The Hanshin Tigers, a professional baseball team from Japan’s Kansai region, have won the Central League for the first time in 18 years.Hanshin defeated the Yomiuri Giants 4-3 in a home game on 14 April at Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.Hanshin broke open a 0-0 tie with a three-run sixth inning, combining Yusuke Oyama’s sacrifice fly with Teruaki Sato’s mid-month two-run homer.Trailing 3-1 in the seventh, they scored a run thanks to an error by Yomiuri to cut the Yomiuri deficit to one run and secure the top spot in the standings.With the win, Hanshin, which erased its magic number one, has 80 wins, four draws and 44 losses for the season, regardless of the remaining games, and has regained the top spot in the Central League for the first time in 18 years since 2005.This year, as well as 18 years ago, the winning manager is veteran Akinobu Okada, 65.Okada first managed Hanshin from 2004-2008 and took the team to the top of the league as soon as he donned the Tiger jersey again this year.Hanshin will go straight to the final stage of the climactic series, where the winner of the first stage, which pits the league’s second- and third-placed teams, will play for a spot in the Nippon Series.In Nippon Professional Baseball, which only established its current postseason system in 2007, the team that finishes first in the league (called the championship) is still ranked higher than the postseason winner.Hanshin clinched the league title against Yomiuri, the national team and representative of the Kanto region.Hanshin won the Central League title for the fifth time in 2005, and a win in the climactic series would make it a sixth.As of the 13th, Hanshin is also the most popular club in terms of attendance, with a season total of 2,671,114 and an average of 48,892 per game, the highest among the 12 teams in Japan’s two major leagues.Hanshin’s return to the top of the table is expected to send Osaka, the capital of the Kansai region and Japan’s second largest city, into a frenzy.Eighteen years ago, crowds celebrating Hanshin’s win converged on Osaka’s Namba district and jumped en masse into the Dotonbori River, which runs through the city, causing an accident.Fearing that Hanshin’s victory will once again cause accidents on the overcrowded Dotonbori, Japanese police have sent a notice to foreign diplomatic missions, including the Korean Consulate General in Osaka, asking 바카라사이트 tourists to refrain from visiting Dotonbori from 12-17 December.
