In a seesaw battle that had all the makings of a fantastic finish, Hirokazu Ibata singled to center off reliever Mike Romano, scoring the runner from second to give Japan Series champion Chunichi a 6-5 lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning. Hitoki Iwase retired the side in the ninth for the save, ending a fantastic run by SK that saw them outscore its opponents 32-4 during the tournament.
The Korean team tied the game on a dramatic two-run home run by Lee Jin-young in the eighth inning. Bae Chung-kyung nearly broke the tie, launching a ball into the middle tier seats beyond the left-field bleachers at Tokyo Done, but the ball was clearly foul.
Chunichi joins the 2005 Lotte Marines and the 2006 Nippon Ham Fighters as Japanese winners of the Konami Cup.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Clean // Nov 12, 2007 at 9:44 am
Seems like your enthusiasm dropped off when Chunichi won.
2 A.S. // Nov 12, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Ha. A little. Although I like Chunichi. But seeing a “lesser” level team would have been fun…Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, whatever. But the fact that SK won the first game is progress.
3 Brian H // Nov 14, 2007 at 11:11 pm
I never heard of this series before, thanks for the coverage. I think I heard that China decided to play here instead of the World Cup. Can you confirm that? thanks
4 A.S. // Nov 14, 2007 at 11:45 pm
That was the offical word, but it’s believed that China didn’t play in the World Cup for political reasons. Too bad, I would have been curious to see how the Chinese might have stacked up against the World Cup teams.
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