We had six games on a national holiday Monday, with the PL teams wrapping up their series, and the CL teams starting new ones. Seibu’s Kona Takahashi restarted his season after six weeks sorting things out with the farm team and started in Hokkaido, where there was a big pitching performance, while out west, a Carp pitcher appears to have found his complete-game groove.

Monday’s national holiday was “Mountain Day,” enacted in 2014, is the nation’s newest national holiday. I’ll be watching the news today to see how many unfit people were taken to hospitals from accidents trying out their skills on Japan’s numerous mountains. There might not be any, but it’s kind of a tradition in Japan that on Sports Day, the anniversary of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics’ Oct. 10 opening ceremony, we annually hear about the people who die or are taken to hospitals for participating in activities too strenuous for their hearts to handle. The same with Ocean Day, although I think the number of drownings have steadily decreased since that holiday came into being.

 Carp pitcher Thomas Hatch was fined 50,000 yen (about $300) and received a stern warning for using abusive language to an umpire when he was ejected from a Western League game against the Hawks on Saturday.

Monday’s games:

Fighters 5, Lions 1: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Ren Fukushima (2-3) allowed a solo homer and a walk over 6-1/3 innings as Nippon Ham won six straight games for the first time in two seasons. Kona Takahashi (0-9) allowed four runs on nine hits but no walks while striking out three over 5-2/3 innings.

Franmil Reyes broke the ice in the second with an opposite-field solo homer, his second in two games and his 10th of the season. He made it 2-0 after Yua Tamiya reached on a fluke infield single with a double into the left-field corner. Yuya Gunji doubled in the fifth and scored on a Kotaro Kiyomiya single, and Yua Tamiya homered to lead off the Fighters’ sixth. Takahashi retired the next two batters, but left the game after consulting with pitching coach Kiyoshi Toyoda.

Seibu’s Manaya Fukushima homered to open the seventh with the first hit off Fukushima, who was pulled after facing two more hitters and throwing his 91st pitch.