Category Archives: humor

Baseball, Commentary, humor, Paid Content

March is my time, too

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As Japan’s players this past week began their quest to win the World Baseball Classic for the fourth time in six tries, many of them have been sporting T-shirts that read “March is our time.”

I ought to get one of those.

Because of the WBC, I got on the field in Japan this past week without any of the groveling Nippon Professional Baseball teams expected from me last year after I left my cushy day job at Kyodo News.

Since last year’s MLB openers at Tokyo Dome, MLB has tasked its longtime promotion partner here, the Yomiuri Shimbun Sports Business Department, to handle media credentialing. Because of that switch, field access, where reporters can randomly access players and coaches in unsupervised spaces, has been severely curtailed.

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Baseball, Free, humor, News

Tigers go in search of new disappointments

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The Hanshin Tigers announced last week that with the exception of reliever Kyle Keller, who will receive a contract for 2023, the team’s other imports will all be let go.

The Tigers will be under new old management, bringing in former skipper Akinobu Okada to replace Akihiro Yano, who said before camp started that he would quit at season’s end. With that in mind, Hanshin said it is looking for new imports who will fit in with Hanshin’s established traditions.

“We’ve got a new setup and a new manager, and we want a new look,” a team executive said. “We appreciate the contribution these guys made to our disappointing season, but players can only be expected to take so much overblown expectation, impatience, and baseless criticism behind their backs to the media.”

“With that in mind, we have our eye on a new crop of imports who will help us win a pennant in 2023, and be suitable scapegoats if we don’t. Not just any player has the makeup we need to be a real Hanshin Tiger.”

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