Little Box of horror ... no more ...

Marines stop 16-game skid at The Kleenex Box

The Chiba Lotte Marines had lost every which way but loose over 16 games at Kleenex Stadium Miyagi. They threw just about everything they had at the Rakuten Eagles for 12 innings on Sunday, and finally snapped the skid with a 9-7 victory.
Toshiaki Imae went 5-for-7 with a tiebreaking double in the 12th as the Marines won the Kleenex Box for the first time since July 9 last year.
The victory took the Marines five hours, three minutes, seven pitchers and 19 hits.
Tsuyoshi Nishioka upped his average to .341 with four hits, including two homers, and added four RBIs.
The Eagles also used seven pitchers, and Ryo Hijirizawa led them with four hits, including homer No. 5, and two RBIs.

HAWKS 5, LIONS 4
Seibu continued it stumble before the finish line, helped along by Hitoshi Tamura’s two-run, go-ahead single in the sixth as host SoftBank swept the Lions.
Masahiko Morifuku (3-1) earned the win with 2.1 innings of relief as second-place SoftBank kept Seibu from reducing its magic number from four, and moved a half-game back of them in the standings.

FIGHTERS 3, BUFFALOES 2
Eiichi Koyano drove in his 108th run and Atsunori Inaba also had an RBI in a three-run third that propelled Nippon Ham past visiting Orix.
The win helped the Fighters remain in a third-place tie with the Marines.

CENTRAL LEAGUE
SWALLOWS 4, DRAGONS 3
Fourth-place Yakult kept up its mastery of visiting Chunichi, edging the Dragons after getting the lead on Hiroyasu Tanaka’s fifth-inning RBI single.
Yakult is 8-13-1 vs. first-place Chunichi.

TIGERS 4, GIANTS 2
Lin Wei-zhu’s two-run homer in the fourth inning put host Hanshin on top, and Kenji Jojima added a solo blast for insurance in the eighth in a win over third-place Yomiuri at Koshien Stadium.
The runs were enough to give 19-year-old rookie Takumi Akiyama, who worked around seven hits and two walks over six innings, his fourth win in five decisions.

CARP 9, BAYSTARS 1
Ughhhh……..
Kenta Kurihara had two bombs, his 11th and 12th, and Eishin Soyogi blasted his 12th as Hiroshima won its fifth straight at Yokohama.
Ughhhhhh……..