At lunchtime, the player restaurant in Yahoo Dome was lively and bustling.
The players from SoftBank First Team sat around the tables in small groups, chatting about the various recent events in life while eating, with not a hint of tension for the upcoming big game.
Such behavior was completely understandable: after all, if your team was currently leading your opponent 3-0 in the Japan Series, just one step away from winning the championship, you probably wouldn't be feeling any nerves either—this was precisely the situation for the SoftBank players now.
After Lin Guanglai's magnificent performance with three home runs and 21 strikeouts destroyed the opponent, Hanshin Tigers' players obviously couldn't recover from the loss in the first game:
In the second game at Koshien, although Hanshin's starting pitcher Atsushi Nomi delivered a quality start with 7 innings, 6 strikeouts, and 2 earned runs, his teammates couldn't support him offensively.
