Friday, October 28, 2011

Friday Foto: Draft Aftermath, the paper version

For amusement value, I often like to buy the daily sports papers after a big event has happened, to see their different takes on it (and occasionally to cut out articles to stick up on the wall or whatever).

Anyway, here's your spread of the "big" papers today:



Let's see, first, 4 out of 6 have Sugano on the cover. None have Fujioka.

Upper left, Sports Hochi (a Giants-based paper anyway) has "Impossible! Chosen by Nippon Ham in the lottery!"

Upper right, Sankei Sports (aka Sanspo) has "Hara is completely stunned! Nippon Ham stole Sugano!!" (where 強奪 really means more like "plunder" or "extort", a very strong version of steal)

Middle left, Sponichi has a big "SUGANO SHOCK!!" with tears in his eyes and a note about "He could enter Nihon Seimei or..."

Middle right, Nikkan has "Sugano is stunned! He may refuse to sign!"

Then in non-Sugano news, Daily Sports, a Tigers-based paper, has "Hayata Itoh is the 2nd incarnation of Shinjiro Hiyama!" in the lower left :)

Also in non-Sugano news, Tokyo Chunichi Sports has THEIR front page headline, "Morimichi got his big job done and picked Shuhei Takahashi!"




Sponichi and Nikkan have the Fighters' 7th-round pick Takumi Ohshima (from the Waseda University softball club) on their SECOND PAGE. With his softball team, being a dork with softballs and baseballs, etc. Apparently, for the record, Ohshima is some kind of ungodly good softball player who's done things like hit homeruns in 13 consecutive games, was a world-class Japanese softball team member up through high school, and basically went to a tryout earlier this month and passed -- the scouts liked his large frame and power. (It's unclear to me how good his batting will translate to baseball.) Amusingly one scout even says "Sure, he has no experience in baseball, not since elementary school, but we think he'll be an interesting project".

There's not as much on Fujioka as expected, but I kinda like it that way. Papers have photos of him with captain and 3rd-round pick Daichi Suzuki and with his parents. It's expected that he will get Number 18 as Naruse already has 17.

Can you imagine a Lotte rotation of Karakawa, Naruse, Ueno, Fujioka, and Shunsuke? That's just crazy. It's like my fantasy team or something.

Yusuke Nomura, for the record, seems pretty happy going home to Hiroshima and wants to face Tomoaki Kanemoto.

And for fun, here's Yokohama HS's Otosaka and Kondoh.

2 comments:

dani said...

why is there zero fujioka, that is sad. and SUGANO SHOCK, i think i said that yesterday haha.
the newsprint on takahashi is kind of akward looking with that hand placement. itoh really had the best reaction to his name called yesterday, such a huge smile!

Deanna said...

Well, Fujioka is all over the 3rd pages of most of the papers. Just not the front page. The Sugano shock factor is too big. Fujioka was on the cover of Wednesday's Sponichi magazine after his final start for Toyodai. (And there were a LOT OF PRESS THERE OMG.)

It's funny because I actually recognized his parents in that photo -- I've met his dad, and seen his mom around at Jingu too.