Monday was a national holiday in Japan, Sea Day, so we had baseball ahead of the Wednesday and Thursday’s all-star games. Carter Stewart Jr. and Shumpeita Yamashita squared off in a duel of hard-throwing rookies with good curveballs, Tomoyuki Sugano didn’t make it out of the first inning in one of the year’s wildest games, and Hiroshima’s Hiroki Tokoda did it all on the mound and at bat

Monday’s games

Buffaloes 2, Hawks 1, 10 innings: At Fukuoka Dome, Shumpeita Yamashita (8-2) struck out eight over seven innings while allowing two singles and two walks. Carter Stewart Jr. (0-2) was nearly as impressive. He surrendered five hits, two on slow rollers, striking out seven and walking two. He pitched out of a fourth-inning jam – when right fielder Ukyo Shuto robbed Yuma Tongu of a two-out two-run double. A hard-hit double in the sixth, and a one-out walk set up all three Orix runs.

Leandro Cedeno put a good swing on a decent fastball and knocked it into the right-field home run terrace for his fifth homer.

Shota Abe and Yuki Udagawa each contributed a scoreless inning of relief with Udagawa earning his second save.

The loss was SoftBank’s ninth straight, the Hawks’ longest since 1996, the year Hawks fans in Osaka – from where the franchise had moved seven years earlier – pelted the Daiei team bus with eggs. The Buffaloes go into the second half with a 3-1/2 game lead over the Marines.