OMGWTFPUJOLS

[dr4b]

Monday, I had choir. We had a "website demo" as part of rehearsal. It was sorta dumb, but at least now I know that our concerts are December 9th and 10th. Whee. Also, Part 3 isn't as much fun as Part 2, although you can really hurt your throat singing all of chorus 53.

Went to the gym afterwards as usual, and lifting was fun. I upped my weights for cable row and cable press. I also did running for a bit. I ran for 3.5 minutes straight in between walking; my former best was 2.5 minutes. Go me.

I also learned that Oren was right -- he lent me a TV antenna, and suddenly, I can see red people! That is, the Cardinals. I saw about 20 minutes of the Astros-Cards game before going to choir, which means that I missed the awesome 9th inning - but isn't that what baseball fans live for, those moments? One strike away from the World Series, and suddenly Eckstein bloops a single... Edmonds walks... and Pujols hits a home run to somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri? Sigh. It's too perfect. I did write my latest "The Postseason" humor piece, this time making fun of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, eliminated by Chicago on Sunday. I guess whoever wins the NLCS is next up for the ridicule.

I get really sad these days because people keep asking me about various Japanese players.. not because they care, but because they are trying to think of who else they can speculate on the MLB teams signing next and making a huge profit off of. People go on for hours and hours about whether Daisuke Matsuzaka will get posted, or whether Kenji Johjima will decide to sign with an MLB team, and when I go "So what did you all think of the PL Playoffs? Hell of a 5th game there... talk about clutch, did you see Satozaki's 2-run RBI in the 8th?" the response is "What? Who's that? Lotte? Never heard of them, do they have any players we might want to sign here?" I'm worried there won't be any decent baseball players left by the time I get back to a game in Japan. I know it's not really true, but... I'm working on an essay comparing it to the downfall of the Negro Leagues, though I might be stretching a bit far there.

Anyway, today I was braindead, which sucked. I came home from work and played Puzzle Pirates, since it was Squid Pillage Night, although this week I renamed it "Barr Trek: Brig Space Nine". I'm actually pretty psyched for the Key West Parrrty, given the new housing arrangements that might be happening. It sounds like it could be really really really bloody fun, and maybe I won't even have to feel so bad if I can't come up with anything for the banner contest. It's sad, because I'm a fairly creative person (well, or at least *I* think I am), but I'm really drawing a blank on something I can actually *make* for this.

Katy came over for a bit in the evening and we chatted and I gave her a ton of my moving boxes. It's good because I get to help a friend AND get rid of some of the boxes, since they were taking up space that I didn't really have for them.

I've just sort of been relaxing the night away, which is to say, vegging out. Kevin Shiue's supposed to visit town for the second half of the week, so that'll be fun -- or at least it'll be an excuse to go out for sushi, which I have done surprisingly infrequently as of late, and hopefully an excuse to play cards, which I also haven't done at all lately.

Comments

[nstrom.livejournal.com]

Hey, what's your icon from?

[dr4b]

It's from a t-shirt I have that a friend got me last summer. Squid'n'Crossbones.

[captain-squid.livejournal.com]

I know I've seen it before, but I can't find the link.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure you owe me royalties or something.

[dr4b]

Arr?

One of those things that got lost in the old forums, maybe?

[captain-squid.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps it's the shirt you wore to lunch when you were in town. Which would explain why it's familiar, but not in my files.

[dr4b]

Oh, I thought you were referring to something else.
Yeah, I wore that shirt when I was in town. It seemed appropriate.

[gomezticator.livejournal.com]

The Negro Leagues were a byproduct of segregation and racism, so it made sense for them to die during the civil rights movement.

Japanese Baseball, like Norwegian Baseball, is Way Over There, so people are inherently detached to it all. Hell, Canadian Football is right over the border and no one here pays attention anymore.

It does scare me that the NPB appears to be dying, but I don't think it's because of player defections. Even if Ichiro and Nomo and Godzilla and all else had stayed, though, I still think they would have remained in their dire state. Japanese baseball, like Japanese pro wrestling, has really struggled to bring people in. Maybe it's the ticket prices: I know in wrestling they've either stayed even or risen and they're pretty high to begin with. I know I probably wouldn't attend nearly as many Mariner games if the cheapest ticket was $15-20.

[dr4b]

The ticket prices there aren't much worse than here. I got into most games for $10 or so. Though I sat in the outfield. Those are the good seats to have. Much more fun.

Anyway, the comparison is more on the decline of the leagues. The Negro league ceased to exist because it couldn't pay its bills, because it lost all of its stars to MLB, so the game quality went down, and nobody came out to their games any more since they could go see the stars elsewhere. While I agree that baseball should have always been integrated, and it's a good thing for the collapse, I'm not sure the same holds true with NPB. The Japanese fans can't just hop the ocean to go see their players all the time. If all their star players come over here, the attendance will go down over there, and an already-unprofitable enterprise will become even more so.

One of my friends has a theory that NPB will just become a glorified AAA minor league for MLB. Which I could see -- but if so, then MLB better pay the NPB to sustain said league, because the gate receipts aren't going to do it anymore.

[eustacio.livejournal.com]

Going to have to disagree with the comment on how MLB should pay the NPB to sustain the league. It isn't MLB's job to make sure the NPB is profitable or attractive enough to it's star players to make it worth staying. Unless MLB was to say 'You must be a United States citizen for X number of years to play in our league', it can't do a whole lot in that department. Not to mention that they'd be incredibly racist doing that.

I won't pretend to know a thing about the NPB. I've never had any real sort of fascination with Japan myself. I think a lot of it is due to friends in high school being all "Japan! Japan! Yay Japan!" and me saying "People. There is more to life than anime and Japan. Really". But, I don't know what they pay their players, contract terms, etc.... However, if there's nothing stopping the desire of the players to come to the United States and play, there's obviously some reasons behind that, I figure. Fix those reasons, fix the problem.

[dr4b]

I'm saying that if MLB is going to take all of the top talent from NPB -- essentially "calling up" the best players -- as if it were a minor league -- formally -- then they're going to have to do something to make sure it exists as a minor league at all, or risk having Japanese baseball collapse and lose that source of players.

I have to admit, I personally don't know whether the gate receipts at minor league games actually cover all of the team's expenses. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. (They're so cheap and poorly-attended that I can't imagine they do.) I thought the players' salaries at least partially come from the parent team they're a farm team for, though.

The players want to come here, but I think that in doing so, they're destroying their careers and their league, just to prove some point of personal and national pride. And they want to come here for both the money (which the Japanese teams can't afford to pay them) and the prestige (which they can't possibly remotely do anything about -- what are you going to do, undermine 140 years of perception and tradition?)

BTW, I don't give a shit about anime and haven't for years. I really wish people could get over the fact that it's quite possible to be interested in Japan without caring the slightest about anime or Pokemon or any of that crap. Or to be interested in Japanese baseball from a standpoint besides "Oooh, which of these players do you think our team can steal?"

[eustacio.livejournal.com]

Agreed completely in the anime/various "cultural imports", so to speak, from Japan. I'm a bitter person about it though, I freely admit. I just don't have all that much interest in the nation, period. *shrug*

I do think, personally, that there are too many just flying over here, but I do wonder what can be done about it. If the players want to come here and teams are willing to sign them, then the NPB needs to start figuring out a way to keep it's players. There are a couple thoughts off the top of my head.

Contracts that effectively state 'You will not defect to any other league within X years of signing this contract' might work. They could include clauses about not doing the same job for a 'competitor' or something, as you can make an arguement that NPB and MLB are certainly competing leagues on a global scale. The rise of 'defections' to MLB can certainly be cited, along with corresponding decline in quality and profitability of the NPB.

Of course, this is without having a firm grounding in all the legal restrictions, so I could be wrong. Like I said, these are just off the top of my head.

[dr4b]

There already ARE a ton of things in place keeping NPB players from coming here.

http://marinerds.blogspot.com/2005/08/japan-is-not-aaaa-farm-system-for-mlb.html

http://ussmariner.com/?p=3063

etc.

It doesn't help, when you keep having guys becoming free agents at the age of 28-29 and going "I want to spend my prime in America!"

[eustacio.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, seeing as it appears the 'stay for the good of the league' idea doesn't work, I guess it seems to me the league is going to have to figure out a way to make it's players WANT to stay with them.

Or they can bring in the 'You will not play for a competitor within 5 years of retiring from the NPB'. The players would hate it though and I'm not positive it'd stand up to significant challenge. But, as it stands, MLB is the ultimate 'best' destination of any pro baseball player, and players moving over to MLB isn't likely to stop.

So, ultimately? I agree, from the standpoint of the NPB and it's fans, it's a definite problem. The trick is finding a good way of solving it that doesn't tick the players off.

[the2belo.livejournal.com]

OMGWTFLOTTE

[dr4b]

http://marinerds.blogspot.com/2005/10/chi-wins.html

I know, seriously. I had my laptop on and the game playing over the net, but I kept falling asleep. The crowd noise woke me up in the 8th just in time to see the Marines surge ahead 3-2.

[the2belo.livejournal.com]

I was in Hong Kong at the time and unaware until I called home that night. I had instructed the wife to just not say anything if they lost, because I didn't want to hear about it. So guess what was the first thing she said... woohahahaah.