About

日本語版

Stumps to Strikeouts: An Australian's unlikely journey to Dragons fandom

I'm Scott, an Aussie guy who lived in Japan from 2013 to early 2017. I currently live in Melbourne, Australia with my children and wife who is originally from Chiba prefecture. I am a graduate student researching civil society in Okinawa. I'm a lover of sports and have played cricket since I was about 8 years old. I'm otherwise a coffee connoisseur and just enjoy writing.

I never had an interest in baseball growing up and Australia isn't really the place to follow it either. My early life was dominated by cricket, a sport played mostly by former English colonies, but that experience probably made the addition of baseball to my interests all the easier.

I follow my local baseball team the Brisbane Bandits in the ABL as well as the Minnesota Twins in the MLB. I'm a big association football fan and also keep tabs on PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan and Brisbane Roar in Australia.

Oda Nobunaga watches over Gifu Station

Why the Dragons?

I started following the Dragons simply because that was the team of the realm. My first (substantial) experience in Japan was a study abroad in Gifu prefecture where I was meant to brush up on my Japanese language skills but mostly brushed up on my Japanese drinking skills. I was never interested enough at the time to make a pilgrimage to the Nagoya Dome but I had friends that went to games and I was aware of the buzz surrounding the team in light of their 2007 Japan Series championship.

I went to my first game some years later in 2014 at QVC (now ZoZo) Marines Stadium by chance as my wife and I won some tickets in a raffle. By even bigger chance, they were tickets to see the Marines take on the Dragons in an inter-league game. I was far more interested in drinking that day than watching baseball so I don't remember the result, I just have a vague memory of thinking Hector Luna was a waste of money. 

Jingu. Great Place to watch a ball game. 

From that point, I half-heartedly followed the Dragons season online and didn't really even notice where they finished that year. During the off-season though I picked up a few NPB mobile games and started to get familiar with player names and did a bit of research here and there and it started to really ramp up my interest. My wife then somehow got her hands on a cheap pair of tickets from a reseller to see the Dragons play the Swallows at Jingu Stadium and I was really happy to be going to see my favourite team and players run out live. It was a loss, but the experience solidified my love of the Japanese game and I started following the results much more closely. Avoiding 6th place was something of a joy for me and I waited with bated breath for the 2015 Draft.

The switch was flicked and I ended up reading news daily about the Dragons looking for anything new that might improve the team or build more excitement. Then I had the thought to make a blog about it as I had no one to talk to in regards to the team.

Why the blog?

I have written for numerous websites over the years including my own blogs, some politics stuff and a long stint as a feature writer for a soccer news website, but I found with the Dragons a nice niche. Apart from Moeyo Dragons, I was unable to find anyone doing anything significant in the English language and decided to fill a hole and satiate my desire to share with the world all things Chunichi Dragons. 

I hope to, for as long as possible, provide information about the Dragons in English for everyone to enjoy from various sources in Japanese from print and web media. I'm doing my best to fill in the blanks in my knowledge and if I get the odd thing wrong, bear with me. Unlike most NPB English language writers who are usually North American, I have very little background in baseball. As such, the lingo might be a bit off at times and I might even throw in a lot of phrases that would probably belong in a cricket match report rather than a baseball one. If anything this should be a fairly unique perspective.

Current Goals and Format

In the past, I have attempted to write match reports and do a lot more of what would be considered traditional coverage of the team. However, in this era where information is more and more available to an English-speaking audience and time is at a premium for me, I choose to focus on feature articles. 

Much of my focus is on delving into data to put together arguments for what the team should be doing or why the team is doing what it is. Similarly, to contextualise a lot of what I argue, I have been trying to incorporate more league-wide perspectives. 

In addition to analysis pieces, I have also committed to a yearly prospect ranking and I generally try to cover any of the roster movements in the offseason. While I have previously done deep dives into new draftees specifically, I have now resorted to quicker blurbs as part of my prospect ranking.

Overall my focus is much more refined than what I started with in 2016. Rather than simply reporting, I'm trying to go a little deeper to help you, my reader, understand what the Dragons are doing and what they could possibly be doing better. 

I do not promote the blog on social media all that much but I do frequently post to /r/npb and /r/chunichidragons on Reddit.

Thanks for coming. Please, take a seat, pull a beer and enjoy what Nagoya's finest can do.