World Baseball Classic: Team Japan vs. Seattle Mariners

I was writing an email to my friend Marigold who is currently living in Japan and I wanted to point her to some photos from when I went to the World Baseball Classic first round games last year. As it happened, Pool A (Japan, Chinese Taipei, Japan, & Korea) which was held in Tokyo happened a few days before Pool B started in the US. Because of this the advancing team from Pool A; Korea and Japan were able to travel to Phoenix and play a couple of the Spring Training teams. Japan was able to play the M’s so Ichiro was able to play against his MLB team. Japan dominated the M’s that day. Attached are a few photos I took that day. You can see Ichiro in many of the photos. In one of the photos I will contend that Sadaharu Oh was standing with the rest of his team. It was great to see a baseball legend at a game. You also can see Kenji Johjima talking with his fellow countryman. He would have been on team Japan but he wanted to spend time with the M’s since he was new to the team.