Reliever  Jeff Williams will be brought back up with the Tigers on Tuesday. As expected, pitcher Chris Oxspring has been sent down to make room for Williams. 

Yakult Swallows scouts will be talking to Ritsumeikan University leftthander Norihito  Kaneto  Wednesday about playing for the club. Kaneto's fastball tops out at around 93mph and he reportedly has good movement on all of his pitches.The 5'9" 178 pounder was 21-11 in college with a 1.40 ERA and has a no hitter to his credit. Yakult manager Atsuya Furuta is an alumnus of Ritsumeikan. However, Kaneto has been non-commital as to who he is leaning toward. 

Closer Hirotoshi Ishii's return from shoulder discomfort is going to be at least another week and maybe longer. 

According to Sankei Sports, first baseman  Adam Riggs, second baseman  Greg LaRocca and leftfielder  Alex Ramirez will be commuting from their apartments in Tokyo's Shibuya district to Chiba Marine Stadium by train during the upcoming series at that ballpark against Lotte. All three men are tearing it up during interleague play and the Swallows would like to ride them back into the pennant chase. 

Yokohama Rookie pitcher Naoki Mitsuhashi was called up from the Eastern League. 

Yomiuri Lefthander Hisanori Takahashi will start against Nippon Ham Wednesday at Sapporo Dome. It will be his first appearance since breaking a cheekbone on April 5th when Yakult centerfielder Norichika Aoki lined a foul ball into the Giants dugout. 

Gary Glover will start on June 1st against the Fighters and he threw 40 pitches in the bullpen Mounday as a tuneup. 

Outfielder Yoshinobu Takahashi was diagnosed with a shoulder injury and will be out at least a month. 

Yomiuri is reportedly making plans to have at least some of their games broadcast on big screen televisions affixed to the front of department stores and train stations in Tokyo. The first one might be on a screen in the Shinbashi area. There are still some details to be worked out. I thought that broadcasting games on the screens on Yamanote Line cars was brilliant and now this idea. Both need to be expanded to include all teams every day of the season across the country. 

Backup infielder Satoshi Kuroda and reserve outfielder Takayuki Onishi have been called up. 

The Giants have been weak against pitchers they were seeing for the first time, as they have gone 3-8 during interleague play when an unfamilar man takes the mound for the opposition. Of course, they had collected scouting reports on them before, but they just weren't able to quite get the job done. So the new tack is to take those pitchers they will be seeing in the second round of the interleague slate and analogize them with Central League pitchers. There was one comparison someone made in Sankei Sports between Nippon Ham lefty Tomoya Yagi and Yakult southpaw Shugo Fujii, but I don't see it. For one thing, Fujii doesn't throw a screwball. For another, Fujii, when healthy and at the top of his game, can get up there at 93mph while Yagi is an 86-88 guy who will once in a while touch 91mph. But at least they are trying. We'll have to see just how successful this is over the next couple of weeks. 

Miscellaneous St. Louis outfielder So Taguchi was 2-4 Monday against Houston in a 3-1 victory. 

Chicago White Sox second baseman Tadahito Iguchi was 1-5 with three strikeouts Monday against Cleveland in an 11-0 rout of The Tribe. 

The Mariners faced another guy they haven't seen before in a game with Texas at Predatory Lending Park Monday and, as usual, made him look like Cy Young reincarnate, as rightfielder Ichiro Suzuki went 0-3 with an HBP and catcher Kenji Johjima was 0-3 as well. 

The Central League proposed reducing the interleague schedule in order to keep the same number of games within the CL as they have now but still reduce the overall number of games played to 140. This is all about setting up the post season, but it doesn't appear that the Pacific League is going to welcome reducing the interleague slate with more popular CL nines. Both the Lions and the Reds are based in Saitama Prefecture. 

Japan's equivalent of the College World Series gets underway next week and while most of the games will be held at Meiji Jingu Stadium, some of them will be staged at Tokyo Dome. Should be good fun. 

Everytime I see Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey Jr. slug a homer it reminds me of the fact that I remember when their fathers were rookies. I just hope I live long enough to see Trey Griffey, Ken's son, send his offspring to MLB. And hey, isn't there pressure on the younger Boone siblings to keep that string going? Will they make it FOUR generations? That would be something.