I got back from vacation just in time to watch the PL pennant deciders, and see Munetaka Murakami achieve his twin goals of the batting triple crown and 56 home runs, which is a huge deal in Japan, but not what the media tells you it is.

The Swallows and BayStars wrapped up Japan’s regular season with retirement games for three Yakult players, Seiichi Uchikawa, Tomotaka Sakaguchi and Motohiro Shima.

There has been other news this past week, three bits of manager news, two pennants clinched, but since we have been waiting for more than half a month for Murakami to shoot for the single-season record of 60, let’s start there.

Monday’s game

Swallows 8, BayStars 2: At Jingu Stadium, Murakami needed to do no worse than 0-for-3 to clinch the batting title ahead of Chunichi’s Yohei Oshima, but grounded out weakly in the first.