It’s August again and tomorrow japan’s boys of summer will take the field at koushien once again to determine the nation’s best high school baseball team. I have to admit that I was really looking forward to this year’s edition of the tournament. Maybe it’s because I’m working the night shift next week so I will be able to catch quite a few of the early games each day. I won’t be able to post as much as I did during the spring, but I will try to keep track as the tournament progresses. With this I want to provide some useful links to those interested in joining the fun.
Goro Shigeno, who always provides exciting inning-by-inning reports for the games, is working on an extended preview on all participating teams with a close look at each bracket and the key players of each school as well as a spreadsheet of the tournament’s brackets. Personally I am looking forward to how PL Gakuen (ＰＬ学園)will do. I am still thrilled about their game in the spring edition of the Koushien tournament when their ace Nakano Takayuki had a no-hitter through 9 innings and eventually lost the game in extras. A few other familiar names are back like Chiben Wakayama (智弁和歌山), the home team for the prefecture my japanese tandem partner comes from. I’ll be especially looking forward to Kumamoto Kougyou (熊本工) since that’s a place I plan to visit when I’ll be going to Japan in september. But I have no idea how they will do at Koushien.
Also there’s the forums at japanesebaseball.com where you can find a lot of information and communicate with a lot of people. Maybe they will also have a chat room again which is pretty nice and highly informative for newbies like me.
Alright, let’s get things started tomorrow, although I probably won’t be able to join the fun since the opening ceremony will start at 4 am CET and by that time I’ll probably be in bed. But maybe I can catch a game in the morning. Games should be streamed at the tournament’s official website, at least that’s what it’s been like the past two years.
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