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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.
It might have been a different setting, but NPB fans experienced déjà vu all over again.
Following on the heels of the Yokohama-Yakult stunner from the previous night, Nippon Ham battled back from eight runs down to finish in a 9-9 draw with the Lotte Marines on Thursday at The Q.
An eight-run second inning for host Lotte wasn't enough to knock out the Fighters, whose six-run fifth got them within a run and Shota Ono’s sac fly in the sixth evened the score. Wednesday it was visiting Yokohama that scored eight runs in the first but couldn’t hold off Yakult at Jingu.
The Marines, though, took the lead in the eighth on Tomoya Satozaki’s scoring flyball, only to see closer Yasuhiko Yabuta serve up a game-tying solo blast in the ninth.
The time limit put an end to things after nine innings.
HAWKS 4, BUFFALOES 0
Shota Oba (5-0) scattered four hits and three walks with five Ks for his shutout since March 23, 2008, as SoftBank recorded its Japan-best 19th whitewashing this season, shutting down Orix at FYJ Dome.
The Hawks moved 31 games over .500 for the first time in six years.
LIONS 6, EAGLES 1
Second-year lefty Yusei Kikuchi (3-0) tossed his first pro complete game, scattering six hits, a walk and a hit batter with one strikeout, and Ryan Mulhern smacked a bases-clearing double in the first as host Seibu topped Rakuten.
Eagles 42-year-old slugger Takeshi Yamasaki clubbed his 400th homer in the ninth to break up Kikuchi’s shutout bid and become the 17th -- and oldest -- player to reach that milestone.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
SWALLOWS 2, BAYSTARS 0
It took 14 appearances over two-plus seasons, but Katsuki Akagawa (1-0) earned his first pro victory with 5.2 innings of shutout pitching as first-place Yakult blanked Yokohama at Jingu Stadium.
The lefty got help from four relievers, with Tony Barnette tossing a perfect ninth for his first save in Japan. Shingo Kawabata singled home a run in the first and suddenly hot-again Wladimir Balentien went deep for the fourth straight game [his 10th longball against Yokohama], hitting No. 24 to back the 21-year-old Akagawa.
The Swallows pushed their league lead to six games as second-place Yomiuri lost in Nagoya.
CARP 5, TIGERS 4
Kenta Kurihara homered for the second straight game, Yoshiyuki Ishihara smacked an RBI double after Takashi Toritani’s error helped Hiroshima tie the score in the eighth inning, and the Carp held off Hanshin at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
The victory lifted the Carp into a virtual tie for third place with Yomiuri.
DRAGONS 2, GIANTS
Enyelbert Soto held Yomiuri to a run over six innings but was out of the game when Kazuhiro Wada broke a slump by clubbing his 10th homer -- his first hit in 17 plate appearances -- as Chunichi came back to top Yomiuri at Nagoya Dome.
The two-run shot was Wada’s first longball in 19 games.
Closer Hitoki Iwase worked around an error in the ninth to close out Masahiro Araki’s 1,500th career game.
[Edited by: jgibson on Aug 19, 2011 8:24 AM]