Mauro Gómez then drove Uemoto in with an RBI double off of Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks' starting pitcher Jason Standridge.

Relief pitchers Ryota Igarashi and Dennis Sarfate followed up Takeda by pitching scoreless eighth and ninth innings, respectively.

The scoring began in the top of the first inning when the Hawks' Yuki Yanagita singled to center and reached second on a Kenta Imamiya sacrifice bunt.

Later, when Yuki Yoshimura drew a walk to start the bottom of the fourth inning, he was bunted to second and then scored from there on a wild pitch thrown by Shintaro Fujinami.

The only scoring for the Tigers occurred in the ninth inning when Toritani drove in a run on an RBI single off of reliever Sarfate.

With tiring Hanshin starter Randy Messenger still in the game, runners were on 1st and 3rd with two out and SoftBank 3rd baseman Nobuhiro Matsuda at the plate.

In the top of the 9th, SoftBank closer Sarfate loaded the bases with 1 out and Hanshin shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka at-bat.