Out of the doghouse and in the spotlight ...

Ihara on the fast track to redemption

Yasushi Ihara had a recent base-running gaffe that put him in the doghouse. He was humble but living it up in the penthouse after hitting a two-run, eighth-inning home run on Saturday to help the Yakult Swallows top the Hanshin Tigers 4-2.
Ihara, who doubled in the tying run in the fifth inning, cracked his fourth longball off Ken Nishimura (4-1) to give the Swallows a 3-2 lead, and newcomer Josh Whitesell slugged his first homer in his debut in a win at Jingu Stadium.
The Swallows promoted the game in hopes of drawing a large crowd to make the world’s biggest toast. Of the 28,503 on hand, 27,126 were confirmed in the toast to set the record.
Ihara set fifth-place Yakult’s record one game in the right direction in the Central League.
After Hiroyasu Tanaka singed, he sent a fly toward right-center field that took off and carried over the wall.
The Swallows evened the three-game weekend series, which wraps up on Sunday.
Masanori Ishikawa was sharp over his 6.1 innings, but left after walking a man in the seventh. Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi, a one-time promising hurler turned reliever, allowed singles to the first two batters he faced to load the bases.
He fanned pinch-hitter Tomoaki Kanemoto, but held onto a fastball too long against pinch-hitter Shinjiro Hiyama for a wild pitch that sent home the go-ahead run for a 2-1 Hanshin lead.
Ihara erased that and made fans forget about his failure to touch up and score on a flyball in a June 20 game at Hiroshima, by blasting the Swallows into the lead.

DRAGONS 1, CARP 0
Kenichi Nakata (2-2) scattered four hits and three walks over 7.2 innings to beat Giancarlo Alvarado (1-4) in a pitching duel at Nagoya Dome.
The Dragons pushed home a run in the first, and escaped a two-on, none-out jam in the ninth to preserve the win.

GIANTS 11, BAYSTARS 2
Shinnosuke Abe homered twice -- giving him the CL lead with 24 -- and drove in four, and Edgar Gonzalez hit a three-run shot as two five-run innings helped lift front-running Yomiuri past visiting Yokohama and give skipper Tatsunori Hara his 517th win, fourth most in club history.

PACIFIC LEAGUE

FIGHTERS 7, MARINES 2
Yu Darvish (7-4) stopped Bill Murphy’s winning streak to start the season at six games, working seven innings of one-run ball to beat Lotte at Sapporo Dome.
Murphy (6-1) was trying to top Leo Kiely’s franchise record for foreign pitchers. Kiely went 6-0 in 1953 for the team when it was known as the Mainichi Orions.

HAWKS 2, EAGLES 1
Tsuyoshi Wada (10-4) became the PL’s second10-game winner with seven strong innings, and three relievers finished up with a perfect inning each at SoftBank edged Rakuten at the Kleenex Box.
Jose Ortiz and Hiroshi Shibahara each had RBIs in a two-run second inning in support of Wada.

BUFFALOES 7, LIONS 5
Takahiro “T.O.” Okada had three hits, including his 15th homer, and four RBIs, and Alex Cabrera went 2-for-4 as visiting Orix topped front-running Seibu.