The Cup

The Stanley Cup finals begin next week.  I was born in a small town 50 miles from downtown Pittsburgh, and I'll be rooting for the Penguins.  This photo is labeled, "The Springfield Indians, Springfield, Mass."  The Indians played in the AHL from 1954 to 1967, and won the Calder Cup three years in a row.  The 1959-60, 1960-61, and 1961-62 seasons.  I've been going through club photos, and I think this one is from the 60-61 season, said to be the greatest team in league history.  I'm not 100% certain, but I think number 2 in the second row is Ken Schinkel, who went on to play, and coach the Pittsburgh Penguins.

So, you read it here first, Pens in 6.  Sorry Nashville.

Lost 10-Won 1

Well, it says soccer, rather than football on the front, so I'm going out on a limb and say that a team of American soldiers got beat big time by locals who had been playing the game for most of their lives.  I also suspect that that one win might have been thrown to make the Yanks feel a bit better about themselves.

Gachinko

A nice thing about eBay is that I can purchase old photos from anywhere in the world.   (That is when I can afford 'em, which isn't often.)   Anyway, I found this nice photo of young baseball players from a seller in Japan.  At first I was a bit confused.  Why were  these Japanese baseball players wearing jerseys with English lettering?  Was it possible that this picture was taken in someplace like Fresno, and mailed back to family in someplace like Tokyo?   Then I did some research and discovered that the logos for all the teams in the Japanese major leagues are in English.  The only explanation I could think of was that baseball originated in the United States and Japanese baseball fans crave authenticity, so English it is.

But what does that word mean?  The first thing I had to do was determine the first letter.  Is that an F, so Fachi, or maybe Jachi, or Tachi?  The only other letter I thought it could be was G,  so I typed Gachi into the search engine and found a match on a site dedicated to Japanese slang.  Gachi, a game played earnestly, from sumo wrestling, short for Gachinko.  It might not be right, but it fits.