I went to Tokyo Dome again for the game between the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles and Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. This game was “Arizona Diamondbacks Night”, as the Fighters and the D’Backs have some sort of partnership. As a result, there were also a lot of Americans at the game. Some notables were also in the crowd, including the newly appointed Ambassador from the United States, J. Thomas Schieffer, and the General Manager of the Eagles, Marty Kuehnert.

I had reserved seating this time around, so the view was a little better than the unreserved seating from the other day. But I still miss the Safe. I realize I’m spoiled by the grand 500 million dollar stadium in Seattle. If you thought the Safe was “generic”, the Tokyo Dome is the French Vanilla of all vanilla stadiums.

Shoda Itsuki started this game for the Fighters, while the Eagles sent veteran Kaneda Masahiko. The Fighters quickly disposed of the Eagles in the first and immediately put up a three-spot with a blizzard of singles. The Fighters protected this lead into the fifth, but Shoda gave up a two run bomb to Eagles’ 3B Saito Hidemitsu. This threat was immediately repulsed by the Fighters by putting up two runs in the bottom of the frame. The Fighters held down the Eagles for the rest of the game and tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the seventh. As a result, the Eagles were swept away by the Fighters, 7-2.

Fighter players of note were 3B Ogasawara Michihiro, who went 3-for-3 with 2 walks and 1 RBI, 1B Fernando Seguinol (formerly of the Expos, Blue Wave and Yankees), who went 3-for-5 with 1 RBI and 1 run, and RF Inaba Atsunori, who went 2-for-4 with 1 RBI. Overall, the offense was mostly small ball, compared to yesterday, and the production was pretty equally spread out across the entire starting lineup. The pitching was pretty good, with the starter Shoda going 7 innings with 2 ERs.

The Eagles really had no one of note. 3B Saito Hidemitsu was the only one who created any offense (2-for-3, HR, 2 RBI), but he also added an error. The Eagles pitching was never really able to control the game much either.

Overall, it was really fun. The first seats we were in were near a guy from Philly. It was fun talking to him about good ol’ Major League Baseball. He also confirmed the fact that Philly fans are insane. We then moved to better seats, where I spotted the Eagles GM. There isn’t really any thing I noticed more about the game and stadium than yesterday. Well, I found out they sell whisky in the stands too, but that wasn’t very surprising. I went to the game yesterday with Nick, a fellow exchange student from California, but today I went with Christine and some of her pals. I got myself a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters cap as a souveneir and successfully restrained myself from spending too much on a Fighters jersey. Sadly, the Eagles ones are only 35 bucks and half the price of the Fighters ones, but they’re too ugly to wear. I figure I’ll just save my money for a Mariners one, considering I’d probably actually wear that one.

Oh yeah, Christine is my hero because she got these tickets for the games this weekend. Spring just can’t be kicked off without a little piece of Summer. NPB baseball is going to be fun to keep track of. It’s too bad it wasn’t as fun as I wanted it to be, because I’m fending off a cold right now. Damn it!