Big in Japan



Here's Diamondbacks washout Alex Cabrera celebrating after launching a two-run blast during Game 3 of the Fall Classic. No, not that championship series. The other series...in Japan, where the Seibu Lions just sealed up a championship in a tense series against the Chunichi Dragons. Would that fly in America? Only in the NFL, but Cabrera can still claim full jackass rights after a monster series which saw him knock two home runs (including a grand slam) in Game 3 and a pivotal two-run shot in Game 7 to rally the Lions in the final game of the series.

What's cool is that the Lions became the first Japanese baseball team to win the Japan Series by besting their opponents in the final two games on the road. So there's some hope for the Cardinals in all this, I suppose, if they could only win a goddamn game. Team's MVP was starter Takashi Ishii, who finished the series with a sterling 0.00 era after going 1-5 during the regular season.

I don't pretend to know a lot about Japanese baseball, short of what I've read in Robert Whiting's excellent and informative chronicle You've Gotta Have Wa. I'd like to know more, mind you, but Japanese baseball remains woefully underexposed here in the U.S. Just think: Hideki Matsui has a team of journalists following him around and waiting for him to squeeze out a fart so it can make top headlines in Japan. And then Alex Cabrera goes over to Japan, does his best impression of David Ortiz, and no one seems to care.

I'm not concerned with that particular inequity, because Japanese leagues have been employing foreign (mot just U.S., but Korea and Taiwan) players with a much greater frequency for a much longer period of time. But with seventeen different ESPN channels on the dish, there's no room to air this series? C'mon: less teams, parity between the teams and a smaller talent pool to draw from -- the seven-game stretch sounds like it was a lot more intriguing than what's going on here right now.

Boston's up 4-0 as I write this. Go Lions!