Masahiro Tanaka had a kind of happy homecoming when he helped celebrate the Nippon Ham Fighters’ new stadium on Thursday, when NPB opened its season with just one game. Nippon Professional Baseball’s other 10 teams will open their seasons Friday.
Eagles 3, Fighters 1, at Kitahiroshima Taxpayers’ Burden Park: Tanaka, who became a celebrity high school pitching ace nearby, retired the first 13 batters he faced before allowing one run on two hits, two walks and a hit batsman to win the first game played at the new stadium in Kitahiroshima, Hokkaido, which borders the Fighters’ former home of Sapporo, where they were less-than-satisfied tenants at Sapporo Dome from 2004 to 2022.
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New import Maikel Franco recorded the first hit at the natural grass park with a retractable roof, getting a first-inning flare single off southpaw Takayuki Kato. Yukiya Ito, who was traded to Rakuten last summer from DeNA, got his first hit as an Eagle and made it 1-0 with the stadium’s first home run, in the fourth. Franco, who also doubled, hit a sixth-inning homer into the second deck.
Pacific League TV did not have it’s sharing link up, so the highlights are on a separate URL. Sorry.
Tanaka who began to give up some shots in the fourth inning, left two on in the fifth, and loaded the bases with one out in the sixth. Go Matsumoto, last year’s PL batting champ, doubled with one out, and after two walks, scored on a Yuki James Nomura sacrifice fly.
The Fighters would manage just one more base runner in the game with Yuki Matsui earning his 198th save to close it out. Tanaka’s win was his 191st in major league competition. Although a native of central Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, Tanaka rose to national fame as the ace pitcher of Komazawa University Tomakomai High School, located about 30 kilometers to the south.
“It’s my fate to be connected with Hokkaido, so I’m happy to have received this one-time opportunity and get the win,” said Tanaka, who added with the most dead-pan expression possible. “This is the greatest.”
Japan’s 2023 World Baseball Classic manager, Hideki Kuriyama, who managed Nippon Ham for 10 years, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to the Fighters’ first skipper in Hokkaido, Trey Hillman, whose successor, Masataka Nashida, stood in the batter’s box. Hillman recently began running a baseball consulting business and the Fighters are one of his clients.
Hillman was originally planned to throw out the first pitch, but flipped the script.
