Back to Koshien at last. With two teams still breathing down the Tigers’ necks, they needed a strong series against one of those teams, and the red-hot Yakult Swallows came to town looking to take first place from the suddenly weary-looking Hanshin Tigers. Let’s take a look at how the first professional baseball at Koshien…
August is usually a fair barometer for how the Hanshin Tigers’ season will develop. Typically the team gets one series at Koshien Stadium to start the month, and one at the end to finish it. The rest, they travel to nearly all Central League parks, playing a few interspersed “home” series at Kyocera Dome (home…
The tightly-packed Central League is starting to loosen up a little bit. Ten short days ago, just two games separated first from fifth, and no team was over the .500 mark. But collapses by the Chunichi Dragons and DeNA Baystars, along with the continued mediocre play of the Hiroshima Carp, have turned things (at least for this week) into…
It must have been getting lonely at the top. The Hanshin Tigers were the lone Central League team with a winning record heading into the last series of June, and they were riding a 7-game undefeated streak that stretched back to the middle of the month. Their best hitters were heating up, and their starters…
“Forget interleague play. Move on and play better,” they said. Despite the harsh words spoken by coaches, players and fans alike, the Tigers finished the mini-season with a 10-8 record, good for best among Central League teams, and putting them close enough to the top of the CL standings despite being 2 games over par…
The last time the Hanshin Tigers had been swept two times in one season at Koshien was 2001. On May 11, they already matched that futility. They also became the first Central League team to reach 20 losses for the first time since 2001. They also had the game following their Koshien sweep rained out…