Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 520 - 110: Fierce Battle Against the Central League

The exchange matches kicked off with a no-hitter game against the Giant Team. Under the intentional adjustments by Akiyama Koji and the coaching team, SoftBank’s form has noticeably improved.

After concluding the first series at the Tokyo Dome, the players of the SoftBank Team barely had any time to catch their breath before quickly making their way back to Fukuoka day and night without pause.

The tight schedule for preparation has its reasons:

In the following week, the SoftBank Team will be hosting two Central League teams at their home ground, the Yahoo Dome, namely the Hiroshima Toyo Carp and the Hanshin Tigers.

Both teams made it to the climax series last season, and they are currently among the most competitive clubs in the Central League.

The Hanshin Tigers are already an "old friend" of Lin Guanglai, and he is well-acquainted with the technical skills of each player in this venerable elite team;

In contrast, Hiroshima Toyo, this relatively unknown small club in Japan, has been gradually rising over the past two years, shaking off their perennial underdog status, and was rarely in the spotlight before.

However, as of tonight’s game, this very team leads the Central League by a margin of 1.5 games over the two major powers, the Giant Team and the Hanshin Tigers.

Unlike the rich and powerful Giant and SoftBank teams, who can dominate the transfer market every year, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp rely more on their young player development system. They generally don’t compete for popular rookies unless the type exactly meets their urgent needs at the draft meeting.

Now, most of their main players are nurtured through their draft process, including stars like Maeda Kenta and Kimura Tsuyoshi, who are strong enough to be selected for the Japan National Team, as well as promising young talents like Maru Yoshihiro and Suzuki Seiya, who are coveted by many clubs.

Considering tonight’s coaching, Hiroshima Toyo’s several ace players, including Maeda Kenta, have all come out to play, making the game challenging for the travel-worn SoftBank.

Indeed, this turned out to be the case—

Because of pitching the complete game against the Giant Team before, according to the team’s rotation plan, Lin Guanglai would take a 10-day break this time. He only sat on the bench and didn’t play in today’s game.

In the Yahoo Dome, amidst the deafening cheers loud enough to blow the roof off, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp showed their extremely strong defensive ability as the visiting team:

Particularly Maeda Kenta’s "nauseating" slider; not only is there a significant speed difference between it and his fastball, averaging 147km/h with a peak of 154km/h, but its movement is also extremely large—this slider, with a speed of about 130km/h, combines subtle changes and develops different versions that flexibly utilize changes in size, speed variation, and vertical and horizontal trajectory, leaving the SoftBank batters complaining incessantly.

Even with the former ace Shetsu Shou, who is deeply trusted by all the players, on the mound delivering a perfect 7-innings scoreless performance, SoftBank still became the side to fall behind first:

On the top of the eighth inning, relief pitcher Okajima Hideki, who stepped in, first gave up a double, then a wild pitch allowed the opponent to advance to third base freely; Hiroshima Toyo’s manager, Nomura Kenjiro, seized the moment to substitute a pinch hitter, taking the lead.

Fortunately, Okajima Hideki and the defense players adjusted their states timely and did not allow the gap to widen further.

Just when the Yahoo Dome, which had been noisy almost the entire game, was about to fall into silence, the SoftBank Team’s billion-dollar lineup, which had almost been mute the whole game, finally erupted:

Starting with Nakamura Akira’s hit as the ninth batter, SoftBank’s side had three consecutive batters hit, leveling the score almost in the blink of an eye;

Then, in a two-out and runner-on-third scenario, last season’s hit king, Nagatagawa Yuuya, sent the ball into the stands with a swing, achieving a comeback for the home-playing SoftBank and throwing the entire Yahoo Dome into madness once again.

On the top of the ninth inning, to the exuberant entrance music, Dennis Sarfate, SoftBank’s consistent guardian so far this season, rode up to the pitcher’s mound, and his answer was—

"Strikeout! Strikeout!! Strikeout!!!"

"Dennis Sarfate, three consecutive strikeouts! The game is over!"

In this game, although the home-playing SoftBank Team reversed the match due to the lineup’s eruption at the last moment, it must be admitted that today’s Hiroshima Toyo is already different from the perennial underdog it used to be.

Given some time, this team, having accumulated a lot of talent, is expected to become the main opponent for the SoftBank Team in the battle for Japan’s Number One in the coming years.

After sending off the Hiroshima Toyo, the SoftBank Team quickly welcomed their second opponent, the Hanshin Tigers, with which they had developed quite animosity since last season’s exchange matches. Even the starting pitcher for this game was Randy Mason, who instigated the bench-clearing incident last season due to a deliberate hit on Lin Guanglai.

As one of the most well-known teams across Japan, the Hanshin Tigers have fervent fans. Even though Osaka and Fukuoka are quite a distance apart, many chose to follow the team on the expedition and created quite a scene on a small portion of the stands in Yahoo Dome.