Lions Lose to Lotte, Win Pennant

The Chiba Lotte Marines put up a great fight the past two days to keep the Lions' magic number at check at one. Daiei over powered the Fighters on Friday (9/20) night, but ended in a tie at Tokyo Dome last night (9/21) to become mathematically eliminated from the league championship. With Daiei's tie, the Lions, watching from their hotel in Chiba, became the 2002 Pacific League champions.

Now we have a little more than a month until the Lions take on the Giants in the Nihon Series. Well, the Giants have taken two in a row against Yakult to reduce their magic number to 4 with 11 games remaining (16 for Yakult) and a 10.5 game lead. If we say that the Giants will match up against the Lions then the Nihon Series schedule becomes:

Game	Date	Matchup	Location
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.	10/26 (Sat) 27 (Sun) 29 (Tue) 30 (Wed) 31 (Thu) 11/2 (Sat) 3 (Sun)	Lions - Giants Lions - Giants Giants - Lions Giants - Lions Giants - Lions Lions - Giants Lions - Giants	Tokyo Dome Tokyo Dome Seibu Dome Seibu Dome Seibu Dome Tokyo Dome Tokyo Dome

* Substitute Swallows for Giants and Jingu for Tokyo Dome should a miracle happen.

All games are night games, with those at Seibu Dome starting at 6:20.

What I found most interesting was Lotte's ability to hold the first place team in check at M-1, not just these two games, but also on October 1, 1988 against M-1 Kintetsu, tying 4-4 to prevent them from winning in front of them. Then again on September 15-17, 1995, sweeping the M-1 Orix BlueWave under Bobby Valentine's lead and their best finish in a decade. Lotte then held Daiei at M-1 October 5-6, 2000, holding off the enevitable for Daiei's next series. Now in 2002, Seibu was unable to take the pennant in front of them in two tries.

As for backing into the pennant, this marked the first time since Lotte lost their game on September 26, 1974 that a team lost on the same day they won the pennant. They become only the 5th team to do so.

Ihara-kantoku becomes the first first-year manager since Yokohama's Gondoh-kantoku took over the 'Stars in 1998 to win a league pennant. He's the 9th rookie manager to win the pennant since 1950. (It looks like the Giants' Hara-kantoku is about to become the 10th.)

Finally, since becoming the Seibu Lions in 1979, this marks the team's 14th Pacific League championship, their first in four years. They took 6 pennents in the 1980's and 7 in the 1990's. This marks their first for the 2000's.