May 14, 2012: Naha, Japan – It’s as loud as a mime festival in Edo after the completion of the season opening.  After a strong showing in spring training, the bats took some time off, leaving Edo in their absence in solid control of last place with a 2-4 record.

After six games, Edo trails the league with a team average 2.7 runs per game and a dismal .227 batting average.  Team funnyman Ben Bigalow observed, “227 is a fine number if you happen to be a member of Katrina and the Waves.  They won the Eurovision Song Contest with a 227 in 1997, which at the time was the highest score ever.”  He then broke out into song with a rendition of their hit “Walking on Sunshine”, which had the clubhouse guffawing at their Canadian comic fielder.

Team owner/manager Patrick Hildreth noted wryly “If they keep hitting .227, they’ll be singing for their supper, alright.”

Nothing annoys the mimes more than somebody hacking during their performance.  One longtime fan of Edo suggests that there is a literary basis for the collective team cough.  Said Professor Iki Isawyu (Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University), “When you remove the ‘bat’ from ‘Battousai’, all you have left is ‘tousai’.  ‘Tousai’, of course, is a form of the first person singular past tense of ‘tousser’, the French verb meaning ‘to cough’.

When informed of this observation, Mr.  Hildreth quipped, “Well, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I see the problem clearly.  We haven’t seen our bats and bats don’t see well.  In the lingua franca of this mystery – namely, French – you will see that the word meaning ‘poor sighted’ is ‘bigleux’.  Please inform the team that the missing bat has been found and Mr. Ben ‘Sunshine’ ‘Bigleux’ will be bringing it to future games to correct the problem.  I’ve moved him up in the order to accommodate his efforts.”

Yessir, things are looking up in Edo, “…and don’t it feel good?”