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Game Report

Batting Line Fails to Follow Up in First Game… Defeat to Joint Team

11/10/2014

In the 2014 SUZUKI All-Star Series, Samurai Japan played the joint team of Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks/Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters *hereafter referred to as Joint Team. Kokubo Japan's ""first battle"" of 2014, held in the Fukuoka Yafuoku Dome, ended in a disappointing 0-to-1 defeat.

In the first game, Samurai Japan's first player, Shintaro Fujinami (Hanshin), with jersey number 17, was off to a hopeful start by striking out two batters, and the Joint Team's starting pitcher Nao Higashihama also struck three batters out, and the inning ended with no points to either team. The tense game continued to unfold after that, but in the top of the fourth, with the score at 0 to 0, the second pitcher Minoru Iwata (Hanshin), who had taken the mound the previous inning, allowed a hit by the top batter Takuya Nakashima (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham), and one out later, allowed a stolen base, letting a runner into the scoring position. While he wanted to avoid them taking the first point, the Joint Team's fourth batter Tomoaki Egawa (Fukuoka SoftBank) hit an easy pitch to left field and brought Nakashima home. In the end, this would be the one and only run of the match from either team.

Samurai Japan's batting line had Yuki Yanagita (Fukuoka SoftBank) as first batter, and Yoshio Itoi (Orix), Sho Nakata (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham), and Seiichi Uchikawa (Fukuoka SoftBank) as cleanup, but up until the sixth inning, they had only one hit by Hayato Sakamoto (Giants). In the seventh inning, the second batter Ryosuke Kikuchi (Hiroshima) hit an infield single, but this was followed by a strikeout. In the seventh inning, Tetsuto Yamada (Tokyo Yakult) hit a double in the eighth inning, as did Yanagita in the ninth inning, but the batters failed to follow up. In spite of the pitchers' shutout relay following the fifth inning, including Yuki Nishi, Takahiro Matsuba (both Orix), Shota Takeda (Fukuoka SoftBank), Tomomi Takahashi (Saitama Seibu), and Yuji Nishino (Chiba Lotte), the batting lineup only made four scattered hits in face of the Joint Team's frequent change of pitchers.

2014 SUZUKI ALL-STAR SERIES

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