Our friend Alastair Burgess [1], 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 [2] 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 [3] delivered to you just like Al did.