Nippon Hamu Faitazu aka The Hamfighters

Last Sunday, Kyle and I went to see the local professional baseball team with our friends Anton and Mami.  The game was also played in the Sapporo Dome, the same stadium where we watched the soccer game.  However, they configure the field and seats differently for the two different sports.  There is a really cool video about how they change between the two fields here.  It's in Japanese, but the transformation starts at 45 seconds.  The baseball field is artificial but the soccer field is grass.  The soccer field lives outside the stadium (so it can get sunlight) and only comes inside for games.

Sapporo's baseball team is called the Nippon Ham Fighters, which is possibly the awesomest name for a baseball team ever.  Tragically, they are not Fighters-of-Ham, but rather they are sponsored by the Nippon Ham company.  But we English speakers prefer to call them as the Hamfighters.

Baseball here is much more popular than soccer.  The soccer game we went to had 12,000 people, while the baseball game had 30,000. However, there were many similarities to the soccer game, including continuous organized chants (whenever the Hamfighters were at bat) with drums and horns, and a dedicated visiting team seating section.

On Sunday, the Hamfighters were playing the Lotte Marines from Chiba.  Their mascot was a big chicken, so we called them the "Marine Chickens"...  which sounded funny to us.

Here is the opening pitch of the game.  We were completely baffled by all the people on the field.  It looked like 2-3 people were at each position.  We couldn't tell who they were.

Here is a panorama of the whole stadium.  We sat in nose-bleed seats above 1st base...  the same approximate place that Kyle and I usually sit for watching the Seattle Mariners. 

At the beginning of the game and halfway through the game, a very large group of cheerleaders came out and performed for the audience.  These cheerleaders were all children, which we found surprising since cheerleading for professional sports in the U.S. is done by primarily by scantily-clad women.  We later saw two of the cheerleaders at the restaurant near the stadium, where we went for dinner.  I estimate that one was 10 and the other 5 or 6 years old.

Kyle made a video of the cheerleading and the blimp that circled the stadium in the 5th inning.

A panorama of the play.

In the 7th inning or so, people around us started to inflate these large blue balloons with little hand-pumps.  In the transition between one team's at bat and the other's, everyone released the balloons in unison.  It looked pretty cool.  I don't know what happened to the balloons afterwards. 

This video showcases some of the organized cheering for the Hamfighters when they are at bat.  It was less energetic than the soccer game was, but significantly more than what you would find at a U.S. baseball game.

In general, the game was pretty slow.  The Marine Chickens managed to score 2 runs in the 6th or 7th inning.  The Hamfighters rallied to score one run in the 8th, and they almost, almost, almost scored again in the bottom of the 9th, but no luck.  It was very intense.

Here is the video of the one run the Hamfighters scored.  The crowd was very happy.

Bad luck for us to watch them lose.  They won the two other games in the series with the Marine Chickens, and they won yesterday 13-3!  That would have been exciting!

Well, that's all for now. Until our next adventure,
-Bre (and Kyle)