Fellow pitcher Mitsuru Sato, meanwhile, threw 74 pitches in the bullpen and hopes to be consistent all season long after pulling one of the bigger el foldos in recent baseball annals in 2006. 

Another Dragons pitcher, Masahiro Yamamoto, was no doubt happy when learning of his alma mater, Nichidai Fujisawa High, being selected to compete in the spring Koshien Tournament, especially since his 36 year old younger brother, Hideaki, is its head coach. Hideaki Yamamoto never played in the pros, but did catch in the industrial leagues with Mitsubishi Motors Kawasaki. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nichidai's ace throws a screwball like Masahiro does. Big bro also donated 100 dozen baseballs to the Nichidai program. 

Rookie catcher Nagamasa Fukuda pumped seven balls over the wall in 92 swings Saturday while manager Hiromitsu Ochiai watched. While he still has to polish his skills as a backstop, a coach remarked that Fukuda is farther along at this point than Kenji Johjima was. Catching is becoming something of an issue for the Dragons since incumbent Motonobu Tanishige is long in the tooth and backups Kohei Oda and Masauumi Shimizu aren't much at the plate. 

Outfielder Byung-kyu Lee  drilled four homers in batting practice and also used some Japanese his translator taught him during practice. 

Hanshin Pitcher Ryan Vogelsong made his bullpen debut for the Tigers in front of 3,500 fans and sent 57 pitches through the air, including his cutter, changeup, sinker and curve. A writer for Hochi Sports described Vogelsong as "handsome," using the english word. But what made the biggest impression was what was coming out of Vogelsong's mouth, screams and grunts Nolan Ryan stylee. "I get mad when I'm on the mound," he told the writers. That inspired some of the other pitchers to imitate the ex-Pirate's histrionics. "I tried doing it while throwing a slow curve," laughed Shinobu Fukuhara. 

A Chunichi scout commented that Vogelsong had good tilt on his pitches and appears to be advancing smoothly in his preparations for the season. 

The Japanese reporters contrasted that with the bullpen session of Esteban Yan, who quietly threw everything but the kitchen sink in his 54 pitches. Yan thinks he is at about 80% right now. 

Which brings this up: in the Japanese dailies, they have been writing his name in katakana as "Jan (pronounced the same as the the last name of a pitcher for who an elbow tendon procedure)." So is Esteban's last name really spelled "Llan?" I just remember as a kid that the Angels had an infielder named Winston Llenas (who later played in Japan as well) who pronounced his last name "Jenas." That always used to throw me. "Yan" can be spelled like it sounds in Japanese, but they aren't doing it. So I wonder what was up with that. 

By the way, there is still some talk about Yan's power and perhaps using him as a pinch hitter in desperate situations. 

Centerfielder Norihiro Akahoshi cut practice short after suffering back pain while engaging in windsprints. He was taken to a local hospital and x rayed, where they diagnosed him with, wait for it....a backache. File that one under, "no shit Sherlock." Manager Akinobu Okada will give him the next two days off to recover. 

That led to an article in Sankei Sports discussing how an injury to Akahoshi could lead to chances for two other outfielders, Lin Wei-tzu, who they portrayed in a photo that seemed to show him using a curved   bat due to some photographic distortion, and minor leaguer Masato Akamatsu, who was captured on film while a fly ball went over his head for extra bases. Weird. 

Shortstop Takashi Toritani was a swingin' fool Saturday, taking 181 hacks and powering 12 into the great beyond. 

The press went into a minor tizzy yesterday when leftfielder Tomoaki Kanemoto had some discomfort in one of his arms because of that consecutive games streak of his, but he whiped those fears away Saturda with a free and easy batting practice before ratcheting up the intensity on his last ten cuts and conking two well over the rightfield wall. 

Infielder Makoto Imaoka concentrated on his problem, throwing after having hand surgery last season, by pegging balls into a net after regular practice. 

First baseman Andy Sheets is being allowed to make his own workout routine and after doing the usual warmups, running, playing catch etc, he went into the cage and swung at a relaxed clip and then called it a day. 

Okada was impressed with the big overhand hook of newbie Tatsuya Kojima, one of the candidates to replace Kei Igawa in the rotation. He went 103 pitches before exiting the pen. 

Another southpaw, Hirotaka Egusa, is working on a two seamer and is getting good movement out of it even if he doesn't always know precisely how it will act whenever he throws it. 

Reliever Tomoyuki Kubota registered another 160 pitches Saturday, making it 500 for him since camp opened Thursday. I don't know, this just reeks of misdirected machismo to me. He is a big guy, but he's hardly invincible. 

Darwin Cubillan, who has been demoted to a foreign insurance policy if Vogelsong or Yan don't prove viable, threw 30 pitches, but he has got to feel like he kinda got rooked after being flat out brilliant at times last season. 

Kyuji Fujikawa served up a gentleman's 30 pitches and said that he has no pain in his shoulder. The righthander, one of the best four or five middle relievers on the planet, experienced significant shoulder discomfort last season. But he also tends to take it easy during spring training and Okada allows him to pretty much do what he wants as far as pitch counts, so he tends to be fresher coming out of camp than a lot of the other hurlers. At the end of the 2006 schedule, he was still smoking it up to 93-95mph pretty consistently despite a substantial workload. 

Hiroshima Ace Hiroki Kuroda did some longtossing, about 65 yards, Saturday and it appears that he is fully recovered from offseason elbow surgery. Manager Marty Brown offered that Kuroda looked so good that he can pretty much forget about him even having had the procedure, but Kuroda's pitch counts and throw days will still be restricted. The surgery has made it easier on him psychologically because if he didn't have it he would be thinking about aggravating the problem he had in 2006 with discomfort that kept him out most of the last six weeks or so. 

First baseman Kenta Kurihara, who missed a good chunk of the season with an injury last season, worked on hitting the other way Saturday, 44 of his 67 swings sending the ball to either right or rightcenter. :I want to increase the number of balls I hit out near the rightfield foul pole at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium," the former minor league homer king said. "It doesn't matter if it goes 300 feet or 500 feet, it counts the same." This provoked a Sankei Sports headline writer to plaster the article with a line that read, "Kurihara: The Goal is 50 Bombs Due to Blooper Home Runs."

Kurihara has resorted to a longer bat, 34.5 inches, though that isn't a big deal. But what would Sigumd Freud make of this  shot?

Knuckleballer Jared Fernandez propounded that just because he throws the floater to not think that the opposition will run wild on him. He reasoned that he has a good pickoff move and that he can always waste fastballs off the outside corner to setup his catcher for gunning base thieves down. 

Closer Katsuhiro Nagakawa asked Fernandez to teach him how to throw the knuckler but quickly have up on it after hanging the first one and bouncing the other. "It hurts my fingers to throw it. It's too hard."

Yakult Top rookie Tatsuyoshi Mabuchi had an abbreviated side session Saturday, but manager Atsuya Furuta was impressed, saying that the kid reminded him of Shingo Takatsu when Japan's al time saves leader first came up with the Swallows. Others have compared Masubuchi to former Yomiuri great Masaki Saito. For his part, Masubuchi said that he tries to pattern himself after Nippon Ham righty Yu Darvish. 

Seth Greisinger showed off his changeup during his 47 pitch stint on the bullpen hill, evaluating afterward that he was at around 60% of in season shape. He won 14 games last year in the KBO. 

Yokohama Infielder Seiichi Uchikawa was hospitalized with infected tonsils and can't eat due to the pain, so he is being given an IV drip. He was consequently taken off the top team roster and will be with the minor leaguers when he checks out of sick bay. 

And closer Mark  Kroon is still suffering from a left leg problem he suffered at the end of last season, but he threw 56 pitches in the bullpen Saturday anyway and displayed easy gas. 

And, in something that will drive both Hispanics and African-Americans up the wall, Chunichi Sports ran  this  pic with a caption that Kroon and another pitcher, Joselo Diaz, look alike even if I personally don't believe it to even be close. 

Yomiuri Japanese olympic baseball team manager Senichi Hoshino, who is also a senior adviser with Hanshin, journeyed to the Giants spring camp and talked for a while with the owner's assitant Hidetoshi Kiyotake about how the kyojin could rejuvenate themselves. "When Hanshin or the Giants aren't strong then baseball loses something," Hoshino, who spent his playing career toiling on the hill for Chunichi, averred to the press. He also revealed that when righthander Hiroshi Kisanuki was once a regular part of Yomiuri's pitching mix, the strategy he used against him was to be patient and make him use up a lot of pitches and then take it to him in the late innings. Kisanuki's career has stagnated after winning the Rookie of the Year award due to injury problems and he has become a non-factor on the club while he strives to get untracked. 

Kisanuki entered the bullpen for the first time this spring Saturday and threw 115 fastballs to regular catcher Shinnosuke Abe. Manager Tatsunori Hara stated that he would have been happy with 80 since he doesn't want the righthander, who was also pursued by Seattle when he came out of Asia University, to overdo it and risk another injury. Pitching coach Takao Obana has worked with him on a minor adjustment to help his rhythm and while Kisanuki still isn't totally locked in on it he says his progress "is not bad." 

Definitely not doing too shabby either is first baseman Seung-yeop Lee, wo uncorcked twn homers in 47 swings, eight of them to the opposite field, including one estimated at about 455 feet. 

Obana was seen instructing veteran reliever Kiyoshi Toyoda on his weight transer Saturday during the former Lion's 51 pitch bullpen outing. 

Rookie infielder Hidetoshi Tsuburaya has developed a blood blister on his right hand from swinging the bat so much over the last few days and even though he wrapped it in tape it still pains him. Nonetheless, he is carrying on. 

Kentaro Nishimura toed the rubber in the pen again after the regular practice menu had ended and spun 87 pitches up to his catcher as Obana lent him advice on his weight shift. 

Luis Gonzalez was back at second base for infield defensive drills and did fine, but said afterward that he has to learn some Japanese to improve his communication with the other interior glovemen. 

Ken Kadokura had another throwing session and it was all fastballs. "It's gradually getting better, but still not there yet," he grumbled to reporters. He has vowed to keep focusing on the heater until it is up to standard before whipping out the forkball. 

Longtime lefty reliever Yukinaga Maeda was seen dropping to the side as he attempts to stave off retirement. It is a mystery as to why the Giants kept him on given his age an ineffectiveness, but there you go. Obana liked what Maeda was dealing Saturday as a result of the change in arm angle. 

Is it any kind of omen when you get hit by the PITCHING MACHINE? That happened to outfielder Kenji Yano, who took one on his left thigh. He walked it off. 

Shintaro Yoshitake, who was brought over from Softbank as a compensation pick for infielder Hiroki Kokubo using free agency to head back to Fukuoka, threw 82 pitches in his bullpen session Saturday. It's not that Yoshitake is thag great, but he does improve the Giants relief corps nevertheless. 

Fleetfooted outfielder Takahiro Suzuki went back to switch hitting last season and he believes that he is getting better at it. Suzuki and the other guy who is likely to be up at the top of the Yomiuri lineup, infielder Ryota Wakiya, will both need to improve their OBP significantly to boost an attack that was anemic last year, especially with Abe's power stroke going on hiatus and not certain to rematerialize. 

Outfielder Yoshitomo Tani, who has had back and elbow problems the last couple of seasons, appeared to be swinging pretty easy Saturday in bp, telling the press that he has no qualms about his physical state this spring.  

Miscellaneous Now here is a screwy item and you can make up your mind as to what it means culturally for Japanese high school baseball: on Januray 27th, a substitute teacher for Osaka Toin High had a little too much to drink and then got behind the wheel and ran over a 58 year old newspaper deliverywoman, who was on the scooter she used for job at the time. She was sadly killed. But here is where it gets weird: the school had to file a report on the incident with the Japan High School Baseball Federation. Keep in mind that the perp in this case wasn't affiliated with the school's baseball program. The JHSBF said that it will make a determination about how to handle this once they get all the information they need. Huh? Why is it any of their business? Osaka Toin is tentatively scheduled to play in the spring Koshien Tournament. Look, if the school itself wants to pull out of the tourney as an expression of regret for the incident I can understand that. They haven't yet made any decisions on that matter, though. But how does the JHSBF justify getting anywhere near this? If I'm being dense, write in and tell me why. 

If you remember how I wrote about then Waseda Jitsugyo High ace Yuki Saito (now at Waseda University) during the summer Koshien Tournament, we may be seeing his clone in Sendai Ikuei High righthander Yoshinori Sato, a gutsy kid who, like Saito, tops out at 91mph with a good, sharp slider. He is still only a junior, but look for scouts on both sides of the ocean to give this kid a thorough going over. You won't see him getting out a handkerchief to wipe his brow like Saito did, though. 

New Yankee Kei Igawa visited his old high school Saturday, Mito Shogyo (some schools in Japan are still six days a week, others afre five but have mandatory club activities on that day) and will then fly to the U.S. Sunday. He is at his usual playing weight and hasn't slept well recently in anticipation of his inaugural MLB campaign. He will be pitching before some packed houses, as the Bronx nine have already sold three million tickets for 2007. 

Colorado infielder Kazuo Matsui says that because he switch hits he has to work four times harder than the normal person. To that end, he will be bringing his own batting machine with him from Japan when he reports for spring training so that he can get in as much hitting has he wants. Whatever works. 

Tampa Bay third baseman Akinori Iwamura has changed his batting approach to give himself better plate coverage, as he has closed up what used to be an open stance. It is generally perceived that the strike zone in the U.S. is wider than that in Japan, thus engendering the adjustment. All that means, though, is that Iwamura is going to see a lot of inside heat when he begins facing MLB pitching and he had better be able to either turn on it or take it if it is off the plate. 

Convicted felon and babbling dickhead Michael Irvin was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame at Canton. Another reason to keep from watching football. "The NFL: we commit more felonies before 6 a.m. than any street gang." Shit, they should just induct the Cincinnati Bengals en masse or put prison bars and barbed wire around the hall of fame's compound.