OK, it’s the post-season of baseball in both the USA and Japan. I am very excited because both my favorite teams are on the road to the Series!!!
The St. Louis Cardinals are my favorite team, because I grew up in St. Louis! Even though I lived in New York, and Los Angeles, I would only go to see the Mets or the Dodgers if they were playing the Cardinals!!! I drink Budweiser and eat toasted ravioli and bratwurst at the games too! (Only those from St Louis would even consider this.) I wait for Fredbird to come out and put some unsuspecting kid’s head into his mouth! Instead of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” we clap along to the Budweiser theme as the neon eagle and cardinal logos flash, and the Budweiser Clydesdale horses come out on the field and pull the beer wagon during our 7th inning stretches. That is quintessential St. Louis for me. The only city that comes close to St. Louis and its baseball traditions and rituals are Osaka, and the Hanshin Tigers!!!
The Hanshin Tigers is the oldest baseball club in Japan, and because of that their fans are the most fiercely loyal! When you enter Koshien Stadium, you’d better be wearing some form of black, yellow and white… DO NOT WEAR ORANGE! That’s like going to Busch Stadium in St Louis, and instead of red, you wore Cubs Blue… You’ll get your ass kicked, because that’s the colors of the Yomiuri Giants, the Tigers rivals from Tokyo. The tigers fans even have their own song! It goes like this:
Rokko Orochi
Rokko oroshi ni sasso to
Soten kakeru nichirin no
Seishun no haki uruwashiku
Kagayaku wagana zo Hanshin Taigasu
O-o-o-o Hanshin Taigasu
Fure-fure-fure-fure
Toshi hatsuratsu tatsu ya ima
Nekketsu sude ni teki o tsuku
Ju-o no iki takaraka ni
Muteki no warera zo Hanshin Taigasu
O-o-o-o Hanshin Taigasu
Fure-fure-fure-fure
Soten kakeru nichirin no
Seishun no haki uruwashiku
Kagayaku wagana zo Hanshin Taigasu
O-o-o-o Hanshin Taigasu
Fure-fure-fure-fure
Toshi hatsuratsu tatsu ya ima
Nekketsu sude ni teki o tsuku
Ju-o no iki takaraka ni
Muteki no warera zo Hanshin Taigasu
O-o-o-o Hanshin Taigasu
Fure-fure-fure-fure
The Wind of Mount Rokko
Dashing swiftly through the wind blowin' from Rokko
Like the big sun soaring in the clear blue sk
yMighty spirit of the youth shows the victor's grace
The name that shines in glory "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
Powerful hits and skillful pitch achieved a thousand times
Trained with every discipline here at Koshien
Crowned with constant victory glorious, matchless fea
Always proud, invincible "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
Like the big sun soaring in the clear blue sk
yMighty spirit of the youth shows the victor's grace
The name that shines in glory "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
Powerful hits and skillful pitch achieved a thousand times
Trained with every discipline here at Koshien
Crowned with constant victory glorious, matchless fea
Always proud, invincible "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
Now that’s fan loyalty! Congratulations to both the St. Louis Cardinals and the Hanshin Tigers for making it into the playoffs this year and lets bring home a World Series and a Japan Series!!! GO CARDS and GO TIGERS!!!
This is an experiment of sorts to try to tie together my online identity and my offline personality. I've made plenty of business oriented sites, but I have never actually put together one for myself personally... With the advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace along with blog sites like Blogger and Twitter, I find that I have cut a wide swath here in the internet, in terms of being actively online, but there isn't one place to really tie that information together. So this will be an attempt at doing so.