The cartoonist Edward Steed spent the summer in Japan and, with nothing better to do, ended up going to a lot of baseball games. He brought his sketchbook along, too.
Left-handed pitcher Minako Uemura.
Mika Miyahara, Hyogo Dione.
Minako Uemura, Kyoto Flora.
Victory dance.
Ball one.
Makoto Moriyama, waiting.
Yuki Miyazaki. Fourth-inning uglyshirt R.B.I. double.
Yukata Bargains (twenty per cent off).
Waving towels for T-Okada.
First base.
Three runs in 0.2 innings. Shohei Tsukahara’s teammates want to talk about his pitching.
Just before the game, a rare yellow Shinkansen rolls past. Dr. Yellow is said to bring good luck.
Jesús hits a home run.
Hiroki Kuroda, under pressure in the second inning.
Total concentration.
Fans get ready for the seventh-inning balloon release.
Deunte Heath is pitching to Kosuke Fukudome. Runner on second.
Fukudome strikes out.
Batter’s eye.
Daikan Yoh, a.k.a Yang Dai-Kang.
Imamiya hits a home run. 3-1, Hawks.
Satoru Kakizono gets some flowers. It is his two-thousand-five-hundredth game as an umpire.
Honda wins it for the Hawks with a walk-off single.
Finally, the dome roof opens to reveal the vastness of the universe.
But most people have gone home already.
Someone has a new favorite player.
Seventeen-year-old Shinnosuke Ogasawara pitching for Tokai Daigaku Fuzoku Sagami . . .
. . . 151 k.p.h.
The kindness of strangers.
Sixteen-year-old celebrity Kotaro Kiyomiya’s first at-bat. Goes down swinging.
Second at-bat, fouls one behind, then hits a single. Crowd goes wild.
Osaka Kaisei Gakuen vs. Kyushu Kokusai Daigaku Fuzoku. Osaka loses in front of the home crowd.
It’s a knockout tournament, no second chances.
Collecting some Koshien dirt as a souvenir.
Last game of the day, ninth inning. Tsuruga Kehi, down 8-3 to Hanamaki Higashi:
Team huddle.
Somewhere between Osaka and Tokyo.
Somewhere else between Osaka and Tokyo.
Tigers: 0, Swallows: 0.
Tigers: 6, Swallows: 1.
No. 1 fan.
