Tough to Swallow ...

Three days ago club officials gave Yakult Swallows skipper Shigeru Takada a vote of confidence. The Lotte Marines gave his team a beating.

The Marines jolted Yakult’s confidence, slapping the Swallows around in a 20-4 win on Saturday at Chiba Marine Stadium and sending the Swallows to their eighth straight loss. They are 18 games under .500 for the first time in three seasons.
Tsuyoshi Nishioka led Lotte’s onslaught against the Central League’s last place team, going 5-for-5 with three RBIs. Toshiaki Imae went 4-for-5 and just missed hitting for the cycle when his seventh-inning drive hit high off the fence and bounced onto the field for his second double.
The Marines pounded out 22 hits, and the 20 runs were the most the Swallows have allowed since Yokohama put up the same number July, 1999.
Jamie D’Antona had three hits, including a two-run homer for Yakult.
Lefty Yuji Yoshimi (1-0), who was purchased from the Yokohama BayStars this season, earned his first Pacific League win in his debut with the Marines.

LIONS 8, DRAGONS 0
Japan ERA leader Kazuyuki Hoashi (6-2) blanked Chunichi over 7.2 innings, scattering five hits and three walks while fanning a season-high nine to win at Seibu Dome.
Dee Brown slugged a pair of homers, a three-run shot in the third and a solo blast in the eighth as Seibu cruised.

GIANTS 5, EAGLES 3
Hisayoshi Chono had his first two-homer game, his second breaking a 3-3 tie in the ninth inning, as Yomiuri took down Rakuten at the Kleenex Box.
Chono smacked a solo shot in the second and took Tsuyoshi Kawagishi deep with one on in the top of the ninth for the game-winner.

FIGHTERS 3, BAYSTARS 1
Tomohiro Nioka and Eiichi Koyano each drove in sixth-inning runs to break a 1-1 tie, and Masaru Takeda (3-4) held Yokohama to a run over eight innings as Nippon Ham won at Sapporo Dome.
The Fighters won for the ninth time in 13 games since shortstop Makoto Kaneko returned from a ribcage injury.

BUFFALOES 5, TIGERS 3
Aarom Baldiris haunted his former team with a tie-breaking solo shot in the sixth that proved to be the difference as Orix topped Hanshin at Skymark Stadium in Kobe.

HAWKS 7, CARP 4
Jose Ortiz homered in a six-run third inning that propelled SoftBank past Hiroshima at Yahoo! Japan Dome.