Senior Day - June 30, 2013

It was Senior Day at Yokohama Stadium as 39 year old Daisuke Miura (a week after facing 19 year old Shintaro Fujinami) took on 47 year old Masahiro Yamamoto on the mound. At bat it was 39 year old Norihiro Nakamura stealing the show.

Actually, let's start with Nori. He managed to hit his 400th career home run, a solo shot in the 2nd inning to start off the scoring. Nakamura is the 18th player in NPB history to reach the milestone, doing so at the slowest pace in history (2,195 games).

Then in the 9th inning, with the score tied at 2-2, two outs, and runners at the corners, Nakamura grounded the ball through the left side of the infield, hitting his career 16th sayonara hit surpassing Sadaharu Oh's 15 to take sole position of 3rd place in the category.

Oh, and speaking of surpassing Oh, Motonobu Tanishige came into the game as a pinch hitter in the 7th inning, staying in to work behind the plate, making his his 2,832nd game of his career, one more and counting over Oh to place Tanishige by himself in second place in games played.

But the main headline was the combined 87 and 4 months in age of the two pitchers, Miura and Masa. Miura threw 130 pitches for his second complete game of the season, winning his 6th game. He did a good job of scattering 9 hits by the Dragons over the 9 innings, only retiring the side in order in the 2nd and 8th. The two innings he allowed two hits in were the 4th and 5th, both of which led to single runs.

Masa was a little more impressive, although he had a bit shorter of an outing. Yamamoto allowed just 3 hits over 6 innings, retiring the BayStars in order 4 times (once thanks to a double play). He just gave up the one long ball as the only run allowed.

It was the fourth Dragon pitcher of the afternoon, Kenichi Nakata, who gave up the game tying home run to Hitoshi Tamura in the 8th inning. Yoshiya Okada got tagged with the loss, allowing Tekehiro Ishikawa to single to start the 9th inning and eventually come around on Nori's sayonara single against Yuta Mutoh.

Salvaging the last of the three game home stand 3-2, Yokohama remains in 5th place, just half a game behind the 4th place Carp and one game behind the 3rd place Dragons. The third Climax Series spot is still there for the taking.