Miyamoto won the vote for who Tsubamegun want to see playing third.

We posted a poll on the 25th asking you some general questions about the state of affairs with the team. Aoki’s gone, and there are some question marks hanging over the team as spring camp gets under way down in Urasoe, Okinawa.

We here at Tsubamegun tend to see these question marks as opportunities, and the majority of respondents to the poll seemed to agree with us. Not a single voter had the team finishing the 2012 season any lower than fourth place in the Central League.

There were 25 complete responses to the poll, and for your perusal we have laid out the numbers in an easily digestible format.

1. Do you approve of Tokyo’s decision to post Aoki at the end of 2011?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	15	60%
No	6	24%
Undecided	4	16%

2. Who do you want to get the most starts at third base for the Tokyo Swallows this season?

Response	Votes	%
Shinya Miyamoto	13	52%
Tetsuto Yamada	3	12%
Shingo Kawabata	3	12%
Kazuhiro Hatakeyama	2	8%
Ryosuke Morioka	1	4%
Takahiro Araki	0	0%
Other	0	0%
Undecided	3	12%

3. Who do you want to get the most starts at center for the Tokyo Swallows this season?

Response	Votes	%
Tsuyoshi Ueda	14	56%
Yasushi Iihara	3	12%
Kazuki Fukuchi	1	4%
Yuichi Matsumoto	1	4%
Other	1	4%
Undecided	5	20%

4. With the players currently under contract, do you believe that Tokyo can make up for the loss of Aoki’s defense and his 2011 slash line of .292/.358/.360?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	9	36%
No	14	56%
Undecided	2	8%

5. Do you think that the front office made enough moves during the off-season to bolster the starting rotation and bullpen?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	7	28%
No	13	52%
Undecided	5	20%

6. What place to you think the Tokyo Swallows will finish the 2012 regular season in?

Response	Votes	%
Central League Champions	7	28%
2nd place	6	24%
3rd place	6	24%
4th place	6	24%
5th place	0	0%
6th place	0	0%

Interesting responses although not entirely unexpected. Even though it’s an exceedingly small sample size, feel free to offer your interpretations in the comments section below.

Who do you want to get the bulk of the starts at third this year?

**The poll is now closed. Click here to see the results of the vote.

Here’s a poll to keep your mind off of what you should actually be doing at work.

You will be asked for your opinions on topics such as who should get the most starts at third, and whether or not the front office was right in accepting the posting amount for Norichika Aoki.

This poll will remain open until 5PM (EST) Wednesday February 1st (that’s 7AM on Thursday February 2nd here in Japan). We’ll post the results of the poll shortly thereafter.

Please vote only once.

Poll closed.

As you might have guessed, articles covering the postseason were some of the most popular on the site.

Hello 2012, and Happy New Year to everyone out there in Tsubamegun land!

We’d like to welcome you to the new year, and a spring training camp in Okinawa that’s only a month away, by looking back briefly on the most popular posts of last season.

They’re listed here according to page views, and it’s an amusing view into what interested the record number of readers that accessed this site last year.

5. Tokyo vs Yomiuri Game 3 – Climax Series 1st Stage

This was Kozo’s personalized version of the emotional ups and downs of that historic game between the birds and their much better funded crosstown rivals.

4. Tokyo vs Chunichi Game 5 – Climax Series 2nd Stage

Garrett wrote the season-ending game report after the team’s loss to eventual Japan Series Runner-up, Chunichi. The comments at the end of this post were very much appreciated by all of us here at the site.

3. Online Yakyu Writer Insights: 2011 Tokyo Swallows

For this article, I interviewed Yakyu Baka’s Gen Sueyoshi, NPB Tracker’s Patrick Newman, and Jason Coskrey from the Japan Times to see what they thought about Tokyo’s chances in 2011. It’s interesting to re-read this article nearly a year later and see how things actually panned out. I, for one, was completely off on Aoki having a career-best year. Seems the new baseball was the monkey wrench on that one.

2. 2011 Japan Series – Chunichi vs Fukuoka

This is the youngest of the entrants on this short list of popular posts, but it makes sense that it made the cut because it’s essentially seven game reports wrapped into one. Game seven, in which I included play-by-play coverage of how the Hawks finally defeated the Dragons, helped attract a lot of real-time attention to that post.

1. Wishful Thinking (2011 version)

Ah, yes. The annual ritual of putting our foolish hopes and dreams in writing. It’s almost like a belated Christmas Wish List. I swung and missed on most of mine last year. How did you end up doing?

Thanks to everyone who visited Tsubamegun last season! Keep watching this space for an upcoming Wishful Thinking post that we’ll appreciate your feedback on. 

Enjoy the rest of the New Year’s holiday!

The All-Star Team. (From left) Sugimoto, Pellegrini, Nakagawa

We thought this well-timed feature would interest the Tsubamegun. The Asahi Shimbun‘s Rob Smaal chatted with our own Christopher Pellegrini and snapped a photo of him with our dear friends, Messrs. Sugimoto and Nakagawa (without whom, we wouldn’t be on course to be buried in our regular seats).

Enjoy! See you at the game.

Seems like it's been longer than just one year.

In honor of Tsubamegun’s first and (as yet) only official holiday, we’re giving away a limited edition gift to whomsoever best answers one of the following questiony:
1) In your opinion, what was the best Tokyo Swallows off-field moment?

2) Which NPB team has done a good job of reaching out to fans?

We will also award a second prize for the best moniker ascribed to this young holiday.

3) What would you call this auspicious day (May 26th)?

Rules? Don’t exceed 300 words. And leave your answer here. The deadline is Tuesday May 31st.

**The winner of both categories will be announced by Monday June 6th. Prizes will be shipped within one week of award announcements.

Another extended losing streak.

Baseball-wise, the quake has affected a number of things. Firstly the need to save energy has lead to the introduction of a few rules to limit game times. Games will still end in a tie if the teams are tied after 12 innings, but now games will not go into further extra innings after three and a half hours. The clock will begin to tick from the first pitch, not the scheduled start time, and will not be stopped for delays such as rain, wind, fog and other troubles. In the event that a game is ended early because of a blackout the game will be called.

The quake has pushed the schedule back a few weeks and the damage has necessitated the following changes to the schedule. For the month of April teams playing in areas of lower power (basically Eastern Honshu) will be playing day games in order to avoid using power-sucking lights. The NPB executive committee has said that the schedule will proceed as normal and allow teams in the affected areas to play night game in May. It is quite possible, however, that the schedule will be changed once the government announces its energy savings plans for the summer months, when peak energy usage increases 50% from current usage. Games that were cancelled due to the quake have been rescheduled to October, therefore the start of the Climax Series will be pushed accordingly to the end of October. The Nippon Series is expected to be played around November 12.

There are still a lot of unknowns surrounding how baseball will proceed this year, but hopefully it will allow people to forget about their troubles, if only for a short while, and that games will be able to be used as a vehicle for further charity and awareness activities for those in need. We here at Tsubamegun intend to keep on plugging along and bring you the best Swallows coverage starting with our season opener against the Giants later on tonight.

In an effort to forge a little bit of a tradition here, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve done the last two seasons and make some pleas to the Jingu yakyu kami (read: Jingu stadium baseball gods).

I got a decent amount of what I asked for last year after getting completely dissed in 2009. The following is what I was hoping for last year:

1. The Swallows finish the year with a record above .500

2. Barnette wins 10 games

3. Yoshinori stops using Oil of Olay on his hands every night before going to bed

4. Lim makes fewer than 50 appearances (regular season)

5. We start the 2011 campaign with a manager who isn’t old enough to collect pension benefits

I definitely got what I wanted on numbers one and five but got sent back on numbers two (Barnette went 4-5) and four (53 appearances).

Number three? Not so sure. Did oniisan Sato miss any starts last season because of his delicate digits? I can’t remember that he did.

I’ll play it safe and say that I got a 50% return on that wish. That would mean that I did way better in 2010 than in 2009. I wonder if I should wish bigger this year…?

Without further ado:

1. Mikinori Katoh makes at least 15 appearances and keeps his ERA below 4.00

2. Barnette has at least 20 starts and keeps his ERA below 3.50

3. Ogawa calls for the bunt less than he did last year (even though he’ll be the manager for two months longer)

4. Whoever becomes the everyday right fielder gets more than 400 plate appearances and collects at least 100 hits

5. Aoki wins the Central League MVP

Feel free to post your comments on my picks and how likely they are to happen. Additionally, just as we’ve done in the past, go ahead and post your own ‘Wishful Thinking’ list for the 2011 season.

Click here for part one: OYWI: NPB Moving Forward?

After a detailed trip through some of the prevailing wisdom on NPB in general, which we’ll return to in the next edition of this interview series, it seemed like the right time to focus exclusively on the birds for a bit. That’s what part two is all about.

The 2010 season, as you’ll recall, was quite the ride! And if the Central League had been more like the 2009 edition, then the birds would have easily walked into the playoffs in second place with home field advantage for the first stage of the Climax Series.

However, 2010 saw three teams put together solid full-season performances while Tokyo didn’t get its act together until June. Even though they were the winningest team in the league from July to the end of the season, it wasn’t enough to overtake the coasting Yomiuri Giants.

The big question now is whether this whole coming-up-short act is going to continue. As the Japan Times’ Jason Coskrey aptly told us, Tokyo “is the Houston Texans of the NPB. They have the pieces, they just seem to underachieve.”

Credit where credit is due though. The Tokyo Swallows finished the 2010 season at 72-68-4 even though they were in 6th place with a record of 13-32-1 on May 26th when former manager Shigeru Takada finally stepped down.

The post-Takada turnaround, as we’ve said many times before, was other-worldly when considering how badly the team was playing just a week prior to Takada’s throwing in the towel (check here for the mid-May, Takada-inspired offensive stats).

My routine pouting about sacrifice bunting notwithstanding, Tokyo fans were afforded many reasons to be excited about baseball last season, and they are desperate for the good times to continue!

The pitching, of course, looks pretty good for 2011. The birds just re-signed Tony Barnette, the right-handed starter who showed flashes of dependability last season, and Lim inked a nest egg for his great-great-grandchildren during the off-season to ensure that we have a fearsome closer in the bullpen.

Teamed with the Daisuke Araki-guided rotation and middle relief, the Swallows look to have the makings of another solid pitching corps.

The offense, on the other hand, is a little bit more of a question mark. Guiel and Whitesell will be back, but D’Antona was unfortunately let loose. He had a rough season last year, but then again he was never given the day-to-day starts that helped him earn July MVP honors in 2009. Whoever picks him up will be getting a bargain.

An unknown quantity in the form of Wladimir Balentien has joined the squad

Balentien has spent time with Seattle and Cincinnati.

to compete with Guiel for a spot in the outfield, but no matter how that works out, expect big things from their neighbor in center, Norichika Aoki.

Barring major injury or posting system foolishness, Aoki will be playing in North America in 2012, so don’t be shocked if he puts up career-best numbers this season.

Iihara, Hatakeyama and Tanaka should continue to make their presence felt this year, and the competition for the starting spot at short should be fun to watch.

If Miyamoto and Aikawa can stay off IR (hey, can we get the deep-muscle-massage crew that keeps all the old guys on the Phoenix Suns roster healthy?!), then there’s definitely sustainable hope for the offense. Third place in the Central is what I’m thinking for 2011.

But that’s just my opinion.

Apparently, I don’t have a whole lot of company.

The general consensus seems to be that the birds will finish fourth. Gen Sueyoshi from Yakyu Baka and Patrick Newman from NPB Tracker explain that the top three teams from 2010 are still too strong for Tokyo to easily make a move into the playoffs.

“[Tokyo] obviously has some top-notch talent, but they have challenges in that they won’t score as much as Yomiuri or Hanshin, and they’re looking up at Chunichi in terms of run prevention.

“Yakult has great rotation depth and a pretty good bullpen though, so if they can hit a little more consistently and one of Yomiuri/Hanshin/Chunichi falters, they have a shot at a playoff spot,” said Newman.

Sueyoshi largely agreed that the Swallows are likely destined for fourth place this year due to the relative strength of the wealthier clubs that finished ahead of them last season.

Maybe Tokyo can use these guys as the second farm team?

At the same time, he pointed to the young talent that all three of 2010′s B-class teams have waiting in the wings as a source of excitement for the next few seasons.

“The Swallows have a fairly solid core of young players and might be poised to make some noise in the near future.

“But I also think that Yokohama and Hiroshima have a fairly solid core group of young players and things could get interesting in the CL over the new few years,” he said.

Good point. Especially as far as Tokyo is concerned. The Swallows haven’t got short figured out yet, but there are three or four very interesting young players who could easily keep veterans Fujimoto and Kawashima on the bench in 2011.

Kawabata (23), Morioka (26) and Onizaki (27) are three players who showed promise last year, and Tokyo’s first round draft pick, Tetsuto Yamada, should also get a decent shot at playing between Miyamoto and Tanaka in Tokyo’s infield.

Accordingly, another reason for Tokyo fans to be optimistic, at least over the medium to long-term, is the fact that Chunichi, Hanshin and Yomiuri’s lineups are a bit ass-heavy with aging superstars.

Sueyoshi pointed to Yomiuri as a case in point: “While they’re putting a lot of effort into growing their farm system, I don’t know if/when they’ll be able to replace stars like Michihiro Ogasawara, Alex Ramirez, and Shinnosuke Abe.”

It should be very interesting to see if homegrown stars such as Sakamoto and Yamaguchi can live up to the expectations that have been placed on them by the Yomiuri organization and their fans.

At any rate, even if they can’t plug those holes with talent from their farm team, I think we can be confident that Yomiuri will just buy an all-star from another team as they did with Ogasawara and Ramirez.

And Tani.

And Kroon, Greisinger and Lee.

Coskrey was just slightly more optimistic about Tokyo’s chances when he talked to us.

“If they can convince themselves they can compete, then they will. Which is why I like Ogawa as their manager. He’s a good influence in the clubhouse.

“The new ball may keep more balls in the park and could be a great equalizer for their pitchers.

“The top three are going to be tough to beat. The team’s cheap ways of the past, losing Seth and Rami for instance, I think will keep them fourth, but I wouldn’t be that surprised to see them finish third.”

Well, the good news is that nobody, including us, has the team pegged to get run into the ground this season.

But the outlook for 2011 is not entirely rosy if you listen (as we do) to the opinions of Coskrey, Sueyoshi and Newman, three of the most attentive NPB writers you’ll find in English on the Internet.

In part three of this series we will return our focus to the general state of affairs in NPB and myriad minor details such as the value of Japanese print, TV and Internet media baseball coverage.

Takada resigned in May.

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 will pick up right where 2010 left off. Minus all of the bunting, of course.

And while hopes may be high at Jingu, there will surely be a lot of optimism when several other teams start spring training in the not-too-distant future.

In an effort to survey current NPB trends and what changes may be afoot, Tsubamegun talked to some of the more well-known writers (English language) in the online yakyu community.

This is the first in a short series of articles featuring their thoughts and insights.

One thing that we asked everyone about was whether or not non-Japanese managers, who have fared very poorly in the league since Trey Hillman’s Fighters won the championship back in 2006, are finished in Japan for the foreseeable future.

Gen Sueyoshi, the one-man show at the irreplaceable Yakyu Baka, thinks that there won’t be any more work visa-toting managers in Japan any time soon.

“Some people think I’m over-reacting when I say this, and perhaps I am, but I tend to think that Marty Brown ruined things for non-Japanese managers.

“It also doesn’t help that the Chiba Lotte Marines won the Nippon Series the year after Bobby Valentine left.  And if Senichi Hoshino manages to do something similar with the Eagles…”

Ah, the Eagles.

Former Tokyo third baseman, Akinori Iwamura, decided to sign with them during the off-season after seeing

Hoshino got Rakuten to open the purse strings.

his MLB career get derailed by a knee injury. They should definitely be an improved unit considering the changes they’ve made over the past couple of months.

Marty Brown is out, and Hanshin-resurrecter, Senichi Hoshino, takes over a retooled offense (Kaz Matsui was also lured back to Japan from MLB).

Additionally, ace pitcher Iwakuma’s somewhat unexpected return to the starting rotation should keep naysayers at bay for the time being.

How nice would it be if the Yakult front office put a little extra coin into attracting top free agent talent like the Eagles and Fukuoka Softbank Hawks?

But before that happens, actually, it would be most prudent to develop the farm team in a way similar to what Yomiuri does. But alas, in the eyes of the parent company (Yakult) the minor league club doesn’t help market the yogurt/feminine beauty products manufacturer.

Idiots.

So how about a new owner for the Tokyo Swallows?

As stated repeatedly on this site, Tsubamegun is not at all opposed to the idea of the team being sold. We’d love to see a group of investors, a la John Henry’s NESV (Boston Red Sox; Liverpool Football Club), buy the team and show the rest of the league how to run a club as a profitable business in its own right.

Nevertheless, that won’t happen because non-Japanese are still banned from owning NPB teams, and even if they weren’t, NESV would quickly discover that doing business their way would involve the inevitable anchor of locking horns with the crusty owners of the Central League’s other five teams.

Where is this league headed?

Indeed, Patrick Newman, lead researcher and writer for NPB Tracker, says that NPB in general, and the Central League in particular, is in need of some fresh thinking.

“I’d really like to see a scrappy, competitive group come in and shake things up a bit,” Newman remarked.

Coincidentally perhaps, it seemed for a brief moment last month that the Swallows might be on the auctioneer’s block. But they weren’t.

Yakyu Baka’s Sueyoshi made the intriguing observation that the Swallows would ideally be purchased by an Internet or technology company of some sort. He pointed to the strength of the teams fronted by Rakuten and Softbank as a model for where NPB might find some fresh legs.

Fresh legs and a second wind are definitely what the league needs as it continues to lose the talent battle with MLB.

There are obviously so many things holding NPB back here. The league shoots itself in the foot, both of them really, at nearly every conceivable opportunity.

As mentioned earlier, player development is still a big concern. So is the way that the owners deal with the athletes and their neutered player’s union.

And these foundational issues, while integral to the righting of NPBs ship, are just the tip of the enormous yakyu dumb-berg.

Sueyoshi pointed to the non-Japanese active roster player quote as one of a litany of problems.

“The NPB could do with more foreign players, especially if good players continue to leave for the MLB.

“I know there are people that are against it because it might end up keeping Japanese players out of the line-up, but really I think it would lead to more competition and would improve the league in general.

“And a more competitive league could help keep current players more interested in staying in the NPB.  It could also lead to better performances on the international stage.”

Newman, for his part, urges increased use of the ikusei contracts to expand the pool of talent that teams have access to.

“Signing and developing amateur talent from other countries is another opportunity; Wei-Yin Chen is obviously the current big success story to look at.”

Indeed, these are concepts that many teams  find hard to grasp. The Tokyo Swallows are no exception.

I’m dreaming a little bit here, but it wouldn’t be a prohibitively expensive investment in a team’s long-term future to set up a second farm team, especially when considering the size and worth of the parent companies involved.

And I’d like to remind owners that their team’s farm club doesn’t necessarily have to be within a 30 minute

The tourist city of Nasu (Tochigi Prefecture) would likely foot part of the bill to bring a minor league baseball club to town.

drive of the top team’s stadium.

There’s nothing wrong with having an ikusei/rookie/second year player squad in a small city a couple of prefectures away. This country isn’t that big, and transportation here is second to none, so why can’t the Swallows place a second farm team in a small tourist city such as Nasu, Izu or Tsukuba?

But since the team’s farm system is mostly an afterthought, the birds seem content to rely on the luck of the annual amateur draft, a gambit that didn’t play out particularly well in 2010.

Further compounding Tokyo’s climb into the playoffs is the well-established fact that Yakult refuses to spend money on talent like Central League rivals Yomiuri, Hanshin and Chunichi routinely do.

In the next edition of this multi-part interview, Tsubamegun asks our yakyu journalism colleagues how well they think the Tokyo Swallows will do in 2011. Please check back here for part two in early January.

In the meantime, Tsubamegun would like to wish you and yours a very happy new year!

You can follow Sueyoshi and Newman on Twitter at @gwynar and @npbtracker, respectively.

There's another season coming. Be thankful.

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, but I’ve only done that once).

I was all set to put up a belated post on what sucked about the 2010 season (there’s nothing that doesn’t suck about a record-length game that ends in a shittily-played tie, in the m*th*#rf*ck!ng Japan Series, giving us another pointless playoff tie. Competitive events that end sans result have no merit and need never have happened. Two CL teams, yet again, might as well have not taken the field, etc.), when I thought I’d take a different tack. We’re out of the hot, muggy, crabby barbecue pit of the Tokyo summer, when baseball leads to the ambiguity of repeated disappointment, and into the relatively mild chill of the Tokyo winter and the reliable, indoor-voices, joys of opera season. We have the space of a bit of time and it turns out some good stuff happened in the 2010 season.

Such as:

• Although Tokyo didn’t make the Climax Series this year, they actually had a much better, winning season and were six and a half games out instead of 22. Last year was a season that showed the absurdity of having half of the league make it to the playoffs. This year was decidedly more competitive.
• The partial remodel of Jingu was successful in a number of ways: the toilets are much better now, not only cleaner and nicer, but laid out better, allowing people to get in an out in a reasonable manner; the separate line for sausages has not only boosted sausage sales, but left little wait for my customary, but oft-regretted chicken basket; the installation of a Baskin-Robbins near the bottom of the ramp leading the bleachers has relieved me of the duty of keeping an eye peeled for the ice cream girl when my wife comes to games; there’s a KFC near our in ramp, which I, in theory, could patronize some day.
• Takada is gone.

- Garrett

• Yoshinori and Muranaka turned a corner and had themselves respectable seasons. They showed some unexpected poise and stability and were a validation of Araki’s approach to grooming young pitchers. If the progress continues, and Nakazawa follows suit, then that will mean very positive things moving forward.
• The Swallows have so many quality young infielders that they cut Kajimoto (will definitely find a home elsewhere) and didn’t even flinch when Iwamura resurfaced in Japan looking for a new team. Onizaki, Kawabata and Araki (not the pitching coach mentioned earlier) should provide plenty of competition for each other and hopefully keep Fujimoto and Kawashima on the bench for most of 2011.
• I saved a lot of money this year by switching to shochu. With the ‘Beer Oji’ off to corporate pastures, I decided to find a new way to drown out Takada’s decisions. Apparently the switch was enough to drown him right off the team. Haven’t looked back since.

- Christopher

As a Canadian, I already celebrated Thanksgiving last month, but I think it’s important that we never take things for granted, and thus I’d like to add my thanks to this list.

• First of all, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people through Swallows baseball, for which I am very thankful. There are too many people to name, but I’m particularly thankful to Chris, David, and Garrett for giving me a chance to contribute to this site.
• I’m thankful for the continued development of Hiroyasu Tanaka and Yasushi Iihara. Tanaka quietly put together a very solid season both offensively and defensively, and was a consistent presence in our lineup. Iihara also showed improvement in both facets of the game, and is no longer a liability on the field.
• I’m thankful for our fairly deep pitching corp. We have a solid rotation in Ishikawa, Tateyama, Muranaka, and Yoshinori, and bullpen stars like Masubuchi, Matsuoka, Oshimoto, and Lim. While every team always needs more pitching, we’re certainly no exception. But I feel we’re deeper than any other team in the Central league, something that gives me great hope going into next season.
• Honestly, I’m just thankful that I know that the Swallows will continue to exist next year and into the foreseeable future. As a former Expo fan, I can sympathize with Yokohama fans that are living in a state of constant uncertainty. I’m glad we can afford to bitch about baseball related stuff.

-Kozo

I am thankful that:

• Takada is no longer anywhere near my ballclub (touch wood).
• We have Tateyama and Ishikawa as our team aces. Despite an injury affected start, Tateyama proved once more that he is still the man. Ishikawa also showed the enormity of his stones by coming back from a horrific start to the year (primarily due to poor run support from Takada’s Swallows) to shine as usual.
• Ogawa will be back next year. He pleasantly surprised me as an interim-manager and I will be interested to see what the Ogawa-Araki combo can do with a full season to play with.
• Yomiuri choked down the stretch and in the post-season. With the added bonus of Marc Kroon providing a lot of the entertainment as the Giants sunk.
• Hanshin choked down the stretch and in the post-season. No added bonus really needed here.
• Aoki is still a Swallow.
• I had HDTV coverage of every Tokyo game.
• I have HDTV coverage of the English Premier League to tide me over until next April.
• Kozo joined team-Tsubamegun.
• People actually read this website.
• Takada is no longer anywhere near my ballclub. (Erm, did I mention that?)

- David

Garrett again: For what it’s worth, I’d point out that Kozo did not get in on the Takada-swatting. I count that as a point in favor of his having joined the team – differing views and all. (Don’t tell your Mom, er. . . Mum, but he’s Canadian and all.) I’d also draw a bit of attention to our own Christopher, who has worked hard, very, very hard, to bring Tokyo Swallows merch to the masses. A lot of you contact us, a lot of you sympathize with us, Christopher makes it happen on the streets, where you can represent. More is to come. For those who haven’t noticed, nearly three years of day-by-day reports on Japanese baseball have been filed in English, with the proper partisan slant and the details and “inside baseball” the papers won’t give you, almost entirely due to the tireless dedication of our own David Watkins and Christopher Pellegrini. You should try hard to meet them. And Kozo; he’s rad, too.

On top of it all, though, you’re reading this. You rock.