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.
The Marines and Fighters were rained out on Friday, leaving us to start Japan’s pro baseball weekend with three games, the last-place Tigers in a record-setting funk to start the season faced the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers with the Swallows at the DeNA BayStars.
In a game between two struggling teams, the Seibu Lions were in Osaka to play the Orix Buffaloes, whose high point to the week was being victimized for a perfect game by Roki Sasaki. Since then, coronavirus infections caused the Buffaloes to scrap their midweek games with Orix, depriving me of a Masahiro Tanaka start I was looking forward to.
Ready? Let’s go.
Friday’s games
Tigers 4, Giants 1: At Koshien Stadium, the joy was palpable when reliever Suguru Iwazaki retired Zelous Wheeler for the final out. Eighteen games into the season, the Tigers had their second win.
