| Wherein our heroine meets various baseball folks and doesn't faint |
[07 Jul 2008|01:29am] |
Today I did many things and I have no photo proof of them. Sorry.
I went to the Lotte-Softbank game. Showed up around 11, got snuck in, went to the field, and was like... hmm. Sunny, hot.
I hung out for BP on the Hawks side. After standing there like a dork taking pictures for a while, Rob Smaal from the daily Asahi came over and talked to me.
With him, I met CJ Nitkowski, Mike Restovich, and Rick Guttormson, and talked to them a little. They were all really nice. I told Guttormson I saw him play in Tacoma and he was like "Whoa." And I told CJ I love his website. Stuff like that.
Rob also introduced me to a woman named Yayoi. She's a little younger than me, and went to college in NYC... she's a foreign correspondent for TBS. She likes the Marines and this was her first time on the field at the stadium, so I ended up showing her around. That was kind of crazy.
With her, I stood in the media throng around Sadaharu Oh, so this time I was *10 FEET* from the living legend. Yay. Still too scared to say anything to him though of course.
(If I had been on the Marines side, I would have been standing next to Shunsuke Watanabe, who was literally just hanging out by the dugout for a while, but I didn't want to leave the Hawks side for fear I wouldn't get to say hi to the foreign players. Bugger.)
Went around the back path to the Marines dugout with Rob and Yayoi, and we ran into Brian Sikorski. Rob introduced us and he'd actually heard of me (and thanked me for the box scores and stuff like that). That was cool. Sikorski is also a nice guy.
Went outside, and Bobby came by and pulled my hair and was like "How're you doing?" We chatted a bit. He wanted to know where I was sitting, and I said I'd be in the media room. "Why are you going to be there? Why don't you go to the rightfield stands?" he said.
"Uhhh.... because I don't want to get any more sunburnt than I am right now?" I replied.
"Do you want sunscreen? I have some in my office..." said Bobby.
"Uh... sure?"
So Bobby comes back. "I'm not sure this is actually sunscreen. My wife left it here."
It turns out to be a bottle of foundation makeup that has SPF 15. It was actually pretty gross-looking. "Err..."
Uh, so anyway, a bit after that Bobby kicked us off the field, which was fine with me because I wanted to go get a Bobby Burger from Lotteria. Turns out they had blocked off the stairs though. SO randomly wandering around I found Larry and I met the Lotte ouendan leader guy again. He remembered me and was like "why are you not coming out to cheer with us?" Then I found Alex the Intern and we went up in the elevator instead. Stupid stairs. After getting food I went to the camera well and camped out there for the whole game. It worked remarkably well and nobody said anything to me even though it was obvious that I was sitting there with my inferior camera and just kind of lurking.
The Marines lost the game 7-6, it was frustratingly close. The biggest deal was when they were up 5-3, and Bobby put in Kubo to pitch, and Oh pinch-hit Shibahara for Restovich. And I'm thinking "Wow, that is a really good move there by Oh," thinking Shibahara would probably get a hit. I did NOT expect him to blast a 2-run homer. This is why I will forever think of him as Hiroshi Freaking Shibahara. He always comes up big at the weirdest/worst times.
Okay, so after the game I'm standing in the tunnel between the dugouts and the kankeisha exit, and Paul Pupo is talking to this guy, they're sharing bizarro stories about baseball stuff. So I come over and listen, because Paul is used to me listening to his wacky stories. I'm thinking I should know who the other guy is, but I totally do not. So finally I ask who he is and he's like "Oh, sorry I didn't introduce myself. My name is Mike Pagliarulo."
MIKE PAGLIARULO?
Yeah. THEN the bells go off in my brain. So I totally accidentally met a former Yankees and Twins and Seibu Lions player. How wacky is that? I ended up talking to him for like 15-20 minutes about some baseball consulting stuff he's doing with Dugout Central and whatnot. Pretty crazy. He said he didn't have a card, but I gave him mine (and he actually emailed me! whoa!).
Yayoi and her friend came up after that and were like "where the hell is Rob? can you help us find him??" and I'm like "uhh... uhh... do you know who this guy is?" and even after he told her, she totally didn't care. ("So you played for Seibu in the mid-90's? Like with any famous people?") It was kinda funny. But just as well because I think Mike wanted to go talk to Bobby anyway.
So I showed them how to get to the media room to say hi to Rob... and there was a Marines-Swallows minor-league game starting, and so it turned out these guys sitting behind Rob were all minor-league pitchers. Boy, did we sound like idiots. Oops. Yayoi and her friend Ono-san (never caught the girl's firstname) wanted to go meet Nemoto. I like Nemoto, so I volunteered to at least show them to where they should go. Unfortunately, most of the players were either leaving the back way, or were already gone, or whatnot. (Shirtless, shoulder-iced Satozaki walked by us and I nearly fainted.) We did say an otsukaresama to Saburo, and eventually Larry came by and introduced us to the Marines publicity guy, saying that if we do want to get in touch with a player, it's best to go through him as a channel. Oh, and Mike and Bobby came out too. So eventually they decided to give up on meeting Nemoto for the time being. I advised just coming early some game.
(I wonder if I could do an interview with Nemoto for my blog and have Yayoi as my interpreter. Then we can both meet him and even have an official reason. Hmm... to be honest... that's really not a bad idea...)
Oh yeah, Yayoi went to high school with Kazuhito Tadano, they graduated in the same year. I told her I was a Tadano fan and she was like "He's totally gay. Seriously."
Anyway, Yayoi and her friend left, and I went back to the press room to watch the ni-gun game a bit with Rob. Still sitting in front of the minor league pitchers charting pitches. Who were probably laughing at us for being dumbasses. I talked to Rob a bit, watched about 2 innings of the game, and then left. Yoshinori Satoh was pitching for Yakult, and I was all psyched at one point because I got to see Kohbe standing next to Miyade at first base. They are both 191cm tall and I do love them both so much for it. But it was too dark to be worth sneaking back to the camera well, I thought, so I decided to just leave.
Went around Makuhari area. Played a buncha UFO catchers... yeah, I suck. One really fucking funny one was, they had these huge Stitches in the corners of a machine as display, and I actually managed to knock one of them loose. It fell down and got kinda stuck in the chute, so I pulled it out, and quickly got a plastic bag to hide it, because I was like... "wait a minute, I am totally not supposed to have done that."
Then I went to Outback for dinner. I sat at the bar, and got a Queensland salad, and it was big and salady and that was good. Yay.
Came home. Accidentally took a tokkyu train to Tokyo. It cost 500 yen more but it was nice to have a big comfy chair to sit in. Transferred to the K-T line and got a seat there too, which was lucky.
Now I have been enjoying the AC, looking at the pictures dumped from my camera, and zoning out. I have many emails to write and stuff to do, but I feel a little apathetic and exhausted, which is bad.
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