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Japan Baseball Isn’t That Great

17 May

May 17, 2012

Today I turn over the reins of the site to Allan Keyes, world traveler, baseball fan, and guest blogger. Take it away!

I’d like to thank everyone for the thoughtful – and sometimes funny- comments you all had about my pics of my trip to Japan. I didn’t realize Mr. B was so hard up for content! Seriously though, lest you think I actually had any photo skills, just realize that to get to the few gems presented here, he had to wade through around 800 shots, many not so good.

Japan is an amazing place, and I’d like to share some of my quick takes with you. The first and foremost thing I can tell you all with authority:  JAPANESE BASEBALL IS NOT VERY GOOD.  I spent a lot of time watching (on TV alas) while I was there. Now don’t get me wrong, Japan professional baseball has several things in its favor:

–          The fundamentals level there is higher than it is in the majors

–          They have some world-class pitching talent (on a related note, I was in Tokyo when Yu Darvish pitched against Hideki Kuroda in New York, and the country was going ape-sh*t over that matchup)

–          You never see any players dogging it

–          It’s fun to see washed-up MLB players surface in Japan. (I can report that I did a spit take when I saw Mr. Blog’s favorite player Lastings “L-Millz” Milledge show up and ground out weakly to SS)

–          The television announcers are wonderfully enthusiastic. You know in soccer, when a guy scores and the announcer yells “gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!!!!!” for 20 minutes? That’s the level of energy that the play-by-play guys bring to routine putouts at first.

–          The Yomiuri Giants have a cool logo:

                       

Whenever a Giants player hits a HR, he is the recipient of a stuffed doll of this mascot when he arrives at home plate. At home, if the Giants win, the MVP of the game gets hauled onto the field and he gets a doll as well. Watching grown sweaty athletes treating this doll with the reverence of his grandfather’s urn is touching and amusing at the same time.

–          The fans are really into it. During the home team’s at bats, the designated cheering section has a little band, and they play the team fight song OVER AND OVER.  I can hum the fight songs for the Giants and the Chiba Lotte Marines still.

–          For some reason, the home team is listed on top of the box score graphic, instead of at the bottom like we do here. You have no idea how much that flummoxed me until I figured it out!

–          Snazzy graphics. When a team scores, there’s a nice flashy logo showing the score change.

So with all that, why does Japanese baseball kinda blow? It’s because all of the hitters are wannabe Ichiros. I can’t blame them – the guy is a national hero and bona fide Hall of Fame player.  But there’s not a lot of enjoyment for me in watching a game where the entire battle plan seems to consist of chopping the ball over the infielder’s head, or slapping an opposite field single. Meh. There’s very little power going on out there, shockingly when you consider the legacy of Sadaharu Oh, quite possibly the 2nd greatest homerun hitter who ever lived.  It tends to make for a station-to-station game.  I’ve heard it said that Japanese professional baseball should be considered equal to AAA+ ball here, and I think that’s about right. I’ve also been reading that the league there is in financial trouble, and that makes me sad, because they have a great history, and the fans are very devoted.  Playing a team fight song every inning – even in games where the team is down 6 runs – isn’t something a casual fan does. I’ve also always had a soft spot in my heart for Japan baseball after my all-time favorite manager Bobby Valentine won the Japan Series with perennial also-rans Chiba Lotte.  It is for the sake of this man, that I hope Japan baseball flourishes:

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The Man Who Could Not Make Pizza, AKA The Idiot

25 Apr

April 25, 2012

The last time I wrote about a bad experience at a restaurant I was contacted by an executive from their home office. Let’s hope the same happens here because someone needs to know.

There is a bar/restaurant named Luciano’s in the complex where my current office is located. Here is what they have to say about themselves from their website:

You haven’t tried pizza til you’ve tried Luciano’s! We offer top-notch pizza delivery in Brooklyn, with delightful concoctions like the Meatball Parmigiana Pizza and the Funghi Pizza adding a little pizzazz to our menu. If you like more low-key pies, we can toss you up a traditional Margherita or a Pepperoni. So for fast, free delivery, place an order online Monday through Friday.

For the record, it is a nice place and the food isn’t bad. Not nearly as good as they say it is, but not bad. Bear in mind that this is not as good as your local pizzeria. This place caters to the office workers that surround them. They are closed on the weekends and are open no later than 7:45. The bar there does much better than the food, as you’d expect. It is an office hangout located in the heart of a business complex so it can be forgiven if the food is not perfect, they have a captive audience. In fact, reread that description above. They brag more about their delivery than their food. Sure, they claim to have the best pizza in Brooklyn, but what pizza place does not? That’s just cliché.

I should also note that on Google, after 10 reviews, they have a 1.9 out of 5 stars, so while I say the food is not bad there are plenty of people who think it sucks.

Last week Saarah and I went into Luciano’s for lunch. Saarah had eaten their Primavera pizza before and wanted one for lunch. Worked for me. From their website, here is what they put on a Primavera pizza: Broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, spinach, fresh mozzarella, basil, tomato sauce. They have all their pizzas listed on a giant menu above the register. Simple enough.

No it was not.

We walked to the pizza counter and the pizza guy took our order: One Primavera pizza. Typical looking pizza guy- white t-shirt, white apron, funny little white hat on his funny little head. He looked the look, he walked the walk, and he totally blew it on the talk.

“What?”
“Primavera Pizza,” Saarah repeated.
“I don’t know.”

We were in trouble. There was a giant menu board right above his head. Saarah pointed to it and said “Primavera pizza.” He turned and looked at it (note that I did not say he read it) and went straight over to the pizza-making station where he immediately began to absolutely not get to work on her pizza.

Oh sure, he picked up and dropped a couple of slices of pepperoni, which by the way do not go on a Primavera pizza, he wiped down the counter, he picked up a pair of tongs and futzed around in the oven, he even looked like he was thinking at one point. But he did not make a pizza.

A note on how Luciano’s makes a pizza. The pizza bases are all pre-made. In other words the dough has been cooked and the sauce has been spread atop it. All that needs to be done is to add the cheese and toppings and slide it into the oven for a couple of minutes. The rack of pizza bases was no more than and certainly much less than five feet from the guy but he did not make a move to get one. What he did was come back to us.

“What do you want?”

Saarah pointed to the sign. “Primavera pizza. It’s right there!” She was remarkably composed. Ever helpful, I jumped in. “It is the fourth one down, under the eggplant pizza.” At this point I honestly believed the man could not read since as much as he stared at the sign he showed no appearance of comprehending it. So I read it to him.

“It says broccoli. Zucchini. Mushrooms. Spinach. Fresh mozzarella. Basil. Tomato sauce.” I paused for emphasis after each ingredient. “Zucchini. (PAUSE) Mushrooms. (PAUSE) Spinach. (PAUSE)” etc. You can tell I am a former teacher, right? There’s a reason it says “former.”

So the guy looked at me and rather than calling me a jerk for treating him like an illiterate fifth-grader from Neptune, he said, very sincerely, “thank you.”

Then he walked away and stared at the floor.

By now the girl behind the register had come over and wrote down our order on her pad. Saarah asked her if the guy knew what he was doing and she sadly shook her head and, with a look on her face that said she’d been through it all before, without a word, walked away.

Saarah looked at me. At times like this she can read my mind, and when she said “want to get out of here?” I was already wondering what took her so long. Without a single backward glance we left. And it I bet the pizza guy had no clue we were gone. Or even that we were ever there.

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