The 12-in-12 could not have been going any worse than it had up to this point. Two wins and eight losses, with the lone wins coming against the Yakult Swallows (1-1) and Hiroshima Carp (1-2). Two losses each at the hands of the BayStars and Giants, plus one against the Chunichi Dragons, completely eliminated the…
Just avoid the September sputter. That’s all the Tigers had to do in order to hold on to first and clinch their first pennant in a decade. But the final month of regular season play has not been a good one for the Tigers in recent years, and this year was starting to look like…
In a nutshell our problem is this: the Hanshin Tigers can’t beat other teams’ best pitchers. The chart below lists the Central League’s ten best qualified (enough innings played to win individual awards) pitchers by ERA. Keep in mind this chart does not look at our record in games in which their aces got no-decisions. Pitcher…
As has been the case in the Central League all season, winning streaks are followed by losing streaks, which are followed by winning streaks again. The Tigers had won 3 straight heading into Sunday’s matchup with the Dragons, but lost 5-0 in the series finale. Would it be the beginning of another losing streak, or…
The original trashy article can be found here 元のゴミはこちら The war below the surface is starting to bubble. We’re talking about last year’s batting champ, Matt Murton (33). He took a benching for a few games this season when he lost some of his shimmer. He’s brought his average back up to .293 (as of…
It really doesn’t matter too much what the Tigers’ record is. They need to beat their longtime rivals, the Yomiuri Giants. Wada himself said, “We’re more focused on the rivalry than our record in this series.” He backed that up by slotting three of his strongest pitchers to take the mound under the EGG in…
For the Central League, the All-Star Break may as well have been the offseason, and the remaining games a full season. The gap between all the teams was a mere 5 games (including 4 teams within a single game of first). To make things even more spring-like, no team was above .500! With fewer than…
夢はつぶれる、未来はつぶれる ぼくとわたしの大きな夢は いつもの負けで いつもの阪神… 阪神！ Yume wa tsubureru, mirai wa tsubureru Boku to watashi no o-kina yume wa Itsumo no make de, itsumo no Hanshin… HANSHIN! (My dreams have been squashed, my future is squashed. Your big dreams and mine, always losers, always Hanshin… HANSHIN!) Coming into this series, the boys were rocking a 3-6 record since…
To purchase and read this book, I had to put away my dislike of the Yomiuri Giants. After all, the subject and co-author starred for them during the most interesting years of my Hanshin Tigers’ history. He was a perfect foil to then-star Tiger Randy Bass, who enamored the fanatics at Koshien from the time he arrived in…
If only there were more books like this. If only I had been a fan of Japanese baseball when these two faced each other. If only I had had time to actually finish reading the book! (It was a loaner from the library, and I will take it out again after I’ve read a handful…