Pride was the big word in Sunday’s headlines, when Munetaka Murakami went off, the Chunichi Dragons did something for the first time in 10 years.

Also, an analyst shocked an announcer by extolling the virtues of high fastballs in a media environment where virtually every bad pitch is customarily declared to be high, and that pitchers who fail to work low in the zone can’t succeed.

Shall we get to it?

Sunday’s games

Swallows 4, Tigers 2, 11 innings: At Koshien Stadium, Yakult was heading toward its third straight loss after Joe Gunkel pounded the zone and held the league leaders scoreless for six innings and left with a 2-0 lead. Munetaka Murakami, however, belted three home runs.

The CL home run leader became the first visitor to do so since Koshien’s home run-distance-shortening inner fences were removed 30 years earlier, and the only one to do it since a uniform deader ball was introduced in 2011. Murakami hit his 35^th in the seventh with an opposite-field shot, tied it against closer Suguru Iwazaki in the ninth by pulling it into the wind off Osaka Bay, and went the other way again with a runner on in the 11^th.