About

Hi.

Welcome to BenyBall, a site created ostensibly to follow the Rakuten Eagles in Japan's NPB, although I might use it as a platform to write about general sports from time to time. I am not the most statistically minded baseball fan, my appreciation for advanced statistics goes about as far as OPS and WHIP, so if you're looking for detailed statistical analysis I'm not able to deliver that. What I plan to provide is research and content related to being a fan of the Rakuten Eagles, Japanese baseball, and sports in general.

My name is Ben Roberts and I have been a fan of Japanese baseball since high school in the early 2000s. While I was living in the U.S. I imported Pro Yakyu Spirits 4 on the PlayStation 3 and was able to watch the occasional Rakuten Eagles home game streaming online. I didn't set foot in Japan until 2014 when I was stationed onboard the USS Peleliu and we made a port-call in Sasebo. I later received orders to the U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka and that's when my true Japanese baseball fandom started.

I am a fan of the Rakuten Eagles and the DeNA Baystars as a result of living in the Yokohama area for a number of years and family connections in Tohoku. If you are looking for a team to root for that has a dedicated group of fans who appreciate warm baseball summers after surviving harsh, snowy winters then the Tohoku Rakuten Eagles are the team for you! So please join me as we explore the Eagles' roster and follow the team's exploits on and off the field. Thank you for visiting the site, I'm so happy to have you along for the ride!

-Ben

email

Note: In case you were wondering, the name of this site is a combination of a number of different elements and is my attempt to be clever. It is both a play on my name and the name BenyLand, which is an amusement park in Sendai (Yagiyama BenyLand). BenyLand had a local TV commercial with a particularly memorable jingle that was transformed into one of the Eagles' fan cheers. There are also Benymart stores in Aomori Prefecture in Hirosaki and Aomori city so I decided to use the Beny spelling instead of Benny as a nod to Tohoku.