Buffaloes Take Round One

In front of a sell out crowd of 46,000 at Osaka Dome, and facing Seibu's ace Matsuzaka, the Kintetsu Buffaloes managed to scrape out a 2-1 victory to take the first game in this head to head competition for first to retake the lead in the Pacific League by half a game.

Mizuguchi, who had three hits, including the game winner, was announced as the hero of the game. I thought it should have gone to relief pitcher Ohtsuka who pitched very well the last few innings. He was certainly something to watch this evening!

With Pro Yakyu making headlines that are designed to promote racial hatred in the New York Times (proyakyu/yakyu) and LA Times (actually, both articles are pretty well written, but stress all the wrong things), I'm sure you're all wondering how Rhodes did. Well, since this headline doesn't announce that he reached or broke the record, you've already got that much.

Rhodes went 1 for 3 with a walk. I missed his first at bat, but apparently he got a base hit and came around to score on a bases loaded walk to tie the game at 1-1 in the first inning.

He flied to left after that, then, in the bottom of the 5th with one run in and game hero Mizuguchi on first, Matsuzaka threw some heat down the middle on a full count pitch that Rhodes swung on and missed. I was disappointed to see him miss, but that was some pitch by the boy monster!

In the bottom of the 8th, Rhodes fouled off what I think was a breaking pitch with the count full that Matsuzaka tried to come in with. The next pitch got away from Matsuzaka and was way high and outside, walking Rhodes. You could tell that Matsuzaka was upset with himself there. He walked Nakamura on 6 pitches after that, showing signs that he was losing control. But he managed to get the next batter to ground into a double play to end the inning.

Nakamura failed to get a hit this evening, but hit a huge fly to straight away center that he and the crowd all thought was gone. Bummer.

And speaking of Nakamura, he's probably the best example of why Rhodes isn't "a household word," as one of the above reporters complained.

You see, from the beginning of the season Kintetsu has been pushing Nakamura as their "face." He's on the posters for Kintetsu, and was for the All Star games as well. Nakamura has even done some commercial for ramen.

Yet, even with Nakamura being the biggest Japanese home run hitter this season, he's not even listed in the top 10 popular players in Shukan Baseball's poll. The Giants' Matsui and Takahashi are fairly consistantly in the top spot(s), with Seibu's Matsui ranking in there on occasion. So for all of Kintetsu's attempt at boosting Nakamura's popularity, they've been fighting a losing battle so far this year.

As both writers above pointed out, showing that they did do some research and weren't completely out in left field, the Pacific League just doesn't get the recognision from the press that they often deserve. Either Ichiro takes the spot light, or the more popular Central League.

However, I feel that both articles are quite misleading. Rhodes and Kintetsu have gotten a great deal of real estate in Nikkan Sports (sorry I don't have a wider selection of sports papers) the past couple of months, often taking the color page away from the Giants. The press has been in full support of seeing the record broken, as have the announcers on TV (although they still talk too much about the Giants during games that the Giants aren't even playing in).

But most importantly, Rhodes is seeing good pitches. I had hoped that if Rhodes saw enough good pitches that all of the talk of discriminatoin would die away, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. The foreign press is still attacking Japanese baseball despite the fact that it has changed. Are they applauding the amount of change? It doesn't seem that way to me.

I know I'm guilty of this, too. But if there's a problem, it's easy to complain about it. When that problem is fixed, it's easier to move on to complaining about the next problem than to pause and be grateful for what has been accomplished. (Let me take this time to thank Albright-san for using CSV format in recent uploads to the Pro Yakyu mailing list data site!)

Both of the authors did acknoledge progress. To that, I'm thankful. But I was still left with the impression that their whining will never end.