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Well, that's it. No more baseball for 5 months :(
Okay, okay, so I did stay up all night and listen to Game 4 of the Japan Series. See, on a whim I figured I'd check and see if Michael Westbay was broadcasting the game -- I'd listened to a few of his broadcasts earlier in the year. He runs japanesebaseball.com, and this year for fun decided to do "english broadcasts" of Japanese baseball games, basically him sitting there watching the game on TV and relaying what was going on. As the year went on it started sounding more and more like a "real" radio broadcast, which was sort of spiffy.
Anyway, not only was he broadcasting, but the people who usually help him out in the chat room with stats and transcribing the plays weren't around. So I said I'd help out for as long as I was awake. At first I was just saying things in jest, like "Gosh, now might not be the best time to point out that the 3-4-5 of Sheets-Kanemoto-Imaoka is hitting 4-for-34 so far in this series, would it? :)" but then he'd actually mention it on air, like "Deanna informs us that the 3-4-5 hitters are..." so after a while I started really getting into it, like when he was like "Wait, where did we get Hiyama from?" I looked up the boxscore to explain that blah blah when Fukuhara came in to pitch, they did a double switch putting him in batting 6th and putting Hamanaka in RF batting ninth, and then Williams replaced him, and thus Hiyama was pinch-hitting. Etc. I mean, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you weren't used to reading Japanese box scores, would you be able to figure it out from something like this or this?
I digress. The upshot is, I was having such fun being a stathead and chatting with Westbay, a few others, and one poor disenchanted Tigers fan who had tickets to Game 5 at Koshien and was getting worried he wouldn't get to go (eventually he just headed out to an izakaya to get plastered), and god forbid, the Marines were actually WINNING the game (Seung-Yeop Lee hit a 2-run homer in the 2nd inning and drove in another run in the 4th, and the Tigers never managed to get more than 2 runs). So I ended up sticking around for the whole bloody game. It actually became a nailbiter when Imaoka and Hiyama hit those two RBI singles in the 6th -- and Okada FINALLY FUCKING BROUGHT OUT JFK (er, "JFK" is the bullpen setup-closer tandem of J eff (williams), F ujikawa, and K ubota, and they had been in the first three games for all of one inning when Fujikawa came out) -- but the Tigers didn't manage any more runs off the Marines' bullpen, nor did the Marines manage any off the Tigers' vaunted tandem. Masa Kobayashi almost imploded in the ninth like he did in PL Playoff 2-stage game 3... walked Kataoka, and Kuji pinch-ran, and Yano tried to sac bunt him ahead, but Imae saved it with a sliding catch to get Yano's bunt and doubled off Kuji at first. Kobayashi struck out Fujimoto after that and the Marines were Japan Series champions. Westbay-san put his microphone up to the TV after that so we could hear all the MVP speeches and whatnot. I'd said that Imae was going to be MVP, and I was right. Woo.
I emailed Jack to explain what happened and went to sleep around 6am.
I got up around 11:30am and went to work. We had a knowledge transfer meeting that I had to be at. I can't escape the tech writing thing altogether, y'know.
After work I came home, played some PP because it was Looterati Squid Squad Night and watched the World Series Game 4 and ate dinner... then went over to the gym to play volleyball.
I decided to stick a tape in the VCR and tape the game before I left, though. I didn't want to miss the White Sox sweeping. (Kind of like how the second thing I said in the chatroom was "I don't want to miss the Marines sweeping!") And a damn good thing I did!
I played volleyball for 2.5 hours. It was good exercise. There's this guy who always is weightlifting on Wednesdays and he always seems to come by and WATCH us play but never plays. Well, tonight I found out why -- it's actually because he's really GOOD at volleyball and doesn't want to overpower anyone. He was pretty nice though. I played pretty well when I was next to him in the rotation because I didn't want to look bad. And I played pretty poorly when I got stuck next to the bossy guy because I was nervous. So go figure. We had 15 people so we split up into three groups of 5 and played rally scoring to 15 points, but eventually people decided they didn't like sitting out a whole game, and a few people left, too.
Then I came home and watched the last hour of the game. Wooo, go White Sox. I'm disappointed that the postgame show was so boring though, at least compared to last year's. I guess the Red Sox were just a bunch of weirdoes... I still remember Pedro running by and stealing the World Series trophy, and Manny Ramirez ignoring the interviewers and flashing his fingers at everyone who'd walk by, and someone coming up and dumping a beer on Theo's head while he was talking to the camera. This time... eh. And Jermaine Dye as MVP? I was really hoping for Shoeless Joe from Jefferson City, MO. At least the Fox people played themes from the musical Chicago in the background of stuff.
Anyway, uh, yay. I'm doing some laundry right now because I am out of socks, and then I will sleep and all.
By the way, I've decided I'm going to take some Japanese classes at a community college in the spring, to unrust myself (I swear, I'm great at reading baseball box scores and articles, but that's IT these days) on conversation. And then I *AM* going back to Japan sometime during baseball season. It's really important to me, and if I'm going to take this "I can do anything if I put my mind to it" attitude from now on, I might as well start there. I also have another fun idea or two for things to do in the offseason, but they'd probly be better tailored to another post some other time. Yeehaw.
So, yeah, my posts should be getting back to boring and short again soon.
Anyway, not only was he broadcasting, but the people who usually help him out in the chat room with stats and transcribing the plays weren't around. So I said I'd help out for as long as I was awake. At first I was just saying things in jest, like "Gosh, now might not be the best time to point out that the 3-4-5 of Sheets-Kanemoto-Imaoka is hitting 4-for-34 so far in this series, would it? :)" but then he'd actually mention it on air, like "Deanna informs us that the 3-4-5 hitters are..." so after a while I started really getting into it, like when he was like "Wait, where did we get Hiyama from?" I looked up the boxscore to explain that blah blah when Fukuhara came in to pitch, they did a double switch putting him in batting 6th and putting Hamanaka in RF batting ninth, and then Williams replaced him, and thus Hiyama was pinch-hitting. Etc. I mean, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you weren't used to reading Japanese box scores, would you be able to figure it out from something like this or this?
I digress. The upshot is, I was having such fun being a stathead and chatting with Westbay, a few others, and one poor disenchanted Tigers fan who had tickets to Game 5 at Koshien and was getting worried he wouldn't get to go (eventually he just headed out to an izakaya to get plastered), and god forbid, the Marines were actually WINNING the game (Seung-Yeop Lee hit a 2-run homer in the 2nd inning and drove in another run in the 4th, and the Tigers never managed to get more than 2 runs). So I ended up sticking around for the whole bloody game. It actually became a nailbiter when Imaoka and Hiyama hit those two RBI singles in the 6th -- and Okada FINALLY FUCKING BROUGHT OUT JFK (er, "JFK" is the bullpen setup-closer tandem of J eff (williams), F ujikawa, and K ubota, and they had been in the first three games for all of one inning when Fujikawa came out) -- but the Tigers didn't manage any more runs off the Marines' bullpen, nor did the Marines manage any off the Tigers' vaunted tandem. Masa Kobayashi almost imploded in the ninth like he did in PL Playoff 2-stage game 3... walked Kataoka, and Kuji pinch-ran, and Yano tried to sac bunt him ahead, but Imae saved it with a sliding catch to get Yano's bunt and doubled off Kuji at first. Kobayashi struck out Fujimoto after that and the Marines were Japan Series champions. Westbay-san put his microphone up to the TV after that so we could hear all the MVP speeches and whatnot. I'd said that Imae was going to be MVP, and I was right. Woo.
I emailed Jack to explain what happened and went to sleep around 6am.
I got up around 11:30am and went to work. We had a knowledge transfer meeting that I had to be at. I can't escape the tech writing thing altogether, y'know.
After work I came home, played some PP because it was Looterati Squid Squad Night and watched the World Series Game 4 and ate dinner... then went over to the gym to play volleyball.
I decided to stick a tape in the VCR and tape the game before I left, though. I didn't want to miss the White Sox sweeping. (Kind of like how the second thing I said in the chatroom was "I don't want to miss the Marines sweeping!") And a damn good thing I did!
I played volleyball for 2.5 hours. It was good exercise. There's this guy who always is weightlifting on Wednesdays and he always seems to come by and WATCH us play but never plays. Well, tonight I found out why -- it's actually because he's really GOOD at volleyball and doesn't want to overpower anyone. He was pretty nice though. I played pretty well when I was next to him in the rotation because I didn't want to look bad. And I played pretty poorly when I got stuck next to the bossy guy because I was nervous. So go figure. We had 15 people so we split up into three groups of 5 and played rally scoring to 15 points, but eventually people decided they didn't like sitting out a whole game, and a few people left, too.
Then I came home and watched the last hour of the game. Wooo, go White Sox. I'm disappointed that the postgame show was so boring though, at least compared to last year's. I guess the Red Sox were just a bunch of weirdoes... I still remember Pedro running by and stealing the World Series trophy, and Manny Ramirez ignoring the interviewers and flashing his fingers at everyone who'd walk by, and someone coming up and dumping a beer on Theo's head while he was talking to the camera. This time... eh. And Jermaine Dye as MVP? I was really hoping for Shoeless Joe from Jefferson City, MO. At least the Fox people played themes from the musical Chicago in the background of stuff.
Anyway, uh, yay. I'm doing some laundry right now because I am out of socks, and then I will sleep and all.
By the way, I've decided I'm going to take some Japanese classes at a community college in the spring, to unrust myself (I swear, I'm great at reading baseball box scores and articles, but that's IT these days) on conversation. And then I *AM* going back to Japan sometime during baseball season. It's really important to me, and if I'm going to take this "I can do anything if I put my mind to it" attitude from now on, I might as well start there. I also have another fun idea or two for things to do in the offseason, but they'd probly be better tailored to another post some other time. Yeehaw.
So, yeah, my posts should be getting back to boring and short again soon.
no subject
Sox over Astros wasn't exactly a hard call, but I didn't realized that the Central League in Japan sucked that much. First three games double digit points for the Marines? Amazing.
no subject
Or maybe the Marines just got super-lucky.
no subject
1) I got to see Lotte live during an exhibition game at the Nagoya Dome in the spring. If only I knew. If only I knew!
2) As part of his MVP award, Imae was given a brand-new Toyota Harrier Hybrid, the same make and model as the one I'm about to take delivery of in about 24 hours (sans hybridity). So I feel kind of connected, or something.
Although his was white. I hate white cars. Black with inpenetrable window tint is the way to go. Screw white cars.