July 26th, 2004
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Around the world in baseball
Baseball, regardless of which country you live in, has its good moments and its bad.
The good
Going to a Baystars-Giants game, getting the last available seats in right field, nearly catching three whoppers, your very own Kazuhiro Sasaki armband and Baystars thunder sticks. Mikiko and I went to see the infamous Yomiuri Giants for the first time Sunday. The only available seats were in smack in the center of Baystar territory. It didn’t really matter as I have emotional ties to half of the teams in the Central League, though I think the orange and red of my Waseda University shirt made me suspect. I made up for it with my never-more-than-five-feet-away-from-me Seahawks hat, and some well timed clapping. The game was pretty good; the home team came out strong, almost threw it all away, and won it on a walkoff two run homer in the eleventh. It almost wasn’t though, in a game that saw eleven homeruns and fourteen pitchers (but no Sasaki thanks to Scott Mullen’s arrogant insistence that he could finish the fourth after loading the bases and giving up a homer to the Giants’ Tuffy Rhodes). All in all, it was a good game. Exciting on-field antics, tasty, reasonably priced refreshments, and it didn’t run past my bedtime.
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Hossiezo (left) is the street-smart one (obviously) of the Baystars four mascots.
The bad
On a day that should have been glorious, with a four-run lead and Ichiro taking three hits, the Mariners as usual imploded both ways at once. A 4-0 game became a 5-14 game, thanks to 14 walks by the Seattle bullpen (Oakland managed all of their runs on one less hit and a single homer). The Mariners’ entire season can be summed up with the last play in the top of the 7th: bases loaded, Ichiro on third, one out… and then the momentum comes to a whiplash-inducing halt as Raul Ibanez grounds right up the middle into a double play. The cook at the curry restaurant where I catch my weekly game shared my sentiments; in the past three weeks I’ve gone from knowing the entire roster backwards and forwards to barely being able to put together the outfield. Things are definitely changing, though so far it’s only been the jersey numbers attached to the suckiness.
“Who the hell are these guys, anyway?”
