Two teams made up of players from the six teams in the Tokyo Big 6 played each other in an All-Star Game at Botchan Stadium in Ehime on Saturday.  This was the league first ever All-Star Game using current players.

Team Botchan (first base side) was made up of players from Keio, Rikkio, and Hosei while Team Madonna (third base side) was made up of players from Waseda, Meiji, and Tokyo.

Over 13,000 people were at the game.

You can get more information about the players on the roster from each team at the official Tokyo Big 6 All-Star Game page.

Some more information:

Yuya Fukui (Waseda) started the game for Team Madonna and gave up a run on 2 hits over three innings of work.

Yuki Saito (Waseda) was the only player that did not see any playing time during the game (he tossed a complete game on the 26th).

Soichiro Tanaka (Rikkio) hit a 2-run homer in the game.

Tatsuya Oishi (Waseda) and Fukui both his 150 km/h. Oishi entered the game in the 4th and retired the side in order.

Doshisha righty Takayuki Fujii appears to have decided to forgo the draft and join Industrial League Nihon Seimei.  With the draft fairly deep with pitchers this year, Fujii may have decided to wait it out while polishing up on his skills with Nihon Seimei.

Kokugakuin announced on Thursday that 34-year-old Yasutaka Toriyama (鳥山泰孝) was named manager of the university baseball team, backdated to the 11th.

Toriyama takes over for Toshiaki Takeda and was formerly the manager for the Shutoku High School (Tokyo) baseball team.

Here are my photos from the Gold / Silver Medal game that featured Cuba and the USA.

Here are my photos from the Bronze Medal game that featured Japan and Korea.

Korea vs Japan @ Jingu Stadium (Attendance: 3500)

Box scores

Japan - Batting

Japan - Pitching

Korea - Batting

Korea - Pitching

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USA vs Cuba @ Jingu Stadium (Attendance: 4000)

Box scores

Cuba - Batting

Cuba - Pitching

HR: A.Despaigne (3, none on in the 8th; 4, 2 on in the 10th)
2B: Morejon

USA - Batting

USA - Pitching

HR: Maggi (1)

SB: Mahtook

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Final Standings

Awards

All-Star Team

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Some notes from the two games

The Bronze medal game wasn't really all that interesting.  Going into the game, I figured Japan would probably win, but not quite at such a large margin.  If anything, that was the surprise.

The USA - Cuba game was a whole other story.  I wasn't really sure what to expect, except for an inkling that Cuba would win.

Both Gerrit Cole and Yadier Gonzalez tossed great games.  And when Cole came out, I thought Gonzalez would as well, since it was obvious he was beginning to lose some of his stuff.  But Cuba kept him in there.  And in the end, it almost looked as if it might have sunk Cuba's ship, but Alfredo Despaigne came through in a big way with a 3-run bomb in the bottom of the 10th.

When that ball came off Despaigne's bat, the crowd at the stadium just went wild.

Now, if there's one person you have to feel sorry for in all of this, it's Nick Ramirez.  I'm not really sure how much experience he has as a pitcher, but when the US brought him in the 9th inning with the bases loaded and no out, I was a bit confused.  But he got out of the jam with a double play and a fly out to center and suddenly Bill Kinneberg is the man of the hour.

So, assuming Ramirez doesn't have much experience as a pitcher, you figure he's just about used up all his luck for the night.  And yet he's back out there in the bottom of the 10th.  Did he US not have any more pitchers available to go?  Or were they hoping that after seeing Cole and Noe Ramirez all night that Cuba would have a tough time adjusting to Ramirez's junk?

In either case, the poor guy was devastated after the homer.  He stood on the mound in disbelief (and I'm guessing disgust) for a good few seconds before finally walking towards the dugout.  And even after that, he just looked awful.

That all said, it was a great end to a tournament.

A couple of minor notes:

I think Cole broke 2-3 bats over his 7 inning outing.  He also hit 155km/h on the stadium radar a number of times and it seemed he was consistently around the 150km/h range with his fastball.

At one point, the Cuba fans and the US fans started a chant competition.

Nolan Fontana (at least I think it was him) tried to trick Cuba by hiding the ball in his glove after heading towards the mound for a brief meeting with the pitcher (can't remember which inning any more, but it was towards the end I think).  The second base ump caught on and quickly asked Fontana to return the ball to the pitcher.

A few of scouts were sitting in front of me.  One of them seemed to have their eye on George Springer.

I missed it, but Antonio Castro threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Finals game; Sadaharu Oh stood in the batter's box.

Pictures from both games will come a little later.

The results from Day 7:

Chinese Taipei vs Canada @ Jingu Stadium (Attendance: 50)

Box score

Chinese Taipei - Batting

Chinese Taipei - Pitching

HR: YANG KUAN WEI (2, two on in the 1st; one on in the 3rd), CHEN WEI CHIH (1, one on in the 7th)
2B: HUNG CHEN YU, CHEN WEI CHIH

SB: HUANG CHIH PEI, HUANG YI KUN

Canada - Batting

Canada - Pitching

HR: Bell (1, none on in the 5th)
3B: Bell
2B: Flemming, Carruthers, Ellis

SB: Wallace

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Sri Lanka vs China @ Utsumi-Shimaoka Ballpark (Attendance: 120)

Box score

China - Batting

China - Pitching

Sri Lanka - Batting

Sri Lanka - Pitching

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Day 9 Schedule:

Korea at Japan - Meiji Jingu Stadium - 12:00 (for the Bronze)

USA at Cuba - Meiji Jingu Stadium - 18:00 (for Gold / Silver)

Final Standings

I once again decided to go to the game at the very last minute and ended up getting to the stadium at around 6:30, so I missed out on all the offense (namely Springer's grand slam in the 1st inning).

As usual, I had my camera with me.  Unfortunately, I had an off-night -- I wasn't able to snap as many good images and for some reason, I really struggled with the lighting.  Odd because I didn't have the same problem the night before.  The only two things that changed between last night and the night before were the section I was sitting and a different zoom lens.  But it wasn't as if I was sitting in an entirely different location, or that the zoom lens I was using was hugely different from the one I used the night before.

In any case, I managed to filter out about 50 pictures that I thought were half-way decent.  Since I don't have time to lay them out, I've posted them in slideshow format.

A couple of news headlines from the game:

Shigeo Nagashima was at the game last night.  Nagashima was impressed with Tatsuya Oishi's outing and also said that Yuki Saito pitched well, outside of the first inning (in particular the one pitch that ended up over the fence for a grand slam).

Incidentally, Saito was a no-show at the post-game press conference.  Tamotsu Enomoto asked reporters to give Saito a break for his absence.

With the Fall league right around the corner, Toshiaki Takeda has apparently decided to step down as manager of the Kokugakuin University baseball team.  Takeda first got his start managing the Tohoku High School baseball team in 1968.  From there he went on to manage at Sendai Ikuei and took a post at Kokugakuin in 1996.