Best baseball game ever!

Hansin Tigers
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

Wow, i just got back from a Japanese baseball game, and i was totally impressed. This was probably the best game i have ever been too. Not only did the Hansin Tigers defeat the Nagoya Dragons and retain their first place dominance with a 5-3 win in a thriller complete with a come from behind 2 run homer, the atmosphere in the stadium was amazing. (think of a game 7 atmosphere...and that is half of what this was).

First off, before the game started, we got there early and saw batting practice. There is a job at Hansin Stadium where a young man (maybe 30) wears a helmet and has a whistle and stands in the outfield stands and blows his whistle if the ball might hit someone. There are about 20 of these guys that simply watch and wait for a ball to come screaming into the stands and then they blast their whistles like their lives depend on it. Even with this measure of secrurity, i saw a little old lady in a red sweater get hit twice by fly balls (remember, this is before the game even started). Apparently she is deaf, but she got nailed twice in the span of 20 mins. She was tough.

Then the game started, and i was prepared. I had bought my ballons (i will explain later) and picked up a pair of plastic thunder sticks that i would wack against eachother for 3 nonstop hours.

Also, i had to practice being a fan before i went to the game. Each Tiger player has their own fan dance that the fans do when they are up to bat. Each dance is different. Imagine one player gets 50,000 people to do the macarena and scream his name. Then the next player gets them to do the Hokey Pokey. Im serious, each player has their own unique dance. This was great. They really get into cheering. That is when a group of Americans i saw in the row in front of me joined up with myself to teach the japanese fans The Wave. Well, we did great, we spread out around the stadium and the fans loved it....but the police did not and we almost got in some deep trouble. My japanese translator informed me that they had never seen that in their stadium and they didnt like how excited everyone was getting. hmm ok.

Now to the ballons i bought. The highlight of my game experiance. Everyone buys 4 ballons and after the 7th inning stretch....where we dont sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game...instead, 200,000 ballons equiped with whistles are inflated and released on cue after we sing the team song. This was amazing. So the pic i have included is moments before we all let them go.

I am now hooked. I am looking for season tickets!!