May 30th, 2011
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 1
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 0
Streak: Lost 10 Last 5: LLLLL
(Meiji Jingu Stadium)
Records we’d care not think about looming in the ether, the Swallows hosted their colleagues from Sapporo – a team that looks even better than their 26-19-2 record would show. How went the new lineup’s upset?
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 1 |
| Tokyo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 1 |
| W: Yoshikawa (6-2); L: Akagawa (3-4); S: Takeda (1-1-7) | ||||||||||||
Miyade and Iihara starting? This is like VH-1.
Hokkaido | Tokyo |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Itoi (RF) | 1 | Milledge (CF) |
| 2 | Koyano (3B) | 2 | Tanaka (2B) |
| 3 | Tanaka (2B) | 3 | Kawabata (SS) |
| 4 | Nakata (LF) | 4 | Hatakeyama (1B) |
| 5 | Inaba (1B) | 5 | Iihara (RF) |
| 6 | Yo (CF) | 6 | Miyamoto (3B) |
| 7 | Kaneko (SS) | 7 | Miyade (LF) |
| 8 | Tsuruoka (C) | 8 | Aikawa (C) |
| 9 | Yoshikawa (P) | 9 | Akagawa (P) |
As we’re used to, the Birds’ opponents got on the board first. Akagawa gave up a single to punk-ass chubby hick Nakata (yes, I realize that describes a fair few ballplayers), then walked Inaba, saw Yo “successfully” sac bunt, then gave up an RBI single to Kaneko. 1-0 Hokkaido.
Fighters’ starter Yoshikawa struck out a passel of batters in the first few innings, but also gave up four hits in the first two, which gave our side hope, but not runs.
The bottom of the fourth got exciting when Tokyo loaded the bases to bring up Akagawa with two outs. It went as you would expect.
Akagawa pitched seven innings of four-hit, one-run ball. Hidaka took over in the eighth.
Blah, blah, blah. 1-0 Hokkaido, Final.
We await a reply to our request of University of Tokyo Mathematics Department to calculate the number of consecutive losses incurred in this streak.
On the upside. . .
Hmm. . .
Nope. Not baseball-wise. I got some steaks in the mail from The Meat Guy, though. And I have some Tama no Megumi beer. Kozo’s getting in shape, David is breaking records on Elevator Action DeathParade, Scott is spending more quality time with his family, Christopher is organizing his closet. All of this needs to stop.
