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JUST TRY NOT TO LOSE

January 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Along with the new uniforms, Yakult have also unveiled their “team slogan” for 2009. 

For those that don’t know, Japanese baseball teams all have a new slogan each year for. . . for. . . well I don’t know why. 

Some gems from the Swallows recent past include:

2001: Speed & Power
2002: Data + Speed & Power
2005: Tactics
2006: Make It Happen!
2007: Let’s Make It Happen!
2008: Dynamic & Dramatic

So their slogan for 2009 is:2009-slogan

“JUST PLAY TO WIN” (capitals intentional).
Not bad, not bad, if not completely and utterly obvious. Though I guess I am glad they’re going to be playing “just” to win this year, as opposed to last year’s play “just” to stubbornly follow the managers flawed tactics (yeah Takada, that was 2005!).

Some alternatives I can think of include:
“JUST DON’T BE SHIT (AGAIN)”
“LET’S FIGHT FOR A-CLASS”
“WE USED TO BE GOOD (HONEST)”
“TAKADA-BALL – THE ART OF WTF?!!??”
“EAT MORE YOGURT”
“AOKI, DON’T LEAVE US”
“F.U. YAKULT”

Filed Under: 2009 Season, Tsubamegun Tagged With: , , , ,
About David Watkins

David is a baseball bothering Brummie who spends a fair portion of his life fretting over both the Tokyo Swallows and the WORLD'S GREATEST FOOTBALL TEAM, Aston Villa.

  • Ken Worsley

    STOP BUNTING

  • Christopher Amano-Langtree

    Still it could have been as bad as the Tigers new slogan ‘Focus on this play, this moment!’. I am not sure what they mean by it

    The lamest though has to be the 2005 slogan which begs the answer and…… I would suggest ‘FOR THE BIRDS’

  • Rob

    Woah, very zen for the Tigers!
    Swallows: Win The Flag!! (WTF??)

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com/ Garrett DeOrio

    Nice one, C.A-L.

    Rob, while I’m pretty sure the “flag” is the pennant, that slogan is another example of why a Japanese-English dictionary on its own is not an effective means of translation. Either that or they decided to give up on baseball for a while and get into semi-pro capture the flag.

    I like setting achievable expectations in order to keep people’s spirits up, I also like the impossibility of pinning down the meaning behind a slogan without verbs, so I’m pushing for: BASEBALL!

    Or maybe: A GAME!

    Or we could do without slogan what Orix did with their logo and say: WE SELL SNACK FOOD AND SODA AT THE BALLPARK! WOMEN AND CHILDREN WELCOME!

    What would really make sense, though, would be putting the slogan in Japanese and making something other than ???!

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com/ Christopher Pellegrini

    BEER AND PIZZA