Nakamura's vintage run just what Lions need
For Takeya Nakamura and the Seibu Lions, the past week and half was just like old times, with the Lions' lineup doing damage and the burly slugger's bat roaring the loudest. "Okawari-kun" went on a vintage, nearly record-setting run of power from Aug. 4-13. He ...
Koshien officials need to be mindful of heat
The temperature in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, got as high as 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, the opening day of this year's edition of Summer Koshien. According to AccuWeather RealFeel, which measures in things such as humidity, cloud cover, intensity of the sun ...
All-around talents Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Yangita deserving of spotlight
Three seasons ago, a Triple 3 campaign was treated as something of a phenomenon. The feat — finishing a season with at least a .300 average, 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases — had been accomplished before Tetsuto Yamada and Yuki Yanagita both ...
Bringing back Daisuke Matsuzaka could make sense for Dragons
If there's anything to be learned from the first half of the 2018 baseball season it's that a lot of people still can't get enough of Daisuke Matsuzaka. It's been over a decade since his last turn as the ace for the Seibu Lions and ...
Tigers should consider trading pitcher Shintaro Fujinami
The Hanshin Tigers should trade pitcher Shintaro Fujinami. Yes, that Shintaro Fujinami. The fire-balling right-hander who dominated at Koshien Stadium during Osaka Toin's run to the Summer Koshien title in 2012. The tall, lean rising star who for the next three years, while playing his ...
Marines pitcher Mike Bolsinger gets NPB career off to roaring start
Early on during Mike Bolsinger's latest start for the Chiba Lotte Marines, catcher Tatsuhiro Tamura noticed his pitcher shaking his head a little every now and then and didn't quite know what to make of it. "I thought it was kind of weird," Tamura joked ...
Rakuten reliever Frank Herrmann follows path from Harvard to Sendai
Frank Herrmann is still putting his Harvard University education to good use. Just not in the way, and certainly not in the place, he expected. Herrmann left the prestigious Ivy League college with a degree in economics, but it's the lessons he learned on the ...
Matt Dominguez makes good first impression with Marines
It only took a handful of games for Matt Dominguez to become the biggest thing to hit the Chiba Lotte Marines since the Nazo no Sakana (Mysterious Fish) mascot. The fish burst onto the scene about this time last year and delighted Marines fans with ...
British artist Andy Brown captures essence of baseball through paintings
Some baseball fans carry a glove to a game hoping to catch a ball. Andy Brown is a little bit different. Brown doesn't go to games in search of foul balls. He carries some paint, a few brushes and other supplies. What he hopes to ...
SoftBank's Yuki Yanagita stands out among NPB crowd
The top buzzwords in Japan in 2015, as chosen through the annual U-Can Shingo Ryukogo Taisho (U-Can New Words and Buzzwords Awards), were co-winners bakugai and toripuru suri. The former refers to extreme shopping sprees carried out by Chinese tourists. The latter, Triple 3, to ...
Kiyomiya already getting star treatment from NPB world
On the night Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks captain Seiichi Uchikawa reached the 2,000-hit milestone, one of the the first items on public broadcaster NHK's 9 p.m. national news program was a breathless retelling of the first NPB home run hit by Kotaro Kiyomiya, the Hokkaido ...
Ichiro ahead of curve as usual in new position for Mariners
Ichiro Suzuki saw Shohei Ohtani coming. Prior to Friday's game between the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Angels, Ichiro spied Ohtani in the reflection of one of his teammates' sunglasses, as the younger player came over to greet him. Just as Ohtani arrived and took ...
