Japan Baseball Daily

Yes, this is another blow to the English-speaking NPB fan community. There was some warning though, as Garland-san noted that this would be his last season of recaps back in March or April.

The question now becomes, who will step up? Westbay-san already does so much for us that he is at the overload point. Deanna runs a great blog that I visit constantly, but she's at the breaking point with work and blogging. Many others in this community contribute with exceptional work; sorry I can't mention all of you right now. Me? I don't have the resources (or cognitive capacity) to do what JBD has done for the last several years.

So, the question is, who will take up the challenge?

Garland-san has taken the off season off each year. But it does sound like he's done, doesn't it? He does contribute here on occasion, so I hope that when the writing bug gets him that he'll come by to share his insight with us.

In the mean time, what can I do to help promote more people writing? Having team reports has been discussed before, but nobody came forward to perform the task for any team this past season. Is there something structural that I can do with this site to help motivate people?

I would be happy to provide Tigers game reports, but I couldn't guarantee to provide all the games. I didn't make the offer last year because Gary was covering everything so excellently. Let me know what you would need.

I would offer to help, but while I have a great interest in Japanese baseball, I certainly don't have the knowledge to help you out. Coupled with my complete lack of Japanese language skills leaves me out all together.

Sorry, I should have added in my first post that I wouldn't be sure of what kind of time commitment this would take. As was said earlier, I don't know that I could do every game - even if I had the knowledge needed.

Isn't it just no more detailed game reports? There'll still be news, right? I never really read the game reports. They were really long-winded and I could only imagine how long they'd take to write up. In the long run, I don't think it's worth the time and effort.

I think a more convenient method would be to translate YouTube highlights with an English voice over. They'd also appeal to shorter attention spans.

- Isn't it just no more detailed game reports?

From reading the post, that's the message I got. Whether that includes news or not I don't know. As for the game reports, I can imagine the time and massive energy they take up.

The impression I got from Garland-san's post was that there are many other things that Gary planned to implement with Japan Baseball Daily as he mentioned in the past with the site. Again, whether this includes news I don't know as it wasn't clear to me.

Though that switches to who will step up as mentioned above by Ken D and Westbaystars? Me? I don't have the resources, the time, and coupled with a lack of Japanese language skills, I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help in filling up the gap.

If I do get my new laptop as soon as I think I will, then I should be ready in time to cover the Hawks, although I would like to cover as many teams as possible so I can help more.

I can't commit to anything either. I only have like 2-3 hours of free time on any given week day, if that, and I'm not at a computer during my work day, so it's hard to get things done like I used to. My priorities for the off-season were going to be catching up on writing some old game report blog entries, posting some pictures I took at various NPB and college games, and then working on improvements for my boxscore translator scripts, which I just didn't have any time to do in the midst of moving to Japan this year.

I'd offer to at least put my game reports on here next year, but I think my word choices might not really go with what Westbay has in mind for this site (since I spend half of my time swearing or making fun of players or giving nicknames to my favorite players like "Dragonbutt," and I'm really not an impartial observer at all).

Personally I think the news notebooks are the best part of Gary's site anyway, since I know that even though I try to read ShuBe every week, and I look at the headlines on Yahoo Sports Japan and all, there's simply too much out there to catch everything. The summaries are great.