So the day begins with a 3:30am alarm. I ate a nice traditional Japanese energy meal consisting of rice balls with various things in the middle such as salmon/cheese, egg salad and tuna salad. My ride arrived on time at 4am and we were the first ones to the field to begin warmups.
As people begin to show up they say that I am the first foreigner to play Noheji morning baseball. So seeing as I was the Jackie Robinson of this league, I knew I had to be on my best behavior all the time and the people would stare at me funny. I do a pretty generic jog around the field and stretch out like usual and it's maybe 4:15, first pitch in 45 minutes. I am informed that I'll be the only pitcher today since the other two pitchers on the team couldn't make it. I don't want to throw too much, so after about 10 minutes of playing catch, I start getting closer and closer to my partner to signify that I'm about done.
But every time I got within 60 feet of him, he always said "Toe-masu...back!" and so I would go back and play more catch. This would repeat a few times, I would back up, throw a couple times, then get close and each time I would get closer, he would scream something in Japanese, motion for me to go back and say "Toe-masu...back!" After a good half hour of throwing and the game starting pretty soon, the catcher finally arrives and they have me throw in the bullpen with the catcher. Of course I had to pretend to be superman but my arm was already dead by this point.
Meanwhile, as I'm warming up in the bullpen, I notice some weird gathering of people in the infield. I assume it's a meeting or something, but then I see two people with bats in their hand standing about 10 feet behind home plate and separated by about 5 feet with no L screens or nets anywhere on the field. And then of course they start taking batting practice right there on the field, pitchers maybe 40 feet away not even paying attention when the other teams batter was hitting. Crazy. For those of you unfamiliar with baseball warmups, usually one team bats at a time with a pitcher behind a net that blocks any balls from hitting the pitcher (since during batting practice, the pitcher stands much closer to the batter than in a game) and it would be considered suicide to throw batting practice without such a net.
So anyhow, I've been throwing for 45 minutes straight and the game is about to start, we have maybe 5 minutes of downtime and so I get out my wallet to go buy something from the vending machine in our dugout. As I reach for my wallet, one of the other players was like "ooh Toe-masu...drink?" and I was like "hai" (yes) and he was like "ah, my treat." And so we go and stand in front of the vending machine.
I'm going to take a quick break from the story and teach you a little Japanese. ゴ is a character that is pronounced "go" and コ is pronounced "ko." The only difference of course is the little quotation marks above the "go" ゴ コ. マ is pronounced "ma" and ン is pronounced "n"
So back to the action, we're in front of the vending machine and there is a pretty crazy font that I haven't seen before on one of the drinks and I look at it and see マンコ。 He asks me what I want and I had no idea what "manko" was so I said "マンコ。。。おいしいですか？" (is Manko delicious?) and he gives me an absolute death stare and starts bursting out laughing. Turns out that there were the little apostrophes that I didn't see and so it was supposed to be "mango." マンゴ means "mango" and マンコ "manko" is about the most offensive thing you can possibly say, it is a slang word for "vagina" and basically translates to "pussy." So our conversation went like this:
"What would you like?"
"Is pussy delicious?"
The team really got a good laugh out of that one. So anyhow, the game starts and I'm on the mound for the top of the first. The opposing batter steps in who was easily their youngest player and probably about my age. He had the eyes of an angry coach Hoefs, the muscles of a young Coach Heiderscheit, the speed of a young Coach Perchinsky and the goatee of Coach Hucke (black instead of red, of course), he was a worthy challenge for my introduction to Japanese baseball. He worked the count full and I didn't want a lead off walk so I gave him a nice meatball down the middle and he slapped it to right for a base hit, there goes my dreams of a opening day no hitter. Luckily by about the 5th batter, there was nothing but 2008 Tom Corcoran's in the lineup (aka not anyone to be scared of), so it was pretty smooth sailing through the bottom of the lineup.
My first plate appearance was also worth noting. I was getting my game face on with my angry-must-hit-ball-hard look and ready to go when suddenly the pitcher yells out "ganbatte toe-masu!" basically "good luck Tom!" And then everyone on my team starts yelling "over the fence" and "ganbatte!" I don't really know how to respond so I just take off my helmet, bow and say "arigato gozaimasu!" (thank you). And so of course this throws me off and I'm smiling way too much to be a big scary hitter so I let the first two pitches go by right down the middle. After working the count full, I go after a high outside pitch and get it up middle and get my first hit and RBI in my first plate appearance. Good start.
Not too much else to note, other than the fact that as soon as we would get of the field and it was our turn to bat, at least 5 people on our team would light up cigarettes and start smoking right there in the dugout.
It ends up not being close, we win 14-0.
My final lines were:
Batting: 2-3 2B BB 4R 4 RBI 2SB
Pitching: 5 IP 7K 0BB 4H
Definitely a great time and well worth waking up at 3:30, can't wait for the next game!
So a quick summary of differences between Royals baseball and Japanese morning baseball.
- Royals are much much better.
- 5 people smoking in the dugout after each half inning.
- Opposing team yells "Go Toe-masu!" Every time I bat.
- Vending machine within arms reach of the dugouts.
- Change balls after each hit.
- They clean balls by running water over them to rub off the dirt.
- Everyone lines up and bows at the beginning and end of each game.
- Everyone plays catch after the game to cool down.
- Warmups consist of the pitcher throwing for 45 minutes straight.
- Both teams take batting practice on the field at the same time and no L screens are used.
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