Wednesday, April 11, 2007

"Fans" and Their Hats

For this semester I have taken it upon myself to be the newsfeed for my Japanese class on Daisuke Matsuzaka. My teacher (井田先生) is full-blooded Japanese and is actually quite interested in baseball. So today I announced that for Dice-K's Fenway opener, he will be pitching against Ichiro Suzuki.

To my surprise, a guy in class had on a Mariners hat. You have to understand that in a Japanese class, someone besides me liking sports would be like one of them not liking anime. Anyway, I find out that this might actually be legit. The guy is from Seattle and has only been living in MS for a few years. Kudos to him for sticking by his team my man, kudos indeed. Nonetheless, things take a turn for the worse. I ask him if he'll be watching the game tonight since it'll be Matsuzaka versus Ichiro. His response, "What is that, soccer?"


...



Let that sink in. Here's a guy, from Seattle, with a Mariners hat on and he didn't recognize the name Ichiro. I'll give him Dice-K because I guess it would be possible to not know him yet, very unlikely but possible. However, not knowing Ichiro is completely deplorable if you are hailing as a Mariner fan. The guy is easily one of the greatest imports to the sport of all time with a life-time batting average somewhere around .890, a rocket cannon for a throwing arm, and is the fastest thing out of the batter's box since that big wheeled robot from Base Wars for NES.

He has received six consecutive gold gloves and shows no signs of stopping that trend this year. He has got one of the quickest swings in all of baseball. He was the second guy to ever be named League MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same year (Fred Lynn did it first). He has had over 200 hits in each of his six seasons, which is just stupid crazy. He was the first player to have a 50-hit month (August 2004). If this isn't convincing enough that you should definitely know this guy, continuing reading accounts of his incredible record breaking career here.

In no manner am I down playing Matsuzaka's ability but he has some enormous shoes to fill before he can come anywhere close to being the best Japanese player in the MLB.





I seem to get my post on in the AM, guess I'm going to have to change that so I can fulfill the what I'm drinking section. Instead of currently, I'll give you this.

Last Night's Drink: Horne senior's homebrew

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! That guy's freaking awsome. Makes me sad to miss it, but if he continues to be awesome I'll definitely have another chance.

Mallory said...

I like the variation of giving props to a non-Sox player. It shows your knowledge of the competition and the sport in general.

Speaking of fans and their hats, I was just commenting to RBDS1 about how my Sox hat has acquired a nice degree of "fan's wear." It's not half bad considering I didn't spend a summer doing carpentry in mine to get that weathered look that someone we both know cherishes so dearly.

Also, you should post Bond's current home run tally next to your HR pool countdown.

Your faithful subscriber,
- Sox Gal

The RedBullDawgSox said...

It's true. I love my hat dearly.

-RBDS1

Are you looking for sports? Or maybe just the Red Sox? That team that is in the American League East? That same team that is the rival of the New York Yankees? Maybe you are looking for sports on the rox? Or is it Sports on the Rocks? You may be looking for Sports Drinks. Henry and Trevor read the Boston GlobeBoston Globe. They also read ESPN. If you are also looking for Mississippi State University sports, then you are in the right place too. Dirt Dawgs? Diamond Dawgs? Dawgs in general? You can Google the hell out of this site if you want.