Carp again

I just blogged about the Carp, but hey, I'm no writer, and I know fuck all about baseball and the history of the team. This is a nice article from the Daily Yomiuri. Thanks to GH for pointing me there.

Oh and they beat Manche...Giants tonight.

(and speaking of Manchester, Brighton beat the richest club in the world, Manchester City, last night.....Check it :)....)

Carp dream of landmark finish
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Fish might not dream, but Hiroshima Carp do. With Hiroshima Citizens Stadium staging its final games, outfielder Shigenobu Shima revealed his dream to The Hot Corner on Monday.
Before the Carp are transported to a new pond, a larger ballpark near Hiroshima Station for next season, the team has some unfinished business to attend to.
"There's no next year here," Shima said of the park that's scheduled to host its final regular season game on Sunday.
"If we get to the Climax Series, some fans will make it to our road games, but so many wouldn't be able to see us play. That's why we need to win so that we can come home in the Japan Series and play again for our fans here.
"We want to do this, and the fans share the feeling. It's pretty special."
Hiroshima Shimin is fairly special as well: a downtown, natural-surfaced, open-air facility, where fans walk or arrive on the streetcar that stops 30 meters from the gate. It is noticeably old and cramped, but it is also intimate. The atmosphere is similar to that at Koshien, but the fans in Hiroshima are perched closer to the action. The only stadium where the fans are any closer is the Eagles' remodeled park in Sendai.
It is a shame the club and city decided a new park was the best option, because with some serious renovation, this little gem could be unsurpassed.
When the Carp moved here in July 1957, the team was already seven years into an 18-year spell in the lower reaches of the Central League standings. That streak ended in 1968 with a 68-62-4 campaign, the club's second winning season, but Hiroshima's fans continued to suffer until 1975. That was the year the club emerged as a powerhouse.
With a mass of talent developed under former manager Rikuo Nemoto, the Carp won it all in 1975, 1979, 1980 and 1984 under skipper Takeshi Koba.
The Carp continued to be a force in the CL, but failed to win the Series in 1986 and 1991, with that last year being a turning point in the team's fortunes. The old guard of the 1980s was gone and new stars were emerging. Third baseman Akira Eto, shortstop Kenjiro Nomura and an outfield trio of Koichi Ogata, Tomonori Maeda and Tomoaki Kanemoto should have powered Hiroshima to some pennants, but the decline of the club's pitching and catching proved too big an obstacle.
Shinji Sasaoka had the stuff and heart to be Japan's best pitcher for over a decade, but the abusive management of Koji Yamamoto turned the dominant right-hander into a journeyman by the age of 27. Under Yamamoto and Toshiyuki Mimura, who skippered the Carp from 1994 to 1998, the Carp burned out one promising young pitcher after another.
Free agency, the inability to keep young pitchers healthy and the organization's unwillingness to pay the cost of keeping successful foreign players doomed the Carp to 10 straight lower-division finishes from 1998 to 2007.
The loss of the team's two best players, third baseman Takahiro Arai and pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, to free agency made things look bleak for a turnaround in Shimin Kyujo's final season. For those focusing on players who were either gone or long past their prime, the Carp had no chance.
But fortunately for the Carp and their fans, names do not win games, players do.
By fighting the owner's desire that every Carp lineup look like an old-timers game, Brown has given chances to younger, faster and more ambitious players.
Instead of having the popular, but lead-footed, Maeda in the outfield as ownership wants, the combination of Shima, Soichiro Amaya, Masato Akamatsu and Alex Ochoa provides a healthy supply of speed, offense and defense.
The addition of league strikeout and ERA leader Colby Lewis (14-7) has helped a fairly young pitching staff be even better without Kuroda.
The new-look Carp have played better and better as the season has progressed and seized a slight advantage in the race for the CL's final playoff spot over the past week.
So while the Carp fans are celebrating the old times, the team is giving Hiroshima a chance to see the old park in its best way possible--as the home of a winning team.
(Sep. 25, 2008)

広島市民球場, Hiroshima Shimin Kyujo

I've always liked stadiums. Even despite the fact there has always been the distinction between the 'cheap seats' and the not so cheap and that in some modern arenas you have to pay a small fortune to get in, I have always find there is something egalitarian about them. Once everyone is in, you're all a -insert team name here- fan, you all want one thing and you all get behind -insert team name here- together. Aesthetically aswell, I just enjoy seeing a full stadium.

I'm also often depressed by stadiums, solely down to the fact that the team I support, Brighton and Hove Albion are still without a permanent home after more than 10 years of waiting.

Sadly another venue I have become attached to won't be lasting much longer as Hiroshima Carp's home, Shimin Kyujo, will be torn down at the end of this season and the Carp move across town to their new stadium.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be a big baseball fan. I'm not. I have however, grown quite fond of the Carp, and the stadium has played it's own part in that.

For one thing, it's the atmosphere. Loud and passionate, it doesn't matter that the Carp are generally pretty shite, whenever I have been there the fans have been great. And it truly is for everyone. There's none of the overwhleming presence of men as in sporting venues in the UK. The whole family can go. And not in that horribly patronising way some places try and fit families in, much to the chagrin of the 'fellas'. That's just how it is. You can take your 3 year old kid and no one will mind if they climb over the seats. When I went last week there was a family of 3 generations sat infront of me with a small baby. It's the norm rather than the exception and the passion is not diluted for it.

Even after 5 years or so here I still am unsure on all the rules and I doubt I will ever develope a real affinity for the sport but I would definitely call myself a Carp fan. When I first got to Japan I thought I should atleast give Baseball a look in. I decided that I should obviously be a Carp fan, but how else could I try and involve myself in this game I was initially finding pretty dull. The key to my first stirrings for Yakkyu was infact coming across the Yomiuri Giants. The equation that lead to the result of me being able to get into my first Baseball games was quite simple;

Hiroshima Carp = My team + Yomiuri Giants = Manchester United = COME ON CARP!

Instant hatred, rivalry on tap. The underdogs versus the fat cats from Tokyo. Something I could understand and cling to like a, er, favourite hated teddy?

Anyway, the seeds had been sewn and since then I have always looked out for Carp results, stopped to watch when I see them on telly, and sometimes been to see at their home...

Which will very soon be no more. This is incredibly sad. It's always sad when a team leaves an old home but this is Hiroshima. The Carp's stadium is directly across the street from the A-Bomb dome. I doubt there are many other places in the world that have two such contrasting images of their city so close together. I hesitate to use the word beautiful, but on a warm evening, when the floodlights are lit, and people are streaming into the stadium, with the ruins of the dome in the foreground....it is some sight. One I never fail to appreciate. In the space of a few hundred metres you have the best and saddest of the city. It will be such a shame to lose it.

All is not lost though. You could never hope to better the location, significance and atmospere of the current stadium but, the new one doesn't look too bad at all. It is a proper stadium as opposed to one of those horrible dome things. More importantly though, unlike a lot of new stadiums that get built in the UK, this one is still in the centre of town. Not quite the centre like the old one, but next to Hiroshima station. They won't be any long out of town bus rides like there is if you want to go and see San Frecce play virtually out in the mountains and it's not, thank god, being built in some out of town 'development'. Infact, it's going to be easier to get to for a lot of people in Hiroshima Ken. It's never going to match it's predecessor for me, but it looks like it will stay very much a part of Hiroshima and is very much, in Hiroshima. It could of been a lot worse.

So what will go up on the old site? I am past caring really as I'm resigned to it falling way short of Shimin Kyujo and as long as it is at least architecturally interesting and not a shopping centre, it will have to do. For some reason City Officials seem to be ignoring my idea of building a stunning new stadium there for San Frecce. Hiroshima's two sporting representatives right in the middle of the town. Would be fantastic.

Why does nobody ever listen to me?

In the name of the father the son and the drum and bass

Haven't done a YouTube post for a while (not including my tracks) but this is a goody

My all new dance troupe

Not real, but then neither are Gorillaz are they?

Found this on YouTube taken from the game 'Audition' which my track 'Apathetic' was licensed for.

The two on the right don't look much cop.