Where were the cheerleaders and the megaphones? And what about the incessant beating of the drums?
The Cubs had been told the atmosphere at the Tokyo Dome for their exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants would be raucous.
“With the drums beating and horns playing, it’s unbelievable,” said pitcher Brian Williams, who played for Fukoka of the Japanese Pacific League in 1998. “It’s non-stop.”
Said infielder Cole Liniak: “It’s supposed to be so loud, you can’t even hear.”
Try again. It was almost quiet enough to hear the crowd of 53,000 laughing at the Cubs, who managed only six hits in the 6-0 drubbing Monday night.
“I was surprised,” Mark Grace said. “This was not the party atmosphere we had in ’92 [during an All-Star tour]. They were sitting on their hands pretty much. They were all there for Sammy [Sosa] but didn’t have much to cheer about.”
The Cubs hope to give the locals more to cheer about when they face the New York Mets in the first regular-season major-league game outside North America. The first pitch will be at 7:08 p.m. local time Wednesday, which is 4:08 a.m. if you’re scoring at home.
The Cubs have major concerns heading into the opener, and that goes well beyond facing Mets ace Mike Hampton, who went 22-4 last year for Houston. Not one Cubs pitcher won half that many games in 1999.
Jon Lieber, their Opening Day starter, ranked among National League leaders last season with 8.2 strikeouts and 2.0 walks per nine innings. Still, Lieber couldn’t stay afloat on the Cubs’ sinking ship, going 2-8 with a 4.94 earned-run average after the All-Star break.
The Cubs’ offense, expected to be respectable, has been downgraded to mediocre after the injury bug swept through Mesa, Ariz., during the final week of spring training. Both Glenallen Hill (pulled hamstring) and Willie Greene (lacerated hand) were placed on the disabled list, meaning the Cubs will be without their top right-handed- and left-handed-hitting reserves.
That leaves manager Don Baylor in an unenviable spot, like a man who looks at a buffet and sees nothing but stale crackers and day-old cheese.
Baylor’s top left-handed hitters off the bench are 37-year-old catcher Jeff Reed and outfielder Roosevelt Brown, who hit .219 in his first stint with the Cubs last season. His right-handed hitters are rookie infielders Jose Nieves and Liniak. The two hit a combined .248 for the Cubs last season with two home runs in 210 at-bats.
Even Sosa will enter the game in a mini-slump. He went 0 for 4 Monday, extending his hitless streak to 11 at-bats.
The fans did let out a burst of “ooohs” when Sosa sent a rocket down the right-field line in the first inning that sliced foul. They also cheered when Sosa flied out to the warning track in the eighth. Then streams of fans flooded the exits.
Not that anyone would have noticed that they were gone.
“It was as quiet as I’ve ever seen it,” said Cubs scout Leon Lee, who played 10 seasons in Japan. “You usually get dizzy watching all the activity in the crowd. I was surprised.”
Some Cubs speculated that Major League Baseball had instructed fans not to bring drums or horns into the stadium. An MLB spokesman denied that.
The crowd had been revved up the night before for a game between the Giants and Seibu Lions. But that wasn’t the case Monday night.
“I expected it to be much louder,” Joe Girardi said. “After watching some of the high school games on TV, I expected to see the drums.”
Baylor had predicted the atmosphere would resemble that of a college football game. This crowd sounded like it was watching a Toledo-San Diego State blowout.
Eight seats down from the press box, a man sat reading his newspaper.
“They made liars out of me,” Williams said. “It wasn’t loud. It was like Dodger Stadium.”
In more ways than one. Fans were treated to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. Vendors walked through the aisles selling overpriced beer. Sushi was being sold, but so were hot dogs and hamburgers. It was easier to find pizza than tempura.
But the Tokyo Dome wasn’t completely Americanized. The warning track was nothing more than a white line painted into the carpet. And when players hit foul balls into the stands, fans made little effort to catch them. All balls were politely returned to the nearest usher.
Some of the action on the field also would have looked out of place in the big leagues.
The Giants players slid into home plate even when there was no chance for a throw.
After hitting a home run, Yomiuri’s Hideki Matsui sprinted around the bases and was congratulated outside the dugout by teammates who formed an orderly receiving line. Matsui then threw his batting gloves into the stands and did a TV interview while one of his teammates was at the plate.
The other oddity of the evening came courtesy of the Giants’ public relations department. In their zeal to supply reporters with quotes during the game, officials took a few shortcuts with the translations.
According to the sheet, pitcher Kimiyasu Koda remarked: “I am throwing goes my job only 3 inning….Sammy Sosa is a good hitter. He try to see what I have and if I throw 135 km/hour fastball, he can hit home easy.”
Actually nothing came easy for the Cubs against the Giants. And Grace planned to address that with his teammates.
“I’ll have a little card game in my suite and the guys can talk about it,” he said. “They outplayed us. In the third inning I said to the guys, `Let’s go. Enough with the [bull].’ But we got embarrassed. There’s no sugarcoating it.”
