China Dragon colours

No pics of uniforms yet, but here’s the logo of the renamed Chinese entry into the Asia League of Ice Hockey, the China Dragon:

The team will wear reds at home and whites away.

Seibu Lions Classic

This season’s Lions Classic games have begun with Seibu wearing its home uniforms from the dynasty era. (Koji Akiyama #1 and Hisanobu Watanabe #41 flanking Kazuhiro Kiyohara #3.)

Well, the uniform design was used until quite recently as it can be seen here with a young Daisuke Matsuzaka wearing it.

However, the Lions were unable to replicate their success of the awesome uniforms as the team has lost its first two games wearing it against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks managed by former Lions star Koji Akiyama. Incidentally, another former 80’s Lions star, Hisanobu Watanabe, is currently managing the Lions, so the ceremonial first pitch for Sunday’s game was old teammates Watanabe facing off against Akiyama, and Koji fouled the pitch off to the third base side.

Saitama Seibu Lions looking great (except for the lack of stirrups and addition of the Nike logo) in losing the first two games wearing these classic uniforms 3-10 and 5-7.

You can see the ceremonial first pitch here, Akiyama’s front foot slips but he still makes contact with NabeQ’s pitch.

ライオンズの色

西鉄時代の黒と、西武時代の空色を混ぜて（濃い）紺のレジェンドブルーが埼玉西武ライオンズの新しいチームカラーなんだけど…ヘルメットは何故か黒。なんでだろう？

09 Seibu Lions Uniforms

They have officially been unveiled in the camp opening ceremony held yesterday. The navy looks much closer to Nishitetsu black than the old Seibu sky blue. I like the simple design, though the minimalist simplicity of the home uniform (right) with just the L looks almost like a high school team uniform  😛  The away uniform (left) is pretty much straight up Nishitetsu throwbacks from last season. And here’s yet another team going to an off white (or light gray) colour for their road uniform (Giants ditched their ugly black tops and used their interleague off white unis as road uniforms for most of last season, not sure what’s happening with them this season). NPB’s gonna look a lot like high school baseball in 2009. What’s up with this trend?

09 Seibu Lions Away Uniform

Illustration of the 2009 Saitama Seibu Lions away uniform has been leaked. It’s base colour is gray, spells out “LIONS” across the chest in the Nishitetsu Lios era font (or in the 2008 Nishitetsu throwback uni style), and the font is the “legend blue” navy colour that is supposed to be a mixture of Nishitetsu era black and Seibu era light blue. The uniform will be unveiled on 28 January at the training camp opening press conference, and will be worn first in the season opener against the Chiba Lotte Marines at Marine Stadium on 3 April. 

Legend Blue?

Happy 2009!

So, it’s official, the Saitama Seibu Lions changing the team logo and colour are both official, new uniforms will be announced at a later date. The explanation for the new navy colour is that it’s a mixture of the Nishitetsu Lions black and the Seibu Lions sky blue. The new “Lions” font comes from the Nishitetsu throwback uniforms the team used in 2008, and that’s nifty, but the franchise could have paid respect to their Nishitetsu days without messing with the classic Tezuka Osamu Leo logo (were the royalty payments getting too high?) and the Lions sky blue that is associated with the franchise’s golden era in the 80’s (the Leo logo will remain on the club flag). And the navy just means that there’s yet another NPB team with navy as its team colour, after Chunichi, Yokohama, Orix, and Tokyo Yakult.

The new logo with the paw grabbing a baseball looks minor league as well. The team had obviously planned all this big change for the franchise’s 60th season in 2009, but it ended up being timed horribly because the Lions had just won it all, the Pacific League, Japan Series, and Asia Series and created goodwill with a reboosted and reconnected fanbase. Oh, and “legend blue” is a pretty lame name for the colour as well.

Seibu uniforms

A couple of Seibu uniform announcements for both their baseball and hockey teams.

First the Saitama Seibu Lions baseball team is apparently completely overhauling its uniform next season with new colours, logo, and uniforms. This may or may not be their primary logo, colour, and uniform, but this photo was taken at Tokorozawa station (home of Lions) but before a public announcement. Weird, but Seibu has never been good at marketing. Personally, moving away from the Tezuka Osamu designed Leo logo to a generic claws and baseball logo is a huge mistake, along with darkening the skyblue that has been the Lions colour since the team moved to Tokorozawa some 30 years ago, the new navy makes them similar to Chunichi Dragons, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and Yokohama BayStars. Then again, I suppose this move in the new direction is probably meant to signal their new attachment to their hometown “Saitama”, but just seems like a bad move right after winning it all (Japan Series and Asia Series champions).

Now onto the Seibu Prince Rabbits hockey team that has just announced that they will be folding (or hopefully selling) the team after this season. The team will play in throwback Seibu Railway (Seibu Railway and Kokudo teams merged to form the current Seibu team a few years back) uniforms. The ads take away from the mood, but a classy move nonetheless as it’s a classic uni that I should’ve bought while the Railway team was still alive. The throwbacks will be worn in the game on 11 January 2009 against long time archrivals Oji Eagles at the Dydo Drinco Ice Arena home game (Higashifushimi, Tokyo). The ceremonial faceoff will be taken by the brothers Mel and Herb Wakabayashi who led Japanese hockey through the 70’s and beyond as player and coach on Kokudo, Seibu, and the Japanese national team.

By the way, Seibu wore this uniform for a while after the SEIBU era:

Either way, much better than the Kokudo bunny donchya think?

I used to be a fun of the rough and exciting Seibu Railway team, but could never support the team after it was merged into Kokudo even though many of my favourite players like Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita (the Theo Fleury of Japan, he led the Japanese league in PIM and goals once or twice, I think) play on the team. Just for good measure, here’s Ryan who’s been playing in Japan since 1995 and played on the 1998 Nagano Olympic team:

China Sharks Update

The only team to not have opened their 2008-09 Asia League campaign, the China Sharks, will start their season on the road with a game against the Nikko IceBucks tonight.

The team made a fairly bland press release on 17 September, but in it is a video of an in depth 20 minute press conference. And contained in it are some nuggets, like how:

• The Sharks will instantaneously have, by far, the largest capacity arena in the league now as the brand new Shanghai arena seats 6000, I hope they do a hell of a marketing job to get enough butts into those seats to create some atmosphere and excitement. The Sharks management actively seeked out this arena, so they seem ready, let’s hope the Shanghai citizens are ready for some hockey!
• The Sharks organization will, in effect, run the Chinese national hockey program through coaching, player selection, etc. (This is the Sharks side of the story, not sure if it’ll completely match up with the Chinese Ice Hockey Association’s story.)
• China is going to make a run for the 2018, or more likely the 2022, Winter Olympics, and want to make sure that they have a competitive hockey team, and that is one of the reasons for the Sharks involvement.

The new China Sharks uniform (home darks, I assume) was also unveiled. But ugh, the Chinese red completely clashes with the Sharks black and teal. Guess we’ll see what colours their helmets, pants, and socks will be from tonight’s Bucks game photos.

Also, Kato “Kataribe” Jiro interviewed China Sharks head coach Derek Eisler and he said even though he is confident with the team, and found some good Chinese and import players through tryouts (as well as signing known quantities in Steve McKenna, Wade Flaherty, and Adam Taylor, and Harvard grad Kevin Du, and keeping Jason Beeman and Kevin Korol from last season, the former was a one man wrecking crew of the otherwise pathetic Sharks offense last season), playing coaches McKenna and Flaherty will see more time as coaches in the latter half of the season depending on how the season is progressing. (Sharks season opening roster)

2008.8.5 Koshien Update

The 90th Koshien Summer Tournament is chugging along as we’re now in day 4 of first round games.

11 games have been played so far and powerhouses Chiben-Wakayama (Wakayama), Kagoshima-Jitsugyo (Kagoshima), Chiben (Nara), Hotoku-Gakuen (East Hyogo), Kanto-Daiichi (East Tokyo), Kisarazu-Sogo (East Chiba), and Urasoe-Shogaku (Okinawa) have all won their first round games, and young Honjo-Daiichi (North Saitama) with a starting lineup consisting seven 1st and 2nd years (with a 1st year 1st baseman slugger hitting cleanup, most unusual as most teams lineups are loaded with 3rd year students as they’re more physically and technically developed at this age) is currently tied with Kaisei (Shimane) 4-4 in the first game of the day right now. (Update: Okuda Pedro just won the game for Honjo by leading off the bottom of the 9th with a walkoff homerun to deep centre on a difficult pitch.)

Some other notes of interest:

• I saw Kanto-Daiichi in the quarterfinals and semifinals of their East Tokyo qualification tournament.

• I have a rooting interest in Okinawan high schools, and Urasoe defeated the 2008 Spring Koshien (invitational) champs Okinawa-Shogaku in the Okinawa qualifier tournament final, so they’re a legitimate threat to win it all this summer.

• Baseball exchange students are on some teams. Iizuka (Fukuoka) had Kim Dong-Ming(? 金東民) from Korea as it’s leadoff hitter and starting shortstop, as a 2nd year, definitely the core of the team. Magario Mike(?) is a Japanese-Brazilian 2nd year outfielder and 187 cm tall slugger for the powerhouse Aomori-Yamada (Aomori). And Honjo-Daiichi (North Saitama) also features two Japanese-Brazilians, ace Ito Diego and starting shortstop Okuda Pedro. They have both gone through the “Centro Trainament Yakult”(?) baseball academy before going to Honjo-Daiichi. Ito Diego (left) and Okuda Pedro

• Urasoe-Shogaku’s (Okinawa) cap is designed like the Tokyo Yakult Swallows cap, and this is probably intentional as Urasoe is the Okinawan city where the Swallows hold training camp every spring.                   Urasoe-Shogaku         Tokyo Yakult Swallows

• Pitch counts are often mentioned during game commentary, mostly as how it wears down pitchers, and some teams even talk about a walk being just as valuable as a hit (not true, but close, and way better than discounting the walk). The tides are slowly changing even in high school ball.

Rare Kuwata and Kiyohara Photos

Living legend and recently retired Masumi Kuwata (173-141, 3.55 ERA in NPB) threw 38 batting practice pitches today to almost-retired-but-still-rehabbing slugger Kazuhiro Kiyohara (.272/.389/.521, 525 HR, 1527 RBI) at Kobe’s Skymark Stadium. The interesting twist? Kuwata was in his Pittsburgh Pirates uniform which he wore briefly in 2007-08 while Kiyohara wore his Orix Buffaloes uniform. The two formed the core of the mighty PL Gakuen high school baseball team in the mid-80s (made it into all 5 possible Koshien tournaments, Spring and Summer, during their 3 years from the extremely competitive Osaka prefecture, won their way to 4 finals and won the whole thing twice), and were reunited on the Yomiuri Giants from 1997-2005. The image of Kiyohara tears before the final pitch of the 1987 Japan Series as his  Seibu Lions clinched the series over the Kuwata’s Yomiuri Giants is legendary. Will Kiyohara make a full come back and add to his magnificient career homerun total (5th all time and 11 behind 4th place Carp Koji Yamamoto), we can never predict with his now shattered body.