Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 81

One of the reasons why we selected this specific time to go to Sapporo was to go to the All-Star game.

The Sapporo Dome is used for both baseball (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) and soccer (Consadole Sapporo). It was opened in 2001 and has hosted quite a few major events, including 3 games during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the opening ceremonies of the 2007 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. It also made history as being the first venue where both indoor and nighttime skiing events took place for the first time on a world championship or Winter Olympic Games level with competitions in the cross country skiing sprints (men's and women's individual, and men's and women's team) and the cross country portion of the 7.5 km sprint event in the nordic combined. In order to generate snow, the stadium used its turf conversion hovering system to facilitate the snow making process for the skiing competitions.

One of the interesting features is that it has a retractable surface (not roof, surface!). It switches between two entirely different surfaces. Baseball games are played on an artificial turf field, while soccer games are held on a grass pitch that slides into and out of the stadium as needed. Conversion from baseball to football begins with the storage of the baseball field's artificial turf. Once finished, a set of lower bowl bleachers rotate from an angled position for baseball to a parallel position. A set of main bowl seats on one end of the dome then retracts, and the football pitch is slid into the stadium. The lower bowl is then rotated 90 degrees. Conversion from football to baseball occurs in reverse.

The Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star Game (well, there are multiple actual games) is an annual baseball game between players from the Central League and the Pacific League. They are normally played at roughly the half-way point in the season. The Sapporo game was the first of 3 games in 2013 and it ended in a 1-1 tie (they don't do extra innings it seems).

I took quite a few pictures (some better than others). I won't go through too much commentary on them but wanted to give a view of the game. I have a few interesting things that I'll comment on.

I haven't been to a professional baseball game since ... well, if I said what year it would really "age" me. I used to go to Kansas City to see the Royals play with my dad when I was a kid. But, I don't remember there being a band in the stands! Here there were bands on each side of the stadium (reminded me of a college football or basketball game).

Pre-game, they put on a pretty good show, with all of the mascots out in the field doing a variety of different things, including an obstacle course and sack races.

As the teams came out, they went through the gate with all of the mascots. We had good seats, between home plate and 3rd base and fairly close.

Then the cheerleaders came out with a big banner and the players and mascots all pitched it taking it out on to the field. In the end, it covered all of home plate and had the logo of the games along with the shirts of all of the teams.

The stands were pretty much packed, as you can see.

And of course, they have the cheerleaders! Each team had a couple at the game and they took turns between innings doing little dances on the sidelines.

So again, I don't know if they have these in the US games, but they had different beer sellers coming through with basically a keg on their backs and when you wanted to buy one, they would kneel down next to you and pour you a beer from the tap.

Another one .. they had balloons that they blew up near the end of the game and basically all let them go at the same time. They weren't closed balloons, so they flew around while the air came out. A bit interesting.

I tried to get a couple nice action shots of the batter .. not too bad!

The food selection wasn't bad, although again, nothing really in English so we had to just look at the options that we could see visible and point to them. We did a some takoyaki's (octopus balls) and some chicken and pork skewers. While you are out eating, they have lots of huge video screens to still watch the game.

And going home, the order in the metro. Remember, 40,000 some-odd people just left the stadium with a good chunk of them going to the metro. But nice lines, everybody standing behind the yellow marker on the floor ....