The Shinjo phenomenon.

Tsuyoshi Shinjo (aka "The tallest freakin' Japanese dude on the face of the earth," "Automatic out," and my personal favorite "Oh no, why'd you put him in the lineup today Dusty?"), a Japanese baseball player, after playing in the majors for a few years, came back to Japan... to play for the NIPPON HAM FIGHTERS! Tally that as an additional reason to get a Nippon Ham Fighters baseball cap.

The news here has been covering the spring training camps for all 12 Japanese pro baseball teams recently. And of course, when there's the report for the Nippon Ham Fighters' camp, all you see is Shinjo. Nobody else. Absolutely no coverage for any other Nippon Ham player. Just Shinjo. Well Shinjo, and all his screaming fans. Reports indicate that the fan attendance for Nippon Ham's spring training camp is already 4 times what it was last year (that is pre-Shinjo).

I find this all amazing because when Shinjo was playing in the States (minus his rookie year in the majors), the Japanese media and most Japanese baseball fans were ragging on him... hard. Come back to Japan, though, and suddenly he's more popular than smap. What changed? I have no idea. It's the strangest phenomenon.

Oh by the way, Shinjo a few weeks back was on the Japanese version of the gameshow "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" (which comes complete with a Japanese version of Regis). He won it all... of course, the Japanese version gives 10,000,000 yen which is about $100,000 not (a la Dr. Evil) ONE MILLION DOLLARS! The thing is that he's not that smart. How'd he win? With a pencil. His pencil had the letters A, B, C, and D marked on its sides. If he didn't know the answer, he'd roll his pencil, and whatever letter showed up, he'd use that as his answer. Go figure. The pencil was right every time. For any high school juniors and seniors out there, rumor has it that the Nippon Ham Fighters team will be selling identical "Shinjo pencils" as souvenirs and memorabilia.