Today in Yokosuka

This morning I decided I was going to go to a minor-league ballgame. After pondering a bit, rather than going to the closeby Lotte vs. Yakult game, I went to Yokosuka Stadium (which is like, 1.5-2 hours away) for Lions-Baystars... because I heard the Baystars were putting in their real players. Which meant maybe I'd see Hichori and such.

The trains were actually completely normal and ontime today, no delays, no nothing. So I took the train to Oppama station on the Keihin-Kyuko, got off, followed a guy in a Searex jacket to the stadium. There were actually tons of people going to the game, and indeed the stadium was pretty full by the time I got in there. (But first, I bought a ticket, and then went to throw 1000 yen into the Earthquake Relief Donation Box... and got my photo taken with Reck the mascot, and also got a Reck postcard and another "Play for Japan" card.)

It was full, and I didn't get in until 12:45 for a 1pm game, so I ended up taking a seat on the Seibu side of things... but due to the way the stadium is, with the fences, I kept climbing to the back of the stands to go take photos of stuff going on on the field. After an inning or so I walked over to the Baystars side anyway, so I could take photos of right-handed batters from the proper side. And the Lions starter, Yuta Nakazaki, was lefty, so I wanted a good shot of him too. (The Baystars starter was none other than former MLBer Tomokazu Ohka, go figure.)

I was hanging out in back on the Baystars side when a lady comes up to me like "Hey! Do you remember me?" and I'm figuring... well... she had to be someone from that infamous day at Baystars Kyujo, so despite that no, I did not recognize her face, I said "Yeah! I met you at Baystars Kyujo in January?" and she said "Yeah! The day that we all met Kagami!"

...see, I KNEW that day would end up having some good repercussions...

Anyway, her name's Tomoko and she invited me to come sit with her group of friends, another woman also was a college ball fan though she liked Waseda. They had a FANTASTIC set of seats with a great view of the field for taking photos. Plus they kept calling out to random friends of theirs who walked by like "This is that girl we told you about, the big Kagami fan! She came BACK to Japan! Isn't that amazing?"

So, I watched the game with them. It was an 11-inning game with Seibu eventually winning 4-2 -- sadly, the winning and losing pitchers were BOTH former Fighters, with Yataro Sakamoto getting the win for Seibu and Suguru Matsuyama getting the loss for Yokohama. I really liked both of them when they were Fighters, alas. Also, yeah, several normal Baystars players started the game, like Murata, Hichori, Kinjoh, etc, so I got to hold up my Hichori towel and cheer.

I also got to hear various gossip about players because these women turn out to be the kind just like my Fighters Kamagaya women friends who go to ALL the games and know ALL the players. Infact that's how I found out that Makka and Taketora weren't there that day... one lady's like "Hey, look at Bancho's blog, he's at Yokohama Station collecting money for the earthquake." "Oh, who's with him?" and they listed the players... two people even were like "ok we're going to go try to meet them! see you guys later!" and left the game. No joke.

After the game, the Baystars players all lined up outside the stadium with collection boxes for earthquake relief. And they were SWARMED by fans! I can't even imagine how much money they raised. Hichori in particular was super-popular, there was a line of people waiting to throw money into his box. Some other players looked kinda sad that nobody was coming up to them but I wasn't sure if I should; my problem is that I don't have a TON of money and I already had donated for the day (I intend to donate 1000 yen at every game I go to where a donation box is made easily accessible to me). I do think it's cool that they did that though -- I know the mentality here, and a lot of people are a lot more likely to throw money into a box held by a baseball player than a box held by a random team representative, just to have a few seconds' contact with said player.

So it all goes back to what I said before -- if the players want to help the earthquake victims, what they've got to be doing is this -- getting out there and collecting donations -- not sitting there saying "How can we play baseball at a time like this?"

I don't have a lot to say about the rest of the day. I was really pretty hungry but rather than risk getting stranded in Oppama on the off chance there was another quake or another train stoppage, I decided to ride back to Akabane. I looked out the window until sundown, and then played Osu Tatakae Ouendan for the rest of the ride.

Only sad thing is, I had my heart set on Coco Ichibanya curry for dinner, and would you believe it, the Coco Ichibanya in Akabane, which I was so happy about opening back in January... CLOSED BECAUSE OF THE EARTHQUAKE AND POWEROUTS? OMFG how annoying. So I got katsudon at Katsuya instead, and just came home. Have been home all evening. Did a load of laundry and then did various other things like cropping some photos.

Speaking of photos:

Me with Reck, the former Searex mascot and now just Baystars ni-gun mascot. (They killed the "Shonan Searex" moniker and uniform, but kept the mascot...)


After the game ended. Since I brought my Kagami jersey with me and this was my first game at Yokosuka, I wanted a photo there.


Hichori with a donation box.


The players address the fans and press afterwards (I was amazingly close for this). Hichori actually made a short speech like "This is a tough time for everybody but I wanted to thank all the fans for supporting the team and for supporting the earthquake victims in Tohoku."