Whenever it is, you know we are in the midst of it. Who knows, maybe it's been the strange weather this year. Certainly some of the strangest weather on record struck Kobe last week when the BlueWave postponed their game at 2:30 in the afternoon.
It wasn't raining and the Marines players were headed for their pre-game meeting. In retrospect, it seems like a pretty reasonable decision. It seems that rain was on the forecast--along with a start by the Marines' Johnny Kuroki.
"They had (lefty Masahiko) Kaneda and it was pretty clear they didn't
like the matchup,² said one Marines player.
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Without Ichiro Suzuki in the lineup, the BlueWave are having a terrible time drawing fans to their remote ballpark. You'd think that all other things being equal, more people would come if Kuroki, the best pitcher in the league right now, was pitching.
Ichiro's absence aside, wouldn't you think the BlueWave could draw respectable crowds to Kobe Green Stadium just by being in the pennant race?
Sure this isn't the first time in baseball history that a good team has struggled to remain competitive at the ticket office. It happened to the Oakland A's of the early 1970s. Here was a team that won three straight World Series, a great team. But every year their attendance fell. It's really hard to figure out what was going on there since it was a fun team to watch with lots of great players.
Many have argued that the A's financial success would always be limited by the presence of the San Francisco Giants on the other side of the bay--a weaker team then but one with much more history that had been there 10 years longer.
The Seibu Lions are another successful team that drew well enough but not what you might expect from their on-field success.
In the Lions case, there seems to be two likely possibilities for the attendance declines. Their park, like the BlueWave's, is somewhat isolated and the Lions, while successful, were as predictable as taxes.
Their manager at the time, Masaaki Mori, who is now running the Yokohama BayStars, said that a team should be boring if it led to wins.
While there may be, and probably are, many other reasons why the fans stayed away, Mori's Lions were ruthless winners who silenced opponents and the home fans alike.
It is of course a problem when a professional sports organization puts a winning team on the field and the fans don't pay to see it.
There will always be good products that don't sell. When this happens in baseball, the knee jerk reaction is for everyone from the bat boy to the owner to lay the blame upon who else, the fans.
But how can you blame the fans when the manager tells them that boredom is part of the cost of winning?
It gives new meaning to the Japanese custom of telling the recipient of your gift that it's boring (tsumaranai mono desu kedo...).
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The Pacific League thoughtfully announces the starting pitchers a day in advance, presumably so fans can know who they won't see if the home team decides to back out. But there's no reason why both leagues could not emulate the majors and announce the starters for each series in advance.
Of course, the Central League persists in keeping their starting pitchers a secret. This may be done to prevent the fans from observing that some managers give no more thought to organizing their rotations than they do next spring's fashions in Paris.
But if you have great matchups--and there are a lot worth seeing--why not advertise them? Why not let the fans know who they can see? One can only wonder.
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Returning to the Marines for a moment, it seems that things are finally falling into place for Koji Yamamoto's battalion.
Not only has Kuroki continued to pitch up a storm, but second baseman Koichi Horii has returned to the lineup for the first time this season and has gone deep three times in a handful of games.
Horii's return has allowed skipper Yamamoto to send the enthusiastic and hardworking Saburo Omura back to the outfield after spending the three months trying to make a second baseman out of him.
Saburo did quite well at second in terms of catching balls but a number of the split-second decisions a second baseman has to make didn't come easily to him.
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The Marines should have been in trouble last weekend with a three-game series at Tokyo Dome. The Nippon Ham Fighters went into the game with a 3-1 advantage in their four games this season and beat the Marines 16 times last season.
The last-place Hamsters entered the first game of the series with a five-game losing streak, but knowing that they had already snapped two losing streaks this season with wins over the Marines.
When it was pointed out that the visitors, who have a seagull for a mascot, had been the Fighters' pigeons all season and all of last season as well, Fighters slugger Michihiro Ogasawara said, "You can't say that. It may be true, but we don't say that.²
And though the serious swinging first baseman refused to put the jinx on his teammates, the Marines overran the Fighters' Tokyo Dome redoubt in a three-game sweep.
Kuroki beat them in the first game and then the trio of Horii, Frank
Bolick and Derrick May each homered in the second and third games.
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In a related story, Yakult Swallows shortstop Shinya Miyamoto has suffered the indignity of watching all season as one line drive after another was hit directly to an opposition fielder.
Miyamoto, who had a breakthrough season at the plate last year under the tutelage of Hall of Fame slugger Futoshi Nakanishi, sought help this time from a different sort of expert--a Shinto priest.
Miyamoto, 30, went to a shrine near his home in Tokyo's Shinagawa ward and had the priest perform a purification ceremony before the Swallows' game against the Tigers on May 20.
One would like to report that the ritual was a success, and it may have been for Swallows, if not for our hero, who went 4-for-17 in five games since seeking help. The Swallows, however, instantly found a tail wind and won all five.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .