We had all been told there would be no radio or television broadcast from Japan of the M's game with the Yomiuri Giants. But with some improvisation, a little luck and a good tip I was able to watch the game live on the Nippon TV broadcast. The guys in the booth, of course, spoke Japanese, but the game was easy to follow and the camera work superb.
I started on line, using MLB.com's Gameday app which posts, agsinst a static graphic bsckground of a batter in the box, a pitch by pitch account of each at bat. It's works well, I've been using to follow games for years. While streaming it on the internet is new, the idea has been around for a long time. Newspapers used to post game progress outside their offices snd during major events, like a World Series game, crowds would gather to see the teletyped results.
Twitter was a good supplement to the Gameday reports. And I appreciate the efforts of Seattle media representatives, most notably, Greg Johns, Shannon Drayer and Ryan Divish, along with the Mariners public relations team to keep us informed. By the second inning I had a pretty good idea of how the game was going and how the players, especially Ichiro, the focus of last night's game. The reporters also did a great job capturing the atmosphere and antics of the Japanese crowd.
Then a tweet showed up from John Drummond (thank you) who informed us that the game was broadcast live in Japan on Nippon TV through a website, www.aqstream.com. It worked perfectly. I also heard you could see the game through Hulu, but I didn't try it. So it works. And it's free. If you want to see the next match-up of the M's and the Y Giants, you're going to have to get up early... first pitch 3 a.m. Pacific-Tiajuana time.
Enough with the streaming technique, what did I see? Ichiro. Plenty of Ichiro. And embarassing amount of Ichiro. We had been told the story was big in Japan... well that was an understatement. Without understanding a word of what was said, the constant shots of Ichiro often doing nothing but standing in the outfield or peering from the dugout dominated the coverage. It got to the point I began to feel sorry for him. A screen cap I took:
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