Furuta Hits Milestones as Swallows Take 1st

The Yakult Swallows have been the "hidden" first place team for about a month.  And it's been Furuta's bat that has helped them get there, with Furuta hitting his career 150th home run on Tuesday (7/10), to follow up with his 1,500th career hit on Wednesday, a home run against Giant ace Uehara.

The Giants have hit a 5 game skid.  After taking 2 games from Yakult last week, it was looking like they might escape from the curse of having the Swallows be the "hidden" first place team, which is wrecking havoc on the media trying to explain why the Giants are listed first despite the Swallows having a better record.  (NTV's owner (NTV is part of the Yomiuri media group) even went so far as to say that the system whereby the team with the best record is listed first should be done away with since it's so confusing.)

Well, worry no more.  The BayStars swept the Giants at Yokohama Stadium over the weekend, and Yakult bounced back to win 4 of their last 5 to reach the Giants' league leading 44 win mark.  Since they have the better winning percentage (by 4 1/2 games), Yakult is now listed by themselves on top of the Central League.

And they've beat the Giants at their own game, the long ball.

On Tuesday, Inaba, Furuta, and Petagine all homered in their come from behind victory, Petagine's 2nd home run, a 2-run shot in the top of the 9th, being the decider.  Furuta's home run in the 6th was his 9th of the year and 150th of his career.

Last night (Wednesday), After Manaka lead off the game fouling out to the catcher, then Miyamoto reached on an error by Etoh, Inaba, Petagine, and Furuta hit back to back to back home runs to give the Swallows a quick 4-0 lead.  Furuta's home run turned out to be his career 1,500th hit, making this a very memorable series for him.

Yakult's Iriki threw 6 innings to get revenge on his former team and pass his little brother and a few others to become the top game winner in the Central League.

An amazing stat, looking at the box score, is that 5 Giant pitchers combined to strike out 16 Swallows, yet lost the game 7-1.  I guess it was strike out or hit last night for the birds.

The Giants' offense consisted of a Takahashi solo home run in the bottom of the second.  They had 5 hits though 5 innings, but 2 double plays (one just before Takahashi's home run) pretty much took care of them.  Yakult pitchers didn't allow a single base on balls, so the remaining two Giants who hit were all that were stranded on base.

The Swallows are sending their Giant killing Ishii to the mound tonight to see if they can hold on to their new found lead.  Actually, though, Wakamatsu-kantoku joked that he kind of wanted to stay hidden a little longer.