Former Swallows reliever Ryota Igarashi is in Port St. Lucie with the Mets, where he was interviewed for a piece about him in the New York Daily News yesterday.
Among the article’s gems:

During his 11-year career with the Yakult Swallows, Igarashi would wear a WWE-style mask and take on the persona of “Swallows Man.” A photo of him [...]

Robert Whiting wrote about the remarkable equalizing power of athletes such as Matsui, Ichiro, and Matsuzaka in the FCCJ.
A choice selection from the article:
Then there was also the fact that every year during spring training, Matsui took the Yankees-beat writers out to dinner, perhaps the only Yankee in the history of the franchise [...]

The fourth and final installment in a series of articles about Bobby Valentines’s rise and fall with the Chiba Lotte Marines baseball organization.
Robert Whiting, author of the irreplaceable You Gotta Have Wa, interviews players and personnel both in and outside the organization to present a rounded account of what went on behind the scenes.

Pitchers Yuya Kamada (no. 20) and Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi (no. 22) were called up to the top team before yesterday’s game.
This is the second time in recent weeks that Kamada has been called up, the first time was detailed in this Roster Update. Kamada has a 4.50 in eight innings of work for the top team [...]

Trans-Pacific Radio just published a
podcast which reviews the 2008 baseball
season all the way through the Japan Series which was eventually won by the Saitama Seibu Lions.
Click here to listen to the podcast.

Rob Fitts, author of Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball and the biography’s subject, baseball legend Wally Yonamine, the first American to play in Japan after WWII, the man who brought hustle and hard sliding to Japanese Pro Baseball, will be giving a reading of the book at the Tokyo American Club at [...]

Japanese baseball reporter and insider, Wayne Graczyk, posted an interesting article about the fall of the Tokyo and Yokohama clubs over the last several seasons. He compares them unfavorably to the state of affairs in the 80’s and says that they are two of the “worst franchises in Japanese pro baseball, in terms of both [...]

Interesting article in the (*spit*) Yomiuri today about veteran Swallows reliever Masao Kida today.
I’ve always had a softspot for Kida, I like his spirit.  He always gives his all and plus he’s one of the few pitchers in Japan who likes to react when he makes the final out of an inning, and I like that. [...]

So what happened last Thursday?
The Tsubamegun at Chiba Marine Stadium? Hostile territory, one might think.
Not when Mr. Larry Rocca is around.
First of all, Mr. Rocca wears nice suits. We were a bit taken aback when he appeared out of thin air in 90 degree sunlight wearing a blue and white striped three-button job with a [...]

For anyone who’s interested, the Japan Times published a piece about Tokyo centerfielder Norichika Aoki, whom we here at the Tsubamegun think just might be the best position player in the NPB these days. The piece, based on an interview with Aoki prior to the Swallows’ recent home loss to the Yokohama BayStars, focuses on [...]