The Eye of Patrick

Yesterday I was busy in Fukagawa (A post for another day) and so I missed the Nippon Ham Fighters vs. Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in the Pacific League Pennant Series. This was disappointing as I have started to take a keen interest in the Ham Fighters since coming to Hokkaido. But luckily I was able to read about it in the papers and the news as good.

Nippon Ham Fighters won 1-0 in the 2nd game of a 3 game series. They came into the series with already ahead in the series 1-0 thanks to finishing first in the Pacific League regular season. Even with that lead the game was a nail biter due to the low scoring and the lack of runners in scoring position for the ham fighters.

But like the game I saw a few weeks back, when they won in the 11th inning against the Chiba mariners, I knew they could come back. This might simply be my luck to have blinding faith in a team that was able to win. But either way I was happy with the result.

The scoring run came off a hit by Atsunori Inaba, who was able to hit the ball far enough in the 9th inning to force a fielders choice and let Hichori Morimoto run all the way from 2nd inning to home plate, which granted the Nippon Ham there first pennant league series win in 23 years and the first one since moving to Hokkaido in 2004 from Tokyo.

The Japan Series will start October 21^st in Nagoya, Japan against the Chunichi Dragons. I will be in Sapporo at the time buying my new DSLR camera so I will see if I can get tickets to the game and if I can’t you will probably find me standing in front of a TV in some random shop, bar or hotel watching and hoping to see the Ham bring the championship to Hokkaido.

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