Our friend Alastair Burgess, citizen of New Zealand, Japan and Metsopotamia, steps outside and shows off the four retired numbers of the New York Mets on his Faith and Fear t-shirt at Koshien Stadium, home of Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s alma mater, the Hanshin Tigers. Al (whose Shinjoesque orange wristbands are not pictured) informs us Koshien, built in 1924 and undergoing renovations, is one of the few non-dome ballparks in Japan.
I infer that Al took pity on my dizzying May 30 experience of standing up, moving out, backing in and sitting down for the thirsty young men in the upper boxes whose quest for Bud Light was neverending. “Notice the young lass behind selling beer,” Al advises. “They bring it to you! Sometimes she has a keg strapped to her back! So you only have to deal with weak-bladdered people or smokers getting up to squeeze past, but they generally wait until between innings.”
The custom wherein beer vendors roam the stands is, keg or not, is quite familiar to United States baseball fans. The idea that people would be courteous enough to wait for a break in the action to interrupt you? A totally foreign concept in Queens.
A young lass may not strap it to her back, but you can have a FAFIF t-shirt delivered to you just like Al did.
I was indeed referring to your experience with the thirsty guys disturbing your baseball rhythms. Koshien is a great place to visit but it's not so comfortable for tall gaijin like me. The Tigers have their fair share of bandwagon-jumpers and sell out every home game (About 47,000)
Japanese support their team by smacking a couple of plastic “megaphones” together while singing a song written specially for each player. Quite a sight when 47,000 people are doing it in unison. And then when the other team bats it's just silent. I always think they should sing a song for the pitcher too. Not much booing. They'll throw their megaphones on the field sometimes though.
I'll miss my chance of seeing Shea before it's parking, but I'm looking forward to seeing the New York Mets play in Citifield. I couldn't go to the Mets-Cubs series in Tokyo but saw the MLB All-Stars in 2006 with Reyes, Wright and Maine coming over.
The shirt is fantastic too ! I bought it in December and it's already been to New Zealand (summer down there of course ) and Guam !