On Wednesday, a former player exposing himself in public reminds us of the weird way in which Japan’s media “protects” the privacy of suspects arrested by the police here. On the field, Ryosuke Kikuchi had a milestone night, and then hit a walk-off homer, a rookie hit a grand slam and the Nippon Ham Fighters insured their victory with some suicidal behavior.
Wednesday’s games
Fighters 4, Marines 1: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Sachiya Yamasaki allowed a run in 7-1/3 innings, and the Nippon Ham Fighters came from behind with the help of back-to-back suicide squeezes on Wednesday.
Yamasaki (8-3) allowed a run on three hits and error in the first inning, but Franmil Reyes tied it in the bottom of the first with 11th home run. A leadoff walk and Chusei Mannami double then set up Nippon Ham’s big inning.
The Fighters took the lead on an error charged to Neftali Soto for failing to catch a wide throw at first base, and Nippon Ham wasted no time piling on. On consecutive pitches, Torai Fushimi and Tatsuki Mizuno laid down perfect squeeze bunts with the runners going from third.
Last year in June, the Fighters went through a suicide squeeze phase and over the course of three games had three runners tagged out at the plate on pitch outs, twice against the Marines on June 24.
“I regret giving up the first-inning homer and the two squeeze bunts, but from the third inning on I was able to pitch my kind of game,” Lotte starter C.C. Mercedes (4-6) said.
Marines skipper Masato Yoshii also liked what he saw at the finish from his lefty, but was not pleased by how Mercedes came out of the gate.
“This was an important game for us, so it might have been better for him to come out pitching as well as he possibly could, but we got behind and that was that,” Yoshii said. “We had no answer for manager (Tsuyoshi) Shinjo’s calling for suicide squeezes on consecutive pitches, and that completely took the air out of us.”
Eagles 6, Buffaloes 1: At Osaka UFO Dome, Hiroto Kobukata drew a first-inning leadoff walk off Anderson Espinoza (7-6) and scored on Ryosuke Tatsumi‘s one-out double. Kotaro Kurebayashi tied it in the bottom of the inning against Ryusei Uchi (6-7), who allowed just one more base runner in his remaining four innings.
Kobukata’s two-run fifth-inning triple untied the game before the Eagles piled on some late insurance runs.
Giants 4, Tigers 0: At Tokyo Ugly Dome, Shosei Togo (9-6) threw a seven-hit shutout and rookie Shogo Asano hit a fourth-inning grand slam, the first of his career, off Masaki Oyokawa (1-3).
Carp 4, BayStars 3: At New Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Shugo Maki singled in a first-inning run for the visitors, who took a 3-1 lead against Hiroki Tokoda in the fourth on a Takuma Hayashi RBI double and an RBI single from starting pitcher Andre Jackson, who allowed only a second-inning unearned run over six innings but left trailing 3-1.
Ryosuke Kikuchi became the 78th player with 300 career doubles in Japan in the seventh inning, but saved his best for last. With two one and one out in the ninth, he hit his 129th career home run as Hiroshima won in a walk-off to stay one game ahead of Yomiuri atop the CL table.
BayStars closer Kohei Morihara (2-5) surrendered a leadoff double to Kaito Kozono and pitched around Shogo Sakakura with first base open. With one out and looking for a double play, he attacked Kikuchi.
“I located the pitch to Kozon well,” Morihara said. “The pitch Kikuchi hit was not a mistake, he just saw it well and put a good swing on it.”
Lions 4, Hawks 1: At the domed stadium formerly known as “Prince,” Chihiro Sumida (7-8) allowed a run over six innings while striking out eight without a walk as Seibu snapped an eight-game losing streak.
Swallows 7, Dragons 6, 11 innings: At Jingu “Tokyo’s sacrifice to corporate greed and governmental malfeasance” Stadium, Yukihiro Iwata tied the game in the eighth with a two-run homer, and then doubled and scored the game-winning run in the 11th inning as Yakult took two out of three against fellow bottom feeder Chunichi.
Kengo Ota singled to open Yakult’s first and scored via a groundout and a Domingo Santana single. Takaya Ishikawa tied it in the fourth with a solo homer, his third, off Cy Sneed. Santana, who went 3-for-4, kept the fifth inning alive with a two-out single, Munetaka Murakami walked and Jose Osuna broke the tie with his 14th home run.
Chunichi catcher Takuya Kinoshita doubled in Seiya Hosokawa in the seventh, and the Dragons moved ahead in a four-run eighth on an Ishikawa sac fly, a two-run Kinoshita double and an RBI pinch-hit single by Seiji Kawagoe. With two outs and the bases loaded in the 11th Murakami ended it with an RBI single.
Japan’s privacy hypocrisy
On Wednesday, we learned through a post on his ex-wife’s blog that a former professional baseball player was recently arrested on suspicion of “public indecency” for exposing himself in a supermarket parking lot. His ex-wife, who was described as a “talent”–the Japanese word for celebrity in this case a woman who was once posed semi-nude in magazines and who had been working as racing track eye-candy in motor sports, reported that her ex, who had been arrested for same thing in 2018 for the same charges.
The news reports referred to the former player as “Suspect A” and declined to give his name as is the custom in Japan. It is also the custom in Japan to publish as much other information about the suspect so that anyone who cares to look can find out the person’s name.
Mentioning to my colleagues at the day job today, I was told that when the prime minister’s son was arrested, we were allowed to identify him as the PM’s oldest son, but were not permitted to publish his name. When asked what the point of that exercise was, my colleague said he was told, “We’re still a Japanese news agency.”
The same thing when Japanese ballplayers were caught trying to evade taxes on the money paid under the table by pro teams to sign them. The players were not identified by name but by the year they turned pro, the team that drafted them and the draft round they were selected in.
