A Classic Spring Classic
I don’t usually go in for loudness for the sake of loudness, but I found last night’s Japan Korea thunder stick fest exhilarating. I can’t imagine keeping up that kind of energy for 162 games, but it was an awesome sight.
All in all, it was an unforgettable night. Great baseball played by two evenly matched teams that required more than 9 innings to get it all in. Ichiro went 4-for-6 and yet never scored. Japan had all of two extra base hits (both doubles), and just one home run hit the entire game. Great pitching to say the least.
Here are some other things I noticed, in no particular order:
No beach balls. The fans came to watch baseball.
Until Ichiro’s at-bat, there were very few foul balls. Upon taking our seats in the loge just to the third base side of the screen, I recall thinking, “We had better be alert, since foul balls are likely to come screaming back at us. Yet nothing came close. I don’t know how to verify this other than with my observation, or for that matter, what it means, but I found it unusual. Maybe it just means I’ve been watching spring training games where batters haven’t yet caught up to pitchers, while Japan and Korea were in midseason form?
With all the routinized cheering (Nip-pon, Nip-pon was prevalent in our heavily Japanese rooting section), not once did I see the execrable wave ripple through Dodger Stadium. This act is tiresome to say the least, and annoying to those who are trying to watch the game at most. The fans knew exactly when to cheer, when to stand up to watch an incredible defensive play, and when to sit back in their seats (by the time the next pitch was thrown).
The Dodgers put on a pretty good show, linking both teams to L.A. baseball history, bringing in Japanese and Korean announcers to introduce the players, even charting the Ks on the pizza board (it’s no longer California Pizza Kitchen) thrown by Korean pitchers (they were the home team). Shortcomings on the scoreboard included the lack of the players’ full names (so many Lees and Kims on the Korean team made it hard to identify each one) and failure to recap what batters had done in their previous at-bats. I keep score anyway, but I never did catch what Bum Ho Lee did in his first at-bat.
All in all, it was an unforgettable night. Great baseball played by two evenly matched teams that required more than 9 innings to get it all in. Ichiro went 4-for-6 and yet never scored. Japan had all of two extra base hits (both doubles), and just one home run hit the entire game. Great pitching to say the least.
Here are some other things I noticed, in no particular order:
No beach balls. The fans came to watch baseball.
Until Ichiro’s at-bat, there were very few foul balls. Upon taking our seats in the loge just to the third base side of the screen, I recall thinking, “We had better be alert, since foul balls are likely to come screaming back at us. Yet nothing came close. I don’t know how to verify this other than with my observation, or for that matter, what it means, but I found it unusual. Maybe it just means I’ve been watching spring training games where batters haven’t yet caught up to pitchers, while Japan and Korea were in midseason form?
With all the routinized cheering (Nip-pon, Nip-pon was prevalent in our heavily Japanese rooting section), not once did I see the execrable wave ripple through Dodger Stadium. This act is tiresome to say the least, and annoying to those who are trying to watch the game at most. The fans knew exactly when to cheer, when to stand up to watch an incredible defensive play, and when to sit back in their seats (by the time the next pitch was thrown).
The Dodgers put on a pretty good show, linking both teams to L.A. baseball history, bringing in Japanese and Korean announcers to introduce the players, even charting the Ks on the pizza board (it’s no longer California Pizza Kitchen) thrown by Korean pitchers (they were the home team). Shortcomings on the scoreboard included the lack of the players’ full names (so many Lees and Kims on the Korean team made it hard to identify each one) and failure to recap what batters had done in their previous at-bats. I keep score anyway, but I never did catch what Bum Ho Lee did in his first at-bat.
posted by John Rosenthal @ 10:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home