I’m back from a week’s vacation in the States, and on a holiday Thursday afternoon in Japan, we came within one out of a five-pitcher, two-catcher combined no-hitter and had a three walk-off wins, including two on home runs.
Meanwhile, the BayStars’ slide into the dark side makes me think it’s time we give them a more fitting name. In the old days, before nicknames became brands and became etched in stone, American teams drew inspiration from events and personalities.
An old-fashioned name for DeNA
Take the Los Angeles Dodgers. Their name was ostensibly taken from fans dodging streetcars to get into Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. Before that, the franchise was known for a time in the 19th Century as the “Bridegrooms,” after several players were married and later the Robins, in honor of manager Wilbert “Uncle Robbie” Robinson.
Pittsburgh’s current club, meanwhile, got its nickname from “pirating” a player — signing second baseman Louis Bierbauer in violation of an agreement to not take in players who belonged to other major league clubs before they competed in the Players League in 1890.
Because of its strenuous white washing of the ugly truths surrounding the pitcher it signed that the Dodgers are paying more than $40 million this year not to wear their uniform, and whom 29 other MLB teams declined to sign for MLB’s minimum wage, we should revive that tradition for DeNA.
Any ideas? For the time being, the Whitewashers will do…although I’m open to suggestions. It wouldn’t hurt to come up with fitting nicknames for all 12 teams while we’re at it, but I’ll leave that to you dear readers for now.
Thursday’s games
Fighters 1, Lions 0: At Seibu Dome, converted reliever Koki Kitayama (1-1) walked two batters over six innings, and Nippon Ham came within an out of a combined no-hitter, but had to settle for a shutout as reliever Seigi Tanaka, the Fighters’ fifth pitcher, surrendered back-to-back two-out singles before locking down the win with his third strikeout and recording his third save.
Wataru Matsumoto (2-2) allowed a run on six hits but no walks over seven innings. He surrendered the lead in the seventh on Chusei Mannami’s fifth home run.
Bryan Rodriguez worked a 1-2-3 seventh, Taisho Tamai retired Hotaka Yamakawa to open the eighth with side-arm lefty Naoki Miyanishi retiring both batters he faced.
Tanaka struck out two pinch-hitters to open the ninth Takumi Kuriyama swinging and Takeya Nakamura looking before Aito Takeda, who made a big catch in the first inning, flipped the script with a hit.
A Shohei Suzuki single put the tying run at second but with the holiday crowd going nuts, Tanaka struck out Shuta Tonosaki to end it.
Whitewashers 3, Carp 2: At Yokohama Stadium, Toshiro Miyazaki, who next week will likely collect the Central League’s Batter of the Month Award, led off the ninth inning by hitting the second pitch from Ryuya Matsumoto (0-2) for his fifth home run lifting DeNA past Hiroshima.
Shogo Akiyama singled home Ryosuke Kikuchi in the first, and Shota Dobayashi made it 2-0 Carp in the second by doubling home Ryoma Nishikawa. Carp starter Masato Morishita began his belated season debut with four scoreless innings in his first game since having surgery to clean out his right elbow last autumn.
Masayuki Kuwahara led off the fifth with his second homer, and pinch-hitter Yamato Maeda singled in Yota Kyoda to tie it off Morishita.
Whitewashers-Carp highlights
Eagles 6, Marines 0: At Miyagi Stadium, rookie Rakuten right-hander Tomotaka Matsui (1-0) allowed three hits and two walks over five innings to win his first career decision after the Eagles piled up five runs in a five-single three-walk fifth and four relievers retired 11 of the final 13 Marines batters.
Giants 8, Swallows 7: At Tokyo Dome, Yomiuri came from behind again to win its second straight barn-burner against Yakult on Yoshihiro Maru’s sixth career walk-off “sayonara” home run and first since he clinched a win for the Hiroshima Carp on Sept. 1, 2016.
Yuhei Nakamura’s second homer, a solo shot, made it 2-0 Yakult in the fourth. The Giants made it 3-2 in the fifth after third baseman Munetaka Murakami’s second error prolonged the inning and put a man on for Hayato Sakamoto to tie it with his fourth homer. Kazuma Okamoto followed with his fourth homer and his second in two days off Swallows starter Dillon Peters.
Yomiuri made it 6-2 in the sixth. Maru singled and scored on Adam Walker’s two-out pinch-hit double off reliever Tomoya Hoshi, who hit a batter and surrendered back-to-back singles. Sakamoto’s second hit drove in two and capped the rally, only for Yakult to tie it in the seventh.
Yakult leadoff man Yasutaka Shiomi, who was making his season debut after being sidelined all season with “lack of lower body fitness,” hit a no-out two-run homer. Norichika Aoki reached with his third hit, and Luis Okoye saved a run by racing back and making a leaping grab of a Domingo Santana drive.
That play loomed large when Murakami tied it with his third home run.
Takumi Oshiro, Japan’s reserve catcher in the WBC had a pinch-hit RBI single in the seventh, but Nakamura doubled to lead off Yakult’s eighth and the Swallows tied it on a sac fly.
Tigers 3, Dragons 2: At Koshien Stadium, Yusuke Oyama doubled and scored to bring Hanshin within a run in the seventh, and tied it in the eighth by singling home Koji Chikamoto with two outs and setting up Teruraki Sato’s go-ahead RBI single off the 129th pitch from Yuya Yanagi (0-3).
Yanagi went 2-for-3 with an RBI single and a sacrifice, while allowing three runs, two earned, over 7-2/3 innings. He gave up seven hits, struck out seven and walked two, as Chunichi stranded 11 base runners.
Tigers-Dragons highlights
Hawks 8, Buffaloes 7, 11innings: At Fukuoka Dome, we had another see-saw game that ended when Kensuke Kondo singled to open the 11th off Yoshihisa Hirano (0-1) and SoftBank won it on singles by Yuki Yanagita and Ryoya Kurihara.
Orix struck against Tsuyoshi Wada in the first. Yuma Mune doubled and score on a triple by Keita Nakagawa, who scored on a groundout. Kondo walked and scored the tying run in the home half on Kurihara’s two-run single.
Nakagawa’s fourth homer put Orix up by a run in the third, but Kondo’s third, with two on in the fourth off Jharel Cotton, made it 5-3 SoftBank.
Mune’s RBI single capped a three-run Orix sixth that made it 6-5. Akira Nakamura tied it for the Hawks with a two-run eighth-inning home run.
And in addition, La Tortuga — Willens Astudillo — was called up Thursday for the second time this season, and got his first hit in Japan.
