{"id":1491,"date":"2012-03-30T08:20:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2012-03-30T08:20:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:20:24","slug":"play-ball-japanese-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=1491","title":{"rendered":"Play Ball!  (Japanese style)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2012 Nippon Professional Baseball season is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/sports\/baseball.html\">officially underway<\/a>.  The Yomiuri Giants (boo!) seem the favorites in the Central league, while in the Pacific League its the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks with their new import pitcher Brad Penny.  As for me, I&#8217;m curious to see how the Hanshin Tigers fare under new manager Wada Yutaka, a star infielder for the team in the 1990s.  In the PL, I&#8217;ll be watching to see if the Tohoku Rakuten Eagles can finally turn the corner and become contenders.<\/p>\n<p>To celebrate the occasion, here&#8217;s a brilliant tv commercial from the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks (I found it via the N<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/neojaponisme\">?ojaponisme twitter feed<\/a>) on how they practice:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/npT79zeShsA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class='shareinpost'><ul class=\"socialwrap row\"><li class=\"iconOnly\"><a  rel='nofollow'  target='_blank'  title='Bookmark this post : Play Ball!  (Japanese style) on Delicious'  href='http:\/\/delicious.com\/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbourdaghs.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D1491&amp;title=Play+Ball%21++%28Japanese+style%29'  ><img  src='https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/images\/blank.gif'  height='32' width='32'  class='image-32' alt='delicious'  style='background: transparent url(https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/default\/32\/sprite-feb-32.png) no-repeat;padding:0;margin:0;height:32px;width:32px;background-position:-231px 0px'   \/> <span class=\"head\">Bookmark on Delicious<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"iconOnly\"><a  rel='nofollow'  target='_blank'  title='Digg this post : Play Ball!  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(Japanese style) on Twitter'  href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbourdaghs.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D1491&amp;text=\"  ><img  src='https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/images\/blank.gif'  height='32' width='32'  class='image-32' alt='twitter'  style='background: transparent url(https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/default\/32\/sprite-feb-32.png) no-repeat;padding:0;margin:0;height:32px;width:32px;background-position:-132px -33px'   \/> <span class=\"head\">Tweet about it<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"iconOnly\"><a rel=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=1491&feed=rss2\" title=\"Follow this post : Play Ball!  (Japanese style) comments\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/images\/blank.gif\" height=\"32\"  width=\"32\" style=\"background: transparent url(https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-and-follow\/default\/32\/sprite-feb-32.png) no-repeat;padding:0;margin:0;height:32px;width:32px;background-position:-1782px 0px\" class=\"image-32\"  alt=\"rss\" \/> <span class=\"head\">Subscribe to the comments on this post<\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"clean\"><\/div> <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2012 Nippon Professional Baseball season is officially underway. The Yomiuri Giants (boo!) seem the favorites in the Central league, while in the Pacific League its the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks with their new import pitcher Brad Penny. As for me, I&#8217;m curious to see how the Hanshin Tigers fare under new manager Wada Yutaka, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1494,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}