Perhaps one symptom of the coronavirus is the inability to get bad word associations out of your head. Either that or it’s age. Since I began paying attention to 20-year-old Giants right-hander Shosei Togo, I can’t stop connecting him in my mind with Japan’s hero of the Russo-Japanese War, Admiral Heihachiro Togo.
Before anyone complains, I am aware that their names are not pronounced exactly the same and only share one Chinese character. Other than their both being from southern Kyushu, the Giants pitcher from central Miyazaki, and the admiral from neighboring Kagoshima.
On Sunday, Togo got out of a tight spot in the first inning with some really good pitching and poised that belied his youth, retiring the heart of the Dragons order after the top two hitters singled.
The biggest problem I had with Togo was that his name reminded me of one of those nightmare wedding parties that everyone goes to eventually in Japan, where someone gives an interminable speech. In this case, it was a man whose father had been an aide to Admiral Togo sixty years earlier, and who felt dutybound to relate snippets of the admiral’s wisdom to the bride and groom.
Because the man, the principal at the school where my friend and her husband taught. spoke softly, you could hear people’s teeth grinding as he droned on and on. It’s hard to believe that I went to more wedding celebrations after that. But that was the beginning of the end.
No coaching in the press box
After Saturday’s loss to the Yakult Swallows at Jingu Stadium — even after the Swallows’ hero interviews, Tigers manager Akihiro Yano and one of his coaches was jawing with the umpires.
The most obvious reason for the discussion seemed to be a close play at the plate that Yano asked be reviewed via the “request system.” The umpire had also approached Yano during the eighth inning to complain about the team getting help from a “reporter.”
The umpires told Yano they heard a reporter shouting at the Tigers’ bench “He’s safe” on the play at the plate, and warned them that they are not allowed to get help from the press box, which at Jingu is immediately behind home plate.
“It’s no big deal,” Yano told reporters Sunday. “It’s not like they were helping us steal signs or something like that.”
Game of shadows
I’m not any big “Twilight Zone” aficionado, but one episode I can’t get out of my head is “Shadow Play,” where Dennis Weaver plays a man in his dream where he is sentenced to death and the dream replays over and over with him dying in the electric chair.
It’s like every time the Hawks play the Marines, you know who the better team is but it rarely seems to matter, because like Dennis Weaver, no matter how well prepared the Hawks are, the result is they get their butts kicked by a team that shouldn’t be able to stay on the field with them.
Yomiuri Giants rookie Shosei Togo (8-4) shut down the Chunichi Dragons for seven innings in a 5-1 win at Tokyo Dome on Sunday.
The 20-year-old right-hander, the Giants’ sixth pick in the 2018 draft, located his 150-kph (93.2 MPH) fastball that set the table for a nasty splitter and a good slider. He allowed four hits and a walk while striking out four.
The Dragons threatened in the first when Yohei Oshima rolled a tough pitch through the infield and Yota Kyoda smashed a high straight fastball for a single, but Togo bore down and took out the heart of the Chunichi order, Zolio Almonte, Dayan Viciedo and Shuhei Takahashi.
Seiya Matsubara tripled twice and scored three runs for the Giants, who peppered lefty Takahiro Matsuba (3-5). Matsubara opened the scoring in the first with an RBI triple off the top of the wall, and scored on a Hayato Sakamoto ground out.
With a runner on first and two outs in the fifth, the Dragons opted to walk Sakamoto intentionally rather than letting him hack at a 3-0 pitch from the lefty. Moving the runner to second proved costly, when cleanup hitter Kazuma Okamoto put a picture-perfect swing on a pitch away and drove it to right to make it 3-0.
Almonte and Viciedo combined to produce a run off Rubby De La Rosa in the ninth. Sakamoto doubled in the third, his 1,964th career hit.
Shinichi Onuki (7-4) allowed a run on three hits and a walk over 6-2/3 innings as the DeNA BayStars beat the Hiroshima Carp 3-1 at Hiroshima’s Mazda Stadium.
Takayuki Kajitani got the BayStars on the board in the first, leading off against Yuta Nakamura (0-2) with his 15th home run. Neftali Soto then doubled and scored on a ground out.
In the second, Kajitani saved a run with a diving catch in the gap, causing manager Alex Ramirez to say the play brought back memories — of center fielders diving to grab balls because he had no range in left field.
Onuki left after allowing Ryuhei Matsuyama’s two-out home run in the seventh, but the DeNA bullpen then set down the last seven hitters. Spencer Patton dispatched the bottom of the order 1-2-3 in the eighth, and Kazuki Mishima fanned two in a 1-2-3 ninth against the top of the order to record his 11th save.
Haraguchi, Sands bury Swallows
Fumihito Haraguchi homered, singled, walked, scored two runs and drove in three, while Jerry Sands had three hits and made a run-saving catch in the outfield as the Hanshin Tigers beat the Yakults Swallows 9-3 at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium.
Sands singled in the game’s opening run off rookie Daiki Yoshida (1-5) after Koji Chikamoto opened the game with a single and stole second.
Haraguchi homered to open the second to tie it, and the Tigers took the lead in the third. The Swallows hit Tigers starter Takumi Aoyama (6-2) in the fourth, but failed to tie it thanks to two defensive gems.
Munetaka Murakami led off with a drive to the wall in center that Chikamoto somehow caught for the first out. Tomotaka Sakaguchi followed with a double and was poised to score on a sinking liner to left, but Sands was able to make a diving catch and hold onto the ball for the third out.
Chikamoto had four hits for the Tigers and drove in three.
Normal programming was restored at Chiba’s Zozo Marine Stadium, where the SoftBank Hawks’ normal program is the “Twilight Zone,” in particular, the episode “Shadow Play.“
On Sunday the three-time defending Japan Series champs lost 8-4 to the Lotte Marines, who now lead their season series 10-4-1. Last year, the Marines went 16-8-1 against manager Tadahito Iguchi’s old team.
Leonys Martin became the sixth player in Pacific League history to walk five times in a game. The Japan record is held by Hall of Famer Hiromitsu Ochiai. He scored twice. Seiya Inoue’s two RBI doubles drove in four of the Marines’ first seven runs, all charged to Hawks starter Akira Niho (4-5) who didn’t finish the second inning.
Former Hawk Shuhei Fukuda had four hits and drove in three runs for the hosts, while another free agent acquisition, pitcher Manabu Mima (8-2) won despite allowing four runs over five innings.
Lions sweep Eagles
Wataru Matsumoto (4-3) scattered four walks and four hits to allow two runs over seven innings, and Ernesto Mejia doubled twice and drove in two runs for the Seibu Lions in a 6-2 win over the Rakuten Eagles to complete a three-game sweep at MetLife Dome.
Mejia, who was hit by a pitch in the first, doubled in both runs in the Lions’ two-run second. He doubled again in the seventh to set up an insurance run.
Both Eagles runs came on solo homers, Stefen Romero’s 20th — his 89th in four Japan season — and the first of rookie Hiroto Kobukata’s career.
Fighters pay Buffaloes’ roaming charges
Teams virtually always take batting practice before the game, but the Orix Buffaloes kept going after home plate umpire Yuta Sudo shouted “play ball.,” in a 20-hit 12-8 win over the Nippon Ham Fighters at Osaka’s Kyocera Dome.
Four different Buffaloes hitters recorded a “modasho,” and Steven Moya continued to hit balls over the wall with his fourth homer in five games, a two-run shot that broke a 4-4 third-inning tie.
Adam Jones, who had been deactivated due to a stiff lower back, returned to the Orix lineup for the first time since Sept. 15. He went 1-for-4 with a first-inning sacrifice fly.
Kotaro Kiyomiya, whose three-run pinch-hit double tied Saturday’s game in the ninth, allowing Nippon Ham to win in extra innings, came off the bench in the ninth and hit a two-run pinch-hit home run.
Fighters rookie Kosei Yoshida, the epic hero of 2018’s national high school championship, started and allowed four runs in 1-1/3 innings.
