Mori-kantoku to Quit

It's true! It's true! That was the other big story of the day that I didn't have time to report this morning.

The firings (I mean, "retirements") start with the BayStars' president Ohori and are expected to go down through Kuroe-head coach, Mori-pitching coach, and Tsuji-third base coach.

New BayStars' owner Sunahara (of TBS) said that the firing of Ohori-president has been coming all year, and puts the blame of the 'Stars poor finish (fixed at 6 out of 6 teams) squarely on his shoulders.

As for Mori-kantoku, there had been a lot of "dark" talk within the ball club and around the town (like here), including "he doesn't motivate the players." This is kind of ironic considering that despite winning the Nihon Series under Gondoh-kantoku in 1998, many of the players complained that Gondoh didn't manage enough, now they have Mr. Kanri Yakyu. (Careful what you ask for?)

I think it's a shame that Mori-kantoku, with the great legend he had with the V-9 Giants, then winning 8 of 9 Pacific League championship in charge of the Lions (6 of them Nippon Ichi) should go out like this. But he wasn't a good fit for Yokohama.

The front-runner for the new managerial job is former Yokohama (Taiyo Whales) star Daisuke Yamashita. Yamashita set the Japan record of 322 consecutive plays without an error at shortstop and won 8 consecutive Golden Glove awards from 1976 to 1983. He was also Yokohama's head coach in their victorious 1998 season, with an all Golden Glove infield. Rumor has it that he's very high on the list with people within the BayStars' organization, but not necessarily within TBS. We'll see in the next few months.

westbaystars -san,

All I can say is "yattaa!", or "yatto". Yamashita was pretty high on the list when Gondoh left wasn't he? I was hoping he would have been selected then. All of the sudden, I am looking forward to next year.

BTW, third base coach Tsuji should have been canned long ago. Boy did he make some serious blunders directing traffic.

morosuki

Mori-kantoku announced in a press conference yesterday (Sept. 26) that he was hanging up his uniform and, after parting with the players today, not returning to the BayStars' dugout.

Kuroe is taking over as the substitute manager until a replacement is found. Yamashita is currently coaching the All Japan team in the Asian Games and was surrounded by the press at Seibu Dome yesterday. While the press thinks that he'll be in a BayStars' uniform before the end of this season (with a big ichi-ni-gun swap of coaching staff), Yamashita said that he has not yet been contacted by anybody about the postion.

- BTW, third base coach Tsuji should have been canned long ago. Boy did he make some serious blunders directing traffic.

And here I thought that I was the only one who noticed that. I lost track of the number of runners thrown out at home after Tsuji waved them around. And they weren't even close plays! Tsuji isn't a spectater hoping that the runner will make it. He's got a better view of where the ball and fielders are than the base runner, and he should know if a player can make it or not. He's failed that too many times. I often think that he just likes waving the runners home and isn't paying attention to the ball's location at all.