The Hanshin Tigers on Saturday became the first team to go beyond half capacity since the start of the pandemic, although the Koshien stadium crowd of 40,354 was still masked and prohibited from vocal cheering.

There, we had a pitchers’ duel between Aaron Wilkerson and Matt Shoemaker, which was fun, while Renato Núñez and Arismendy Alcantara did a ton of damage as Nippon Ham KO’ed the Marines, who were wearing super cool new uniforms on a day I’ll call “Roki Eve.”

Ready? OK. Let’s get started.

Saturday’s games

Tigers 2, Giants 1: At Koshien Stadium, former Milwaukee Brewer Aaron Wilkerson (1-0) outdueled veteran MLB hurler Matt Shoemaker (0-1) to win his Japan debut as the Hanshin Tigers scraped out their third win of the season and their first win streak.