Hiroshima Carp Fever...Catch It! Or, How I Watched Eric Stults Blow Up Again.

Way back when I was an undergraduate, I bought a Hiroshima Carp T-shirt, pretty much because the name amused me.  Carp.  What kind of nickname was Carp?  It never occurred to me then that I might actually see the Carp in action, but such was the case last Thursday night, August 19, in Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium, as former Dodger Eric Stults and his new team took on the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.

My son teaches in a small city north of Hiroshima, so Japanese baseball and the Carp of my old T-shirt in particular had been on my radar since we started planning the trip.  It didn't hurt that we arrived in Tokyo just as the nation was growing transfixed by the annual high school championship series.  As we went from Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima over the next week I also discovered that despite being pretty bad, the Carp are amazingly popular.  Throughout the trip I saw one person wearing a Yomiuri Giants cap and a few first-place Hanshin Tigers caps, but Carp fans were everywhere, like the pre-Manny Red Sox Nation.  Indeed in and around Hiroshima itself, support for the Carp is overwhelming, with player posters and other team images all over town.

As Bob Timmermann warned me months ago, August in Hiroshima is darned hot, with daytime temperatures in the upper nineties.  It was still stifling at five o'clock when we started walking from the train station to the stadium.  Mazda Zoom-Zoom is new, having replaced the old municipal stadium across from ground zero only last year.  Nonetheless, a sort of Wrigleyville has quickly grown up around the new yard, including baseball-themed restaurants and stores, and waiters and clerks all in Carp jerseys.  After a quick run at souvenirs, we bought upper deck, third base-side tickets and settled into our backless seats.  Over the left field wall was a surprisingly attractive view of the rail yard, the lovely city behind it, and the mountains in the distance.  I soon noticed two upper deck sections unconnected to the rest of the tier.  I quickly learned that the one out in right field was for the Carp's loudest boosters, the cheering section.  A smaller section in the left field corner was reserved for the visitors.  We purchased beer from one of the woman vendors, all of whom carry a keg on their backs, and waited for the game to start.  A kid came out to throw the ceremonial first pitch, and I learned that in Nippon Professional Baseball, a member of the visiting team is supposed to stand at home plate, swing, and miss the ball.  The Swallow so honored didn't seem too enthusiastic.  It also was throwback uniform week in the Central League, so the Carp came out in their faux Pete Rose Big Red Machine unis they wore when last a good team.

The game itself went bad quickly.  Stultsie couldn't find home plate, walking three straight batters after getting the first out before giving up a two-run single and a home run.  Somewhere, Ned Colletti murmured "I told you so."  All this time, the Swallow fans in their perch had been cheering along with their brass band, but after the homer, they all happily pulled out umbrellas, something that Yakult fans do traditionally when a pitcher seems on the way to the showers.  Showers, get it?  Stults got out of the inning, and only gave up one more run, but the damage was done.  Still, the home crowd of maybe 25,000 stayed in the game.  Every home at-bat was accompanied by music, cheers, and the constant banging of thunder sticks.  Heck, they stayed in the game even when Vinnie Chulk came on to pitch.  A woman in front of us was so amused to see three gaijan cheering that she gave us some watermelon cubes she had brought with her to supplement our hot-dogs-on-a-stick.

Then came the seventh inning stretch, which beggars description.  No "God Bless America" here.  Instead, the Carp fans first all sang their fight song.  In translation, it goes:

"Carp, Carp, Carp, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Carp, If you fly to the sky heaven will open it's breast.  Certainly fighting at this time today, Far and high, far and high, Raise the flag of glory, Carp, Carp, Carp, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Carp!"

After the singing we released the balloons.  Yes, I said balloons.  These balloons are specially designed to inflate quickly and then fly to heaven's breast before falling back to earth.  Manufactured in red, they become pink when inflated to over two feet in length, which meant that right before release the stadium looked rather pornographic.  Thank your lucky stars that Charles Steinberg never saw this.

Eventually the Carp went down to another defeat, final score 7-2.  On the way out we encountered a disgusted fan who kept saying that fifth place was unacceptable, and that big changes had to be made.  I felt like I knew the guy--surely he comments on baseball blogs.  Nonetheless, I had a great time at my first game in Japan, and would recommend the experience to any baseball fan lucky enough to do so.