u/AdMajestic8119

Here’s my last waifu stuck on my wallpaper,

Looking as if she were alive. I’ll savour

That for a while now: for months I have searched

DeviantArt for her paintings, and atop my heart she is perched.

Will’t please you come and look at her? I said

‘DeviantArt’ by design – for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of her earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The wallpaper I have switched for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not

Her and her only who called a spot

Of emotion into my own body; while my love intact,

Some other chanced to say, “Your love detracts

From the impression our community wants to show”;

Or that “Why you love her I would never know,

Yet your love lends this place a bad impression.” Such stuff

Could not stand, I thought, and cause enough

For me, in my room, alone, to cry.

I had a heart – how shall I say? – in search to die,

Too easily broken: I liked whate’er

She did with me, and our works went everywhere.

Sir, ‘twas all one! The love she put in me,

The blushes when I chanced to say ‘I love thee’,

The heart which I left empty for her alone,

Our honeymoon ‘neath the stars’ undertone,

The ring I would have shown to her – all and each

Would draw from us alike our approving speech,

Or blush at least. We loved each other – good! But others spoke

Somehow – I know not how – as if we were woke,

My gift of a nine-hundred-days-old love in name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech – which I have not – to make your will

Quite clear to such a critic, and say, “Just this

Or that in your disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark” – and if they’d let

Themselves be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Their wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse –

E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, we smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er we met; but e’en with love devout

A smile helped no more. They grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There we stand

As if alive! Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Developer your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of a waste of my money will be disallowed;

Though your SSR character, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir! Notice my valentine, though,

Her lips at my cheek, thought a rarity –

Which I myself cast in gold for me!

In the exam hall he stands alone
with students sat down in ordered rows.
The only light is white and hardly glows,
as though this were a prison and he
an executor preparing to oversee a departure.
AQA. Edexcel. CIE. All boards are torture.

He has a job to do. Papers taken out folders,
handed to students who did not tremble then
though seem to now. The Exam Hall. Home again
to students' suffering which silence can dispel,
to agonies which in here cannot be voiced
till at the end of the clock all alike is destroyed.

Something is happening. A student's body
start to shake before his eyes without tears,
a half-formed terror. He remembers the cheers
of this boy's friends, how he to them told
he would not study a bit before in he'd go
and how now he regrets it from his soul.

Hundreds of agonies in black and white
from which the exam board will pick five or six
for next year's paper. The marker's eyeballs prick
with tears between the zero he writes and his pre-lunch beers.
From the front of the hall he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.

(From a current GCSE student)

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Hiroshi Gondoh's rookie season in 1961 is beyond the realm of legendary. He pitched 429.1 innings, had a 35-19 record, struck out 310, and somehow only had a 1.70 ERA and 0.911 WHIP. As a rookie. His opponents weren't exactly easy: Shigeo Nagashima had found his breakthrough and hit .353 in 1961; Sadaharu Oh, then 21 years old, was beginning to establish himself too.

To this day 429.1 IP in a season is still a record since the NPB split into two leagues in 1950. And given modern pitching philosophies, I think it is a certainty this record will never be broken as long as the rules of baseball as a sport remains as they are.

It is close to an impossibility to find any pitcher who had a better rookie season in any league in history. I think most would agree this is statistically the best rookie pitching season in NPB history.

My question is: where does Gondoh's 1961 rank in terms of individual pitching seasons in the NPB since 1950? Yutaka Enatsu's 1968 (his 401-strikeout season), Masahiro Tanaka 2013 (24-0 record), Kazuhisa Inao 1961 (42-14 1.69 ERA 0.941 WHIP 353 K) come to mind. Is there anyone who realistically stands a chance at winning this debate?