The original interview (in Japanese) and pictures can be found here How do you feel playing for the Hanshin Tigers? Rafael Dolis (RD): I’d wanted to make my way out to Japan for awhile already, so I’m really happy to have been able to do it. I feel very fortunate the be a member of…
Original is in this magazine 元の記事はこの雑誌から Messenger Remembers His Teammates Written by Randy Messenger, translated to Japanese, then re-translated here by T-Ray The Real Ichiro Hits Homers at Will I forgot to mention something in the last column. I want to talk about Barry (Bonds = Pittsburgh Pirates, San Francisco Giants) a little. He holds…
The following interview was a 5-week series found on the Hanshin Tigers official website. I always find it hard to translate these, because the original answers given by Randy Messenger were in English, then interpreted into Japanese, transcribed, read by my eyes, and put back into the English I think Randy might have originally spoken….
On Tuesday night, I had the privilege of going to watch the Hanshin Tigers face the Chunichi Dragons. Without going into too many details about the game (series recap will come out after Thursday’s match), suffice to say that there was little drama in the game itself, but it ended jubilantly. I received an invitation…
New relief pitcher Roman Mendez (age 26, formerly of the Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers) arrived in Japan on the 28th and met the press formally for the first time on the 29th in Nishinomiya. Here is a partial transcript of his Q & A: －What’s your mindset in joining Hanshin? I’m really happy….
I got notice from one John Gunning (who covers sumo in English in Japan and does it quite well) that he wanted to start to promote sports in Japan to more of a global audience. So he asked me if he could interview me and post the video to his YouTube channel. Of course I…
Now, I’ve had my encounters with Hanshin Tigers players before. Some of you remember my report about meeting Matt Murton at Starbucks. Others will have read my more recent report about bumping into (not literally, thank God) Randy Messenger, Mauro Gomez, Marcos Mateo, Matt Hague, and Tom O’Malley at a Mexican restaurant in Okinawa. But…
A couple of weeks ago, I was able to chat on FaceTime with Tigers’ legend Gene Bacque. As a rookie Tigers’ fan, I only found out about Mr. Bacque by accident when I was researching the history of the Eiji Sawamura Award. A few Google searches later I found a way to contact him, and we have…
The first edition of the 2015 magazine is now in the hands of fan club members. Over 90% of its content is devoted to ticket purchase information (who knew it was this complicated!) but the first few pages feature a nice interview with young catcher Ryutaro Umeno and young pitcher Ryoma Matsuda. Here is my…