The Yokohama DeNA Baystars are central league champions

I mean, wow. That was a lot. That was really completely a lot. I don’t even know where to start with this but I think I just experienced my greatest baseball moment as a fan in my life.

About the game. The climax series in Japan is designed so the first place team has every advantage. When I say every advantage, I mean there is a lack of fairness that you never see in western baseball. First of all, the top three teams in each league advance and Yokohama was solidly in third. Were they a better team than that? I am sure that they are and were but, they were streaky and we’re prone to long dips of depressiveness. I think it’s a natural for Yokohama which seems to be a very overbuilt city, like all of Japan, but still provincial both how people see them and how they see themselves. So, in order to be where they are today, they had to play the tigers, another of their serious rivals who have them nailed and they took them two nothing.

This Giants series though is weird. First of all, the Giants were given a win right at the beginning. It was a seven game series but not really. It’s a six game series and apparently, that’s how they do it. The Giants needed to win three and the Oklahoma four in order to advance. And then they get to play every single game at home in the Tokyo Dome. Not only are all the games played in Tokyo but Yokohama would have to be the visiting team in every one of them! They didn’t even flip it for fairness. The Giants were the home team every game and they got a free win!

So be it. The stars took the first three games. I wouldn’t say easily but just perfectly. They had won five in a row. I don’t remember how many to close the season but they were probably the hottest team in Japan at this moment. I was going into my day thinking that it was all going to be over on Saturday.

That’s not how Yokohama does anything.

How did they lose the next game? It was close. It was nobody’s particular fault. Everybody was playing well and, you know, the Giants are a good team. It would be okay and we would win the next day. We didn’t.

I didn’t have access to direct video. I had been able to watch the two games against the tigers without problem. I thought for sure these games would be on. They weren’t. So, I went to go see my friend who does scoreboard radio commentary on YouTube. Let me see if I can get this right.

Patton Senshadn is the name that is attached to this channel. I Don’t actually know this and at the moment I am writing these words, he is still talking. He is a young man and I think he has been doing this for 5 years. He puts a scoreboard up so you can watch the at bat and the line score and then says what’s going on while watching a broadcast. This for people who don’t have access like me.

The translation of the name of this channel is sweet potato vine. Enjoy.

There are several folks on YouTube doing this. I found I liked this guy the most because his graphics had the most English in them at first. But then I got used to his voice. I got used to listening very closely to hear what was happening. I don’t know all the Japanese words but there are plenty of English tags and after a while, you learn to listen to specific things to find out what happened. No, we are not watching baseball and I cannot get any nuance out of this. But I can track a game in real time and sometimes that has to be enough.

Shugo Maki, The absolute God level second base star got the base hit. The Giants were dormant for two and a half games and then suddenly they were playing again. At least even. In the 9th inning, Mori Takashi led off with a hit. Tatsuhiro Shibata came into pinch hit and hit what had to be the go-ahead single. And amazing play by Short stop Hayato Sakamoto Who tried to get the lead runner going into third but was late. Despite this, the return throat of first was just on time and now there was two outs and a man on third. There was nowhere else to go. Get a hit and be a hero. Two outs, man on third and Maki strokes a single through the infield and Yokohama needs three outs to go to the championship.

Morihara for the 9th. Three up three down. The Stars are champions.

Here is one more view from a couple of the guys who brought cameras with them at the first moment of victory and everybody met at the mound.

So there’s more baseball coming up and I’m thrilled about it. I want to say one thing about this that I just realized was maybe the biggest part of this. Baseball was given to me by my dad because he was good at it as a kid. As an adult, he supported football more than baseball and I think he lost interest in the game because he was more interested in working and making money and being who he was in the world. So I kind of got pointed at baseball but not really coached and then all during the time when I should have been diving into it, I was doing other things.

And I’m not saying anything about myself. I’m a fan. I played. I have played and I played well but I didn’t rise and it wasn’t my profession. But I love baseball and I love watching baseball.

What I realize though is that this is the first time I ever personally chose a team to follow. All of the other games that I went to or watched or paid attention to, I was connected to that team because of my own personal geography or where I was born or where I was living now. Things from my childhood. It seems that baseball was handed to me up until I got interested in the Yokohama command. I got into them because of Trevor Bauer. I was following his story and he pitched for them last year. And they were pretty good last year too but they lost it in Hiroshima and it was a difficult and it hurt. This year, I decided that this was the only team I was going to follow and I wasn’t even going to pay much attention to MLB.

Okay, I won’t lie. Aaron judge was worth attention this year. Ohtani was also history class this year with his 50-50 year. But Ramirez in Cleveland was also good and Soto in New York was also awesome. And there were new pitchers who threw ridiculously fast and, you know, American baseball went on. And I did check him. I was interested to see who was doing well and what was going on. But not really.

To my eyes, there is a huge textural difference between watching American baseball and Japanese baseball. Americans are fat. Americans are self-important. American baseball is about power. It is a true fact that playing baseball without home runs would be a very lean game. It would probably be similar to watch as European football at the highest level where you never get more than a goal or two or three a game. That is what the game would be like as pure small ball.

The issue is how much The Americans work towards the power game. Sure, you can barrel up and hit the ball in the seats and guys who can do that are worth more than people who can’t. You have to string together a lot of doubles and triples to be as effective as a guy who can put the ball in the seats 25 or 35 times a year. But there’s something tiring about the endless power bravado. I am tired of watching 100 mile an hour pitchers. I’m tired of looking at pituitary cases. I’m tired of looking at these artificially stimulated beings who are attempting to be comic book superheroes. I wrote a lot about this last year. Baseball is supposed to be a pastoral game.

There are some American thumpers in Japan. Tyler Austin had a career year this year for the stars. They were more afraid of him today than any other hitter and it was an earned reputation. But basically, he is more of a Will Clark player then he is Mark McGuire. He’s not a giant. He’s a solid intense guy and he can hit and he has that uppercut and he can barrel up. But he runs well and fields his position. He’s a ball player not a monster.

And this is where I was all year. What else can I say? They all wear their uniforms well. The guys in Japan they don’t really go that far out of their way to call attention to themselves. It’s not about egotism or authority or power. It seems everybody just wants to play a great game. It also shows itself because they don’t really fight. Maybe you know that or maybe you don’t. Sure, they complain. They show their emotions. But they smile. Bad luck for me. No tantrums. No self-importance. No me more than you and definitely no screaming at each other. Polite. Do you understand what I’m telling you? They play a good hard solid polite game of baseball. Please explain to me how you would not be charmed.

One small noticing from the moment the game ended and the first congratulations between the team started. When Andre Jackson, the amazing picture who turned out to be arguably the ace of the staff this year tried to grab manager Miura for a truly deep hug. In the American game, this is a moment where we express how deep our love is. And this was real. At the beginning of the season, Jackson could not control himself. He walked everything and looked like he was never going to be a major leader. But then Miura Saw something and made it change in how the team behaved and related to Jackson. Whereas before, the outsider was mostly in isolation. Language and custom and whatever. Suddenly the players were talking to him between innings to keep him loose. He became a member of the team regardless of communication issues and the walk problem went away. Actually he was pretty much flawless once that happened. When he tried to hug his manager though, Miura really was not capable of reciprocation. Japanese are stoic but Japanese managers do what they have to do to win. I am glad you love me son. Please don’t do this ever again.

So this was really special. This feels really good. This is like one of those crazy gifts you get. I’ve never actually done this before in my life. I never picked a team and decided to follow it all the way no matter what. I mean, I’ve done that. I’ve followed the Giants intimately. And I’ve checked in with whatever other teams are stuck in my head like the Mets for example. Or the Yankees because like, I did live right on top of the hill overlooking the stadium when I was in New York. I’m just saying that whatever America represents of itself in its national broadcast baseball games is a completely different philosophy then what you get watching them play baseball in Japan. I am really tired of a drunken belligerent world. I am really tired of people going ballistic because they don’t get their way. Male and female.

If the essence of baseball is a timelessly fair representation of the game, I think the closest to that essence is what they are doing in Japan. They are just too respectful not to be excellent at it and the quality of the game lacks nothing. I do not feel I am being cheated watching a Japanese game ever. In fact, when I do go over to try and check in on the American games, I can’t really stay there for more than an inning before my eyes get pushed off the screen. If you add the commercialism in between innings, it’s completely unwatchable to me. I don’t understand what it is except as a propaganda arm for the American military industrial complex. And that’s not far from the truth.

So it’s not over yet and the boys are now going to play the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks,the absolute Juggernaut of Japanese baseball. They won 65% of their games this year. It wasn’t even close. This is the best team that Japanese baseball has to offer. Except for my guys from Oklahoma.

By the way, the name of the team is pronounced DNA. It is written like DeNA, And it has to do with the ownership and the auto business. It’s a company name that is attached. It’s just important to know that when you say it, you say DNA like the stuff our lives are made of.

And not that it was important, but my man was still in the studio 3 hours later, drunk off his ass, and still reveling in the feeling of the stars going to the championship.

Some afterparty notes from the next morning

I am not an alcoholic. I really did not drink a lot for the entirety of my life except for perhaps two specific periods. The first one was when I was playing ball and the habit was to go drinking after games. And I did a lot of drinking with my friends. The second would be from here. Specifically it was drinking vodka. I joined this place and, you know you can buy vodka everywhere. You can buy cigarettes and bad meat and dairy products and all kinds of cheap sugar snacks. So I got into allowing it into my life without thinking of it too much. I would never say that I was addicted except perhaps for a few specific moments when I realized I was working for the beers at the end of the day and that it wasn’t one or two beers.

They drink in Asia. I’m not going to say it has anything specific to do with the Japanese more than the Koreans or the Chinese etc. But drinking is a part of the culture without question. And if the Japanese are deeply into corporate culture, and they most certainly are, those trips to the bar or the late night noodle restaurant are absolutely a part of what we do to keep this thing going. All redundant slave type operations are fueled by meat and alcohol. You keep people going up and down on a quick line and getting upset, it prevents them from getting too many good ideas. And then you let them get wrecked at the end of the day and, they actually start thinking of you with love.

The first thing I noticed about the radio broadcast was the sound of a can cracking open. It was very much apart of the audio portion. It was a statement. We won. Let the party begin. And for sure, there was a massive party in Yokohama last night. Baseball is a generational sport. When teams set out to play baseball at the beginning of the year, it’s exactly like individual agriculture. You’re going to have your season with ups and downs. Some things will go well and some things will not. Some teams are not going to have anything all year and some teams are going to have more than they need. But all you get is the year. You can count the championships but at the end of the day, it was those years when you were playing. And all of the alcohol consumed after all of those games.

I didn’t really drink anything. I haven’t had alcohol in a really long time. I didn’t make special food for the party. I didn’t agree that I could scream and yell at the top of my lungs and set off fireworks to disturb my neighbors. I didn’t agree that I could jump in the car, roll the windows down and scream at passers by trying to share my excitement over the great victory. I didn’t consume so much in my insanity that I vomited on the street. I didn’t end up talking like a fool or leaning against a woman and explaining to her why these things that happen should not be the way they do. And I certainly didn’t have those moments where I question my ability to physically function and my entire attention is focused on keeping my balance and not vomiting.

This is not to ruin anybody’s fun. I understand the cycles we have. I understand what addiction is and I understand the thought process when one is addicted. I know all about it. I know about what it’s like to enjoy things and what it’s like to need them. The difference between going to a tool to do a job and needing a crutch everyday to get by. Crutches are medical. Crutches crutches are there to serve complete dysfunction and disability. Crutches are there every day because there is no life without them. In my business life, I invested in tools and avoided crutches. In fact, whenever I ran into something that even seemed like a crutch calling me to relax with it, I went the other way. To the plus of my life physically and to the minus of my life socially perhaps. Actually I feel I’ve been wise almost every time because I was not going to enjoy where I was invited to go. I’ve already tried it and I know where the road goes.

Do I feel cheated for not having disappeared from the planet? Do I feel cheated for not waking up and knowing that all I have to do is move around and my body will start to feel okay again eventually. I think Frank Sinatra famously said that he pities people who don’t drink because when they wake up in the morning, this is as good as they’re going to feel all day. I don’t know about that. I think there’s something interesting to be said about feeling good when you wake up.

I’m really happy that they won that game yesterday and the whole series. I am amazed, not only to have witnessed it, but to have invested in all of the other games leading up to this game. I’ve never got this kind of baseball payback before. I don’t remember being this personally charmed before. It has to do with personal choice. It’s not a standard cultural gift that I bought into to justify continuing living my life. This was a team I said was interesting to look at just because Fate had introduced them to me. And I stayed with him and I just got paid. I feel so crazy good right now from this, I don’t know what to say. And really, day by day from the game they win make me feel good and the games they lose bring a negativity to my life.  I just don’t need any alcohol to enhance this feeling or this moment. I didn’t need a big party and I didn’t need a reason to get wasted. I just needed the boys to beat the Giants and they did. Maybe that should be enough for everybody.

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