Toshiba 2 vs JR Kyushu 0 - Japan Industrial Leagues Intercity Championship - September 7, 2010

After a weekend of watching way too long baseball games in Hiroshima, I decided to return to the Tokyo Dome for the Industrial League's Intercity Championship. I had been to a few of the qualifying games back in June as well as last year's title tilt, and the games are always fast paced and excellent quality.

The Tournament and Teams

As a quick refresher, the Tournament pits 32 teams from all over the country in single knockout form. Most of these are company teams although sometimes an amateur club team makes it. All games are played at the Tokyo Dome over 12 days, with most days having 3 games. The players are generally in their 20s and played university ball although some come straight from high school. Some go on to be drafted by the NPB teams while Jun Tazawa went straight to the Boston Red Sox after his team won the championship two years ago.

Each region has several qualifying tournaments to decide who participates. Once the teams are set, they can receive players on loan from other teams in the same region that didn't make the final cut. I find this a bit peculiar as it seems like stacking the deck for the bigger regions, which have an advantage with more teams from which to choose temporary players.

The Intercity tournament is also famous for the incredible cheering sections. Each team has a dedicated group of employees who double as the cheerleaders and band. They lead the other employees and fans in raucous cheering throughout the game, and there are awards given for those groups that can get the most fans or show the most spirit, among others. These groups are far more enjoyable than the cheering sections that populate the pro games here as they have more variety between the different groups, based on the company or industry.

This year's finalists were Toshiba from Kawasaki, a city in Kanagawa prefecture immediately south of Tokyo. They are traditionally a strong team who have taken 6 titles overall, the last just 3 years ago. Kawasaki is also a strong city in this tournament, having crowned 11 champions since 1973.

JR Kyushu (the Kyushu branch of Japan Rail) was making their 13th appearance in the competition. They won the 1936 title under a different name but that was their only championship.

In Japan, you sit on the same side of the field as the team you are supporting. This leads to some interesting imbalances. Since Kawasaki is so close to Tokyo, Toshiba is able to fill their half of the Dome with their employees. There are 42,000 seats in the entire stadium so Toshiba fans (i.e. employees) probably took 20,000. But JR Kyushu comes from far-away Kyushu, the southernmost island that is several hours away by train. So they had about 3 sections of fans. A bit one-sided but there was plenty of room on their side of the field, so that is where I sat. (There are several sections in the infield seating that are reserved for those who are just baseball fans which cost 2,400 yen. There are also some balcony seats on the second level for 1,500 yen.)

Both cheering sections were loud and proud, but I preferred the JR Kyushu group as they had a shinkansen balloon (above) and were dressed as train conductors during part of the game.

The Game

Both teams had given up just 9 runs in their 4 victories, while Toshiba had scored 20 compared to JR Kyushu with 18. So a low scoring game was expected and that's what we got.

Nonetheless, Toshiba started quickly in the bottom half of the first off Masamitsu Hamano. Rookie Ryoichi Adachi led off with a liner that diving third baseman Yuki Tadakuma couldn't quite corral as it bounced out of his glove for an infield hit. Adachi was sacrificed to second by Masaya Iseki, and scored (below) on a single by Shota Fujiwara (above). Quickly 1-0 Toshiba.

They added another in the 3rd when Adachi again led off with a single, went to second on an Iseki groundout, then to third on a Fujiwara groundout before scoring on a clutch single from Keiji Ikebe, who was on loan from JX-ENEOS, another Kawasaki team that did not make the tournament.

After that, the story was Toshiba starter Takashi Fujita (above). He was essentially unhittable, throwing a combination of breaking stuff and fastballs that kept the JR Kyushu hitters constantly off balance. He allowed only 3 singles (that's Noriaki Utamura getting one below) and no runner even made it to second. Even then, he wasn't overpowering, barely hitting 140 km/h (87mph) on the gun and only notching 3 strikeouts. But he only needed 107 pitches over the 9 innings as the JR Kyushu batters were unable to make solid contact. A great pitching performance to take the title and give Fujita the tournament's MVP award (given to the top player on the championship team).

Adachi went 3/4 and scored both runs; he was one of three players to win the rookie award for the tournament.

Hamano also threw a complete game but was the hard-luck loser. He yielded just 7 hits and 2 walks with 6 Ks but was bested by a superior pitcher. He was awarded the MVP for the runners up though.

The game time was a terrific 2:04 (an extremely fast rate of 1.89 PPM). An excellent display of pitching and defense by both teams made this a hugely enjoyable evening.

After the game, they had the closing ceremonies where awards were given out and speeches made. A rather anti-climatic ending to the tournament.

Toshiba celebrates while JR Kyushu hang their heads in shame below

Next Up

The World Judo Championships are in Tokyo and I'm going to check out a day of it tomorrow. Check back Friday for a post on that.

Best,

Sean

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Tokyo Crosstown Doubleheader - June 24, 2010

Yesterday was a perfect day for baseball. I had already arranged to meet a friend for the evenings Giants-Swallows game at Jingu so I decided to make it a doubleheader by biking down to Ota Stadium to watch a Tokyo Industrial League tournament game in the afternoon.

There were two games scheduled, but with the World Cup games going on overnight here (yay Japan!), mornings are not an option, so I only made it for the afternoon game featuring JR East and Sega Sammy.

Ota Stadium

Ota Stadium is located in the southern part of Tokyo, close to Haneda airport. The closest train station is Ryutsu Center on the monorail, just two stops from the airport, but the stadium is located next to a long bike trail that takes you from Tennozu Isle all the way to Jonanjima. I used to use the trail here regularly and had passed this stadium hundreds of times but had yet to venture inside.

It is used for a variety of baseball games, and like most of these smaller stadiums, has no outfield seats. The seats extend down the lines a fair bit, and there is a small canopy shading the seats directly behind the plate. The field is a bright green that is almost blinding when you first get in. The dimensions are similar to other stadiums at 325 feet down the lines and 400 to center. You can walk around the top of the seating deck which provides nice views of the surrounding area, including Oi Racecourse, a nearby horse racing track.

Next door is a smaller stadium that looks to be a soccer field and had players practicing lacrosse, which I found interesting. There's not much more than that. It's not a place that is easy to get to or that has regularly scheduled games, so I'm glad I got to finally catch a game here (and up the stadium total to 304).

You can see a plane on approach just to the top left of the scoreboard

The Game

The game featured two teams who had won their first round matches. I missed the first out so decided not to keep score (which turned out to be a fortuitous choice as I had to leave early to make it to the nightcap). JR East broke open the scoring in the 3rd when Akira Matsumoto (shown above) cranked a 3-run shot to left. Sega Sammy got one back in the bottom half on a Takuya Jukuura RBI single (shown below).

The game progressed rather slowly for a few innings until JR East added a run on a great hustle play in the 7th. With a man on first, the batter attempted a sacrifice. The pitcher fielded it and threw wildly to first. The ball bounced into shallow right and the runner rounded third, heading for home. He just beat the throw and that made it 5-1. The bunter also scored on a single later in the frame and that was the final, 6-1.

Not a very exciting game, lots of pitching changes and Sega Sammy must have left 10 men on base. With the win, JR East faces Tokyo Gas next Monday at Jingu with the winner going on to the top tournament. Sega Sammy played a loser's bracket game today and were eliminated.

Tolerant Umpires

The most interesting incident in today's game involved the Sega Sammy manager arguing a call. He felt like his fielder had been interfered with and came out to physically show the umpire. He bumped the ump not once but twice to demonstrate what he felt had transpired on the field. Yet he wasn't tossed, the umpire just explained how he saw it while the manager steamed. Generally in Japan, umpires are much more tolerant and managers or players rarely get ejected.

There's a famous incident where American umpire Mike DiMuro, who was here as part of an experiment to improve umpiring standards in the NPB in 1997, ejected a player for arguing balls and strikes. He was surrounded by the players and pushed, no doubt causing him great consternation. That just doesn't happen in the States, where umpires are respected to some extent and have much more power. No punishment was given to any of the players and DiMuro subsequently resigned, ending the experiment.

Giants beat the Swallows

After biking back home and cleaning up, I headed over to Jingu to meet my friend Greg. He had never been to the stadium before despite living here for over 10 years. I told him I would bring him to a game, and we decided to check out the Yomiuri Giants. Weather was perfect and plenty of tickets were available at the box office. Given that the Swallows are in last, a full 14 games behind the league-leading Giants, this might not be surprising.

We ended up sitting in the second row just beyond first base. I didn't take many pictures as the screen was bothersome and the angle wasn't that good as you can see above. As for the game, the Giants won 4-2 behind two homers from reigning MVP and one-time Swallow Alex Ramirez and a two-run shot from Hisayoshi Chono. Chono is an interesting case - he was drafted twice previously but only wanted to play for the Giants. So he opted to play industrial ball for two years, leading Honda to the title last season. Finally, Yomiuri drafted him and he's been playing all year, although hitting only .245 with 9 homers. Of course, homer number 9 gave the Giants the winning runs yesterday. Ugh. Still, it takes guts to stick with your favourite team, even if it makes you a frontrunner.

It was nice to be back in Jingu to watch the Swallows but the game itself was thoroughly unenjoyable, taking 3:07 to reach its inevitable conclusion.

Next Up

That's pretty much it for Japanese baseball this year, at least in Tokyo. There's no stadium here that I still need to see and the teams I cheer for are horrible (as seems to be the case in every sport).

I'm off to Minneapolis and Iowa in two weeks and will be enjoying the World Cup in the meantime. Look for a post on that in the next couple of days and everyone please cheer on Japan!

Best,

Sean

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Intercity Baseball Tournament Qualifying - June 17, 2010

I've been talking about checking out the Japanese Industrial League tournaments around town and when Thursday turned out to be hot and sunny, I decided to venture back up to Omiya to watch a couple of games in the South Kanto playoff.

The Tournament

The industrial leagues are run by the Japanese Amateur Baseball Association (JABA) and every year they have a nationwide competition known as the Intercity Baseball Tournament. It takes place at the Tokyo Dome in late August. Last year I saw the championship game between Honda and Toyota, but wanted to see some of the preliminary action.

It's a two-step process to reach the main tournament. Each prefecture in the country has an initial qualifying round with winners advancing to a regional tournament. The South Kanto region consists of the prefectures around Tokyo and has 8 teams fighting for 3 spots in the Intercity tournament.

The format is double or triple-elimination to find the 3 winners. Coincidentally, there were 3 industrial league teams and 5 club teams, so it seemed like the tournament wasn't that meaningful as the industrial leaguers are essentially professional while the club squads are semi-pro. Mismatches are therefore common; a couple of early scores were 10-0 and 11-0.

The Games

The first game started at 10, but I didn't arrive until after 11 as Omiya is nearly an hour away. I visited there last year for a Futures game, so won't rehash the ballpark.

When I arrived the game was in the 3rd inning. Honda, last year's champion, was taking on a semi-pro team called Kazusa Magic and already had a 3-0 lead. Although the Magic kept it close, they had no pitching depth and gave up 6 runs in the last two innings for a 10-1 loss. Neither team was eliminated though, Honda advanced to the loser's final while the Magic get a third chance in the double-loser's final (or whatever you call the bracket for teams that have lost twice).

The next game featured two industrial teams: JFE Higashinihon (JFE Steel, shown above in conference) representing Chiba and Nippon Tsuun (Nippon Express) from Saitama. The winner would advance directly to the main tournament while the loser would play Honda the next day with that winner then advancing.

There was one story here: Nippon Express starter, Kazuhisa Makita (below), a sidearm junkballer who never topped 80 on the gun but kept the JFE hitters swinging at air all day long. He pitched a complete game shutout, giving up just a broken-bat single and two walks while striking out 11. He got all the support he needed with a Kenji Suzuki 2-run homer in the second inning. Makita even made a great defensive play, taking a popped bunt and firing to first for a double play, erasing the runner who had singled.

Nippon Express added 7 runs in a 6th inning when the JFE bullpen fell apart after a blown 3rd strike call, but with Makita tossing, it was not really necessary. The final was 9-0 and when the game ended, the Nippon Express cheering section threw streamers (below) while the players ran onto the field to celebrate. Given that they have made the tournament 10 years in a row, I think the celebrations were a bit overdone.

I tried to get a picture of the team tossing their manager in the air, but they did it too close to the fence which was also covered in streamers.

Notes

Honda shutout JFE this morning and are in the big tournament again while JFE take on the Magic tomorrow with that winner also advancing.

Update: The JFE /Magic game was actually Sunday and the Magic won 2-1! That's somewhat of an upset and they advanced to the tournament for the first time in 7 years. JFE gets one more chance next month in a playoff game to be determined.

At the end of the 5th inning, there is a lengthy break while the field is cleaned up. What's interesting is that is the players who do the work. Each team takes several rakes and walk over the infield, which is entirely dirt. Only the mound and batters box are done by the grounds crew.

These teams have bands that play all the time and it drives me nuts after a while. I appreciate their enthusiasm but after an hour of hearing the same tunes over and over and over, it becomes dull. The Nippon Express band gets particular mention for including speakers in their set-up; in such a small park that's overkill.

The Tokyo qualifying tournament is held next week and I'll probably head out to see one more day of action, mainly because it is held at a stadium I've yet to see. So check back next week for a post on those games.

Best,

Sean

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MLB Draft and College Ball

MLB Draft

Today was the first day of the MLB first-year player draft. I watched the first 41 picks on-line, accompanied by the Baseball America draft preview issue. It was quite interesting as teams strayed from the expected order rather early and several top prospects weren't even drafted in the first round. The studio announcers were quite detailed in their analysis, but much of what they said was taken almost verbatim from Baseball America.

Now the fun begins as teams try to sign their selections and assign them to minor league teams. The short season leagues get underway in a couple of weeks and some of today's picks will be sent to those leagues. For those in the Montreal area who were big Delino DeShields fans, his son Delino DeShields Jr. was drafted by Houston 8th overall. If the Astros can sign him, he may eventually wind up in the Tri-City Valley Cats (Troy, NY) in the NY-Penn League. Worth a road trip if he does.

Following up on the game I saw at UCLA in late April, Arizona State's Seth Blair was taken by St. Louis 46th overall. His scouting report is similar to the game I saw: command issues leading to high pitch counts but gets the job done (he threw 113 pitches in 6.2 innings but yielded only one run). I'll see if he signs and where he ends up in the minors.

I mentioned that there were a lot of unexpected early picks; this has to do with signability concerns. Kids coming out of high school can demand huge bonuses and if they don't get what they are looking for, they just head off to college and get drafted a couple of years later. It amazes me that a kid who has just a few hundred high school at bats can demand a multi-million dollar signing bonus. Baseball history is littered with "can't-miss" prospects who missed. It's possible that such a high payout at such a young age affects the motivation of the player, but teams have no choice if they want to be competitive. Last season, MLB clubs spent almost $163 million on signing bonuses, a staggering amount. Remember that's for players that have never seen a major league pitch.

In spite of all this money, I am a big fan of how much baseball information is available now. When I was a kid, we had no idea what was going on behind the scenes in sports, players just magically appeared one season. Now we can follow a player from when he is a high school phenom if not earlier. This certainly makes baseball, particularly the minor leagues, much more interesting and accessible. But with over 1500 players to be drafted, it's impossible to keep track of them all. So I'll follow the Jays first few picks and perhaps Blair and DeShields, just to see what happens over the next few years. I'll keep you posted here, but for those with a deeper interest in the draft, check out the draft page at MLB.com.

College World Series

Many of the players drafted were in action as the regionals of the College World Series were held this past weekend. The NCAA has a great bracket page for those who wish to follow more closely. Both UCLA and Arizona State won their 4-team regionals, so they are just one step away from perhaps meeting again in the CWS in Omaha. In the best-of-3 super-regionals, UCLA will play Cal State Fullerton, who boast Christian Colon (4th overall to Kansas City) as their shortstop. If you are in Los Angeles, try to get to Jackie Robinson Stadium this coming weekend for what should be some exciting super-regional action. Arizona State hosts Arkansas and 3B Zack Cox (26th overall to St. Louis) in Tempe and ESPN2 will be showing the second game of the series live. Wish I could have stayed there an extra couple of weeks though.

For those in northern Florida, going back and forth between Tallahassee and Gainesville would enable you to catch all 4 weekend games in those two super-regionals as the Tallahassee games are afternoon affairs while Gainesville will put on evening encounters. I'm sure a few scouts will be making that roadtrip.

Next Up

It's been a quiet couple of weeks since I got back from the States. Just too much going on in the mornings here, but that should end shortly. In the meantime, there are a few events that merit some attention.

Today was the first day of the Japanese version of the CWS. Known as the All-Japan University Baseball Championship, it's a single-elimination tournament that takes place over 6 days. There are 26 teams entered (one from each university baseball federation in Japan), including Tokyo Big 6 champion Keio. Games are held at the Tokyo Dome and Jingu, and I plan to go see some of them later this week.

I also mentioned the industrial league tournaments being held in the area. I've been following on-line, and right now they are not that interesting. Generally, the early rounds pit semi-pro teams that play for companies such as Honda against amateur club teams, so the games are not competitive. Some of the scores in the Tokyo tournament were 16-0, 15-2, 15-1, and 31-2. That's not a compelling reason to go watch them at this point; I'll wait until late June when the top 8 teams face off closer to my home.

I've also noticed that soccer's J2 League has a game in Komazawa Stadium this coming weekend. I used to play ball hockey next to the stadium, but never had a chance to get inside, so I'll be visiting there on Saturday afternoon. As usual, check back for posts on all these events.

Best,

Sean

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