Maybe you saw me at the home opener. I was the fool with the soy sauce-stained #15 jersey and the big grin, showing everybody 8-by-10 photos of myself, taken at the Tokyo Dome.

Some of you didn’t believe they were real:

“No … you didn’t really go to Japan, did you?”

“Is that photo computer-generated?”

Yes, I really did fly to Tokyo, just for kicks, alone and without any baseball tickets.

Tony in the stands at the Tokyo Dome in Japan

Yet I still managed to attend what was arguably the hottest event in the history of Japanese baseball—the game between the Yankees and Matsui-san’s old team, the Yomiuri Giants. I was among the very, very few non-Japanese fans who got to personally witness Matsui’s first at-bat in Pinstripes back in Japan, and see him crush a long homer to send the crowd into ecstasy.

And it didn’t cost me a dime. (Or a yen.)

So, how could such a thing happen to me? My friends and fellow fans have several competing theories:

Perhaps, they say, it was all those Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines that I’d been padding respectfully around in my stocking feet for a week prior to the game, in Kyoto and Tokyo. (Did you see the movie “Lost In Translation”? Yeah, those temples, with the chanting monks and bell-ringing and incense and whatnot.) I guess some of their universal good will might have rubbed off on me.

Or maybe it was the eerily magnetic power of the Sacred Thurman Munson Number 15 home white Yankees jersey I was wearing. Could its rumored connection to some cosmic Bronx Bomber spirit-grid have been responsible?

Still others insist it was the ticket karma I’d acquired over many years of scoring coveted Yankees postseason tickets for deserving friends, and a lifetime of devoted and flamboyant fandom.

I am, after all, that pony-tailed, bearded idiot who, at every single home game against Boston last year, ran around waving a sign reading “BUCKY DENT!” (Yeah, that idiot.) I’m a 26-game partial season ticket holder, in the Tier behind home plate. I paint my face midnight blue and white for every home postseason game (and the occasional World Series game in Miami). And before I mastered the internet, I was known to sleep outside on the ground in the South Bronx to score playoff ducats.

OK, OK … I don’t actually believe in ticket karma.

I think what really happened was that I looked like a very devoted Yankee fan who was 7,000 miles from home and in desperate need of a break. And, oh yeah, it was also that the Japanese are one exceedingly nice, polite and welcoming bunch of baseball-loving people.

But judge for yourself:

Tony poses in front of the Tokyo Dome in Japan

It was nearly twilight when I stepped off the Tokyo subway outside the Dome, and the overwhelmingly Japanese crowd was already filtering in for the 7:00 start. I wandered the tiled concourse that surrounds the stadium, scanning the throng for anyone who looked like—how shall I say—a “ticket reseller.”

But as I watched the roller-coaster in the small amusement park next door run loops through the indigo evening sky, I was resigned to watching the game in a bar.

Earlier in my 10-day solo jaunt around Japan, I had heard that tickets were going for about $500 apiece—if you could even find them. And I knew that the people likely to be selling them—certain individuals with ties to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia—hated dealing with foreigners like me. Not that I was all that thrilled to be dealing with them.

But I figured, at least for this one very special game, I owed it to myself to scout around a bit, and maybe find a real fan with extras to sell. At the very least, I’d get to soak up the atmosphere outside.

As game time approached, I was actually feeling quite happy. The design of the Dome allowed me to creep up about 50 feet behind the last row of seats, with only a bank of glass doors and a portable metal barrier separating me from the lucky ones inside.

So as I watched the heavily MLB merchandise-clad fans filing through the metal detectors, I could also see the outfield scoreboard playing video clips of inspirational Yankee moments. Later, I saw the high-altitude portion of the opening ceremonies: a large cluster of giant helium balloons, decorated to look like baseballs and painted with Yankees and Yomiuri logos, was released to float in front of the stands.

I figured I’d stick around to hear the cheers when Matsui was first introduced.

Meanwhile, I asked the few stray Westerners I saw passing by whether they’d seen anyone selling tickets. None had. I tried my very limited Japanese out on some local fans, but they hadn’t seen any either.

Then around 6:45, I spotted a tall Teutonic-looking dude talking furtively with a plainly dressed sixtyish or seventyish Japanese gent, so I asked the younger guy what was up. His name was Andreas (Andy), and he turned out to be a half-American, half-Austrian guy from Germany, in Japan for six months on business.

He said the older man was … um …an aftermarket ticket redistributor, explaining that these were usually older, casually dressed men. “He’s here to sell,” Andy said, but he wouldn’t sell to us gaijin. Andy went off to try his luck elsewhere.

Just for jollies, I sidled up to the old man, flashing three 10,000-yen notes (about $300) in my palm, and said (in bad Japanese), “one ticket, 30,000 yen?” He declined, very quietly and politely, of course.

But I figured, what the heck, I live in Jersey City, and my name ends in a vowel—why not try to wait the old man out?

As game time approached, I kept circling around him, theatrically checking my watch and giving him a smiling, shrugging look that said, “Hey, you can eat them or sell them, your choice.”

But as 7:00 arrived, and the last of the Number 55-wearing fans crowded in, I figured I should go search for a nearby sports bar, and focus on enjoying the remainder of my somewhat expensive little vacation.

And that’s when I saw Andy striding back in my direction, and heard, in perfect English with a light but commanding Schwarzenegger fillip, the magic words that I’ll be repeating in the Tier for decades to come:

“Ahy haf two seats. Kahm vit me.”

As I floated, stunned, toward the Dome’s inner doors, I asked him, “Do I even want to know how you got these tickets?”

The two Japanese men who gave Tony tickets to the game at the Tokyo Dome in Japan

Turned out, two Japanese fans had taken pity on him, and given him two extras, asking nothing in return and disappearing quickly. He said he knew he had to bestow one of them on me, explaining, “You look like you’re a real Yankee fan.” He’d never been to a major-league game in his life.

We walked inside as the Yanks and Giants were taking their final pre-game warm-ups. We sat in the very last row of the stadium, above the third-base on-deck circle. Hey, that’s cool; I’ve sat in Row X at Yankee Stadium enough times!

By now you’ve probably already heard about the larger differences in the Japanese style of fandom. Suffice it to say that they were all on display that night: the highly organized cheers, the waving of large Yomiuri flags, the loud beating of drums.

I was actually more intrigued by the little differences, like the fact that the beer was carried in portable kegs, dispensed by very young women in neon-colored shorts. Or the ballpark snack that our new Japanese friends in the upper deck shared with us. Some kind of dried fish flakes—try getting those in the Bronx!

It was fun trying to read the Yankees’ names on the scoreboard in Japanese characters. Matsui’s was easy to spot, because it was printed in every Tokyo newspaper, several inches high, for much of the week! You could also see that “JE-ter” and GI-ambi” started with the same character.

I kinda liked the little gadget that many of the Japanese fans carried with them. It’s a megaphone, colored Giants orange, and you can yell through it. But then attached to the side of the megaphone is a little paddle, which makes it into a clapper that you can bang against your hands when you’re sick of yelling. The Japanese are quiet people—except at ballgames.

I was even more amused, though, by the reaction to my own attempts to start familiar Yankee cheers, despite being as a lighthouse in a sea of uncomprehending Japanese faces. There was a small knot of Yankee fans chanting independently behind the left field wall, but they couldn’t hear or see me.

So after Jorge hit a big homer to break the game open, and I stood up and yelled, “Hip-hip! ...”

…you could have heard a pin drop.

I filled in the “HOR-HAAAAAAAAAY!” and tried it again from the top.

Nothing. Nada.

Finally, on my third try, I heard, from far away, a small, high, thin voice, like that of a very young boy, squeak “Jor-ge!”

I got similar results during the seventh-inning stretch, when the stadium PA played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Even though the lyrics were displayed on the scoreboard—karaoke style—I think I was the only one singing. About a hundred fans watched me with confused smiles.

I did a bit better when they played “YMCA” and I did the spelling-out-the-letters-dance, if only because people could see the left-field yahoos doing it, too.

And it really warmed the cockles of my heart when a few fans started cheering for the 4, B and D trains—yes, that’s right, they actually had a Great City Subway Race, complete with cheesy animated video that seemed to be an older version of the one we now use on 161st Street.

Though I have to admit, the best moment of all came earlier in the game, when Matsui took his first at-bat, with the crowd chanting “Home run, Mat-su-i, home run, Mat-su-i”—and he actually hit one out. Way out. Mayhem.

I stood up, clasping the sides of my head, and said to Andy, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

Which, come to think of it, is a good way of summing up my feelings about the whole experience.

Anyway, over the next few days, I watched the Yankees-Rays games in bars with Japanese fans. I figured, “I won’t even try to get those tickets, because it’s somebody else’s turn to tap the good luck.” Of course, I also donned my Yankee hat, sipped some Suntory whiskey, and explored fabulous, exhilarating, neon-lit Tokyo, where seemingly everyone eventually addressed me with a hearty “MATSUI!!!” Then I made the 18-hour trip from my hotel to my apartment.

And thus did the Sacred Munson Jersey—visibly soy-stained above the breastbone and lightly scented with wasabi—return from the Land of the Rising Sun, to fulfill its duties in the Bronx. And now the Yankees and I are over our killer jet lag, and it’s time for baseball American style.

But do me a favor. If you ever come to the Bronx with spare tickets, and you see some nice Japanese folks hanging around outside the Stadium, wearing Matsui jerseys and looking all bummed out … give them a break. Do it for me and Thurman.

After all, it’s just good karma.

 

Tony Borelli is a freelance writer and a Yankees fan. He can be reached at tonythesquid (at) comcast (dot) net or in the Tier Reserved seats behind home plate.