今日も走らず、休息はこれで3日目。
夕方、仕事を中断して、丘の上のジャイアンツ・タウン・スタジアムに野球を観に行くことにする。昨日からスワローズが来ているのだ。ファームで調整中の山田哲人をしっかりと観察しようかと思い立ったのだった。
セカンドの守備位置に近い座席に陣取って、双眼鏡で哲人を追う。が、表情から読み取れることはなさそうだった。何を考えているか分からない。これがムネだったら分かりやすいのだが。とにかく、哲人がんばれ。
ジャイアンツの若い左打者が打席に入ったときに、一塁手の髙野と話す哲人の声が聞こえてきた。「引っ張りなん？」と訊いて守備位置を深くしていた。静かな球場はよいものだ。
そのほかの特筆は、武岡がよい動き。それから、川端の打球はちょっと質が違う。速くて、浮き上がる。ジャイアンツの選手だとショートを守った石塚がよい。ホームランも打った。気になって調べるとドラフト1位のルーキーでまだ19歳であった。身体の大きさは高卒ルーキーにはとても見えなかった。
20時まで観て、帰る。
I skipped running again today. That makes three full days of rest now.
In the evening, I took a break from work and headed up to Giants Town Stadium on the hill, since the Swallows had come into town yesterday for a farm-league game, and I’d decided to go watch Tetsuto Yamada, who’s currently rehabbing with the farm team.
I grabbed a seat close to second base and tracked him with binoculars, but there was little I could read from his expression—I had no idea what he was thinking, and if it were his teammate Munetaka Murakami, I’d probably have a better sense of his mood, since he’s much easier to read—still, all I could do was quietly root for Tetsuto.
At one point, when a young left-handed Giants batter stepped into the box, I heard Yamada ask first baseman Takano, “Is he gonna pull it?” as he shifted back on defense, and I thought to myself how nice it is when a ballpark is this quiet, letting moments like that drift through the air. I hate the whole cheering style in Japanese pro baseball—the drums, the trumpets, the nonstop noise. It drives me crazy.
Elsewhere on the field, Takeoka—my favorite player—looked sharp, and Kawabata’s batted balls had a different kind of quality—fast and rising—while for the Giants, the shortstop Ishizuka caught my eye, and then hit a home run on top of that; I looked him up later and found out he was a first-round draft pick, just nineteen years old, though from the size of him, you’d never guess he came straight out of high school.
I left the stadium around 8 p.m. and headed home.
Konome-ame 