Golden Week IV - Fukuoka

Day 2 of my Western Japan baseball tour meant another long train ride. I got to the station around 8 and made my first trip off the big island of Honshu since I got here. I was hoping for some big bridge with a cool view or something, but it's a tunnel, so I slept instead.

I got to Fukuoka around noon, checked into the hotel, and rested up for a little while before heading over towards the stadium. I wanted to start off by checking out the mall right in front of the stadium, Hawks Town. I figured there would be some Hawks-specific stuff there, but no, just a mall. Oh well, at least I was at the ballpark. The Hawks are a pretty modern team, owned by a cell phone company (my cell phone company, in fact). Softbank, the cell phone compny, has some sort of business arrangement with Yahoo, so the game was at the Yahoo Dome.
I got there good and early, since the mall sucked, and watched the pre-game. The warm-ups were amazingly organized. No personal stretching, no individual workouts. It was all team based. Check out the American guy (Micheal Restovich) quiting early.


They also take a full infield practice, like a high school team. I don't think you could get MLB players to do that.

The mascot is a Hawk, no surprise there.
The game between the Softbank Hawks and the Orix Buffaloes was a blowout, and you could tell from the beginning. The Hawks pitcher, Toshiya Sugiuchi, struck out 5 of the first 6 batters, and, with a manager like Sadaharu Oh, you know they can score runs. They started right away, with 2 in the first, and didn't look back. They ended up with 13 runs on 17 hits, and won 13-0.

This time I got to see what happens when the home team wins, and it was totally different than the US. As soon as they got the last out, some guys rushed onto the field to set up a tiny stage for the "Hero Interview". They rushed the players of the game up to stage to answer questions, and every fan stayed put to listen. I don't know what they said, but people seemed to like it. This is Sugiuchi with his arm all wrapped up.

After the interview, the lights went out and I thought it was over, but nobody moved, so I didn't either. It was the right choice, since I got to see the 20 seconds of indoor fireworks.
While they opened the dome to clear out the smoke, the people finally started leaving, about 35 minutes after the game ended. I crowded onto the subway and went to bed to get some sleep before the big festival the next morning.