On Tuesday night (November 28) in Tokyo, Nippon Professional Baseball held its annual awards ceremony to recognize excellent players and their contributions to the game. Here’s how it went down for our Hanshin Tigers. Matsutaro Shoriki Award: Akinobu Okada Central League MVP: Shoki Murakami Central League Rookie of the Year: Shoki Murakami Central League Best…
Coming home to Koshien Stadium after a rough beatdown on Sunday night, the Tigers were looking to take control of the series again. They opened the scoring, but an uncharacteristic outing from Masashi Itoh put them in a hole in the middle innings. However, the team fought back hard in the latter third of the…
It’s always a little alarming when people start talking about a perfect game before it’s half over, but Shoki Murakami was dealing. No one reached base against him through four innings, conjuring up images of his first start in 2023 against the Yomiuri Giants (April 12, 7 perfect innings). The perfect game vanished against the…
Sometimes you have to watch games to get a true feel for what they were like. The scoreboard and stat line aren’t enough. This one was a bit of a stressful affair, as Masashi Itoh allowed the leadoff runner to reach base in five of his seven innings. In the eighth, they got two 2-out…
History was made at Hanshin Koshien Stadium last night, September 14. The Tigers had a magic number of 1, and were riding a 10-game winning streak. Their perfect September was on the line, and an 11-game streak had not been achieved in 41 seasons. Nevertheless, the team put aside some early-inning jitters (see recap below)…
It has been far from an ideal season for Yuki Nishi. Once the staff ace, he is now the “old man” (despite being two months shy of 33, only one player on the team is longer in the tooth, and only by 6 months). He got farmed for the first time as a Tiger (in…
Note: I did not watch these games and am doing this recap (along with the rest of the August scorecards) retrospectively for the purpose of having them on record. Enjoy the scorecards for what they are worth, but I do not have anything insightful to say about this series. However, with the two wins in…
The way the Hanshin Tigers played this weekend, you would have never guessed they were riding a 13-game losing streak (regular season games only) at Yokohama Stadium. The same is true of the Baystars, whose defense was atrocious through two games. In any case, the team’s bats came to life and the starting pitching was…
The Tigers ended interleague on a downer, having lost four straight series to Pacific League opponents. Meanwhile, the Baystars caught fire during that stretch. The six-game lead once held by the Tigers was down to 2.5… and then they proceeded to completely give it away, as the Baystars swept them in Yokohama back in June….
When attending a baseball game in Japan, one must experience the food in tandem with the action on the field! Japan is world-renowned for putting a lot of thought, effort, and quality into its cuisine… and the ballparks are no exception! There is a lot of great food besides what we have for you here,…