< Previous Next >
Date: September 15, 2003
When you go 17 straight seasons without even contending for the pennant, seasons like this seem surreal. These Tigers won at least 15 games in each of the first four months of the season, and became the fastest team ever to reach 70 wins in a season. Still, manager Senichi Hoshino refused to relent, because he feared the possibility of an historic collapse.
On this day, the team’s magic number was 2. Playing a day game against the Hiroshima Carp, it would need this win plus a Yakult Swallows loss in the evening to officially clinch the pennant. On the mound for the Tigers was Hideki Irabu. He threw well through 7 innings, giving up just two runs. Unfortunately, the team was down a run when he left the game.
In the bottom of the 8th, Atsushi Kataoka, who had come to the Tigers as a free agent from the Nippon Ham Fighters in 2002 but was a disappointment to this point, slugged a solo home run to tie the game at 2.
It would come down to the bottom of the ninth. With one out and the bases empty, Atsushi Fujimoto laced a single into center, and Kataoka advanced him to third on a single through the right side of the infield. Now the Carp were against the ropes. They could hope to get a double play out of Yoshinori Okihara, or they could walk him and leave themselves a chance to get a force out at home. They chose the latter, which meant the diminutive, crafty, speedy Norihiro Akahoshi would get a chance to be the hero. Hoshino gave him some words of advice in the on deck circle, and then he drove the first pitch he saw over the right fielder’s head, giving the team the win.
Now all that was left was to see if the BayStars would pull them a solid and defeat the Swallows out east. The players waited in the dugout. The fans waited in the stands. Koshien was ready to erupt. And a couple of hours after Akahoshi helped bring their magic number down to one, the players sprinted out to the field in jubilation, and the real party began. At long last, the Central League pennant was coming back to Nishinomiya.
< Previous Next >