asian baseball tour 2009/2010: japan!

last weekend i took a quick trip back to japan to see my friends steve and caitlyn before they move back to states and also complete a quad-fecta of baseball in asia. as fans of the blog know, i've seen professional games in china, korea and taiwan, and so i wanted to tick off japan while i still had a free place to stay there. durrell was originally going to join but visa issues grounded him in beijing.

fukuoka's yahoo! japan dome

the game was great, and felt the most like a professional, big league game of the four countries. the soft bank hawks (fukuoka, the home team, yay!) beat the chiba marines (hiss!) in a very exciting game that included a number of home runs and one spectacular collision about five meters in front of home plate. the hawks' runner clobbered the catcher, who had only just caught the ball, sending the ball flying. the runner lay on the ground for a second, climbed up and stumbled a few steps to home before collapsing on the plate. the catcher stayed down for a while.

one interesting tradition took place in lieu of the seventh inning stretch. in the middle of the seventh inning (or after the seventh inning, i don't remember) everybody in the crowd blew up these rather phallic-shaped balloons, sang a song together, then released them into the air. a little plastic whistle was attached to the end of each balloon so that they all buzzed terrifically when let go. they also all fell on everybody's heads after. this was repeated after the end of the game as well, but with white balloons instead of yellow. i guess white stands for victory.

getting ready to blow!

weeeeee!

all in all a good time. i think of all the games i saw, the korean game was the most fun, because it had the best balance between major league professionalism and local quirkiness in the form of gimbop, giant beers and dried squid. japan felt a bit too clean and professional (the stadium was called the Yahoo! Japan Dome, for instance). the two chinese games were a blast but the enjoyment was mostly fuelled by friends and alcohol, as opposed to the quality of the game itself. taiwan was quiet and peaceful but not very exciting. now that i think about it, each of these games are pretty representative of my experiences in their host countries. maybe i should write a story about it. i'm sure i could get the nytimes to publish that crap.