Benny and the Giants

I guess the media here in Japan jumped the gun on the Benny Agbayani transaction. Benny looks like he'll stay with the Mets and compete for playing time against the likes of Jay Payton, Timo Perez, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and the newly acquired Roger Cedeno making his second go-around with the Mets. If I was Benny, and obviously I'm not, the Giants and their deep pockets would've been pretty hard to turn down. Plus he would've been virtually assured of playing every single day, something that he'll have no guarantee of in New York.

Well, scratch Shinjyo from the list. He's the one joining the Giants (of San Fran that is). Kind of ironic, eh? I wonder how Hanshin fans will feel about him donning orange and black?

First of all, so far as "guaranteed to play every day" on the Giants (Tokyo variety) is concerned, only Takahashi and Matsui have such guarantees. A gaijin will most likely have to prove himself to the Giants' front office before recieving such status - now matter how good he may be. Remember Cromartie's book? (Many things have changed for the better since then, but...)

As for Shinjo going to the Giants (of San Francisco), that's great news to me (a rabbid SF Giants' fan since I knew what baseball was in the early '70s)! Perhaps they'll take Tanishige as well and get some air play in Japan. The main reason that I don't follow MLB personally is because ever since Nomo went to the States, San Francisco games had been hard to come by on TV. ("Major League Stadium" on NHK became "Nomo Stadium" back then in all but name. Now it's become "Ichiro Stadium.")

Guess it's time to renew my subscription to the SF Giants' newsgroups. Thanks for that bit of information.

Well, I didn't mean that Benny's name would've been written in stone in the Giants' lineup, but I can bet you anything that he would've been given every opportunity to unseat Shimizu as the starter in left field. Don't you remember Jesse Barfield and his Mendoza-line batting average playing everyday for the Giants back in '93? Granted, Barfield's defense was exceptional, but his average only got above .200 late in the season.

Also, I'm not quite sure what to make of the Shinjo acquistion by the SF Giants. All I know is that Dusty Baker pretty much left the careers of Rex Hudler and Darrin Jackson in limbo after he released them right at the end of spring training in '94 and '97 as both of them were trying to make it back to the Majors after spending time in Japan. I thought that it was pretty shallow on the part of Baker to let those guys go after all of the other teams had already set their rosters for the upcoming season. Hudler was bailed out by Buck Rodgers and luckily caught on with the Angels, but Jackson had to go to extended spring training with the BoSox and later triple-A with the Twins organization before making it back to the big leagues. Dusty Baker loves veteran players, so don't be surprised if Shawon Dunston gets more playing time in the outfield than Shinjo.

I apologize for any redundancy, because I KNOW this has been covered, but what is the correct spelling of Shinjyo/Shinjo in romajii? His uni with Hanshin read Shinjyo, did it not? His Mets uni had Shinjo if I'm not mistaken.

No, that isn't redundant at all. It was covered in the Japanese press, but I don't think I ever mentioned it.

You were right on both accounts: "Shinjyo" on the Tigers and "Shinjo" on the Mets is how it was spelled. While I'm sure that I continue to write it as Shinjyo often, when he went to the Mets, he decided that the "y" caused confusion for English speakers, so he dropped it.

Since I don't generally read the English press, I don't know how they've been spelling it all along while he was with Hanshin. But I do know that they often drop the "h" from Itoh, Saitoh, Johjima, and others. Personally, I tend to spell the names as they're written on the players' uniforms.

Hope that helps clear up the confusion.

From my experience here in the U.S., Japanese names that would end "-oh" in Japan, just end in "-o" over here. With the notable exception of Sadaharu Oh.

The name Ito is very common among Japanese-Americans, but when I came to Japan I noticed that were all "Itoh".

There are three official Japanese romanization systems: Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki, and Nippon-shiki. The weird thing about Japanese baseball is that they consistently use none of these.

In Hepburn, we'd have "Shinjo".
In Kunrei-shiki and Nippon-shiki, it'd be "Sinzyo".
For some odd reason, NPB goes for a hybrid: "Shinjyo". I think this is because Japanese pro baseball just barely preceded the adoption of Kunrei-shiki in 1937, and by tradition Japanese baseball has used their own romanizing conventions.

In the U.S., Hepburn is the customary system of use, since it provides the most intuitive guide to pronunciation for a native English speaker. The Mets probably decided on "Shinjo" without even really thinking about it.

I remember a lot of flame wars starting up around this issue (Romanization Systems) on the sci.lang.japanese (or something like that) usenet news groups back in the late 1980's. (The Internet was not always the World Wide Web! Why, back in those days, ...)

Is the Kunrei-shiki what is used in FEP's (aka IME's) for Romaji-Kana conversion? I learned how to touch type the Kana keyboard back in the early 1980's, so having to type "si" for "shi" always bothered me - and is why I don't use the Romaji input method.

But back somewhat on topic, I still fail to understand why the English sports writers in Japan (i.e. Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, etc.) don't use the same spelling as on the uniforms. Do the writers in the press box not see "Itoh" written right in front of them as they type on their computers that he had just hit a game ending home run?

Ah, it's a rhetorical question. I don't really care much for the English press' coverage of Pro Yakyu anyway.

> I remember a lot of flame wars starting up around
> this issue (Romanization Systems) on the
> sci.lang.japanese (or something like that) usenet
> news groups back in the late 1980's. (The Internet
> was not always the World Wide Web! Why, back in
> those days, ...)

I lurked sci.lang.japan for exactly two days when I first started learning Japanese and figured it was way over my head, and I'd only be setting myself up for a roasting by posting anything. I only looked at soc.culture.japan once and decided it was not something I would ever need or want to look at again.

People get riled up over the silliest things. Recently I've been bemused (read: exasperated) by the ferocity of people arguing over the merits of different Kanji-English character dictionaries. Just go to Amazon.com and read some of the reviews for some of the dictionaries to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

> Is the Kunrei-shiki what is used in FEP's (aka IME's)
> for Romaji-Kana conversion? I learned how to touch
> type the Kana keyboard back in the early 1980's, so
> having to type "si" for "shi" always bothered me -
> and is why I don't use the Romaji input method.

Over the years, input methods have been created in a rather ad hoc way, leading to what some have called "waapuro-shiki". Basically, because Latin-to-kana conversion routines are not very difficult, and because there's a wide availability of source code for most input methods, input methods have become completely broad. In most programs (e.g. Microsoft's IME, or NJStar's NJCommunicator), any input will work. For example:

sinzyo
sinjyo
sinjo
shinzyo
shinjyo
shinjo

will all give you the same kana, and depending on the accompanying kanji compound dictionary, may or may not supply the very kanji for Shinjo's name.

All of the various modern IME's I have used have been tremendously flexible. Putting in 'la' will get you the 'ra' kana more often than not, and putting in 'ca' will often get you 'ka'. The main differences tend to be among conventions for entering special kana combos: the "ti" of "paatii" for example. In just about every IME I've used, putting in 'ti' will, of course, get you the 'chi/ti' kana. In Windows and, I believe, the Canon Wordtank, you have to enter "thi" to get a 'te' kana with a little 'i' kana. For NJCommunicator, you have to put in 'texi'. The 'te' provides the big 'te', while the 'xi' provides a small 'i'.

Every IME I've used has also required the use of 'du' or 'dzu' to write the 'zu' of 'tsuzuku'.

> But back somewhat on topic, I still fail to
> understand why the English sports writers in
> Japan (i.e. Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, etc.)
> don't use the same spelling as on the uniforms. Do
> the writers in the press box not see "Itoh" written
> right in front of them as they type on their
> computers that he had just hit a game ending home
> run?

This is just speculation, but I imagine it just comes from customarily using the Hepburn system. It is the most widely used system, and editors probably prefer that they match up with other media to avoid confusion.

Also, no doubt the internal inconsistency of NPB's romanization system probably leads them to use an accepted standard in their articles. I mean, in all actuality, Ichiro should have been "Ichiroh" if they were being consistent.

> Ah, it's a rhetorical question. I don't really care
> much for the English press' coverage of Pro Yakyu
> anyway.

I don't want to sound like I'm boasting, but I've come to find just about all romaji systems awkward and clumsy. I much prefer just reading straight Japanese. I can never get used to seeing "si" and "tu" to mean "shi" and "tsu", and yet even in Hepburn some words, like "chotto" just seem weird.

And then there's this fun experience: I tried to post some reports of the 2000 Nihon Series and the Sydney Olympics to MSNBC's baseball board, but was stymied because the auto-filters wouldn't allow any post with words such as "shite-iru" or "Fukuoka". Those who don't like Microsoft will undoubtedly find that humorous and par for the Microsoft course.

It can get confusing when the English language newspapers print the Japanese players' names differently than what is written on the back of the uniform, but let's face it-too many "h"s and, in Shinjo's case, "y"s can be even more confusing. A case in point: former Buffs 2nd sacker Oishi. His name was written on his back as "Ohishi." That can lead to people unfamiliar with the Japanese language pronouncing his name, "O-Hishi" when it should be pronounced, "O-Ishi." Also, Shinjo probably spelled his name "shinjyo" just to be different. Can you imagine if everyone else did that? Former Swallows outfielder "Joh" would've become "Jyoh" when "Jo" would've gotten the job done.

> But back somewhat on topic, I still fail to
> understand why the English sports writers in
> Japan (i.e. Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, etc.)
> don't use the same spelling as on the uniforms. Do
> the writers in the press box not see "Itoh" written
> right in front of them as they type on their
> computers that he had just hit a game ending home
> run?
>
> Ah, it's a rhetorical question. I don't really care
> much for the English press' coverage of Pro Yakyu
> anyway.

But it's a good question all the same. I suppose it might have something to do with consistency, in accordance with each newspaper's style manual.

I've never been comfortable writing Shinjo as Shinjyo, as I'm a stickler for Hepburn, and whenever I've referred to The Prince on my website, I've always dropped the y. More consistent that way, especially if one wants to introduce other Japanese words or phrases which are always written in Hepburn.

I hadn't realized that after all of these years the Romanization wars were still going so strong. But it has brought up a number of very interesting points with regard to the "hybrid" system used by Pro Yakyu.

1. It is inconsistant with the use of y as in "Shijyo" and "Johjima".

2. There are exceptions to the trailing "h" rule as with "Ichiro" instead of "Ichiroh" - which would have been very hard to read.

Personally, I like the "h" following "o" - especially for distinguishing between "big" and "little." Yes, those of you who read Kanji know that both "oh" (big) and "o" little/small prefixes can begin a last name in Japanese. So, if Kintsu's Ohishi, as was one example, were written "Oishi," I would envision "SmallStone" instead of "LargeStone" for his name.

The general concensus to one (of many) of my complaints about the English press seems to be that they don't write players' names as they are on their uniforms for consistancy. I can kind of relate as it's hard not to write "Ohsaka" while writing about Saitoh's and Etoh's exploits there. But that just looks plain wrong.

In my mind, I just kind of accept that names of people get different rules than names of places and/or other words when Romanized. It's kind of like the strange spelling of words imported to English from French, totally messing up any resemlance of a rule based spelling system. You learn them and get used to the exceptions being there. Just having exceptions for peoples' names doesn't seem nearly as bad as all of the exception rules in English.

By the way, thanks for explaining why I can't get those small "a", "i", "u", "e", "o" to input correctly in FEPs. They need an "x" in front of them! I'll stick with the standard JIS 106 Kana keyboard layout. As it is, when I thing/type in English, I touch type Romaji. When I think/type in Japanese, I touch type Kana. Trying to think up spelling in Romaji while thinking in Japanese doen't work well - so touch typing the Kana keyboard layout is much more natural. (Of course, some words like "kantoku" I use often while writing here, but then, I'm thinking in Japanglish, which has its own set of problems.)

I personally don't like the extra "h" that's usually used by the Japanese when spelling their names in Romaji. However, the only time I think it's acceptable is when dealing with the name "Ohno" and "Ono". Otherwise, like you said, if we had "Ichiroh","Johjima","Ohsaka","Ohshima", etc., Japanese would be very hard on the eyes. Simple is defnitely best.

Benny just signed a 1 year contract with the Mets for $600,000. We won't see him in Giants uniform after all.

Benny has officially resigned with the Mets for $600,000 for one year plus incentives. He will be staying in the Majors this season, but he may end up in Japan next year.

An Update: Benny has been traded from the New York Mets to the Colorado Rockies in an eleven player deal.