named Watanabe who also went to Keio. And the 3 seats in front of us stayed empty for most of the game. We have no fucking clue what happened, like these women saved the seats and then just LEFT? In such a FULL stadium where TONS of people would love to sit there? It was really fucking weird. We actually got so pissed off about it that around the 5th inning we just threw out their shit and let the seats go empty, so some old dude came down and sat in one, and Yoneyama sat in another. (I should have moved down to the front row but for some reason didn't. Maybe some desire to NOT be shown on TV. Heh.)
Infact, you wanna know how CROWDED it was at the general Meiji Jingu Gaien area on November 3rd? Get a load of this aerial photo showing that there were seriously around 100,000 people in the area. Between the Big 6 baseball game, a J-League soccer game going on at the National Stadium, and the college RUGBY games going on next door to Jingu at Prince Chichibu Stadium... yeah. If only there had been some high school ball at Jingu #2 too, it would have been a true clusterfuck.
The game itself, well, Waseda had like 8 batters in the first inning and quickly went up 3-0 on Daisuke Takeuchi, which was not a good start for things. Yuki Saitoh ended up pitching SEVEN INNINGS OF NO-HIT BALL which was just getting more and more ridiculous as the game went on. Waseda went up something like 7-0 which pretty much seemed impossible to come back from, but then out of nowhere, Saitoh imploded in the 8th inning and Keio scored 5 runs to bring it to 7-5.
What was kinda crazy at that point was that Tatsuya Ohishi came in to pitch for Waseda, which seemed like it was going to be more of the prior not-scoring for Keio, so... we had no clue who was going to pitch the 9th after Daisuke and Hironori Tanaka (4th-year) and Fukutani and Kaneko and Yamagata had all pitched... we thought it might be Okuhashi... well, it ended up being Takuya Masaki! Who was a pitcher in high school... sometimes... but I had basically never seen him as anything but a 1st baseman in college, I don't think he'd pitched in a game since his freshman year. So for his last ever game in a Keio uniform, Masaki pitched the 9th. With Ryuta Iba, his catcher in high school, who now also mostly plays 3rd or 1st, catching for him. That was very cool even if he gave up 3 more runs and pretty much sealed the game... I think Etoh-kantoku figured that Keio wasn't likely to get 3 runs off of Ohishi any time soon, so why not give another 4th-year a "last moment", rather than putting in some other pitcher who might have done better.
So Waseda won 10-5. The reporters and photographers had a total party with this one, of course, and so many cameramen were set up that normal people couldn't even SEE the doage where they tossed Saitoh and everyone up in the air.
There was a "Big 6 Season Closing Ceremony" after that, so I actually snuck to behind home plate with the hopes of taking good photos but in reality I shoulda been a little OFF of home plate, whoops. But Yoneyama and Tanaka-kun were there so I sat with them, they were right behind the tunnel going into Jingu, they thought the Meiji guys would come out there. I ran into Ms. Tokachi and she gave me her business card and said to come back and visit next year and all.
Ceremony was just a lot of guys marching, and a speech by the league administrator, and presentation of various awards, for Waseda's victory, and for the best ERA and best batting average... and that was about it, and all the players exited the field. Waseda, Keio, and Hosei all came through the pathway RIGHT where I was... I was not expecting that. Though it does mean I got to at least SEE Kagami one last time even though I was too scared to actually say anything to him. I'm pretty sure the players could see me as they were coming up the tunnel though...
When I came back and talked to people by our seats and was packing up, I felt really sad. And then Matsui-san was like "Can I get your PC email address? So that we can keep in touch after you leave?" and I burst into tears. It was pretty silly I guess, but I was already in a bit of a fragile mood to begin with. So it took me a bit to get out of that.
I thought to go outside and hunt down autographs from some of the players I'd wanted to catch but never had from the other universities after that but there was a Keio retirement ceremony happening, so instead I ended up being pulled to watch that. It was at least faster than the Hosei one -- the 4th-year ballplayers ran in and lined up in front of the stands on the ouendan platform, we sang the Keio fight song, they announced all of the graduating 4th-year ballplayers by name and had the guys wave, they announced the captains and cocaptains and gave them flowers, and also announced a few other people, like the cheerleaders and ouendan leader guys. Yumoto made a speech as did one or two other people I can't remember, thanking everyone for supporting them for 4 years. And then they called to the crowd and asked ALL Keio 4th-years to please join them on the podium and they played the fight song again and another song I forget, and everyone linked arms and swayed together. A few of the players were crying... I'm obviously focused on a few guys but I saw how some guys wanted a photo with Nagasaki and he was crying too hard to be in one. So I felt like crying again too.
Then they left, ostensibly to change and go home.
The Waseda players had been spending this entire time taking photos with the big "Waseda Victory" sign on the Jingu board, which was pretty surreal.
When I went outside I was too late to catch any of the other university players -- if anyone was still there, it was impossible to find them because of the fucking Waseda bus and the gigantic crowd surrounding it, you couldn't actually go across the front area of Jingu at all.
But you could wait for Keio players to come out, so I did that. (Because Ogura and Toda and such were basically off with their own missions to find certain players and do stuff.) It kinda sucked, I really wanted a photo with Yuto Okuhashi because he's like ninety feet tall and totally bears a resemblance to Morino from the Dragons, except... I couldn't find any of my friends to TAKE said picture. Which SUCKED :( I must have had to tag him like 3 times before I finally got one -- and Ogura took it, and it was totally flashed out and a terrible picture.
In the meantime I did talk to Nagasaki... I thanked him for always being nice to me, and asked what he was going to do next year, and he said he was quitting baseball and just going to work at a normal company, not a company with a baseball team, and I'm like "so today was your real last game?" and he said yeah, and I said that it was a shame, but good luck in the future and all.
Oh, and one thing I was really proud of myself for -- tagged Naoki Yamaguchi and got him to sign this picture. Since he's a 4th-year this was literally the last chance I'd ever get to tag him. So, that was good, though, oddly, he didn't even LOOK at the photo really before signing it, heh.
I did finally get a photo with Okuhashi, and Nagasaki again, by dumb luck -- saw some other girls getting a photo with them and basically said "me too please?". This one actually came out reasonably well, at least:
(Nagasaki is on the left, Okuhashi is the tall dude on the right, doesn't he look like Morino? He probly wondered why there was this crazy gaijin stalking him but whatever -- I guess if he asked about it later, Nagasaki or Fuchigami or someone could probly tell him that I'm just an insane baseball fan who went to all the Keio games this year.)
Ogura had been trying to get me to go away so she could give a package to Nagasaki that was actually for Yumoto (for his birthday), since she couldn't find Yumoto himself, but after she delivered that, then she went to get autographs from Aoyama and another guy, and then was like "hey, let's go get a photo with Kitada-kun" -- he's the Keio ouendan leader dude who I met in Matsuyama and always try to say hi to if I have the chance. But Kitada was busy talking to the Waseda ouendan leader at the time, so he's like "wait a minute, not now". So I was just going to give up, but we waited for Yoneyama and Tanaka to get ready to go, so by then it turned out Kitada was free, so he came and chatted with us for a bit. I got him to sign this photo, where he's the guy in the middle, and he was like "dammit! this is a nice photo, I want a copy" and I'm like "well, shit, I don't have another one with me right now... and I'm moving back to the US over the winter so this is probly the last time I'll see you," and I dunno, we talked to him for a bit, though he had totally lost his voice by then, I'm sure it's normal. Ogura asked him about his plans for next year, and it sounds like he's actually not graduating yet and has to figure out what the hell he's doing -- and he's like "I'm already 24, so I'm pretty much a huge fuckup, y'know?" And she asked him for his phone number, and he gave her his business card -- which of course is basically his "ouendan leader contact card". Crazy. But she did say that maybe she could try to give him a copy of that Matsuyama photo next year sometime.
The three of us got a photo together but Ogura looks like crap -- she NEVER smiles in photos -- so I've cut her out of this. Really, it's for the best, trust me:
I actually took my overcoat off in order to match the black jacket pose :) Though my Keio wristband is not as cool as the Keio armband.
And well, after that we walked to Shinanomachi and got dinner at the Nagasaki Champon noodle place and that's when I had the traumatic experience of being stuck at a table with 3 people who all seemed completely unaware of my presence, after a long and emotional day as is. So I just left and went home.
Shrug.
Oddly, now it's been 3 days since then, so I'm not as emotionally charged about it, but at the same time I've also forgotten pieces of what the hell actually happened.
So, after getting home late from the Japan Series I woke up at like 8:30 on Wednesday and was at Jingu around 10:30 for a 1pm game. Fortunately, as before, I have friends who are insane so they lined up at 7am to save seats, and they saved me one in the second row. I got there before general ticket sales started, at least, but it was still pretty damn crowded. The entire stadium was FULL by 12:30pm or so. I went up to the top of the seats to take some photos of the infield, and it was already standing-room-only up there. The attendance for this game was reported as 36000, of course.
I thought wasting 2 hours before the game started would be difficult but it actually wasn't at all. Between watching the cheer groups warming up, and watching the players warm up, and taking photos... the time actually passed rather quickly! The weather was warm, too, so sitting outside wasn't so bad, while the sun was out, at least. We yelled hi to some players and whatnot (it was Yumoto's birthday so we also yelled happy birthday to him, things like that). And Asai scolded me a few times for trying to call out to players when it wasn't the right time to, like "can't you tell when they're focusing on something? this is a very important game, it's the first time in 50 years this has happened!" There were a lot of non-roster guys playing catch on the field and in order to find out answers to my questions I ended up chatting up a 3rd-year Keio baseball club boy who came down to the front of the stands take photos of some of them too, like "who's the dude with the Marines chest protector?" and stuff, and he explained what was going on, that they were mostly just 4th-years getting their last chance to hang out on the Jingu field.
We got a photo of our group but it sucks.
I sat in the second row with Asai and with a guy named Watanabe who also went to Keio. And the 3 seats in front of us stayed empty for most of the game. We have no fucking clue what happened, like these women saved the seats and then just LEFT? In such a FULL stadium where TONS of people would love to sit there? It was really fucking weird. We actually got so pissed off about it that around the 5th inning we just threw out their shit and let the seats go empty, so some old dude came down and sat in one, and Yoneyama sat in another. (I should have moved down to the front row but for some reason didn't. Maybe some desire to NOT be shown on TV. Heh.)
Infact, you wanna know how CROWDED it was at the general Meiji Jingu Gaien area on November 3rd? Get a load of this aerial photo showing that there were seriously around 100,000 people in the area. Between the Big 6 baseball game, a J-League soccer game going on at the National Stadium, and the college RUGBY games going on next door to Jingu at Prince Chichibu Stadium... yeah. If only there had been some high school ball at Jingu #2 too, it would have been a true clusterfuck.
The game itself, well, Waseda had like 8 batters in the first inning and quickly went up 3-0 on Daisuke Takeuchi, which was not a good start for things. Yuki Saitoh ended up pitching SEVEN INNINGS OF NO-HIT BALL which was just getting more and more ridiculous as the game went on. Waseda went up something like 7-0 which pretty much seemed impossible to come back from, but then out of nowhere, Saitoh imploded in the 8th inning and Keio scored 5 runs to bring it to 7-5.
What was kinda crazy at that point was that Tatsuya Ohishi came in to pitch for Waseda, which seemed like it was going to be more of the prior not-scoring for Keio, so... we had no clue who was going to pitch the 9th after Daisuke and Hironori Tanaka (4th-year) and Fukutani and Kaneko and Yamagata had all pitched... we thought it might be Okuhashi... well, it ended up being Takuya Masaki! Who was a pitcher in high school... sometimes... but I had basically never seen him as anything but a 1st baseman in college, I don't think he'd pitched in a game since his freshman year. So for his last ever game in a Keio uniform, Masaki pitched the 9th. With Ryuta Iba, his catcher in high school, who now also mostly plays 3rd or 1st, catching for him. That was very cool even if he gave up 3 more runs and pretty much sealed the game... I think Etoh-kantoku figured that Keio wasn't likely to get 3 runs off of Ohishi any time soon, so why not give another 4th-year a "last moment", rather than putting in some other pitcher who might have done better.
So Waseda won 10-5. The reporters and photographers had a total party with this one, of course, and so many cameramen were set up that normal people couldn't even SEE the doage where they tossed Saitoh and everyone up in the air.
There was a "Big 6 Season Closing Ceremony" after that, so I actually snuck to behind home plate with the hopes of taking good photos but in reality I shoulda been a little OFF of home plate, whoops. But Yoneyama and Tanaka-kun were there so I sat with them, they were right behind the tunnel going into Jingu, they thought the Meiji guys would come out there. I ran into Ms. Tokachi and she gave me her business card and said to come back and visit next year and all.
Ceremony was just a lot of guys marching, and a speech by the league administrator, and presentation of various awards, for Waseda's victory, and for the best ERA and best batting average... and that was about it, and all the players exited the field. Waseda, Keio, and Hosei all came through the pathway RIGHT where I was... I was not expecting that. Though it does mean I got to at least SEE Kagami one last time even though I was too scared to actually say anything to him. I'm pretty sure the players could see me as they were coming up the tunnel though...
When I came back and talked to people by our seats and was packing up, I felt really sad. And then Matsui-san was like "Can I get your PC email address? So that we can keep in touch after you leave?" and I burst into tears. It was pretty silly I guess, but I was already in a bit of a fragile mood to begin with. So it took me a bit to get out of that.
I thought to go outside and hunt down autographs from some of the players I'd wanted to catch but never had from the other universities after that but there was a Keio retirement ceremony happening, so instead I ended up being pulled to watch that. It was at least faster than the Hosei one -- the 4th-year ballplayers ran in and lined up in front of the stands on the ouendan platform, we sang the Keio fight song, they announced all of the graduating 4th-year ballplayers by name and had the guys wave, they announced the captains and cocaptains and gave them flowers, and also announced a few other people, like the cheerleaders and ouendan leader guys. Yumoto made a speech as did one or two other people I can't remember, thanking everyone for supporting them for 4 years. And then they called to the crowd and asked ALL Keio 4th-years to please join them on the podium and they played the fight song again and another song I forget, and everyone linked arms and swayed together. A few of the players were crying... I'm obviously focused on a few guys but I saw how some guys wanted a photo with Nagasaki and he was crying too hard to be in one. So I felt like crying again too.
Then they left, ostensibly to change and go home.
The Waseda players had been spending this entire time taking photos with the big "Waseda Victory" sign on the Jingu board, which was pretty surreal.
When I went outside I was too late to catch any of the other university players -- if anyone was still there, it was impossible to find them because of the fucking Waseda bus and the gigantic crowd surrounding it, you couldn't actually go across the front area of Jingu at all.
But you could wait for Keio players to come out, so I did that. (Because Ogura and Toda and such were basically off with their own missions to find certain players and do stuff.) It kinda sucked, I really wanted a photo with Yuto Okuhashi because he's like ninety feet tall and totally bears a resemblance to Morino from the Dragons, except... I couldn't find any of my friends to TAKE said picture. Which SUCKED :( I must have had to tag him like 3 times before I finally got one -- and Ogura took it, and it was totally flashed out and a terrible picture.
In the meantime I did talk to Nagasaki... I thanked him for always being nice to me, and asked what he was going to do next year, and he said he was quitting baseball and just going to work at a normal company, not a company with a baseball team, and I'm like "so today was your real last game?" and he said yeah, and I said that it was a shame, but good luck in the future and all.
Oh, and one thing I was really proud of myself for -- tagged Naoki Yamaguchi and got him to sign this picture. Since he's a 4th-year this was literally the last chance I'd ever get to tag him. So, that was good, though, oddly, he didn't even LOOK at the photo really before signing it, heh.
I did finally get a photo with Okuhashi, and Nagasaki again, by dumb luck -- saw some other girls getting a photo with them and basically said "me too please?". This one actually came out reasonably well, at least:
(Nagasaki is on the left, Okuhashi is the tall dude on the right, doesn't he look like Morino? He probly wondered why there was this crazy gaijin stalking him but whatever -- I guess if he asked about it later, Nagasaki or Fuchigami or someone could probly tell him that I'm just an insane baseball fan who went to all the Keio games this year.)
Ogura had been trying to get me to go away so she could give a package to Nagasaki that was actually for Yumoto (for his birthday), since she couldn't find Yumoto himself, but after she delivered that, then she went to get autographs from Aoyama and another guy, and then was like "hey, let's go get a photo with Kitada-kun" -- he's the Keio ouendan leader dude who I met in Matsuyama and always try to say hi to if I have the chance. But Kitada was busy talking to the Waseda ouendan leader at the time, so he's like "wait a minute, not now". So I was just going to give up, but we waited for Yoneyama and Tanaka to get ready to go, so by then it turned out Kitada was free, so he came and chatted with us for a bit. I got him to sign this photo, where he's the guy in the middle, and he was like "dammit! this is a nice photo, I want a copy" and I'm like "well, shit, I don't have another one with me right now... and I'm moving back to the US over the winter so this is probly the last time I'll see you," and I dunno, we talked to him for a bit, though he had totally lost his voice by then, I'm sure it's normal. Ogura asked him about his plans for next year, and it sounds like he's actually not graduating yet and has to figure out what the hell he's doing -- and he's like "I'm already 24, so I'm pretty much a huge fuckup, y'know?" And she asked him for his phone number, and he gave her his business card -- which of course is basically his "ouendan leader contact card". Crazy. But she did say that maybe she could try to give him a copy of that Matsuyama photo next year sometime.
The three of us got a photo together but Ogura looks like crap -- she NEVER smiles in photos -- so I've cut her out of this. Really, it's for the best, trust me:
I actually took my overcoat off in order to match the black jacket pose :) Though my Keio wristband is not as cool as the Keio armband.
And well, after that we walked to Shinanomachi and got dinner at the Nagasaki Champon noodle place and that's when I had the traumatic experience of being stuck at a table with 3 people who all seemed completely unaware of my presence, after a long and emotional day as is. So I just left and went home.
Shrug.
Oddly, now it's been 3 days since then, so I'm not as emotionally charged about it, but at the same time I've also forgotten pieces of what the hell actually happened.
