Baseball

Last week began with a crowd of 17,712 at Tokyo Dome for a showdown between the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants, the top two teams in the Central League. There were 15,345 fans present at the Big Egg on Sunday, when the Kyojin faced the Hiroshima Carp. The tally for […]

Former Dodger Jerry Sands delivered the big blow for the Hanshin Tigers as they beat the Yokohama DeNA BayStars 7-5 in a Central League slugfest on Sunday. Sands broke a 5-5 tie in the seventh inning with a two-out, two-run home run over Koshien Stadium’s center-field fence. Sands walked, reached […]

Houston – Shohei Ohtani delivered a clutch eighth-inning home run on Sunday to spur the Los Angeles Angels to a 4-2 win over the Houston Astros. The two-way star led off the eighth against right-hander Luis Garcia (0-2) with a shot that flew 440 feet (134 meters) over right center […]

Nippon Professional Baseball said Sunday it will postpone five Central League games until after the May 11 end of the current coronavirus state of emergency in order to allow the home teams to admit fans. NPB on Saturday said four ballparks in Tokyo as well as Osaka and Hyogo prefectures […]

Matt Clark hopes this year’s Olympic baseball tournament will prove that what goes around comes around, and that the lessons he learned playing in Japan will help earn Mexico its first Olympic medal in the sport. Clark, who had two stints in Japan, has been playing in the Mexican League […]

Houston – Shohei Ohtani belted his sixth home run of the season Saturday with a towering shot over center field, but it was a rare highlight for the Los Angeles Angels in a 16-2 loss to the Houston Astros. Ohtani also made his first major league appearance as an outfielder […]

Former New York Yankee Masahiro Tanaka allowed a run over six innings for his first win in Japan since 2013 and the 100th of his career in Japan’s top flight in a 2-1 Pacific League win over the Seibu Lions on Saturday. The 32-year-old Tanaka (1-1) struck out four and […]

Takahiro Okada and Yutaro Sugimoto delivered big hits to propel the Orix Buffaloes to a four-run ninth inning and a 7-6 come-from-behind victory over the Seibu Lions in the Pacific League on Thursday. Trailing 6-3 after the Lions’ Aito Takeda cleared the bases with a tie-breaking three-run eighth-inning double at […]

Kazuma Okamoto hit a pair of solo home runs to help lift the Yomiuri Giants to a 3-2 come-from-behind win over the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers, whose winning streak was snapped at eight games on Wednesday. Trailing 2-0 in the second, Okamoto, last year’s CL home run leader, opened the […]

Anaheim, California – Two-way star Shohei Ohtani recorded the 100th home run of his combined pro career in Japan and the United States on Wednesday, a day after throwing four scoreless innings in his second pitching start of the Los Angeles Angels’ season. Ohtani batted second as the designated hitter […]