SB Nation User Blog: jrbh

Greetings from Tokyo, Part Three

jrbh — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:32:17 -0000

OK, imagine you’re in St. Petersburg, Florida in mid-September. You’re at Tropicana Field for Tampa Bay and the Royals, both about 45 out. There’s hardly a soul in the house, not even that loudmouth who sits behind home plate. When you yell "Let’s Go Devil Rays," you can hear your voice echo off the outfield wall. ("Devil Rays" because you’re not having any of this new name, the one that makes it sound like Ray Romano bought the naming rights to the team.)

That was roughly the atmosphere in the Tokyo Dome tonight. Despite word that the game was a sellout, there were a couple of thousand empty seats (there weren’t any last night), and the fans who were here wouldn’t have disturbed the cats at a Japanese cemetery.

The local fans sat on their hands. The Red Sox fans never got a chance to get anything going. And there just weren’t enough A’s fans in attendance to make a dent in the place even as we responded enthusiastically to the redemption of Emil Brown and the dominating if slightly troubling performance from Rich Harden.

That being said, it was still a great day in Tokyo and at the ballpark, and not just because the A’s got that first W and ensured that however good the Red Sox are this year, hey, at least they won’t win it wire-to-wire. (Toronto or the Yankees and Tampa Bay or Baltimore will be a half game ahead of the Sox at the end of play Monday.)

The weather was sunny and in the high 60s during the day, with a soft, narcotic breeze. The cherry blossoms are out with a vengeance on practically every street and in every park. This time of year, Tokyo must be the most beautiful city in the world, and the people who live here are taking obvious pleasure in it.

The good feelings baseball fans from all over the world brought into yesterday’s game – can you believe we’re here? How great is this? – carried over into tonight.

A whole bunch of A’s fans I sat with last night in section 20 – $170 a shot in the first deck right over what turned out to be the Boston dugout – did the same thing I did and went cheap for game two – $70 a ticket to sit in section six at the bottom of the second deck, again over the Boston dugout.

It was a reunion of a bunch of people who’d gotten to know each other the night before, and there was plenty of beer, high fives and e-mail addresses exchanged. Maybe even one romance got started, if I’m right about what was going on between an A’s fan and a Sox fan sitting near me.

The early A’s lead, which never appeared in jeopardy, made for a relaxed cruise through the game, and we were as raucous as we could be, to the appreciation of the Japanese fans sitting near us, but not the stadium PA crew, who played insipid organ tapes everytime we started chanting, "Let’s Go Oakland." It was like being shushed by a librarian with a really, really loud sound system.

About Harden, because I know your heart skipped a beat when I used the words "Harden" and "troubling" in the same sentence. You went to mlb.com this morning and saw Harden’s line – 6 IP, 3 H, 9 Ks – and you figured that at least for now, all is right in Hardenland. So what’s the problem? Maybe nothing, but Rich topped out at 155 km/h on the stadium gun. That’s 96 to you and me. He only got that high once. (A first inning ball to Youkilis way up out of the strike zone.) Most of his fastballs were in the low to mid 90s, and he threw more breaking pitches than I can ever remember seeing him throw.

It was completely unlike him. I know worrying about Harden is an occupational hazard of being an A’s fan, and it could just be that he shifted his pattern because the Red Sox were sitting on his fastball and his breaking stuff was working, and then there's that it’s so early in the season the season hasn’t really started yet, so maybe he wasn’t as ready as he’d like to be or will be in a week or two.

I don’t know. In any case, I found myself holding back a little as I watched him dispatch the Sox. It’s going to take a while before I can root for him wholeheartedly, and I definitely want to see if his approach tonight was a one-time thing or represents some shift in what he can do and, therefore, what we can hope for from him.

Other notes from tonight’s game, and a couple of ones left over from last night:

-- The only t-shirts commemorating the game went for $38 a pop at the Tokyo Dome – if you could get one. They were sold out before very long on Tuesday. Aaron Salles (note the correct spelling tonight; he’s the Humboldt Stater in the pic yesterday with Billy and the Wolff) scored one and literally had people come up to him tonight trying to buy the shirt off his back.

-- The Tokyo Dome turns out to have a good selection of sushi and sashimi to go with it’s yakitori; while aisles behind the stands look the same as the ones in crappy hockey arenas (or the Metrodome), the food is first rate, maybe the best I’ve ever eaten at a ballpark.

-- The stadium PA played Sweet Caroline before the bottom of the eighth each night. Yup, felt just like being in Oakland.

-- Dr. Emil was named MVP of the game and received a check for one million yen. He planned to use the check to launch a campaign of emil world domination until it was pointed out to him that one million yen is only $10,000, and that he got $40,000 just for getting on the plane to come to Tokyo, and that baseball is a multi-billion dollar business. So never mind.

-- Rich Harden got 500,000 yen as the recipient of the Fighting Spirit Award.

-- This is why people love to play with Big Papi, besides all the HR and RBI: Red Sox down 2-0 in the fifth last night, runners on first and second, nobody out, Big Papi steps to the plate and practically before he settles into the box, he pops out foul to Hannahan. Manny follows by being Manny, whacking a double into the left-field corner to tie the game. First guy out of the dugout to greet Pedroia and Youkilis, who’d just scored: Big Papi.

-- I don’t know if the Red Sox have a budget line for acquiring mid-season talent, but if they don’t, they better get one. Their bullpen is Papelbon and Okajima and a bunch of guys who’d have trouble making the Kansas City Royals.

-- The opening ceremonies tonight again involved introductions of both teams, but this time the pre-game stage show was way better: hundreds of samarai and a woman painting on a huge roll of paper laid out between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. After the game, the A’s and the Sox lined up on the baselines again and Francona and Geren each made a short speech thanking Japan and all the fans who showed up for the games.

-- A lot was made of the bandbox nature of the Tokyo Dome, but I didn't see any cheapies out there. The home runs by Ellis, Brown and Ramirez were crushed, and the ones by Hannahan and Moss would have been out at either Fenway or the Coliseum.

-- Jack Cust walked in his only appearance tonight. In six plate appearances in the series, he never put the ball in play.

-- Travis Buck went 0 for the Far East.

-- On the other hand, Keith Foulke and Alan Embree between them have faced fourteen hitters, given up only two singles and induced two double plays.

-- I want to thank everyone for the kinds words about what I’ve been writing from Tokyo, and in particular blez and baseballgirl for making it possible.

For the pics, first, from around Tokyo yesterday and today, then from the ballpark:

via i28.tinypic.com

The Kaneiji Temple, near Ueno Park, built in 1638.

via i28.tinypic.com

A rabbit from the rabbit-themed Tsuki shrine in Urawa, north of Tokyo.

via i26.tinypic.com

via i29.tinypic.com

A gothic Lolita girl checks for messages at Harajuku, a neighborhood and shopping district in Tokyo that thrives on the gothic Lolita -- it's exactly what it sounds like -- and Cosplay subcultures.

via i25.tinypic.com

I took this on the subway today for a couple of reasons: first, two of the women are wearing surgical masks. They're a familiar sight in Tokyo: One in fifteen or twenty people you see on the street is wearing them, either because of allergies, pollution, or to politely avoid infecting other people if they're sick. (The explanation varies depending on who you talk to.)

Second, we're on the subway, and they're checking their messages: it seems like everyone in Tokyo has a spiffy phone, and they all work everywhere on the subway, even ten stories underground. People are asked to voluntarily not make or receive calls on the subway, and turn off their ringers, and amazingly, they do. I'm guessing this kind of system would not work in the US.

via i26.tinypic.com

The opening extravaganza at tonight's game gets under way. Eventually, a woman will paint that square of paper between the pitcher's mound and home plate.

via i25.tinypic.com

Mark Mangassarian, who has posted on AN as "mango" or "mango315" (he can't remember which), stopped in Tokyo to catch tonight's game. He's on his way to China.

via i30.tinypic.com

You can put it on the board.... Hai! A's win!

via i27.tinypic.com

By popular demand, a shot of the Japanese baseball stadium beer distribution system, this one in the Tokyo Dome.

via i28.tinypic.com

The author with two cats at Yanaka Cemetary.

Tokyo Diary, Part Two

jrbh — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:10:29 -0000

By now you know that the A’s were killed by the B’s tonight – two miscues each in the field by Barton and Buck and a tenth-inning baserunning disaster by Emil Brown that was hard to believe. And you know that we’re going to have to temporarily rename Huston Street Desolation Row.

But hey, it was Opening Night in Tokyo, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m here to tell you it was a blast despite the sad and unnecessary outcome.

For me, it was a blast before I even walked into the ballpark: when you walk out of the Korakuen station – in a train that is on time, of course, and deposits you directly across the street from the stadium – you have a serious what the hell is that moment. It’s the Thunder Dolphin roller coaster, adjacent to the stadium, the fifth highest coaster in the world, and one of the most creative: it’s route includes a showstopping drop that would give any respectable acrophobic night sweats, and the coaster line runs through the middle of a Ferris wheel and a hole in an office building. It’s completely freaky.

A few steps takes you to a nice plaza outside the main entrance to the stadium, which tonight was filled by two separate, yet equally important groups: the police who are very, very self-important, and the press who feed on them. Both turned out in mass quantities. There were also a whole mess of fans, who, when not being interviewed by CNN, or NHK, or Canal Plus, or the BBC, were doing the strangers-stopping-strangers-just-to-shake-their-hand thing. Everyone wanted to know how you got there and why, and where you got your allegiance to the A’s or the Sox or baseball. It was as happy a crowd as you will ever see.

I talked to a bunch of people before the game, including Kaoruko Yamoka and her family, who are Japanese and took a trip to San Francisco last year, went to see the A’s because they happened to be at home, and became die-hard A’s fans overnight. They could hardly believe their luck to be seeing them play in Tokyo.

Then there was Aaron Sales, a Humboldt State student on his way back from the States to Shanghai, where he works as a cartographer. "I asked my airline how long my layover could be in Tokyo, and they said ‘As long as you want,’ so here I am." Sales is a serious China guy and had a lot to say about what’s going on there, none of which I can repeat and none of which is very optimistic. (After the game, he e-mailed me a picture you have to see to believe. It’s below.)

And it turned out that once I found my seats, I was sitting next to an old AN contributor, Matt McCracken ("roscoeparrish"), now a high school junior in San Mateo, precociously socially adept and charming. Big Obama supporter.

I ran into other A’s and Sox fans from Hawai’i, Osaka, New England and Taiwan in town for the game. "I used to think that flying five hours from San Francisco to New York was a big deal," the guy sitting behind me during the game told me. "Now I live in Singapore and I travel seven hours just for a good weekend. I’m just here for the game. I’m flying home tomorrow."

The Tokyo Dome itself – the PR flacks for the place like to call it "The Big Egg" – is not a particularly exciting venue, reminiscent, really, of the Metrodome, not exactly a crackling recommendation for A’s fans, or at least A’s fans before The Zito Masterpiece.

And the place was filled with an odd crowd: lots of Japanese of course, but with large pockets of visiting Red Sox fans, and a few narrow pockets of A’s fans. It turns out that the Red Sox ticket sale made things practically impossible for their fans to get tix – just like at Fenway Park – so a lot of them found a way into the A’s sale and were seated among A’s fans. Bizarrely – if you’ve seen the behavior of Sox fans at the Coliseum – the ones who did were apologetic and good sports about the whole thing.

The Japanese fans were a whole ‘nother thing: lots of businessmen – tickets were expensive; my seats between home and third went for $170 each before the dollar died – and a lot of sophisticated fans who weren’t ready to give it up for the American players. The wonderful bleacher creatures in my earlier post about the Saitama Seibu game were completely absent from this one.

The Japanese fans did provide the oddest moment of the game, though.

It’s not quite a cliché, and I’ve been known to utter it myself: every single time you go to a game, you see something you’ve never seen before.

It was true tonight in Tokyo: the crowd favorite, by far, was a middle reliever. The place exploded when Hidecki Okajima came into the game, and he was the easy winner in the all-important flashbulb index.

(Big Papi was a distant second, and Manny Ramirez, after his third and fourth RBI, an even more distant third. No A’s registered on the flashbulb index at all, except of course for Country Joe’s first pitch of the ballgame.

(Daiseke Matsusaka got a surprisingly lukewarm reception, and his utter inability to control the strike zone quieted whatever support he had. His fastball, which topped out at 91 on the stadium gun, didn’t win any converts. It may be that the Red Sox have committed a Pavano-esque blunder with Dice-K; after a mediocre ’07 shattered his mystique, I’m looking at a guy with an average fastball and indifferent command of a couple of breaking pitches. I don’t see how that’s worth nine figures.)

As far as the A’s go, Bobby Crosby is still lunging, Mark Ellis looked as sure as ever, it’s hard not to think that the A’s OF is a complete mess, Alan Embree looked exactly the same as last year, Jack Hannahan remains a wonderful story, and many of the pitches that Huston Street threw were fastballs and sliders that drifted directly into the Happy Zone and the concomitant bad results were not particularly the result of good Boston hitting. You have to wonder if this is going to be an ongoing problem.

Other notes on the game:

-- A lot of the usual suspects were there tonight, including Stomper and Lew Wolff, who was accompanied by a police escort and absent for long periods from his first row dugout seat.

-- The yakitori: again, the way to go. The Japanese have much to teach us about ballpark food.

-- Watching Keith Foulke pitch was fascinating. I tracked the speed of his pitches, and this is what I got:

Kevin Youkilis, 86, 82, 80, 86 (that’s the one he whacked to the warning track in straightaway center.)

David Ortiz, 75, 81, 81, 87, 75, 80, 78, then Foulke shook off Suzuki, threw a fastball, 86, which Ortiz whacked the hell out of, but on a line to Brown in LF for an out.

Manny Ramirez, 79, 81, 79, 79, then Foulke again shook off Suzuki, threw a fastball, 86, but this time Ramirez takes it for strike three.

All three times he tried to finish off guys with a fastball. Twice, he came within a hair of getting taken deep, the other time he polished off a disbelieving Manny.

-- The place was stone sold out, and except for a few people leaving after the ninth, and a few more after the Red Sox scored two in the tenth, it stayed that way for the entire 3:43 and five lead changes of the game.

-- Cherry blossom season started early this year; the walk in Ueno Park was packed with delighted Tokyoites. During this time of year, it’s certainly one of the most beautiful urban parks in the world.

via i25.tinypic.com

The scene in Ueno Park, in Central Tokyo, early in the afternoon before the game.

via i29.tinypic.com

The view of the Tokyo Dome as you come out of the subway.

via i29.tinypic.com

The Thunder Dolphin 'coaster, hard by the Dome.

via i30.tinypic.com

More Thunder Dolphin.

via i26.tinypic.com

Kaoruko Yamaoka (in the blue A's cap) on the plaza outside the Tokyo Dome.

via i30.tinypic.com

Humboldt-stater Aaron Salles with two unidentified A's fans in the Tokyo Dome Opening Night.

via i32.tinypic.com

Inside the Tokyo Dome as the Red Sox take batting practice.

via i27.tinypic.com

Matt McCracken, San Mateo resident and the former "roscoeparrish" on AN, discusses his predilections for Far Eastern travel.

via i32.tinypic.com

A jet-lagged Stomper trudges through the infield as MLB and Tokyo Dome drones prepare the pre-game extravaganza, which had no known relation to baseball. Part of the extravaganza was a phalanx of hot girls in short, short, short hotpants, which Kevin Youkilis spent the entire show ogling while pretending to jog back and forth in front of the Sox dugout.

via i31.tinypic.com

The free schwag handed out to all fans in atttendance at the Tokyo Dome tonight. Almost makes the $1,000 flights from the Bay Area to Japan worth it, don't you think?

Greetings from Tokyo

jrbh — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:34:46 -0000

Greetings, AN, from a contributor in AN’s prehistoric past, and from Tokyo, where I’m here to see the A’s and the Sox – I’ll be posting after the games on Tuesday and Wednesday – and even a little Japanese baseball.

Speaking of which, does this sound familiar: A team dominates in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Wins two different sets of three straight championships. Plays in the shadow of the more popular, better funded Giants. A series of near misses in the early part of the Oughts gives way to futility and serious questions about the desire of ownership to leverage income into payroll, in particular when it comes to established, front-line pitching.

And: the team has been given a brand new "regional" name.

I refer, of course, to the Saitama Seibu Lions, who play in one of Japan’s two major leagues, the Pacific. The Japanese season opened last Thursday and I took advantage of that to head out on Sunday afternoon to Tokorozawa in the western ‘burbs of Tokyo to see the Lions – the A’s of Japan! – play at their home Seibu Dome against the Orix Buffaloes.

The only serious way to get to the ballgame – to get anywhere in and around Tokyo – is the incomprehensibly efficient train system. I’ve been here a week already, taken trains dozens of times, I’ve never had to wait more than three minutes for a train, and I still haven’t seen one that’s even a minute late, and that includes the long-distance shinkansen. (Those are the bullet trains, the ones that go over 200 MPH and travel routes hundreds of miles long.)

When you get to the Seibu Dome, owned by Seibu Railway, home of the Lions, owned by Seibu Railway, it’s literally across the street from the last stop on the Ikebukoro commuter rail line, owned by Seibu Railway.

The Dome is a story in itself. The Lions had a large one-deck outdoor ballpark, reminiscent of Kauffman Stadium, set into a hill, a bit like Dodger Stadium, but decided in the late ‘90s to go state-of-the-art in Japanese baseball. That meant a dome.

Instead of blowing up the outdoor stadium and starting from scratch, Seibu built a dome on top of the existing ballpark, leaving a gap of between fifty and a hundred feet, depending on where you are in the stadium, between the rim of the stadium and the bottom of the new dome. A dome with a breeze, a little like Safeco in Seattle. It’s striking, more so later in the season, I’m guessing, when the trees ringing the stadium have leaves.

Anyway, the game:

I wanted to see it because I love the baseball, and seeing how others worship in the Church of Baseball is always informative – sometimes as much about your own church as it is about theirs. I’ll never forget going to see Los Aguilas de Mexicali play a couple of years ago. I ended up sitting next to the player wives and girlfriends. I don’t speak Spanish, but it didn’t matter. They were exactly the same women you see sitting behind the visitor’s dugout at the Coliseum. In Japan, it was the umpires; if you’d told me that the umpiring crew was visiting from the US, I would have believed you without hesitation. Their gestures, stances, demeanor – all of it exactly the same.

The game on the field is awfully similar to American baseball – perhaps more like the top colleges and the minors than MLB, for reasons I’ll get into later – but when you come to the fans, it’s like you’re watching a different sport altogether, in a way that might be familiar to A’s fans.

Imagine the Coliseum bleachers in the days before Mt. Davis. Now imagine that the drums and flags guys are there. But more of them. A lot more. In fact, everyone in the left field bleachers is a drums and flags guy, all in green and gold. And it’s not just drums and flags. There are guys with bullhorns leading cheers, whistles and a horn section made up of fans which has worked out arrangements to original songs for various players and occasions. Which every single person in the bleachers knows the words to and sings along to.

That was the scene at the Seibu Dome for an otherwise nondescript early-season game between the flagging Lions and the Orix Buffaloes, who are the Tampa Bay of Japan.

That’s not even the end of it, though: the Buffaloes, who are based in Osaka – think Oakland and Anaheim in terms of travel between Tokorozawa and Osaka – filled about a quarter of the rest of the bleachers with their own drums and flag guys, horn section and cheerleaders. The Buffaloes guys and the Lions guys cheered only when their boys were at bat and brought an excitement and spontaneity to the game you just don’t see in any American ballpark for anything but the most intense post-season games.

This was despite the fact that the game only drew 12,632, virtually all of them in the bleachers or in cheaper, general admission seats on the Seibu side of the field, between first base and the right field foul pole. The high dollar seats behind home plate were sparsely populated and the entire third base side of the field, where Orix supporters were encouraged to sit, was virtually deserted.

As to the play on the field, the thing that is most striking is the way the players look: they’re gifted athletes, fast, great hand-eye coordination, all the things you need to be a professional baseball player, but they look like ordinary people, not the hulks we’ve been seeing in MLB. (Although I’m not here to talk about the past.)

It makes the game different, if a little less spectacular. Most of the players in both line-ups were quick, which meant a profusion of big leads by baserunners – Japanese players love them some secondary leads – hit-and-runs and bunts. Orix CF Tomotaka Sakaguchi may be one of the fastest players I’ve ever seen. He hit a routine, line-drive, one-hop double to the wall in right-center. Seibu CF Kenta Matsusaka played the ball nicely, made a strong throw towards the infield, the relay was strong and spot on and – what the hell? – Sakaguchi was standing on third base. Standing. It was Ichiro-like. Or Chuck Carr-like, if you remember him.

Made the difference in the game, too, a 2-1 Orix win.

That’s not to say the game is without power. There were two solo home runs and a couple of deep fly balls, but pitchers were obviously not spending every AB wondering if the back-up catcher was going to take them into the upper deck in CF. (That’s a shoutout to you, Sal Fasano.)

Glovework was awfully slick, too, and obviously a priority, as you’d expect in a league where the ball is sprayed around a lot. Both teams took full infield before the game – when’s the last time you saw that in MLB? – and there are stars all over my scorebook, the ones I use to note a special fielding play. In particular, I don’t think it’d be an exaggeration to say that the Seibu DP combo of Hiroyuki Nakajima at short and Yasuyuki Kataoka at second is better than Crosby and Ellis (and I love Ellis).

Then there’s the pitching. Remember a few years back, before every team had someone, or even several guys who could bring it in the high 90s, when everybody was wondering what happened to the fastball? It was like that. The fastest pitch anyone threw in this game, by Seibu reliever Chikara Onodera, topped out at 145 km/h – 90 MPH. Saitama Seibu starter Matt Kinney – after bouncing around between the Twins, Brewers and Royals, he spent all of last year in the Giants’ system in Fresno, then signed with Seibu this off-season – topped out at 86, and most of his fastballs were 83, 84. One of the Orix relievers threw a pitch that was 61.

(Kinney, by the way, was making his first start in Japan and it might turn out that he’s one of those guys who has trouble making the mental adjustment required in the move from the U.S. to Japan. He was wild high and inside – and only high and inside – for all six innings he worked, he hit two Orix batters and narrowly missed three more. His body language was putrid.)

Other ballpark notes:

-- The scoreboard at the Seibu Dome is monstrous, stretching all the way from left-center to right-center. It is completely unhelpful to those of us keeping score who don’t speak Japanese; except for the team nicknames, there wasn’t a word of English up there, or even the Roman letter-version of the player names. I got lucky; a nice guy who saw the blank left side of my scorebook offered to fill it in for me. Of course, he had "Kablera" batting fifth for Orix; turns out to be "Cabrera," but our "l" and "r" correspond with only one phoneme in Japanese, which accounts for a lot of that kind of confusion.

-- The stadium organist knows the obscure country weeper "Once A Day," recently covered to great effect by Van Morrison. I still can’t believe she played it.

-- Hiram Bocachica can’t break into the starting line-up for Saitama Seibu, either.

-- Not only is beer vended in the stands at Japanese games, but so is whiskey, and all of it – at this game anyway – by cute young Japanese girls. Beers are 700 yen, $7 US.

-- The seventh-inning stretch was a trip. Everyone in the stadium spent the top of the seventh blowing up long, blue balloons, which they didn’t tie off; during the stretch, they sang a song, then at the end, everyone in the stadium let their balloons shoot up into the air and deflate.

-- The Bo Diddley beat – not a Japanese fan clapping skill.

-- The Japanese league has a reputation for abusing pitcher arms. I don’t know if it’s true, but I know this: Japanese pitchers who are in the game start playing catch in front of their dugout when their team is batting with two outs, and Seibu had six different guys throwing in the pen at different points, two per inning from pretty much the fourth inning on. Only two got into the game. (The new Orix manager, Terry Collins, by contrast warmed up only two pitchers, and brought both of them into the game in short order.)

-- The Seibu mascot is the famous Japanese anime character Kimba the White Lion, which brings back cartoon memories to those of us of a certain age.

-- The food at the Seibu Dome is great, especially the yakitori. You can get hot dogs if you insist, but I looked at them carefully and definitely wouldn’t recommend them.

-- The Japanese press has reported that the six billion yen ($51 million then; $60 million with the dollar’s recent collapse) the Lions received for "posting rights" to Daisuke Matsusaka will be enough to pay all of the team’s player salaries for at least two years and still net some extra cash for Seibu. Lions fans are bitter, the Japan Times reports, that none of the money is going into luring star players to Seibu.

-- Earlier in the week, I visited Hiroshima. The Hiroshima Carp play their games in an outdoor stadium across the street from the A-Bomb Dome, the shattered remnants of a building which was directly underneath the detonation point of the first nuclear weapon ever used against people. The dome and it’s accompanying museum are an incredibly moving and powerful experience, not to be missed, and the stadium where the Carp play is one of the few outdoor parks in the Japanese League.

via i25.tinypic.com

The Seibu Dome, as viewed from the subway exit.

via i32.tinypic.com

The Seibu Dome, looking across the outfield.

via i31.tinypic.com

An Asahi girl pours a fan a cold one. Whiskey is available too. Note the knee sox: every girl in Japan under 25 is wearing them.

via i30.tinypic.com

During the seventh-inning stretch...

via i30.tinypic.com

...and the end of the seventh-inning stretch.

via i25.tinypic.com

A view of the Seibu Dome infield, from right field.

via i25.tinypic.com

More cheering from Lions bleacher die-hards.

via i31.tinypic.com

A shot of the author.

What Is a Good Manager, And Is Ken Macha One?

jrbh — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:46:53 -0000

There are a lot of different kinds of good managers. I'd break them down into five categories.

(1) The Baker: the kind who know how to work with and relate to players, who provide unconditional support and empathy, Great Communicator types;

(2) The Martin: the strategic genius, the guy who knows how to run a game, put together a line-up, get the right match-up, and get in the other team's head.

(3) The Torre/Cox: the authority figure who commands loyalty from a great coach and measured respect from the players, who is professional, expects his players to be the same way, and deals with it quickly if they're not.

(4) The Piniella: He's intense, he demands all-out effort all the time, and he's intolerant of anything short of that goal.

(5) The Manual: the genial, hey-no-pressure-here-let's-win-and-go-pound-some-Budweiser guy.

Different kinds work with different teams.

What kind is Ken Macha?

The Baker: Well, Macha clearly isn't this kind. His tenure as manager is replete with public failures of communication, of players assigned roles which are then ignored, of players asking reporters what Macha wants because they aren't told and can't figure it out. No one comes to play in Oakland and gives an interview saying, "Hey, a bunch of teams offered me about the same amount of money, but how could I pass up the chance to play for Ken Macha?"

The Martin: Leaving aside the notion of Jason Kendall batting third, which would have Martin rolling over in his grave and Earl Weaver laughing derisively, Macha doesn't apparently believe in platooning, is virtually void in in-game strategizing (the A's don't much H&R, bunt, squeeze or steal), and hasn't managed to put together line-ups that look elegant or "right" in any particular way. Macha has also failed to use previously overlooked players in roles that allow them to shine, practically a hallmark of the really good strategic manager. Nor has he shown any particular ability at putting bullpen guys into roles that allow them to succeed, or using his bullpen to get good match-ups.

The Torre/Cox: By all accounts, Rick Peterson is one of the best pitching coaches in baseball, or at least one of the guys in that conversation. (Leo Mazzone, Mel Stottlemyre and Ray Miller are some other names you'd throw in there.) Peterson is a profound asset to any organization. By most accounts, Macha couldn't work with him and was a proximate cause of Peterson leaving to go work with Art Howe and the Mets. What about the rest of the Torre/Cox profile: do his players look at Macha and say, "Hey this guy is worth trusting. He knows more about the game than I do, he understands players, and he'll get it to work out"? The answer to that is pretty clear: Macha is not the decisionmaker in terms of how the A's play (that would be Beane, of course), and he's not the guy players talk about when they talk about management helping them out. (Right or wrong, that would be Ron Washington.)

The Piniella: It wouldn't be fair to say that Macha doesn't care, but it would be more than fair to say he doesn't care in any observable way. He doesn't stand up for or to his players and his teams rarely seems focused or intense, as per last September. The most obvious way this manifests itself is when a blown call goes against the A's: Macha kind of wanders out, says a few words, looking defeated from the get-go, then kind of wanders back to the dugout. Moreover, the A's never seem to improve in certain areas that are open to improvement through practice and managerial will: baserunning, cut-off throws, etc.

The Manual: It's a well-established practice in the sporting world to bring in a laid-back coach after you have someone who's too intense; the shift from a Joseph Stalin to a Jerry Garcia can let a thousand talents bloom. (That's what the Phillies are counting on this year.) These managers are often derided as caretakers, but you try keeping laid back with a sense of humor and a smile on your face while doing your job in public for six months in a row with no days off, getting on a plane every three to seven days, and everywhere you go there's a guy sticking a microphone in your face asking you in so many words why you're such an idiot. Art Howe was though of as a Manual-type; Macha was brought in to tighten the ship. From the clubhouse - still considered a frat party with uniforms - to the on-field demeanor - still wrapped too tight when it counts - Macha hasn't appeared to have any kind of effect at all, or at least certainly not a Manual-type effect.

He's not one of those five guys, that's for sure. Rather, he appears to be his own type: he's cheap, available and takes orders without complaint from Billy Beane. He has no leverage in the relationship with Beane at all.

I guess I blame Beane more than Macha for this; I know I wouldn't turn down the job of A's manager under those conditions. Hardly anyone would. But I can't think of any reason why a serious baseball team would want Macha as it's manager, and I think it's time that the evaluation of Beane's strengths and weaknesses begin to include his apparent inability to work with managers who come in as their own men, with their own way of doing things and an established record of success. With the exception of getting a good first baseman, or another good starting pitcher, I can't think of anything the A's could do to improve themselves more than firing Macha and bringing in a manager who has an idea of the direction in which he wants to take the team.

Unsettling Events in the Bronx

jrbh — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:31:32 -0000

I've been watching the Yanks-Sox game on Extra Innings, and it's a very odd and unsettling day up there in New York.

Terry Francona isn't at the game; he was hospitalized with chest pains before it started. No word yet on his condition.

Derek Jeter was hit in the head with a pitch, stayed in the game to run the bases, then was removed. There has been no word on his condition since then either, even though quite a bit of time has passed.

In all this, Mariano Rivera has blown his second straight save; yesterday, it was just Varitek yanking a HR on him, but today, he fell apart: four runs on three singles and three walks, blowing a 3-2 lead and costing the Yankees the game.

A's 24th in Ticket Prices

jrbh — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:20:10 -0000

AP's annual survey of ticket prices turns up the information that the A's are 24th out of the the 30 teams in ticket cost, with an average ticket cost of $16.49.

First -- this will not knock your socks off, so to speak -- is Boston, at $40.77. That's average ticket cost.

Second is the Cubs -- $28.49, over twelve dollars a ticket behind Boston -- and third is Philadelphia. The Yankees are fourth, Seattle is fifth, and the Giants are tenth ($21.60; I'm surprised they're that low).

The team with the cheapest tix in the majors is the Washington Nationals, at $10.82, edging out the 29th-ranked Florida Marlins. Both of these teams may be benefiting from including vast numbers of cheap, third deck seats that no one will ever sit in. For that matter, the A's may be benefiting from that, too.

'05 Predictions

jrbh — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:08:14 -0000

Herewith, my fearless predictions for the '05 season.

AL MVP -- Vladimer Guerrero (again)
AL Cy Young -- Randy Johnson (he got robbed in the NL last year)
AL Rookie-of-the-year -- Huston Street

NL MVP -- Phil Nevin
NL Cy Young -- Oliver Perez
NL Rookie-of-the-year -- Conor Jackson

AL Playoffs: LA, Clev., NY, Bos (WC)
NL Playoffs: SD, Chi., Atl, NY (WC)
AL Champion: NY
NL Champion: Atl
World Champion: Atl

AL West

Los Angeles
Seattle
Oakland
Texas

The Angels simply have the best rotation in the division, especially with sleeper Paul Byrd. And they still have Vlad. Seattle will whack this year, and get good enough pitching. The A's rotation will fall apart by June, and Texas's rotation will seek it's own level, and they don't have quite the bats they usually have, either.

AL Central

Cleveland
Detroit
Minnesota
Chicago
Kansas City

Cleveland has the best pitching in the division, unless Jeremy Bonderman pulls a Santana, and a line-up that's just plain nasty. Detroit, with Ordonez and a maturing Bonderman, will dominate the division after an intermediate step this year. Santana can't possibly have as good a year as he did last year, and Radke will fall apart. No power in the Dome, either. Chicago is Head Case Central. Forget about 'em, and KC has the worst pitching in the majors.

AL East

New York
Boston
Toronto
Baltimore
Tampa Bay

The Yankees probably will only have three or four of their hired guns starters work out, but that's more than last year, and with their hitting, that's enough. If ARod has a career year, they're simply unstoppable at the plate. Boston is the second best-hitting team in the division, the league, and the majors. Their pitching is suspect through and through, except for Foulke. Toronto wins the second division part of the AL East with a decent year from Halladay, Baltimore will spend the summer losing 10-9 games, and Tampa Bay is the worst team in baseball.

NL West

San Diego
Los Angeles
Arizona
San Francisco
Colorado

The Padres are completely under-rated; Greene is what we wish Bobby Crosby was, and the heart of both their line-up and their pitching rotation is profoundly tough. Playing in a radical pitcher's park is a pennant-winning idea, too. The Dodgers are imperfectly pursuing Moneyball-with-Money, but they're solid enough to contend. Arizona has put together the most improved team in baseball, enough to finish at least .500. May call-up Conor Jackson will be NL rookie-of-the-year. Without Bonds, the Giants are doomed to geriatric hell, with Schmidt the only bright spot. The Rockies are and always will be a basket case in Denver.

NL Central

Chicago
Houston
St. Louis
Milwaukee
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh

Even with Kerry Woods problematic yet again, the Cubs have the best pitching in the NL, and here's a prediction: more runs without Sammy than with him. Houston won't get the same year from Roger Clemens, but they'll get all kinds of help from Pettitte and Carlos Hernandez that they didn't get last year. The Cards are going to win the division if Mulder wins 20 games and finish third if he wins 10. Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are also-rans yet again, with Pittsburgh the Tampa Bay of the NL, Cincy utterly lacking arms, and Milwaukee steadily improving, maybe even enough to break into the upper echelon.

NL East

Atlanta
New York
Florida
Philadelphia
Washington

The Braves are going to win the World Series this year, with a rotation that's five deep -- Horacio Ramirez, the #5, would be #1 on half the teams in baseball -- and hitting that's more than enough in the NL. The Mets, with Pedro and Beltran, can make a solid run at the Wild Card, and Florida is scary. This is the make-or-break year for Burnett, Beckett and Willis; this team could flounder at .500 or be brilliant. The Phillies don't have the arms to compete in this division, and play in a radical hitter's ballpark that's going to wear out their pitching staff, and the Nationals are the anti-Moneyball.

2005 A's TV Schedule

jrbh — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:29:58 -0000

The A's have announced their 2005 TV schedule, and while some teams (Boston, San Francisco) are televising all of their games, and others are coming damn close (The The Angels Angels are going to go with 158 this year), the A's will have 130 telecasts spread out over six channels.

I counted up using the monthly calendar on the official A's site and came up with the following figures:

Fox Sports Net: 64
KICU: 49
Fox Sports Net Plus: 11
Fox (KTVU): 3
ESPN: 2
ESPN2: 1

Of the 32 games that aren't being televised, many of them are weekday afternoon games. No series of three or more games is being completely skipped, although the first two-game series in Texas in April isn't going to be on TV.

I called DirecTV and they tell me that MLB is continuing it's policy of blacking out opposing telecasts of A's games in the Extra Inning package even if the A's aren't going to telecast the game themself.

Noose Tightens on Barry

jrbh — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:44:46 -0000

The Chronicle reports today that a woman named Kimberly Bell testified before the BALCO grand jury last week that she was involved with Bonds for 9 years and that he told her that he used steroids:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/20/MNGJKBS9QM1.DTL

She apparently has tapes, receipts, and provided intimate details of Bonds's physical reaction to steroids: acne all over his back "and other symptoms consistent with steroid use." He also became quick-tempered and aggressive, she says.

She is planning to write a book, according to the Chronicle, and the article has other sleazy little details: for example, Bonds refused to spend any of his salary on a new home, but instead would lock himself in a room for hours signing baseballs that he would sell to finance the home. He made a point of saying that he took steroids orally, rather than by injection. He also demanded that the woman sign a confidentiality agreement after they broke up -- good thinking, Barry! -- and paid for her company before they broke up.

"Jose Canseco, Hero"

jrbh — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:47:43 -0000

Michael Chabon, the great Berkeley writer, and a man who still managed, despite his considerable talents, to marry up,

has a piece on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times today about Canseco. He thinks Canseco is a heroic rogue. It's a beautifully written and thoughtful piece, and I recommend it to everyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/opinion/18chabon.html?

P.S.: does anyone knkow how to make links come up as clickable links?