bench was okay.
mostly predictable and dull with a few shining moments; just like naruto itself.
it was pretty annoying how most of the main cast resembled naruto characters and their dynamics, relationships, etc. the first half spent too much time with tertiary characters and meandered a bit, too. i fully expect the better one-shots to be done by lesser known mangaka, though. hopefully those get translated!
@Green:
I see where you're going with this, there's just one problem though: it's a one-shot. One shots are for establishing and developing a basic story and its main characters, not the bit parts. Their purpose would be elaborated on in a hypothetical serialized version.
Also, I see you're not complaining that the third boy didn't do anything either. I wonder why.
short stories are supposed to be focused and easy to pick up and read on their own, not creating loose threads in case they're continued somewhere down the line. maybe it would be excusable if there were ANY possibility of this becoming a series, but since it's done by the creator of freaking naruto, he's obviously gonna stick with the manga that's already number 2 in all of japan.
it's more likely he was trying to build up back story to create an emotional connection with them to get some emotional reaction from the reader during the climax. it was sort of unnecessary, though, since that was already established with the two leads. they needed to be there for it to be a baseball team, yeah, but they probably shouldn't have had as much screen time.