Spring Koushien 2011 Opening Ceremony

I came across a few videos on youtube which show the whole opening ceremony for this year’s high school baseball spring tournament at the Koshien stadium. While there isn’t happening that much, the warm welcome Tohoku’s representative recieved and especially the speech by Soushi Gakuen’s captain Shinsuke Noyama on behalf of all the players were very moving. The overall military touch was a bit strange to me, but then again I’m german and I have a slightly different stance on all things military.

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82nd Spring Koshien: A pitching duel, Chiben Wakayama is out, Chuukyoudai keeps on rolling

I didn’t have a chance to watch the whole game, but the first few innings of the Kouryo vs Miyazaki Kougyou game were pretty exciting. The first thing that struck me were the unusual mechanics both pitchers had when they were throwing to home plate. During the first inning Kouryo’s starter Arihara (I hope I got the name right) looked almost untouchable, looking like he was going to strike out two batters on six pitches. The way he carried on seems to have been fantastic as he was pitching a perfect game until the 5th inning. His counterpart wasn’t bad either as both were exchanging zeros until the 9th inning when things started to fall apart.

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The songs of Koushien

Alright, so I’m a freak for cheering sections and the songs they sing and play. Which is one reason why I really like to watch the Koushien games. The way the brass band is playing there is simply astonishing. Not only do some schools have a song for each and every player on the team (at least it seems that way to me), but they also have a special song they play each time the team gets a hit or scores a run. And they instantly switch from the player’s song to the score or hit song. Pretty disciplined band(s) if you ask me. So while surfing around the youtube-universe I came across some samples from what bands might play ad I thought I’d share them. Some I never heard before, some even I recognized.

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First baseball post of the season: Spring Koshien and spring training

I have to admit that the more I get into baseball the more anxious I am for the season to begin. I was following the off season moves very closely thanks to the great mlbtraderumors.com crew who write their postings so even newbies like me can understand what’s happening around the league.

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Spring Koshien Day 10: Underdog win

Another short one because of work, although I had enough time to welcome spring to Cologne this morning with a short walk through the neighbourhood. Only a few minutes away is the Japanese Cultural Institute in front of which there are a lot of cherry blossom trees.

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Spring Koshien Day 9: Best 8, Hotoku and Seiho come through

Just a short one today since my holiday is over. From today on there will only be two games each day as the tournament enters its final stages.

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Spring Koshien Day 8: Surf’s up for Narashino, Rifu advance

The last day with three games on one day and we are getting closer and closer to the final rounds of the tournament. I am still completely astonished by yesterday’s stellar performance of PL Gakuen‘s Nakano. And because of that I forgot to inculde the link to the wonderful inning-by-inning reports of Goro Shigeno. He’s doing a great job keeping all of us up-to-date it’s almost as if you are listening to a radio broadcast.

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Spring Koshien Day 7: Close calls

Three games which all ended with a one run lead, now that’s what I call exciting. And it gets even better when in one game one pitcher delivers a wonderful performance only to lose the game in extra innings. As a character in “H2” said it absolutely right: “Let me show you the benefits of a game without a time limit”.

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Spring Koshien Day 6: The Last 16 round is complete

When watching the repeat broadcast on the MBS site the most annoying thing to me at the moment ist the commercial for the new “Full Metal Alchemist” movie at the end of each half inning. I really loved the series when it came out a few years ago, but this is getting on my nerves quite a bit. Well, it’s just that, so it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Good news for the semifinals and the final game as the MBS site announces that there will be live coverage for those three games for free. Unfortunately that won’t make a difference to me as those games will start in the middle of the night over here.

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Spring Koshien Day 5: Narashino beats out Hikone in a very close game

I know I have been a little sloppy over the past few days and I sincerly apologize for that. Part of that had to do with a flu that got me right for the start of my holidays which began on Monday, so I was lying in bed most of the time. The other part is that it took me until yesterday evening to figure out how the MBS website worked this year around (just click the inning and that’s it. Duh!). Yup, that’s how dumb I was. I tend to but all the blame on my illness, but I guess I was just blind.

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