Leaving the flock …

Takada leaves the lowly Swallows

The Rakuten Eagles knocked Yakult Swallows skipper Shigeru Takada right out of his perch with a 3-2 interleague win on Wednesday at Jingu.
Actually, the 64-year-old Takada, who took over the team in 2008, hadn’t won much of anything this season. The last-place Swallows are 19 games under .500 and have lost nine straight.
“I was going to see how we did in interleague play, and then assess things,” Takada said. “But the way we’ve been playing, I couldn’t continue this way,” Takada said about 30 minutes after the game.
“I’m going to hang up the uniform,” said the skipper, who had a three-year contract and led the Swallows to their first playoff spot last season.
Head coach Junji Ogawa will take over as interim manager.
Veterans took the spotlight for the Eagles with longballs from Norihiro Nakamura and Takeshi Yamasaki.
Nakamura got the Eagles on the board in the fourth with a solo blast, and Yamasaki’s bases-empty shot in the sixth proved to be the difference for the Pacific League’s fifth-place team.
Yamasaki’s longball was his Japan-leading seventh this year in interleague play.
The Eagles got six scoreless frames of relief from four hurlers, with Takashi Kawai (1-0) earing his first win since June 18, 2006 by tossing two innings.

HAWKS 10, GIANTS 2
Jose Ortiz and Nobuhiko Matsunaka each had RBI hits in a five-run fifth inning that lifted SoftBank past Yomiuri at Tokyo Dome.
The rally sent Dicky Gonzalez (3-6) to his third straight loss.

MARINES 9, CARP 1
Tadahito Iguchi slugged a pair of homers, and Lotte used a 14-hit attack to punish Hiroshima at the Zoom.
Bill Murphy (3-0) struck out 11 and allowed three hits while fanning three over seven shutout innings.

BUFFALOES 8, BAYSTARS 1
Takahiro T.O. Okada had three hits and two RBIs, and So Taguchi hit his first pinch-hit homer since Aug. 25, 1998, as Orix won going away at Yokohama.
Yokohama starter Tomokazu Oka (1-1) suffered his first loss in Japan since Aug. 8, 1996.

LIONS 3, TIGERS 1
Kazuhisa Ishii (6-2) scattered five his and a walk over six innings for his second straight win, and Dee Brown’s RBI hit in the sixth was the difference as PL-leading Seibu won at Koshien.

The Dragons and Fighters were rained out in Toyama.