Baseball

Shohei Ohtani did not want to be selected in the October 2012 NPB draft. He even said so beforehand — warning teams to stay away because he was headed straight from Hanamaki Higashi High School to MLB. It wasn’t an empty threat. No one was blind to Ohtani’s talent as […]

Baseball’s arrival on Japan’s shores should be viewed to have been in 1871 — one year earlier than is commonly thought in Japan — a British historian argues, based on two separate contemporary English newspaper articles from the time about a game played that year in Yokohama. Next year is […]

Rookie Koki Ugusa triggered a four-run first inning with a leadoff home run and the Central League’s fourth-place Hiroshima Carp held on to beat the third-place Yomiuri Giants 8-7 on Saturday. The win at Tokyo Dome kept the Carp’s hopes of seizing a playoff berth alive as they moved to […]

Sapporo – Nippon Ham Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama, who orchestrated Shohei Ohtani’s development as a two-way star and won the most games in franchise history, announced Saturday that he will step down at the end of the season. Kuriyama, 60, steered the Fighters to his first Pacific League pennant in […]

Houston – Japanese right-hander Hirokazu Sawamura made his major league postseason debut for the Boston Red Sox on Friday, struggling to get one out in a 5-4 loss to the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. The Red Sox took a 3-1 lead after a […]

Cody Bellinger hit a one-out, go-ahead single in the top of the ninth inning to help send the Los Angeles Dodgers to the National League Championship Series with a 2-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants in Game 5 of the NL Division Series on Thursday in San Francisco. In […]

Osaka – Roki Sasaki struck out eight over six scoreless innings to outpitch fellow rookie Hiroya Miyagi and lead the Chiba Lotte Marines to a crucial 6-1 win over the Pacific League-leading Orix Buffaloes on Thursday. The win at Orix’s Kyocera Dome Osaka moved second-place Lotte to within a half-game […]

Osaka – Roki Sasaki struck out eight over six scoreless innings to outpitch fellow rookie Hiroya Miyagi and lead the Chiba Lotte Marines to a crucial 6-1 win over the Pacific League-leading Orix Buffaloes on Thursday. The win at Orix’s Kyocera Dome Osaka moved second-place Lotte to within a half-game […]

Ayumu Ishikawa pitched out of a second-inning jam before the Chiba Lotte Marines broke the game open in an 8-2 win over the Pacific League-leading Orix Buffaloes on Wednesday. The win at Kyocera Dome Osaka lifted the second-place Marines to within 1½-games of first place. The teams complete their three-game […]

Jose Altuve slugged a three-run homer, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and Michael Brantley each drove in two runs, and the Houston Astros booked a spot in the American League Championship Series for the fifth straight season with a 10-1 trouncing of the host Chicago White Sox in Game 4 of […]