An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
Spring camp started for the top team in Okinawa today. Here’s a list of the players that were invited. The Swallows’ Japanese website has a handy schedule that will give you a light peak into what’s ahead for the team. The top team camp has only four officially-scheduled days off, and camp concludes on February 28th. [...]
While reading all the off-season and spring training news that can be found about NPB and MLB, I came across some tidbits on former Tokyo center fielder, Norichika Aoki. A tracking poll conducted last week over at Brew Crew Ball found that 94% of respondents were in favor of the contract that Aoki signed with [...]
Chunichi Dragons Sold backup catcher, Keiji Oyama (31) to Tohoku. 2011 was Oyama’s best season so far, offensively-speaking. He hit .280/.394/.390 in 102 plate appearances. It sounds like Araki and Ibata could be reverting to their old positions, second and short, respectively. Victor Diaz is all but certain to be wearing a Chunichi uniform this [...]
I’ve noticed it before, but lord it’s out of control right now. Reporters, announcers, newscaster, whatever you want to call them, are dropping like flies. For whatever reason they’re marrying baseball players. Here’s a list of recent developments: January – Anri Mitsube (NHK newscaster) and Kan Otake (Hiroshima); Saho Narushima (freelance reporter) and Kenta Maeda (Hiroshima) [...]
A lot has happened since we last offered up our insights on what’s happening with your Tokyo Swallows. Some of the major goings-on include: Norichika Aoki has joined the Milwaukee Brewers Lastings Milledge was snagged as a free agent before signing with another major league club Orlando Roman was lured away from the Brother Elephants [...]
On this day in 1980, Masanori Ishikawa was born in Akita Prefecture. He joined the Tokyo Swallows at the end of 2001 when he was selected in the first round by the Japan Series champion Tokyo Swallows. There was no delay in his introduction to top team baseball, and he quickly found himself a weekly [...]
We’ll do another ‘Opening Day Lineup’ post soon, especially now that Aoki has officially flown the coop, but let’s first take a moment to check in with the rest of the team. At least two Tokyo players have already contracted the flu. Awesome. I’m a bit confused because this is normally what happens to the [...]
As most of the baseball world has been made aware, the Texas Rangers won the exclusive rights to speak with Mr. Darvish in December 2011. Until this week, there really had not been much discussion about the discussions. Granted in the US, the sportsworld is fully engulfed by the NFL and college football. Now that all the [...]
The Milwaukee Brewers announced that the team signed Norichika Aoki, Tokyo’s star 30-year-old outfielder, to a multi-year deal. Congratulations to both Aoki and the Brewer community! We here at Tsubamegun hope that it truly is a match made in Milwaukee heaven. Details are sketchy at this point, but it seems like the two sides were [...]
The trivia question that popped up the other day got a decent response and was an enjoyable brain-teaser, so I thought I’d construct one that I actually know all of the answers to. Did you know that Ruppert Jones was the first player in NPB history to don the ’00′ uniform back in 1988? Playing [...]
