Last October, Ellie and I headed out to Jingu Stadium to catch a Swallows game which was listed on my printed schedule. Upon arrival we found that the Swallows weren’t playing that day after all. Instead, we caught the end of a game between Keio University and Meiji University.

This giant banner was hanging on the side of the stadium showing the six teams that play against each other. I wanted to catch a Waseda game, but that never happened. Yuki Saito, Waseda’s star pitcher, is entering the Japanese draft instead of coming to the USA to play. It will be fun to watch his career, even if it is only from afar.

Posted on October 19th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: baseball, meiji jingu stadium, signs, waseda university. Comments: 1

The Japanese Pro Baseball league is supposed to be over by now, but there is still another week to go before the playoffs. Why? Games are being made up at the end of the season. Some teams are done. Others still have as many as five games to play. Weird, huh? That’s nothing. Here are some other strange things…

My team, the Seibu Lions, finished in second place even though they had two more wins than the Softbank Hawks who came in first. What? How can this be? They also had two more loses than the Hawks. The Hawks tied 5 times, while the Lions tied only once. OK, so that makes no sense to those only familiar with MLB.

Today’s picture is something else that will be quite odd for those who haven’t been to a game in Japan. Who is this guy and what is his purpose? I’ll give you a hint. He isn’t an usher or security guard. He isn’t even a cheerleader.

Posted on October 3rd, 2010 under Japan. Tags: baseball, seibu lions. Comments Off on Differences in Japanese Professional Baseball

I knew that Ichiro was big in Japan, but I didn’t realize just how big. His fame in his home country far exceeds that enjoyed by any American athlete in the USA. Not only do you see ads, like today’s photo, all over the place, but every hit, K, or ground out is broadcast on the video screens in the trains. The Mariners’ games are all televised in Japan and each at bat of Ichiro is broken down, reviewed, replayed, and analyzed. You don’t see as much detail for MVPs in the World Series on TV in the states.

Congratulations to Ichiro last week for breaking his own record and collecting 200 hits for the 10th consecutive season. Next year he can break Pete Rose’s record of most 200 hit seasons.

Posted on September 26th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: baseball, signs. Comments Off on Ichiro

As a follow up to yesterday’s entry, with the Giants in the lead after one inning, Tony Blanco comes to the plate for the Dragons. He takes three quick balls (ball 3 pictured above) so I set my camera down thinking he would be taking the fourth pitch.

Not so.

He swings at the 3-0 fastball down the middle and hits it out of the park.

Which means….

We won free Big Macs!

Except at that point I read the fine print to find out that the offer is good from August 6 until September 19, and we were leaving Japan on August 3. 🙁

I asked the lady in front of me if she liked Big Macs. She did, so I gave her our winning tickets.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a Big Mac, and it has been at least 20 years since I’ve tried a McDonald’s hamburger. Needless to say, I’m not that disappointed in missing out on this offer. 😉

Posted on September 14th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: baseball, food, people. Comments Off on Tony Blanco

My fifth Japanese baseball stadium to watch a game in was the Tokyo Dome. Ellie and I went to see the Tokyo Giants vs. the Chunichi Dragons. The Tigers had just taken over first place, and the Dragons were only a half game behind the Giants in third place so this game had some serious implications. Therefore, the Dragons cheering section in the outfield was sold out. We were stuck with some nose bleed seats on the third base side which meant no aerobics* for us, but we could still cheer against the Giants without standing out too much. Probably about 70% of our section were for the Dragons.

Ogasawara is shown above hitting a solo home run in the bottom of the first inning. It was bitter sweet as it meant the Giants took the lead, but it also meant that we were one Dragons’ home run away from winning free Big Macs.

My TZ10 in “sports mode” did OK considering the artificial lighting and the fact that we were about 12 miles from home plate.

* Japanese baseball fan aerobics… here is a demonstration provided later on the same evening by the aforementioned Dragons cheering section

Posted on September 13th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: baseball, people, video. Comments: 6