First Plate Game in the Books

It is Saturday night here in Tokyo. I have just completed my first plate game in the World University Baseball Championship. It was a 15-0, six-inning barn-burner where Japan destroyed China. The result was not a surprise. The fact it took six innings was. In international play, a 15 run lead after five complete and a 10 run lead after 7 complete (when playing nine innings) is the norm. As...

First Game in the books

It is Friday night here in Tokyo. I have been here since Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t do anything Wednesday. Thursday, on the other hand, was an eventful off-the-field day. In the morning the international umpires who had arrived were taken to the Meiji Jingu Stadium, which is the main stadium for the ball games. There was light rain at the time but we still were able to go onto the...

Tokyo Day 4

Another interesting day at Rissho University. Team Canada played against Rissho University baseball team, which are the defending Japanese University baseball champions. The first pitcher for Japan is projected to go first overall in the amateur draft being held this fall. He is a good pitcher. I was working the bases when he pitched so I could not tell how hard he was throwing. I managed to...

Day 3 in Japan

Day 2, for me was very uneventful. A lot of sitting around so news to report. Day 3, on the other hand was something different. I umpired my first game here. It is hot and humid. Five innings on the plate was what I worked. We had an agreement with a local umpire that I would do the first five and he would do the last three. Fortunately that was a good arrangement. The humidity took a lot...

We made it!

After almost 24 hours of travel we made it to Rissho University, which is north of downtown Tokyo. It is very humid here. It took us over two hours to drive from the airport throught downtown Tokyo to here. There was a nasty thunderstorm when we arrived around 8:00 PM Saturday night, around 4:00 AM at home. The university mens baseball team carried all of our luggage up to our floor in the...