Today (June 25) was our last off day before resuming our regular schedule. Tomorrow we face the Nippon Ham Fighters and Yu Darvish, the top pitcher in the league.
We had a full practice at Marines Stadium, which started with a great motivational speech to the team from Bobby, who talked about how he thinks despite all the distractions this year, this team is coming together and our best baseball in ahead of us.
The players then stretched for 45 minutes led by our great conditioning coach, Tachibana-san, who Bobby had with him back in New York.
Following the stretch the players change into full uniforms, play catch (which they call “catch ball”) and prepare for a full infield/outfield (called “shitto knocku” ), which I hit. After “shitto knocku” the players practice all the skills of the game at different stations.
We use 2 batting cages at once for BP, which is one station, there is a bunting station, a soft toss station, a base running station and then the players take fungo’s and live balls off the bat during BP for defensive work.
In Japan, every team has a full staff of batting practice pitchers who are very talented and throw great BP. The speed of the pitches are much faster and more game-like than in the states. Foreigners take some time to adjust to the speed of BP
Below is a picture of 2 future baseball stars, Zack (5) and Frankie (7)
Re: last photo…nice BOB (ball on bat). Don’t go thinking you are a pro shooter now, though.
–CP
Comment by Chris Preovolos — June 26th, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
Dear Frank & Bobby V.
Thanks for the great blogs that have so much truth which gives me a good chuckle as been though some of the same experiences and thoughts being a Stamford native living in Japan.
Thomas / Nagasaki
Comment by Thomas — June 27th, 2009 @ 8:04 am