Komada Retires Early

I woke up to open the newspaper this morning (6/19) to see a picture of Komada walking off the ground, facing an umpire ringing him up. The kanji around the color photo looked rather negative. After shaking sleep off to the point that I could comprehend what I was reading, I realized that Komada wasn't ejected for questioning an umpire's call (which was my first thought), but that he left the stadium before the game was over after being pinch hit for.

Here's the circumstances: The bases are loaded with two down and the score knotted at 1-1 in the bottom of the 6th. Besides his 3rd worst in the league batting average of .234, Komada is batting a league 2nd worst .172 with runners in scoring position. He struck out swinging his first two at bats Sunday afternoon, and is 1 for 10 against Minchey. It appeared to me that Gondoh-kantoku did the right thing by sending in a pinch hitter.

To say the least, the season just isn't going Komada's way this year. Komada came into the season 73 hits shy of 2,000 hits. 43 for 184 (30 still to go) isn't quite the pace that was expected of the Manrui-otoko (Bases-loaded-man).

When "Pinch hitting, Nakane" was announced as Komada was on his way to the batter's box, he stopped, shouted, "What the?", threw his bat to the ground along with his helmet. The helmet had so much force that it bounded back and hit the umpire. (I guess hitting an umpire on accident after throwing one's helmet is OK. I didn't see any kind of follow up on that part.)

After storming to the showers, roughing up a bit of equipment on the way, Komada was heard saying that he may as well be dropped to 2-gun. Not the normal, happy Komada that was heard saying that he wanted to be the Hero in front of his family on Father's Day before the game. Normally, Komada holds his cool better than anyone else when called out on bad pitches.

After finishing up in the locker room, Komada called his family on his keitai phone and left the stadium. This is strike two in the bad behavior department. When one finishes in the showers, one returns to the bench to be with the team until the end of the game. For throwing a temper tantrum, often a small fine is charged, but leaving before the game is over, well, it's unheard of!

Now, for any other team, Komada's fine and/or other penalties would have been made public in time for the 6:30 sports news (as it was a day game). But Yokohama's front office played this one really well. A spokesman said that he won't make any decisions on a penalty before he talks to both Komada and Gondoh-kantoku the next day. (A friend of mine says that Yokohama's front office is one of the meanest around. But they must have a great P.R. and/or D.C. (Damage Control) guy, because any controversy I've seen has been handled very well in my opinion.)

So, what happened with Nakane? He popped out to short to end the inning. The switch failed, but I still think that Gondoh-kantoku did the right thing. In the end, the BayStars scored 2 runs in the 8th to take the lead and win the game 3-1. Breaking a 7 game losing streak, one would have thought that the team would be escalated. But with Komada's big shadow hanging over the team, nobody appeared to leave the stadium with a smile on their face. Lots of people talk about how "wa" is important to the game. Well, this was a real wa killer. We'll see if the team, and Komada, can pick up against Yakult and the Giants for the remainder of the week.

[Updated layout format on Feb 14, 2005 9:31 PM JST]