You might call Greg LaRocca's first year in Japanese baseball a "honeymoon season" for two reasons, and the first is obvious.
The Hiroshima Carp first-year second baseman is having one of the better seasons of any player in the game here, posting high batting statistics that have gotten him selected to play in this coming weekend's Sanyo All-Star Series at Nagoya and Nagano.
Also, when he sent out wedding invitations last fall, the then-Cleveland Indians farmhand had no idea he would actually be spending his time as a newlywed in a rural area of Kyushu or that he would not be getting married on the date originally printed on the invite cards.