Outfielder Byung-kyu Lee had a hit in three at bats Thursday and a steal. Manager Hiromitsu Ochiai will test Lee's adaptability for where he appears in the batting order. He hit leadoff in this one, but will also be tested in the three and five holes as well. 

Hanshin The Tigers ended this phase of their spring camp and leftfielder Tomoaki Kanemoto gave it a 75 out of a possible 100 in terms of how his personal preparation went. He will make his first exhibition start on the tenth. Total fan attendance for the camp was 103,780, up 14% compared to last year. 

Rookie catcher Takashi Shimizu will start on the third against Orix. Manager Akinobu Okada has been impressed with the way Shimizu calls a game, so the main questions is whether he will hit or not. Just how they see Shimizu longterm is still an open question, especially since they have a rookie in the minors right now with tremendous power in Ryohei Hashimoto who is also a receiver but who will need 2-3 years at least to polish his skills. Shimizu is just out of college and is therefore farther along. 

Lefthander Atsushi Nomi, who may have a rotation job locked up now, tossed 90 pitches in the bullpen and is now over 2,000 for the spring. 

Another one of the lefties who they hope can fill the hole left by Kei Igawa is Hirotaka Egusa and he threw 150 pitches during his bullpen Thursday. 

Reliever Kyuji Fujikawa will next appear on the tenth in an exhibition against Yomiuri and said that he wants to finish the spring with no runs scoring against him. He almost did that during the regular season in 2006, at one point going 47.2 innings without a run crossing against him, a team record. Fujikawa had some shoulder stiffness at the end of last season, but is well rested this spring and is rarin' to go. 

The night before, as a celebration for this phase of spring training ending, Jeff Williams, Esteban Yan, Ryan Vogelsong and their translator went to a team party dressed in Japanese schoolgirl outfits as a prank. Ugh! And where did they get ones big enough to fit what are in Japan three huge dudes?

Submariner Takashi Aiki threw 90 pitches down in the mnor league camp Thursday. He will join the top team Friday. 

Pinch hitting specialist Mitsunobu Takahashi, who was signed after being released by Chunichi, was away from the team Thursday to move his stuff from his old place in Nagoya to new digs. He will be back in uniform on the 3rd. 

Number one draft pick Masashi Nohara, an infielder, attended  his high school's graduation ceremony Thursday.

Hiroshima Top high school pick Kenta Maeda will make his first pro exhibition appearance on March 4th against Rakuten. He is scheduled for one innings. 

Yakult After losing to the SK Wyverns Wednesday, the Swallows rebounded by drilling the Samsung Lions Thursday 8-0 at Urazoe Municipal Stadiium. Masanori Ishikawa went five scorelesss innings on four hits and struckout six on 70 pitches. 

Hirobumi Watarai, who is about as long a shot for the third base job as George W. Bush is for winning the Nobel Peace Prize, had three hits and three RBIs. Watarai, though, can also play first and leftfield. 

Yokohama The Bay Stars are hoping to sign 5'10" 162 pound Keio University southpaw Mikinori Kato, who features a 92mph fastball and a slider, for the Nov ember draft. Kato is 22-13 with a 2.08 ERA in Tokyo Big Six University League action for his career in that circuit. Yokohama is seeking to add another lefty arm to their starting rotation. 

It needs to be noted, though, that Yokohama has had poor luck with top draft picks the last few years. Their number three choice in the collegiate/industrial league draft this season, Yuta Kimura, said no thanks. Others have either not done a thing or, as is the case with Daisuke Mori, were released after suffering career ending arm problems. In other words, they draft like the California Angels used to when Gene Autry owned them, which is terrible.  

Joselo Diaz faced seven hitters in a simulated game Thursday and allowed just one hit while fanning a pair.  . 

Yomiuri I just love the Japanese press sometimes. On the front of Hochi Sports' Thursday (U.S. PST) was an over the top article enthusiastically extolling Giants third baseman Michihiro Ogasawara lacing a 2-2 slider through the hole vacated by Nippon Ham shortstop Makoto Kaneko against Nippon Ham starter Yu Darvish that sent Yoshitomo Tani, who had been on first thanks to an error by third baseman Andy Green, to third in the first, from where Luis Gonzalez cashed Tani in with a sac fly for a 1-0 lead in wehat became a 3-0 final. You would have thought that Ogasawara had just won the seventh game of the Japan Series with a walkoff jack by the tone of the article. 

Submariner Yushi   Aida  continues to be one of the real pleasant suprises of the Giants spring camp, as the second year righty went three perfect innings on only 29 pitches. Mind you, sans Ogasawara now, it isn't like Aida was facing Hanshin, but still, seven of his nine outs were on grounders. He was clocked at 80mph and that ain't a typo, which is actually slower than Darvish's slider. 

Aida told the press that when he was in Arizona training at the same facility used by Randy Johnson this offseason, Johnson told him to approach hitters as if you "intend to kill them." Johnson also, according to Aida, informed the youngster that whether you eat or not depends on how you deal with the guy in the batter's box. You writers out there who want to use these quotes please attribute them to Hochi Sports. 

Yomiuri's batting order still isn't scoring much though. They had better change that or, unless the Utsumi-Powell-Nishimura- Uehara (whenever he will finally be ready)-Kadokura axis suddenly turns into the early 1970's Orioles rotation, which isn't likely to happen, it will be another bad year for the Tokyo squad's faithful. 

Part of improving the run production will be catcher Shinnosuke  Abe refinding his home run stroke and he went yard in the second with nobody on here off of an 88mph fastball that was above the belt from Darvish. A double by Yoshiyuki Kamei in the eighth and an ensuing RBI knock by fellow outfielder Takahiro Suzuki resulted in the final Giants tally. 

Gonzalez was rendered hitless, though Damon Hollins had two hits. 

Utsumi was definitely up to the task here, permitting only one hit in his three sparkling innings as the starter. The shuuto he has added was also employed effectively, enabling him to not depend so much on his main outpitch, his changeup. 

Before Thursday's game, the team held a fan event at a Sapporo area hotel. The Giants have a long history in Sapporo dating back to the days when they used to play occasional games at the old Maruyama Stadium. Four of Kamiuchi's whiffs were consecutive. 

Ken Kadokura will being seeing action pretty soon, perhaps on the ninth against Orix, as he dominated during a simulated game Thursday, allowing only one hit to 13 batters. 

Rookie catcher Takahiro Ijuin and first year infielder Hayato Sakamoto both participated in their high school graduations Thursday. 

Another young infielder, Hidetoshi Tsuburuya, had never been to Hokkaido before, so he had also never experienced Sapporo Dome. "It's like a theme park," he said of the ballpark's design. 

Uehara threw 110 pitches in the bullpen, 60 of them with the catcher standing up and then the remaining 50 with the backstop in the crouch. "I'm finally getting to where I can play baseball," Uehara averred. 

There was nothing abnormal found in lefthander Takanobu Tsujiuchi, who will probably be on the mound with the big club later this season, when he had an MRI Thursday, so he will continue to rehab from what had been diagnosed as an elbow inflammation.

Outfielder Takayuki Shimizu was also given an MRI and was diagnosed with an inflammation of his right ring finger. He will be out another couple of weeks. 

Miscellaneous Friday will mark the start of full game reports as we prepare to welcome the regular season. However, there will be no report Monday so that I can keep working on another project. 

If you read the blur above about Hochi Sports going overboard with regard to Ogasawara, it did so concerning Minnesota main man Joe Mauer, who slugged a game tying three run homer Wednesday against Daisuke Matsuzaka's Red Sox in what ended as a 4-4 nine inning tie. Mauer told the Japanese press that he had heard that Matsuzaka throws a lot of pitches and that he would like to stand in against him to see what he has. No big deal, right? Just Mauer expressing his curiosity about the much hyped former Lion. But Hochi Sports angled it as if Mauer was throwing down the gauntlet and challenging Matsuzaka to the baseball equivalent of a duel. Too much. 

Waseda University's head baseball coach is going to forbid pitcher Yuki Saito from taking part in the qualifying round of the olympic baseball tournament, a good move. Saito has already had enough attention. But that nonetheless resulted in grumbling by olympic baseball chief Senichi Hoshino, who thinks that somebody with Saito's name recognition could be a nice addition to his side. However, Hoshino's problem is that he is a former Meiji University grad and those two universities play in the same league and thus are heated rivals. So Hoshino may be getting messages in the next few days from Waseda baseball OB (alumni) telling him to piss off. 

Saito will be too tired to care about all this, as he is scheduled to throw 1000 pitches over the five days from the fourth through the eighth as well engage in a lot of running. 

Saito pitched in a simulated game Thursday and didn't do well, permitting three hits and walking one against seven hitters. He was clocked at 88mph. This is on the heels of a previous outing where he walked five on the 25th. Saito remarked that this always happens to him in the runup to the regular season, that he gets into a funk before stepping it up when it counts, so he isn't bothered by it and neither is Waseda's head coach. The Waseda nine will leave for Urazoe, Okinawa Friday for the next phase of their spring training camp, which will last two weeks. 

There will be a commemorative placque erected at the practice facility used by Yokohama High to celebrate Daisuke Matsuzaka's career there and in the pros. In addition, the names of those involved with the school who helped Matsuzaka get where he is will also have their names inscribed somewhere on the monument, including that of their team bus driver. 

Hideki Matsui was 1-2 with a walk Thursday against Minnesota and made a nice sliding backhand grab of a little fly ball near the line in left. He was then sat down after the team batted in the sixth. 

Colorado second baseman Kazuo Matsui hit against a lefthanded batting practice pitcher after the regular practice ended in order to sharpen his swing from the righthand side. 

Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima was hit by a pitch and grounded into a double play during an intrasquad game Thursday. 

Yankees lefty Kei Igawa passed out english language Shogi (a form of Japanese chess) instructional booklets to his teammates Thursday. One onwders if we can call Igawa the first Japanese otaku (geek) to appear in an MLB game.  

Boy, nice to see Rangers shortstop Michael Young, who has done everything for his team except talk Tom Hicks out of paying A-Rod that ridiculous contract, get a nice fat multiyear deal for $80 million.