At the “Halfway” Point

You see in the media that this is the halfway point of the season, even though the next game is game 91 for Our Marines, 54 games left in the season. It must be the “halfway” point and I’ve missed the punctuation.
The curse of the hat – over. The next time I wore [...]

All Kinds of Ways to Win

There are two basic kinds of blowouts. There’s the sort where one team beats the crap out of the other in the first, then sits in the dugout drinking wine and relaxing for the next day’s game. I went to the quintessential example of this sort of game two years ago in Nagano [...]

Fast Out of the Gate

The first series of the 2010 season vs Orix is in the books, and it was a GREAT one for Lotte. Three games in Osaka, 3 wins for the Marines. 25 runs scored on 43 hits. Last year Lotte didn’t win their first game in Osaka until August, this year the guys [...]

In the Realm of the Clutch Hitters

Friday afternoon I took a look at my planner to see what was on for the weekend. It was empty except for one item, in bold, underlined with a star next to it:
1. Baseball
Mmm, home opener. Two years ago the home opener was in late March; it was stupidly cold and raining but [...]

Live Blog: Lotte vs Nippon Ham, 13 Sep

It’s a lovely day, the sun is shining and Lotte has their first 4 game winning streak of the year. What the heck, let’s do another live blog!
The starting lineups
For Lotte: Tsuyoshi (short), Hayasaka (left), Fukuura (first), Iguchi (second), Ohmatsu (right), Hashimoto (DH), Imae (third), Satozaki (catcher), and Hayakawa (center).

For Nippon Ham: Tanaka [...]