August 22, 2022 — The scuttlebutt was that Collins did it on purpose. The fire that swept social media didn’t are. And make no mistake, the reaction has been swift and white-hot. The fans, or at least the core of the Toyama Baseball Fan club—the onedan that prides itself first and foremost about baseball in Toyama—has  been out in force, bashing anyone who stands up for the club in any way. This morning, the TBF raised the stakes, going for the jugular: next year’s season ticket holders.

To take a step backward, this last round of fan fire started last week when the ball club gave third baseman Kevin Forrest his outright release. The veteran was hitting .265 at the time of the release, with 8 homers and 44 RBI (all of these a deep fall-off from numbers his past performance would have predicted). Despite this fall-off, Forrest was expected to cost upward of $9.5M in next season’s arbitration process. Then came the announcement that veteran second baseman Kaz Yamada (.252/.305/.380) has suffered a similar fate.

“We wanted to start looking at the roster for next year,” said GM Ron Collins. “Kevin’s arbitration figure was just too much to be considered, and we needed the space that Kaz’s option held in order to be able to wiggle a little.”

Which all makes sense. The team held a $3.4M option on Yamada that only Yamada’s mother would have exercised, so the two actions served to lower the team’s projected 2023 expenditures by nearly $13M. [ed: the team is rumored to be pursuing a low-cost extension for shortstop and team captain Shiro Adachi with the mega-riches these transactions have brought.]

But the question on everyone’s mind (and expecially on the TBF’s mond) was “why now?” Why not just let the vets play out their contracts rather than pay them to sit? Why publicly humiliate them when you could have just let them go quietly?

Collins explained: “I think that even now, Paul [owner Paul Walker] expects this team to be in the playoffs. He was clear with me that he preferred to hold onto them, and he wasn’t going to consider those costs off the books for next year. So I really had no choice. If the front office team was going to be able to look at a few other key guys in 2023, we were going to have to force the issue.”

This is where the social media circles are split: several certain that Collins did this so publicly in order to focus the intensity of the klieg lights on Walker, the rest just assuming he’s an idiot like the rest. “Walker wouldn’t let him sign Adachi? Get freaking serious” one fan wrote. “Walker’s a dunce,” said another. But the TBF has a different take altogether.

“The baseball club known as the Lupin Cliff Hangers is a disgrace to this city,” said TBF leader Okai “Sergeant” Tsumata in a blog post. “It is embarrassing to see us dishonor our veterans, especially the honorable Kazuma, who was a member of our city’s championship team only two seasons before. Walker or Collins, it does not matter. We will find a way to make the team play as a team from Toyama should play.”

The way, apparently, is through season ticket holders. Lupin sold something more than 12,000 tickets in the off-season last year. The TBF has apparently gotten hold of the full list of fans who purchased them, and have sent them an email exhorting them to withhold their purchase for next season until the front office finds a way to convince them that the team will operate in a “practical fashion” in 2023. Of interest in this missive is that nowhere does the TBF suggest the team should win more (it is in the midst of a dire tailspin at this point), and nowhere does it call for better play on the field. This is clearly a power-play for form and style. The TBF, it appears, wants to school its front office on rudimentary behavior.

This is neither the first time, nor the second time the TBF has made it’s displeasure known, but both earlier incidents were spurred by dissatisfaction with owner Paul Walker.

And this is where the some fans think Collins’s latest move was meant to drive change in owner Paul Walker. “Pain teaches,” said an anonymous member of the front office. He wanted the world to see the truth about Walker’s approach to top-down management, and he wanted Walker to see it for himself.”

One assumes that if the TBF’s drive to crush season ticket sales is successful, Walker will come around.