July 28, 2019: Kyoto
By Saruwatari Tsuyoshi, Kyoto Shimbun News

43. That’s the numbers of home runs the Edo Battousai have hit this season. It’s a paltry sum. It’s fewer than their 51 stolen bases. It’s a problem.

There are other problems. One of the most chronic has been finding a steady first baseman for the club. Frankly the position has been pretty much a void since 2016 when Bing-Zhang ‘Wheels’ Chien last help down the spot. He alone posted 28 home runs and stole 36 bases in that season. There was always the whispers of that flashy young prospect who would step into the role and make the fans forget Chien. In 2018 that prospect was hitting .314 with a 24.4 VORP. He got called up to the bigs and the wheels came off for young 1B Horiuchi Arai. The kid simply wasn’t ready and the club may actually have set him back by rushing him along too fast.

The club played the same old broken record, shoe-horning a mix of various PEBA castoffs and guys who weren’t prepared to play other positions at first base. In 2019 that meant primarily trying to get anything out of Shihi Suzuki defensively so they could at least get Arai some time to regroup in the minors. It was merely adequate as a solution.

Then the winds of change started to blow. LRS home run legends Morihiro ‘Homu-ran’ Nakamura and Ton ‘Dracula’  Nakamura  found themselves in the Edo organization, together for the first time. With 791 career home runs between them they know a thing or two about the long ball. They were sent to the AAA club to see if they had anything left and to help the prospects along. Surely such immense legacy would rub off on the kids it was thought.

Then Shihi Suzuki suffered a strained rib cage muscle and needed a stint on the DL to heal. It is said that luck is that place where opportunity and preparation meet. There doesn’t seem to be much preparation for this here but there was an opportunity and the club grabbed it.

Thus some small history will be made in Edo when these two legends take to field for the first time as team mates at home against Bing-zhang Chien’s Steel Dragons.

Fans in the know are skeptical that this dynamic duo are the next Ruth and Gehrig but there is hope that they may be able to give the club a lift in two areas where they have been badly underperforming. If nothing else there should at least be a whiff of ozone in the air from all the electricity these two will deliver. Tickets are going fast.