TorafusuTorasan comments

@virusrex--less innocuous means less harmless, but I infer your opinion is that him paying for space tourism is more innocuous than buying a megayacht or private plane.

Anyway, it is amazing that a dropout like Maezawa got to this point from his first business trading rare punk music CDs. Guess he found a way to profit from timely trends.

Right, hard to get why you put down whatever people want to be fans of. If you followed the Kochi Fighting Dogs of the four team Shikoku Island League, that would be a cooler baseball purist move than repping the NY Yankmees just cause their hats are sold at any mall. They sell Man U and Barcelona branded balls at the malls because they are the safe and boring global brand teams.

@Wandora--the latest J-league cup was won by unheralded Fukuoka. The thrill of victory following a small club vs. the empty bragging of being a fan of a mid-table mediocrity like the 2nd best team from Manchester. Not checking the PL standings so if Man U is good these days I stand corrected.

Sure, those are all good points. But the name World Series is really just an old brand name for MLBs domestic league final. Simultaneously, MLB is promoting an international World Baseball Classic for national teams. Again, branding. Not much point in trying to parse the meaning of Classic or, in NFL, the Super Bowl. Just the jargon of its day: golly that was a super duper sock hop last Saturday, gosh!

Sending out an APB to the fashion police. A meat-themed team from the north has been infiltrated by imposter Kimetsu no yaeba cosplayers.

Fighters new look not jesterish? One leg black, the other red. Big unneeded collars that time traveled from the 1970s. And Shinjo, bless him, hamming it up as the lil boss. Even his sports car has the same migraine-inducing paint job. Are you and I talking about the same team?

@RB--I knew the Giants had a media monopoly, especially in Tokyo, but to hear no mention of the Tigers in ten years is wild. Have you heard of the better Tokyo team Yakult by chance?

@garypen--in that case, the team must rank the same place in their list of priorities as you put them to have had such long bouts of mediocrity. And it was not a knock against the Fighters, who have amazing young talent such as Manami. Just stating a fact that I saw reported earlier this year, to illustrate why the team is in last place. I think their most talented staffer may be in the sartorial section--some of those jester unis could temporarily blind rival teams.

@fxgai--no, that was not normal but YY was pitching a shutout in his last appearance before the offseason. Some fans were crying in the stands to witness his farewell game. Fairly clear why the manager gave him all 9 innings.

@Yubaru--but if that were true, the Samurai would have had trouble with the all-minor league US team at the Olympics. Or the stronger competition at the WBC this year. Keep stretching your imagination and say NPB is like 5A or 6A while the Samurai continue to hoard gold.

LOL at the charismatic men front and center. They are not diving in to rescue squat. It takes a special kind of fan to brave the chilly sewage plunge.

@kohakuebisu--yes, founded in 1935, around the time Babe Ruth and other all stars held exhibition games.

That long history does not help much if their corporate backing is a single department store and a regional rail line. Hard to justify raising player pay to compete with the Softbanks and Yomiuris of the league.

Lowest payroll team these days is Fighters, owned by a processed meats maker. Would like to see how creative they get with the Ni-Ham team cafeteria menu.

Kyocera Dome is hosting the corporate league championships from Wednesday. My suspicion is that many fans of those teams are employed by the participating companies and got time off and comped tickets to reward the better employees. Joking but you never know.

Nary a peep?

The lass in question took up half a page in the inner part of that fine newspaper, Nikkan Sports. They downplayed it, calling it a puchi dive of 1 meter, so it seems doubtful that any charisma men needed to follow her in. Could have made the situation worse if the gent was drunk.

I am just waiting for FFS to report what it was like at his alleged Minami stomping grounds, but without any snide U-Cs tacked on please. Or is he off on a long trip again?

@Fighto--Col. Sanders statues should be safe as long as there are no players that resemble him. Maybe Neuse does a little. The mid-80s canal jump was about finding fans who resembled all the players, and when no rotund Oklahoma expats appeared on the bridge, a single Col. Sanders was requisitioned as a stand-in to complete the game. Ultimately, it took decades before the statue was pulled out and put on display with the support of KFC. Because a KFC Japan magazine I collected plays up this history, I doubt they would mind the marketing gift of a repeat statue toss.

@piskian--restarting means restaffing the school, not always simple. The former teachers/principal/secretary were sent elsewhere and may not be thrilled to get asked to return to a school that may close again in a year. I saw a TV documentary where a school on a small island reopened for 1-2 kids and the staff to student ratio was several to 1.

Continued--MLB had no problem with Ohtani and many other players doing the WBC six months ago, but I agree with your gist that in the absence of a lobbying push by MLB, baseball will not be played at LA 2028.

@Samit Basu--you are right that baseball and softball are out for the next Olympics, but got the year wrong: Paris 2024

Whining about nameless lefties 20 times a day doth not good comedy make. It is the epitomy of boring discourse.

Stick to bigging up Kajagoogoo for laffs.

@obladi--that is a probable scenario, but there are two rounds of Climax Series before we can determine if the two Kansai teams will contest the Japan Series a month from now.

@wandora--good question. If all teams are close in talent and funding, then 3 pennants in 18 years would be normal. Hanshin has their second in that span. So another better funded team must have four or more pennants to make up for the Tigers underachieving.

@Fighto!--the US has won the last four Olympic golds in basketball. Their most hyped players this time around were young rising stars without NBA playoff experience like Anthony Edwards of the mediocre Timberwolves. Team Deutschs top scorer Dennis Schroeder is near the peak of his NBA career and is also an excellent ball handler and defender as displayed in the final last night. Good on the German champs.

@kaimychal--Yubaru did link to a Yomiuri article a while back about unnamed representatives. The mods removed it though.

Makes you wonder if that term is just a euphemism for Ippei without outing him. He is literally the guy representing Shohei daily to the English speaking side. He must have plenty of legal representation in Japan as that is where the majority of his income is earned, but it is not their job to announce his aches and pains to the team. It is like the old joke about how many people are needed to replace a light bulb.

Yeah, this article has not aged well. Ohtani was benched after something went wrong during batting practice today.

The buck should stop with Ohtani and not Nez Balelo, Ippei, or whomever. The players are the ones who make the call to visit a doctor for what ails them, unless they are rendered unconscious. The coaches are working under the assumption that the players under their charge are healthy and not hiding any issues.

Once again, we are missing the detail from the tabloid Friday that Yamakawa was abusing his sempai status by expecting younger players to find him women to send from their hotel room to his room. Likely that this victim did not appreciate the switcheroo scheme setting her up with a married player. But if everyone in on these hotel shenanigans was harshly punished, NPB might have to take over and rebrand the team.

An MRI only seems brilliant in hindsight. Ho hum.

The scandal-oriented news sites explained how the younger players served as date recruiters for their senior teammate. From management standpoint, Yamakawa had to get a long suspension to try to shield the rest of the team. Opening a full scale inquiry into who knows how many young players who had some connection to the scheme could be quite ugly.

@Fighto!--this was an outdoor show at a beach or park across the water from KIX. Probably CCTV footage not in play there. The organizers may have given police the same crowd-shot smartphone footage that NHK is using. Those clips are too brief to draw a strong conclusion, but the existence of video did convince the men to go in to the police for interviewing. It will really get interesting if the woman in this case decides to face the music. Organizers and police likely have a list of female ticket holders to help narrow it down, but a heavy handed police investigation of EDM fans could get ugly for the concert promoters.

NHK evening news ran a piece of footage, but it went so quickly that the groping was tricky to pinpoint. My main takeaway was it did not show any security staff around the performer like you would expect at a big concert with thousands in the audience, as I assume this was. Were they on site but napping on the job or occupied elsewhere? Did the young execs shown above skimp on providing adequate security this year? They have been bringing top international DJs to Sennan for this festival for years, so should know how to do security by now.

@Samit--that is a pretty goofy poster. Looks like Pac-Man had too much to drink or too much sun at the beach, and is dealing with it by having a ciggy. But how was it lit by this mascot without any hands?