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The story
On September 17, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks beat Orix 7-1 to clinch their third straight Pacific League pennant. For Orix, it was a bitter way to see the title decided — swept 3-0 in the head-to-head series against the champions. On 5ch threads, users noted that the on-field celebration felt more subdued than in past years, and discussion turned to manager Hiroki Kokubo pulling off three consecutive league titles starting from his very first year in charge. Posters also recalled past managers who achieved a three-peat starting from year one, name-checking Seibu’s Watari Mori and Orix’s Hiroshi Nakajima, sparking some nostalgic trips through baseball history.
SoftBank 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 3｜7
Orix 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0｜1
[Battery]
Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
The team's report form:
https://www.softbankhawks.co.jp/company/note_inquiry.html
Yeah, I'm with this one lol
Not much energy to it
Even the guys running in from the bench to mob the mound
were taking their time about it
It's been obvious for a while now that it was just a matter of when they'd clinch, so the title itself wasn't a surprise
Plus this year there's a good chance they face Yokohama again, so nobody's thrilled about drawing the 3rd-place team as a "safe" matchup
Hanshin's got that posting-system issue with their core players hanging over them
Well, Hanshin won't let it go easily, but the players will probably fight it out to the end too
Back when Sugiura was doing commentary,
if an announcer said something belittling about the opposing team
he'd call them out for it right there on air
A true gentleman
Thanks. So he'd come all the way to Osaka, huh
Sounds like Chairman Oh wasn't there
They weren't exactly losing badly to the Hawks all year, but getting swept 3-0 in the deciding series stings
Yesterday's game really did them in though
Thanks to the umps too!!!!!!!!
But it's really only Fukuoka that's hyped about this, right?
If it's boring, it's boring
Nah, there's zero excitement at all
I've been a Hawks fan since the 80s myself
and this year just feels off
I don't think the Giants' Kawakami won it in his first year either, did he
Mori did that too, didn't he
Seibu's Mori and Orix's Nakajima both did it
Though Nakajima became acting manager partway through the 2020 season, so technically his three-peat started from his second year
They can't even celebrate for a single moment, can they
These days there's basically no perk at all
Around here it's unrelated local companies that run the sales now, so other regions don't get anything
Back in the Daiei days there were sales nationwide — and the funniest part was that during the Japan Series they lost to Hanshin in, the store with the country's top championship-sale revenue was the one right next to Koshien Stadium, Hanshin's own home turf
Background and talking points
SoftBank’s pennant win on this day appears to have been all but decided well in advance in the Pacific League standings, which seems to be behind the repeated comments about the celebration feeling “muted” — it had the air of a game played out after the race was already settled. There is also precedent for a manager winning three straight league titles starting from his first year in charge: Seibu’s Watari Mori and Orix’s Hiroshi Nakajima (though some point out Nakajima’s run effectively started from his second year), and Kokubo’s three-peat is being discussed as the latest addition to that list. The thread also included comments pointing to gaps in team payroll and passing references to sign-stealing suspicions, though none of these came with concrete evidence, and this article does not treat them as established fact. On the muted celebrations, posters also noted a temperature difference between Fukuoka and other regions in how the title win was received — a good illustration of how differently pennant-clinching news lands depending on where you’re watching from.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku+) thread “[Baseball] Pacific League B 1-7 H [9/17] Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks clinch the pennant — three-peat achieved! Orix swept 3-0.”
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