Nishioka Singles Twins to First Victory of 2011

As a Chiba Lotte Marines and a Toronto Blue Jays fan, I almost got to spend the perfect day at the ballpark today. Other than an atrocious throwing error on a run scoring play in which Nishioka was trying a bit too hard to make a spectacular play on a soft grounder, he played well. The Blue Jays hung in there all afternoon, loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth and eliciting some rare regular season excitement from a rarer 35 000+ crowd before falling on a weak Adam Lind ground out. I had great seats to watch the game on the 200 level, second base side--just not quite as good to photograph it from. Despite not having the proper zoom lens, I thought I'd share some Nishioka photos anyway.

Couldn't bring myself to crop the banners out of this pic.

Nishioka was the second of three straight Brett Cecil strikeout victims in the first.

Not the best picture of Nishioka, but it was a good chance to try another panorama shot.

Nishioka was the NPB batting champion like Carlos Gonzalez was the MLB batting champ. Didn't happen.
He was the Pacific League champ only.

He popped out in the third.

Nishioka singled over Yunel Escobar's head for his first Major League RBI. Here's a link that leads to the video.

Jason Frasor struck out Nishioka in the seventh, who was batting left for the first time in the game.

After Denard Span's eventual game winning homer, Nishioka drew a walk off a former Twin, John Rauch.

All in all, an entertaining game. Got to see Bautista homer for the Jays and confirmed my opinion that they need to find an answer at third base, because Encarnacion is not it. Nishioka, after looking nervous for most of the series, seemed to start settling down in the later innings today. It promises to be another good year of baseball.