Daisuke Matsuzaka tossed a one-hitter and struck out 11 over the distance Sunday as the Seibu Lions blanked the Lotte Marines 4-0 at Chiba Marine Stadium.
The only hit off Matsuzaka, who improved to 5-1, was a double by Takashi Tachikawa in the seventh inning. Matsuzaka leads the Pacific League with a sterling 1.19 earned run average.
In Osaka, Hirotoshi Kitagawa, Eiji Mizuguchi and Tuffy Rhodes all homered in the sixth inning off South Korean pitcher Koo Dae-sung to lead the Kintetsu Buffaloes to a 7-2 victory over the Orix BlueWave.
Hiroshi Narahara and Michihiro Ogasawara keyed a four-run second inning with back-to-back RBI singles as the Nippon Ham Fighters defeated the Daiei Hawks 5-1. Masaru Yoshizaki picked up the win after giving up one run over seven innings for the Fighters, who improved to 14-18.
In the Central League, Trey Moore, formerly of the Atlanta Braves, allowed just one run over six innings as the league-leading Hanshin Tigers trounced the Yokohama BayStars 12-1. Moore improved to a league-best 6-0.
Osamu Hamanaka went 3-for-4 and drove in six runs -- including two homers -- to lead the Hanshin attack.
At Tokyo Dome, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami drove in the tying run with a single that bounced off the glove of reliever Hideki Okajima, and Tadaharu Sakai laid down ae bunt in the eighthto drive in the winning run from third as the Chunichi Dragons edged the Yomiuri Giants 6-5.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier