Lions walk off in wild one
The Seibu Lions are fighting like they are kings of the Pacific League jungle.
Hiroyuki Nakajima powered the front-running Lions past the Nippon Ham Fighters with a walk-off sac fly to the warning track for a 6-5 win on Tuesday night at Seibu Dome.
The Lions stayed a game and a half in front of Softbank, which won, with a dramatic comeback from four runs down.
The Fighters put a four-spot on the board in the third, but Seibu rallied for five, capped by a Jose Fernandez RBI single, in the seventh to get even. Fernandez became the 11th foreign player -- the 260th overall -- to reach 1,000 hits.
Brian Sikorski (2-3) tossed a perfect ninth for the win.
BUFFALOES 5, MARINES 4
Chihiro Kaneko looked headed for his first loss in 11 decisions, but pinch-hitter So Taguchi’s two-run blast in the seventh gave Orix the lead and it hung on to top Lotte at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
Kaneko (15-7) fanned 11, while working around eight hits and a walk over eight innings to win his 11th straight decision.
Lotte’s Tsuyoshi Nishioka tied Leron Lee’s club mark for hits in a season by getting two to reach 175.
HAWKS 3, EAGLES 0
Hitoshi Tamura made the best of his first start in three games, blasting a three-run homer, and five pitchers combined on a two-hitter as SoftBank blanked visiting Rakuten.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
TIGERS 1, DRAGONS 0
Jason Standridge (10-2) worked 7.1 scoreless innings, and closer Kyuji Fujikawa got him out of trouble in the eighth and escaped his own jam in the ninth as host Hanshin blanked Chunichi.
The first-place Tigers went a season-high 16 games over .500 and stretched their lead over the Dragons to 1.5 games, snapping Chunichi’s six-game winning streak in the process.
Takashi Toritani’s sac fly in the fifth scored Matt Murton, who doubled, with the game’s only run.
GIANTS 6, BAYSTARS 4
Michihiro Ogasawara and Shigeyuki Furuki each had two hits -- including solo blasts -- and Tetsuya Matsumoto’s two-run single in the eight broke a 4-4 tie as Yomiuri won at Yokohama.
Ogasawara joined Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura as the only players in Nippon Pro Baseball history to have 10 seasons of at least 30 homers.
SWALLOWS 6, CARP 5
Yasushi Iihara’s solo shot leading off the ninth lifted fourth-place Yakult to a walk-off win over visiting Hiroshima.
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