Vs.

October 25, 2020: Toyama — Three games to go down in history. Three games to linger over. Three games to raise glasses to. The storyline was deep and harsh. Lupin’s baseball team was playing in Niihama-shi’s home ballpark, and had just lost a devastating 1-run ballgame to fall behind 3-1 in the last Neo-Tokyo Cup. A pallor hung over the club who had entered the series feeling like the team of destiny. But the Ghosts from Niihama-shi had apparently not gotten the script, and so Lupin fans felt their destiny slipping away like so much oil through their fingers.

It had been a long season punctuated by a brash prediction from their front office, and accentuated by a performance for the ages.It was a season marred by injury, a season where the team had needed everyone to stand up and be the players they were. And stand up they did, in big ways and in small. Yet, here they were in the 9th inning of game five, behind 6-2 and looking for the world as if their goose was cooked.

But we know the story of that inning. We know the stream of hits that came from their bats, the home run hit by Okakura Ishikawa, the youngest of the club’s starters. We know of the astounding 14 runs the ball club scored that inning, and the way that number seemed to buoy the club as it walked off the field knowing it was going back home, and knowing that it would send ace Shinobu Takeuchi to the hill in game six. It felt once again that this might be the team of destiny it thought it had been. It felt like baseball magic could occur.

Indeed, Takeuchi took the ball for game six in front of a sold out crowd at the Castle, and proceeded to put on a record-setting performance in striking out a dozen Ghosts. Even that performance was not enough, however. Shortly after he left the game, the stalwart Ghosts scored to bring themselves to a 2-2 tie in game six of the last Neo-Tokyo Cup. There would be extra innings in this game, and the top of the 10th would prove devastating to the Cliff Hanger faithful as super star Sadatake Sato left the game after a defensive slide the caused him back issues. But all was not lost, and after aging reliever Pepe Rico shut the Ghosts down,oft-maligned catcher Shigekazu Munakata launched a bullet into the right-centerfield bleachers that sent the Neo-Tokyo Cup into a miraculous game seven.

It should be noted that the relations between the teams were growing tense now, also.  The series had begun with Lupin star Hirotsugu Tenno being hit by two pitches in game one.  Game six had seen things escalate, ad Takeuchi had Cheoi-Chung O, the Ghosts starting centerfielder. breaking his finger and sidelining him for the rest of the season. Lupin’s replacement Kikaku Ono was then hit in the ninth inning, causing conversation among benches.

After Munakata homered, though, and after the fans had finally left the stadium, the club announced that Sato’s services were not available for game seven.  They also confirmed that yes, Akira Watanabe would return to the mound to pitch the last game in LRS history. To complete one of the more interesting trivia questions around Japanese baseball, he would face the Ghosts’ Juan Quezada.

The crowd that saw this game seven was only 40,000 big but could have been 80,000 if the Castle had that many seats, could have been 100,000. Could have been a million. This was the end of the LRS, the last game of the last dance. The Cliff Hangers were raging forward from a 3-1 deficit, and had a man on the mound that hadn’t thrown a pitch since an elbow injury in August, but a man who had started this glorious season out by throwing a no-hitter on April 7th. The Ghosts were the best of the SSG, a proud franchise that had beaten down the Eva Empire to make their way through a cloud of doubt from many around the LRS–Good team, many said, but they’re no Shin Seiki. Yet, here the Ghosts stood while the Evas were on the sideline. Both clubs were battered. Both clubs were missing parts.

The game started at 7:05 when Akira Watanabe started lead-off hitter Tuo-zhou Yang off with a ball.  It was 48 degrees in the castle. The wind was a gentle breeze out to left. Yang would fly out. The next two hitters would strike-out swinging.  The Ghosts would get a run in the second, on a walk, and a pair of singles before Watanabe bore down and struck out the next three hitters–all swinging.

That’s Watanbe, you know? The swinging K.

The bottom of Lupin’s order had Watanabe’s back, though, as singles by infielders Tsunesabaru Sugimoto and Kazuma Yamada each plated runs. Lupin led 2-1 after two innings. And when injury replacement Kevin Arnold drilled a 400 foot homer the next inning, the fans were ready to be put in a looney bin. The Cliff Hangers led 3-1 in game seven.

Watanabe lasted into the sixth inning before being replaced by Motonobu Hirano. He had struck out 11 Ghosts by that time, and the score remained 3-1. The fans clearly wanted him to finish the game off, but he had crossed the 100 pitch barrier, and had just given a walk and a single. And manager Ishikawa is paid to think with his brain rather than his heart. He made the right call. Hirano struck out the next hitter looking.

The Ghosts did not threaten in the 7th or in the 8th innings. But they are a proud team, and they were not done.  After a strikeout started the inning, Ghost hitter Nori Oike doubled down the left field line off closer Pepe Rico. He scored an out later when Roberto García hit the wall in right center with a double of his own.  Suddenly the crowd grew stern. The score stood 3-2, and the tying run was on second base. Rico was facing pinch hitter Yasuyuki Hashimoto with the game, the season, and the entirety of the league on the line.

A swinging strike.

A ball.

With each pitch the crowd was straining and the world seemed to stand on its ears and the gods themselves seemed to be holding their breath. Rico went into the windup, and …

Wild pitch!

Now García was at third base. Two outs, and the count at 2-1.

Hashimoto swung and missed at strike two. He fouled off the next pitch. And, then, mercifully, Rico threw him a slider that slid and Hashimoto swung and missed, and the pandemonium that had been sucked into the lungs of every man woman and child in the stands that night, and on the field, and in the press box, and presumably in front of every television in Japan was unleashed.

The Lupin Cliff Hangers had done it. They had fulfilled their pre-season promise. They had taken the last Neo-Tokyo Cup in history.  They danced on the field, they smiled and yelled and screamed.

And around them, if you squinted just right, you could see the ghosts of a thousand ballplayers dressed in their ancient finery, players from the neighborhoods, players from the high schools and from the battlefields and from the old Nippon League. In the stands, players and dignitaries from the other teams in the league applauded. In the stands, fans representing the four teams that had been contracted to begin this last of seasons cheered along, certainly with bittersweet afterthought. But you could feel it here, the celebration. You could feel the sense of movement, the sense of wonder that this was the last of all Japanese championships, and that now their baseball was going to move on into their rightful place with the rest of the world.  The Lupin Cliff Hangers were the last champions, yes, and that was something to be cheered.

But it had taken them all to come to this place.

It had taken them all to bring the world to their game.