An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
Tokyo Swallows fans witnessed it all in 2010: the resumption of the 2009 slump which ended up consuming the first two months of 2010; a change in manager; the addition of a cleanup bat; veteran pitchers refinding their form; an authoritative return to winning; and a bit of flirtation with the third and final playoff spot. With any luck, 2011 [...]
UPDATED: January 13, 2011 Since the end of the season, the Swallows have lost some players through cuts and retirement, the team has also gained some players through free agency and the draft. The team also managed to keep Chang-Yong Lim by resigning him to a lucrative contract. We have covered some of these moves, [...]
We’ve been working hard to get the site switched over to a more *malleable site platform over the past few weeks. Other than the time constraints, it hasn’t been that tough at all (you’ve gotta love WordPress!). And we’re very pleased to announce our newest addition to Tsubamegun, the Tokyo Swallows Forum! We hope that [...]
Could #2 on the Tsubamegun‘s perennial wishlist come to fruition? Depends on how you see fervent denials. Jiji reported today that Susume Fujita, CEO of online ad agency CyberAgent, firmly denied that his firm had any plans to purchase the Swallows or that he had been approached by Yakult with such an offer. He also [...]
Ah, the beloved Tak-bunt. Tokyo’s current manager didn’t fib when he said that he wasn’t going to make many changes to the way that the team was coached after taking over for Takada at the end of May. The Tak-bunting continued, but thankfully not at the same rate that it had been previously employed. For the [...]
Happy Thanksgiving, American Tsubamegun-ites. We bitch a bit round these parts, and I am personally to blame for much of that. I can find the cloud around any silver lining, blow it out of proportion, and try people’s patience bitching about it, although I swear that’s only for matters pertaining to the diamond (or diamonds, [...]
The Swallows plan to hold their annual Fan Appreciation Day at Jingu Stadium tomorrow. The team, and its various sponsors, have various events planned for the day. If you have the day off tomorrow for Labour Day, Fan Appreciation Day might be worth your time. The day will start at 9:00 when the Jingu field [...]
Dear Tokyo Swallows fan, We’ve just started redoing the site. It’s the off-season, so we figured that we could get away with it. And hey, the sooner, the better, right? The result is likely going to look very similar to the spring 2010 iteration, so hopefully there will be very little interruption in services. But [...]
YakyuBaka reported this morning that the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, now led by media star Senichi Hoshino, have managed to lure Akinori Iwamura away from MLB. Iwamura has been quoted saying that he preferred to stay in North America but that he really just wanted to play for a team that needed him. I’d be very [...]
The 2010 NPB draft took place on October 28th, as planned. Unfortunately not a lot else went as planned for the Swallows. As expected the Swallows threw their hat into the Yuki Saito sweepstakes. They were joined by the Nippon Ham Fighters, the Chiba Lotte Marines, and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. Our manager Ogawa, armed [...]
