Quote:
"Hello," he [baseball legend and then Giants manager Sadaharu Oh] said, greeting me in English, "how are you ? Welcome to Japan." Then he smiled and said, "We must win."
"We must win?"
He nodded, and repeated more firmly this time: "We must win." - Warren Cromartie, pg. 17
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March 20, 2020. Opening Day against the Hanshin Tigers
Let's sort of get to know this team that I'm managing. I was so geeked to play that I didn't spend any time scouting the team before diving into the game.
But I knew that the 38-year old Nori Aoki was playing. And there he was, penciled in to bat second behind the 35-year old Tomotaka Sakaguchi, nicknamed "Gucci" (favorite band: Anamanaguchi?). But further on down the batting order I noticed another familiar name: Alcides Escobar, long time Kansas City Royals and member of that 2015 World Champion team. At only 33, he's looking to put up some numbers and maybe catch on with another MLB club.
I didn't know any of the players on the team - at least on the starting 9. I figured: we'd learn about each other on the way.
I almost lost the game in the 7th because I had forgotten to turn on the "no warm up needed" option for the relief pitchers. I tend to play the handedness matchup and so when I needed to insert a pitcher after having pinch hit in the 6th, lefty Naruki Terashima wasn't exactly warmed up.
He promptly gave up two singles, the second one to Justin Bour (!)*, who would eventually come around to score and tie the game on a fielder's choice. Justin Bour signed with the Hanshin Tigers for roughly 2.5 million US.
Yasuhiro "Ryan" Ogawa's great opening day effort - 10 K's in 5 innings - would not earn us the win. Truth be told, my infield wasn't playing in at that fielder's choice either so chalk that up to bad managing.
No worries. We won it in 12th on a Gucci double that scored the hard-running and 45-rated speed Shingo Kawabata from first. For the game, Gucci went 5-6 with a walk, a run scored, and a RBI. Great first impression from my leadoff hitter.
Notes:
* IRL, Justin Bour would leave the Hanshin Tigers at the end of the 2020 season, after batting .243 with 17 honers in 99 games.
Executed my favorite play: the double-steal. The record for stolen bases in the league is held by Yutaka Fukumoto, who swiped 106 bases in 1972. For comparison's sake, the modern MLB record is 130, set by Rickey Henderson in 1982.
I don't plan on writing after every game, but an extra-inning win in our home opener demanded a few words. Plus, I do play each game.