Japan’s Foreplay Series, to decide which teams are aroused enough to compete in the season-ending championship, has selected one willing member, the Hanshin Tigers, and is now waiting another with the Orix Buffaloes entering Saturday’s Game 4 needing a win or a tie to send the Lotte Marines players and coaches back to the drawing board to plan out their 2024.

Also on Saturday, Hiroki Kokubo, who replaced Hiroshi Fujimoto as the SoftBank Hawks Western League manager in 2022, will replace Fujimoto as the team’s major league manager in 2024. We also earned that a former NPB pitcher has been arrested for murder in the United States, and I will share a story about him.

Saturday’s game

Buffaloes 3, Marines 2: At Osaka UFO Dome, Hiroya Miyagi allowed four hits and no walks over six innings, and left with a 3-0 lead, while Tomoya Mori drove in two runs and scored two for the Buffaloes who will now seek to defend their Japan Series championship against the Hanshin Tigers starting in Osaka from Oct. 28.

The series will be the first between Kansai teams since 1964, a span during which PL Kansai teams went to the Japan Series 21 times, but couldn’t synch up with Hanshin’s appearances in 1985, 2003, 2005 and 2014.

Mori, who returned to right field for his first six games there since the Lions had him splitting his time between right and DH in 2016, was back in right for the third time in the series, and crushed a high fastball from Atsuki Taneichi for a two-run first-inning homer.

Mori made it 3-0 in the fifth off Lotte’s third pitcher, Ryotaro Mori. He lined a hanging 2-2 curve to the gap in left for a leadoff double and scored from third on a one-out Yutaro Sugimoto double off the wall.

The Marines got a run back in the eighth, when No. 9 hitter Kyota Fujiwara drilled a high straight 2-1 fastball, the third in a row thrown him by Orix’s third pitcher, Sotaro Yamazaki, over the wall in right.

Yoshihisa Hirano, who saved both of Orix’s wins in the series, and remained seated when the Buffaloes blew their one-run Game 2 lead, returned for the second straight day, helped make it a one-run game with a high straight 1-0 fastball to PL home run king Gregory Polanco, leading off the ninth.

“We haven’t been able to hit many in these games, so (Mori) hitting one in the first inning gave us extra energy,” Buffaloes manager Satoshi Nakajima said.

“Lotte’s pitching staff was extremely stingy when it came to giving up runs, but our pitchers did a great job for us. We did give up some home runs, but we were able to limit the damage they did.”

“I think everyone is going to see a passionate Kansai series, one that will excite the nation.”

Nakajima was asked if the Marines’ coming from three runs down in the 10th inning on Monday had caused him any concern.

“They came out of their first stage win with incredible momentum, and frankly I did wonder if we could overcome that. But I’m happy that we were able to play good games,” said Nakajima, whose ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto surrendered five runs in Game 1.

“Some of their batters did unexpectedly well, while they were able to hit unexpectedly well off one of our pitchers. But even so, we strived for and achieved the victory, so it was a good series.”

True crime and Serafini stories

Dan Serafini, a former MLB player and a key pitcher on the Lotte Marines’ 2005 Pacific League and Japan Series championship team, has been arrested on a murder charge in Nevada, U.S. media reported Friday.

 Serafini, 49, also faces an attempted murder charge in connection with the 2021 incident in which his wife’s father was fatally shot and his mother-in-law was wounded at their residence in California’s Lake Tahoe area. His mother in law died last year, reportedly of suicide. A woman with close ties to the victims was also arrested, California’s Placer County Sheriff’s Office said, according to the reports.

 A left-handed pitcher, Serafini pitched in 104 MLB games for the Minnesota Twins, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies. However, he found his greatest success with the Marines.

He went 5-4 with Lotte in 2004, his first year in Japan, and was 11-4 with a 2.91 ERA in 2005, when the Marines won the Pacific League pennant. Serafini was the winning pitcher in the Marines’ 2005 Japan Series-clinching Game 4 victory before achieving limited success with the Orix Buffaloes.

In Japan, Serafini didn’t mind chatting in the dugout before his games, which made him a rarity in Japan. The Marines bench has for as long as I remember, always had a box filled with Lotte candies and gum for the players.

Before one game in 2005, we were talking on the bench, at Osaka Dome I recall, and Serafini noticed that the box had a few packs of gum in which each stick had a player’s image and number on it.

He opened one pack and began looking at each stick.

“Look here’s Ito, he’s on the farm team…” he said, giving an eye roll whenever he came to a player who had done nothing on the big club.

After he’d emptied two packs, he said, “Funny, I can’t find my gum. Wait. That’s because they don’t have one for me.”