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Camp fires: Feb. 25, 2024

Ideally, the preseason is about good news, baseball being played, players fine-tuning their games for the regular season, guys coming back from injury setback. But the flip side is players getting hurt before the start of the season.

The Chunichi Dragons looking to have left-handed ace Yudai Ono, the 2019 Sawamura Award winner, back after his 2023 season ended in surgery after one game, but went into camp without their top draft pick from 2023, Asia University pitcher Sho Kusaka, who felt discomfort in January and is now having or has already had Tommy John surgery.

Continue reading Camp fires: Feb. 25, 2024

Camp fires: Feb. 2, 2024

On Friday, we were reminded of a fixture of NPB spring camps, reporters counting stuff that has little meaning to anybody and is simply a placeholder for real news.

In other news, we learned that some new dogs are learning old tricks, and we have a list of the former players who have qualified to teach student ballplayers.

Where’s the count when NPB needs him?

The 1st of many 1sts for Dickerson

This is not really about counting but about headlines. Apologies in advance for harping on this, but there is nothing Japan’s media loves than an accomplishment that is absolutely unremarkable being touted as the first of its kind.

Friday, new Chunichi Dragon Alex Dickerson cleared the fence in BP, which is good news if you were betting on that, but it was enough for the Chunichi Sports, not surprisingly the sports paper owned by the team’s parent company to put up a headline saying “Dickerson hits his first home run in Japan!

Continue reading Camp fires: Feb. 2, 2024