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The story
On September 17, 2026, SoftBank’s Pacific League pennant became a real possibility, and 5ch’s live-commentary thread lit up. The game was against Orix at Kyocera Dome Osaka — a dead-rubber matchup for the standings, but reports described SoftBank fans packing not just the visitors’ section but the infield seats as well. In the thread, some lamented that a home-turf championship celebration in Fukuoka wouldn’t happen, while others praised the momentum from taking the series against Seibu and sweeping Nippon-Ham. Opinions were split, though, on whether Seibu’s brief run at closing the gap to 5 games really counted as a ‘furious comeback.’
What people said
Top of the 6th: Buffaloes 1 – 3 Hawks
So it's either Osaka or Sendai
Guess a hometown victory toss really wasn't happening after all
Forget the visitors' section, there's a ton of Hawks fans even in the infield seats
Kyocera Dome's always had a lot of Hawks fans
Diehards going back to the team's old Nankai days (before it moved to Fukuoka and became SoftBank)
If you can get the day off you'd go even from Kyushu
It's basically like going from Tokyo to Osaka
Fukuoka to Osaka is under an hour by plane, that's basically next door
Even by shinkansen it's only about 3 hours
They don't really need to get serious about it until the final series
Better to just let it happen naturally
One loss to Seibu and maybe one more, that's about it
They're basically undefeated
Love this Shinjo-Kokubo alliance thing (nickname combining the Fighters' and Hawks' managers, Shinjo and Kokubo)
They close it out in one shot
Not long ago Hanshin and SoftBank had about the same magic number
At one point Seibu closed the gap on SoftBank to just 5 games
But they pulled away all at once at the end
And this is against Seibu, Nippon-Ham, and Lotte all playing at their best too
Way too strong
Swept the red-hot Fighters lol
The magic number actually went up on 8/6, so it's been over a month already
At this rate they're guaranteed to steamroll everyone again next year too
They might rack up something like 110 wins
If it ends as-is, that's an 11-game lead over 2nd place
Do they even need Yamamoto?
If you're asking whether they need him or not, of course they do
Well, the winning percentages were totally different though
Probably a match for Hanshin and the Giants too
Hanshin is 0-9 against the Pacific League's top three teams
Well, they've got the cushion so it's fine for fine-tuning things
It's not exactly a situation that calls for intensity
Background and Talking Points
In Japanese pro baseball pennant races, once a dominant team pulls away, the movement of its ‘magic number’ tends to become a hot topic. In the thread, opinions split — turning into a bit of a sarcastic back-and-forth — over whether Seibu’s brief push to close the gap on SoftBank to 5 games really deserved to be called a ‘furious comeback.’ Also, SoftBank’s magic number first appeared on August 6, more than a month before the September 17 championship reports, so the impression that they ‘blew through it in a flash’ isn’t quite accurate. Another topic was the large number of SoftBank fans who traveled from their home base in Fukuoka to the game venue at Kyocera Dome (Osaka) — this comes down to Fukuoka and Osaka being close by domestic-travel standards, under an hour by plane or about three hours by shinkansen. Note that exchanges about Hanshin’s interleague record against top Pacific League teams included posts making sweeping generalizations about specific teams and personal insults, so those replies have been excluded from this article.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] SoftBank’s championship looks set to be decided today.”
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