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The story
In Central League play on August 20, the Hiroshima Carp scored a walk-off win over the Chunichi Dragons, closing out the series with a three-game sweep. The Dragons — undone in part by a wild pitch from Abreu — dropped their fourth straight game, and on 5channel their slump became a hot topic, with posters bandying about nicknames like “Zombie” and “Chunidora” (a mocking 5ch nickname for the Chunichi Dragons). The thread also saw plenty of debate over managerial decisions and roster strength.
Chunichi ０ １ ０ ０ ０ ０ ０ ０ ０ ｜1
Hiroshima ０ ０ ０ ０ １ ０ ０ ０ １Ｘ ｜2
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Source: nikkansports.com / original article here
What people said
Well, to be fair, the 'gray' (under suspicion) players have been pulled off the first team now…
At this point a walk-off balk is about the only losing pattern they've got left
Didn't they pull that during the Tatsu era too? (nickname for former Chunichi manager Kazuyoshi Tatsunami)
Well, they've dropped 3 straight to the one team they absolutely couldn't afford to lose to.
→ 'Dinosaur Awakening! Our real fight starts here!!!'
And after that
→ ●◯●●●◯●●●● (● = loss, ◯ = win) 2 wins, 8 losses
What is that, an express train that switches to local halfway through? (a pun on 'kukan kaisoku,' a train service that's fast for only part of its route)
Feels exactly like watching one of those bait-and-switch mobile game ads (where the ad footage looks nothing like the actual game)
With runners on first and third in a walk-off situation, the runner can advance to second for free without risking a force-out, and a delayed steal is also in play → hence pinch-runner Omori.
Ideally Sasaki drives it in after the steal succeeds, but if he's put on base (walk, hit-by-pitch, or a declared intentional walk) to load the bases, then pinch-hit Akiyama.
With Akiyama up, the opposing pitcher's already rattled, so he might draw a walk too.
That's probably the thinking in the Carp dugout.
Only a zombie loses 3 straight to a zombie
Abreu's Dominican too, though.
Just aim for 3rd place with what's left of the season.
Just to clarify, I was talking about the Carp there.
Dragons, do your best starting next season!
Northeast has traditionally been considered the 'kimon' (鬼門, the 'demon's gate' — an inauspicious direction in old Japanese geomancy) in Japan.
Doesn't that direction just feel kind of gloomy somehow?
Chunichi had their golden era — the best results in franchise history — back in the 2000s, though.
For Hiroshima it's the players who are the zombies.
For Chunichi, it's the manager who's the zombie.
Inoue's results are bad enough that he should've been fired ages ago, and yet he just keeps shambling on as manager like the undead.
Nope.
A rotting corpse.
Background and Key Points
The Chunichi Dragons, based in Nagoya, are one of NPB’s most storied Central League clubs, with a 2007 Japan Series title and a stretch of near-annual playoff runs under manager Hiromitsu Ochiai in the 2000s — the “golden era” a poster cites in #123. That success has since evaporated into a run of last-place finishes, and the team enters 2025 under new manager Kazuki Inoue, the “Inoue” posters want fired in #151. Earlier this season Chunichi reeled off five straight wins that got dubbed “Dinosaur Awakening” (a pun on Dragons/dinosaur), only to go 2-8 immediately after — the collapse #37 is mocking. The “kimon” jab in #117 refers to a real Japanese geomantic belief that the northeast is an inauspicious direction; Nagoya Dome sits in Ozone, northeast of the city center, which posters half-jokingly blame for the team’s misfortune.
The thread doesn’t really split over whether Chunichi is bad — everyone agrees they are. The one real disagreement is tactical: #61 questions Hiroshima’s decision to burn pinch-runner Omori for Montero rather than save him, and #80 walks through the actual bunt/steal/force-out logic that justified it, effectively settling the point within the thread.
What’s easy to miss is that “zombie” here is used two ways that don’t fully cohere: Hiroshima being “zombie-mode” (#6, #12) describes a team winning despite injuries and roster gaps, not weakness — while #14’s mention of “gray” players pulled from the first team gestures at unnamed disciplinary or investigation-related absences that the thread never explains, leaving foreign readers without the context needed to know who or why.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “【Baseball】Central League C 2x-1 D [8/20] — Carp win it on a walk-off, sweep the series 3-0; Dragons’ Abreu throws a wild pitch, team drops 4th straight in the sweep.”
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