Last chance, and new chances
What They Say:
Eijun Sawamura finally makes his first appearance at the spring invitational! He wants to restore Seido’s reputation as a first-rate team and make them national champions! Seido High School Baseball Club’s new run is about to begin!
Episode 19 – “Competitive Streak”
Coach Kataoka announces the team will play an intrasquad game, setting the practice fields abuzz. The first-years are eager to perform in order to make the second string, but so are the upperclassmen who want to make the first string. With Sawamura and the other main players looking on, first-year Kukki starts the game. How will Okumura, Seto and the other first-years counter the intense competitive spirit of the upperclassmen?
Episode 20 – “Self-Assertive”
The first-years are playing the second and third-years in an intrasquad game. In the third inning, the Asada-Okumura battery comes on to face the upperclassmen. After seeing Okumura and Seto’s aggressive play, Asada thinks to himself that he wants to live upto Okumura’s expectations. Will Asada’s pitches hit their mark? Meanwhile, Kawashima continues his intense pitching to try to take back his illustrious spot on the bench. Can Okumura and Seto’s devious batting continue to work on the upperclassmen?
Episode 21 – “Out of Time”
Episode 22 – “Chosen”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Episodes 19 and 20 are largely comprised of varying degrees of montage and not montage of a first years v. second and third years game, so before I begin the write up of the show proper, I’ll do a bullet point recap of the important bits of that game.
- First, and most importantly, it’s of course a drubbing of the first years by the second and third years. They have more experience, some are on the second string team, and an even smaller number of them are former first string. So there’s no way the first years are going to win, but it’s used as an exercise to test how they all play in a real game situation.
- Someone named Yohei Kukki is starting for the first years, and I don’t recall much about him, if he’s been shown at all. He has a great slider, but I only learned that from the wiki, so it must not have been immediately evident in the show. Or I just missed it while taking notes.
- Either way, he’s destroyed over three innings, being lit up for eight total runs.
- The second and third years brought out third year Kengo Kawashima, who I also remember nothing about, but wore jersey number 20 in the first series’ fall tournament, so he must have at least been present. Again, I’m only learning that from reading the wiki; the show gives no note of him having a significant role, just of his desire to reach (or re-reach? I don’t remember if they called that out for him) the first string.
- Speaking of third years, this is basically their last chance to make the first string before they graduate, so the sentiment of either making the first string or re-making the first string for the first time among the remaining third years is an ongoing thought. Seido’s non-first string third years aren’t very numerous, because they will tend to just focus on their academics if they aren’t on the first string by then, but they’re dedicated. It takes a lot to play on the second string in essential practice games through three years of your high school career.
- In the 4th inning, Asada (Sawamura and Kuramochi’s roommate) comes in to replace Kukki, as does Sawamura’s nemesis / future best friend, Okumura.
- Asada starts by throwing a meatball down the middle of the plate, which apparently has no dire consequences because I didn’t write any down. Since it was his first pitch, I imagine the batter was playing overly cautious, because it should have been punished. The meatball is an apparent consequence of not swinging his arm all the way through the motion.
- Asada pitches out of the stretch after this, which I baseball speak just means he isn’t doing his full windup. This likely allows him to stop thinking so much about his mechanics and just let his muscle memory do the work. It works, because he induces a sacrifice out.
- Also the aforementioned dire consequences may have been a double, because I wrote after the sac, there is now a man on third, so I’m only making my deductions based on my own notes, but it seems a good one.
- Asada has a 12-6 curveball, which was remarked as rare and I can neither confirm nor deny this claim independently as I do not have the curveball usage data, much less data on the direction of the curveballs that are used. But it’s highly effective, and maybe makes him Japanese anime high school Clayton Kershaw, or maybe makes him Japanese anime high school Hoby Milner. Who knows. You don’t even know who Hoby Milner is. Neither did I until I went into a deep dive of Statcast research on the worst curveballs, just for you.
- Okumura seems a pretty good field general for his age. Not much has been shown of the other first year catcher phenom, Yui, besides his bat, which plays. But Okumura is willing to take risky moves–like moving the outfield in to prevent bloop singles, but at the risk of giving up a potentially deadly double. He also calls a good game for Asada, sort of stymieing the flow of runs the second and third years started on Kukki.
- The game ends without much more fanfare, with the second and third years winning 15-3.
Most of these episodes are actually very character driven, which I appreciate because it means I have to take less notes on a per episode basis. And it all has to do with what each character is trying to do to raise his position with the coach. He says he’s thrown out the entire roster, but there’s truly a few spots that are definite. Like, Furuya, Sawamura, Miyuki, Kominato, Kuramochi, Shirasu, Kawakami, and maybe Tojo are probably all on the team. But that’s only seven positions (with three pitchers), so room for 13 more players. And Kataoka will have to fill in the rest of the diamond with players he deems either better or equal to in most measures to who he’s been throwing out.
But still, no one feels safe. Kominato has been practicing inside pitches to up his bat speed and not get jammed on as many pitches. Miyuki is doing batting practice with the rest of the former first string, which is apparently not a thing that goes on very often.
It does remind me of a story I heard about Mariano Rivera about warming up. He didn’t warm up much when he was coming out of the pen; he just did a few stretches, threw a few soft balls, then hit the mound with 90+ mph cutters. He said he’s been throwing all his life, so a few more practice pitches aren’t going to help him warm up and, especially nearing the end of his career, he needed to save every throw he could so he could give the most effort the most times when it mattered most.
That brings me to these high schoolers, who have whole potential careers ahead of them. They don’t need to save themselves, but a mantra across shonen sports and action anime is that rest is part of training. To bring it to another analogy, the Dodgers in either 2017 or 2018 (I don’t remember…) said they were doing too much batting practice, which just led to fatigue on the field or too much questioning of their mechanics off. There’s an understanding that practice is necessary, and it is because they need to ensure their fundamentals are still there, but there’s also overdoing it. Sawamura seems someone who apparently can’t overdo it, mostly because he’s seemingly only working on conditioning rather than mindless reps at pitching (Furuya) or batting (the rest of the team?), but it’s a concern for everyone else seeing how much extracurricular they’re doing. And the Japanese high school baseball system as I understand it will allow this improvement at the margins for the current team perhaps at the risk of these kids’ careers. Just something I think about when I see this much practicing.
But I digress.
Three players named Takatsu, Mimura, and Kawashima (the starting pitcher for the upperclassmen) have made the first string, according to Kataoka. This, of course, means that three players are going to be dropped off the first string, which is sad. Also Okumura, Seto, and Kukki are moving up to the second string. Asada just missed out, probably due to conditioning more than anything else. He seems to have the skill, and will pair well with Sawamura and Furuya one day.
The main beef of these episodes is of Miyuki’s impending retirement, and how he’s preparing the team for his departure. We came into the series with Miyuki as a second year, and it seemed he would stick around forever because this is an anime and these sports series don’t typically go over several years. (The manga sometimes do, but we rarely get the manga state side). He’s been teaching Sawamura, Kawakami, and Furuya, as well as at least Yui and Okumura (I’m not sure who else is in the room, but it seems a pitchers and catchers meeting) about game situations. What to do when there’s a man on first with one out v. a man on first with two outs, and how the differing counts will affect any decision making during those situations. He also gets into broader discussions of what it means when a runner is on second, third, no runners, and so on. But he wants to prepare everyone what his thinking has been throughout his three years catching, and being one of the premier high school catchers in Japan.
He also wants Sawamura and Furuya especially to start thinking for themselves. He wants them to shake him off when they think the call is the wrong one, and he wants them to be able to call their own games with some degree of knowledge.
All of that will help the two become better pitchers. Having an understanding of why they’re throwing what they’re throwing is absolutely important. And knowing that they need to be aware of a base runner in this situation, but maybe not as much in this situation, is also important. It helps them focus on their task at hand: throwing the ball 60 feet, 6 inches.
It seemed as if Sawamura and Okumura would have become a battery, given the way the previous episodes have gone. But Okumura at least has made a gentleman’s agreement with himself to only catch for Sawamura once he’s made the first string. So in their first practice after Miyuki’s urging for them to work with a first year catcher, Sawamura works with Yui and Furuya with Okumura. They mostly work through situational drills, but it showcases the growth from the first half of these episodes when Kominato was working on inside pitches. He oppo-tacos an inside pitch for a double, just past the first basemen. His bat speed, indeed, is increasing.
Sawamura’s work has not gone unnoticed by Kataoka, who observes a bullpen session between him and Miyuki. Sawamura has at least 11 pitches that are mentioned, and I don’t know what most of them are, if they’re even identifiable. But he’s only got good control over seven of them. Over Golden Week, they have practice games scheduled and their strongest test is against Hakuryu, who are very good and play small ball. Sawamura gets the nod. Perhaps he can become the ace of the diamond after all, with Furuya struggling after his most recent start.
A fun fact that I don’t know where to put anywhere else: Sawamura and Furuya are reading a book by Kuroda, who is presumably former NPB and MLB pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. He seems more a Sawamura-type pitcher than a Furuya-type based on his pitch selection and groundball tendencies, but learning from the best regardless of style is always good. The book, of course, is on rec from Miyuki.
In Summary:
These episodes are an excellent testament to how they can so easily weave character development into games, because there was a lot of stuff going on when they didn’t focus on each and every moment in the first years v. second and third years game. It allowed them to skip around to only moments that were relevant to the characters at hand, and made it more of a baseball ANIME rather than a BASEBALL anime, as it has been.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: LG 47LB5800 47” 1080p LED TV, LG NB3530A Sound Bar
