Jim Allen Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter

  The Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, defending champs but underdogs just the same, came from two-runs down to take Game 1 of the Japan Series from the Yomiuri Giants 5-3 on Saturday night.
  Nobuhiko Matsunaka tied the game at 3-3 in the seventh with a two-run shot off Giants starter and former teammate Kimiyasu Kudo.
  With the Hawks solid relief corps holding the fort as they have all season, Melvin Nieves clubbed a shot off the back wall of the Tokyo Dome to break the tie in the ninth.
  Matsunaka, who starred for Japan at the Sydney Olympics, had had a pair of tough at-bats before he came up in the seventh with Noriyoshi Omichi on first.
  "We had survived a lot of scrapes," Matsunaka said. "So I knew that our chance would present itself. This is the way we have won games all season, by coming up strong in the later innings."
  Nieves got ahead 3-0 in the count to Giants closer Hiromi Makihara before stunning the sell-out crowd of 43,848 by smoking a ball off the Giants' fireman that ricocheted off the billboard of a fire insurance company high over the right field stands.
  Nieves said he wasn't disappointed that he had to come off the bench for his heroics.
  "That his (manager Sadaharu Oh's) job to make that decision," Nieves said.
  "I was looking for my pitch and I was lucky to get ahead in the count.
  Right-hander Kenichi Wakatabe started for the Hawks and gave up three runs in four innings.
  The Pacific League and defending Series champs fell behind by two runs in the bottom of the first. The teams traded runs in the second before the game developed into a pitchers duel.
  Shuji Yoshida earned the win with two innings of solid relief for the Hawks, while Makihara got the loss.
  Rodney Pedraza pitched the ninth inning to record the save.
  The Giants, who lived and died by the long ball, with 203 home runs this season, didn't have to wait long to make a powerful impression on the Hawks when Hideki Matsui, the CL home run leader with 42 homers, planted a belt-high splitter from Wakatabe deep in the center-field stands with a runner on to give Yomiuri a 2-0 lead.
  "I only wanted to concentrate at the plate," Matsui said. "That's all I was thinking."
  Kudo lucked out in the first inning when Matsui snared a sinking liner in center field off the bat of leadoff hitter Hiroshi Shibahara, who hit the first pitch of the game.
  The play saved a run as Omichi blistered a pitch into the left field corner with a two-out double that would have scored Shibahara from first.
  Kenji Jojima cut the Giants' lead in half in the top of the second when he knocked a solo shot into the left field stands.
  The Giants didn't waste any time getting back on the board again in the second after Wakatabe drilled Akira Eto in the arm and Tomohiro Nioka singled under the glove of third baseman Hiroki Kokubo to put runners on first and second with none out.
  After a strikeout, Eto was forced at third on a failed sacrifice attempt. But Toshihisa Nishi saved the situation with his second double of the game. The Giants' leadoff hitter, who hit 30 doubles in the regular season, drove the ball to the wall in center as Nioka scored easily from second.
  After the Hawks creeped silently through their half of the third, Wakatabe finally managed to put a zero on the scoreboard as he struck Eto out swinging with a runner on second to end the inning.
  Wakatabe allowed three runs on six hits in four innings and struck out six while allowing just the walk to Nishi.
  Left-hander Masakazu Watanabe came in to baffle the Giants in the bottom of the fifth and after he left for a pinch hitter, right-hander Keizaburo Tanoue came on to pitch the sixth.
  Eto beat out a broken-bat chopper to third base and Nioka singled to right to put two on with none out.
  With two out and the runners on second and third, the Hawks intentionally walked Nishi again to bring up Shimizu, who again failed to deliver as his hardest hit ball of the night was snared at first for a ground out.
  Omichi hit a looper to right center to give the Hawks their first leadoff runner of the game in the seventh inning. After Kokubo made out on the next pitch, Matsunaka drilled a 1-2 pitch from Kudo into the right field seats to tie the game at three apiece.
  Matsunaka's blast sent Kudo home empty handed despite striking out eight and walking none in seven innings.
  

Jim Allen Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter

  The Pacific League champion Fukuoka Daiei Hawks blew out the Yomiuri Giants 8-3 Sunday night to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the Japan Series.
  The Hawks, who exploded for six runs in the fifth inning, are making their stoic manager, Sadaharu Oh, look like a genius. Before the game, Oh said that if his starting pitchers could hold the opposition to three runs, the Hawks would be in business.
  He may have been referring to Game 1, when starter Kenichi Wakatabe allowed three runs in four innings. But the same held true on Sunday, when right-hander Tomohiro Nagai was wild enough to give up three runs in three innings, but careful enough to keep Daiei within striking distance.
  "Nagai was tense at first," Oh said, "but we were able to play our game, exactly as we did yesterday and the way we have all season.
  "It's not a beautiful way to win, but it's our way and I want to keep playing this way the rest of the Series."
  The defending Series champs rapped out 11 hits to come from behind for the second straight night in front of a capacity crowd of 43,850 at Tokyo Dome and head home for Game 3 tonight at Fukuoka Dome.
  Left-hander Darrell May started for the Central League pennant winners and was spotted a three-run lead. May was in complete command until the Hawks' fifth-inning outburst, when they batted around to take a 6-3 lead.
  The Giants scored first with two in the second on a double play ground ball and a single after starting pitcher Nagai had loaded the bases with no outs.
  Hideki Matsui and Kazuhiro Kiyohara, who scored the Giants' first two runs, hit back-to-back doubles to add another run in the third.
  Kenji Joima added to the Giants' misery with a two-run homer, his second of the Series, in the seventh. Jojima also doubled and had four RBIs in the game after the Hawks were a run ahead.
  When told about his RBI total, Jojima said that he was lucky.
  "Even though we scored six runs, I wanted to get some more," Jojima said of his RBIs. "So any pitch I could reach, I was going to swing at. The Giants have a powerful lineup so any lead you have is a little anxious."
  May, who allowed four runs in 4-1/3 innings on seven hits, took the loss. He struck out five and walked none.
  Masakazu Watanabe got the win in relief for the Hawks, whose relievers logged another six scoreless innings to add to the five zeros they notched on Saturday.
  "I really had a good game yesterday, and today, too," the bespectacled lefty said. "I was a little nervous, but I knew that even if I failed, there are other good pitchers behind me."
  After Game 1's home run derby, Game 2 started out much more sedately. Yusuke Torigoe chopped a ball past May into center field for a single and stole second but died there to end the Hawks' half of the first.
  The Giants went three and out in the bottom of the first and the Hawks followed suit in the top of the second as May found his rhythm and fanned two.
  Nagai hit Matsui with a pitch to leadoff the bottom of the third. The Daiei pitcher, who has struggled with his control throughout his career, then walked Kiyohara and Akira Eto to load the bases.
  Matsui scored on a double-play ground ball and Shinichi Murata smashed a ball back through the box into center to plate Kiyohara.
  Nagai got one out in the bottom of the third before surrendering three straight line drives. The first, off the bat of Yoshinobu Takahashi, was hit on a line to the right fielder, Koji Akiyama, but then Nagai's luck deserted him.
  Matsui whizzed one past the ear of Nobuhiko Matsunaka at first base that bounced to the wall for a double. Two pitches later, Kiyohara ripped a double to the gap in right-center that scored Matsui easily for the Giants' third run.
  Noriyoshi Omichi led off the Hawks' half of the fifth with a double to right, his third of the Series and fourth hit. But May kept him from going any further as he struck out cleanup hitter Hiroki Kokubo for the second time and won a tough nine-pitch battle with Matsunaka before getting Kenji Jojima to fly out on one pitch.
  Right-hander Keizaburo Tanoue came in to pitch the bottom of the fourth and gave up a sharp single but got out of the inning with the help of ground balls and sharp fielding by his middle infielders.
  The Hawks got their leadoff hitter on in the fifth for the third straight inning as Akiyama hit a bouncer that May fielded near the third-base line. Akiyama beat May's wild throw to first and hustled on to second.
  Tadahito Iguchi followed with his second hit of the game to put runners on the corners and then stole second before pinch hitter Takaya Hayashi struck out. Leadoff hitter Shibahara got his first hit of the Series as he lined a ball off the glove of second baseman Toshihisa Nishi that scored Akiyama and sent Iguchi to third.
  Torigoe then belted a double into the left-field corner to drive in Iguchi and drive May from the mound.
  But the speed at which the Hawks circled the bases just increased after Ryuji Kimura came in from the bullpen and gave up a single and a double on two pitches.
  Omichi greeted Kimura with a broken-bat single to left to tie the score at 3-3, and Kokubo doubled to put the Hawks in front by one.
  After reliever Kazuhiro Hiramatsu struck out Matsunaka, Jojima drove a ball deep to center that center fielder Matsui misjudged.
  Matsui went back on the ball and turned this way and that before sticking out his glove as the ball fell for a double that brought in Omichi and Kokubo.
  Koichi Misawa, the Giants fourth pitcher of the inning got Akiyama to pop up and put an end to the carnage.
  With a three-run lead in his pocket, Hawks' manager Sadaharu Oh brought in Watanabe, who retired the Giants in order in the fifth.
  After Matsunaka worked a two-out walk on eight pitches in the seventh, Jojima followed with a homer to left to make it an 8-3 game.
  Masumi Kuwata pitched two scoreless innings to finish up for the Giants, while Rodney Pedraza retired three straight hitters to log off the Giants in the ninth.
  

Ken Marantz Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter

  FUKUOKA -- Mentally, he is the type of pitcher you know can handle the pressure of a Japan Series that you have to win.
  Masaki Saito's physical condition is no longer a question mark.
  Saito allowed four hits and one run over 6-2/3 innings and Akira Eto hit a tie-breaking solo homer as the Yomiuri Giants evened the Japan Series with a 2-1 victory Thursday night over the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.
  Following an unprecedented two-day break, the Giants won for the second time in a row at Fukuoka Dome to tie the series at 2-2. The fifth game will be played here tonight at 6:30 p.m.
  The 35-year-old Saito, limited to five games this season because of a severe left calf injury, looked like the dominating pitcher of the 1990s who twice won 20 games.
  Before a crowd of 36,701, Saito struck out six and walked two in a sterling effort marred only by a first-inning solo homer by Melvin Nieves.
  "When I was told I was going to start Game 4, I thought at worst, we would be trailing 1-2 and that's just the situation it became," Saito said. "When I took the mound, I put all of that out of my mind."
  For Saito, a three-time Sawamura Award winner as Japan's top pitcher and 3-1 this season, the Japan Series has not been kind. He came into the game with a 1-3 career record, with his lone win coming in 1989 against the Kintetsu Buffaloes.
  "For that type of veteran pitcher to win (in the Japan Series) for the second time and first time in 11 years, you could see when he came into the dugout how happy he was," Giants manager Shigeo Nagashima said.
  "From the second inning, my curve and slider were hitting the outside parts of the plate," he said. "I wanted to go seven innings before passing the baton, but overall it was a good effort."
  It all would have been wasted had not Hideki Okajima bailed out Saito in the seventh inning and finish up the game with 2-1/3 perfect innings to notch a crucial save.
  Nagashima said prior to the game that a victory, while tying up the series, would give the Giants the feeling that they were leading because of the momentum they have gained. He couldn't hardly have asked for a more solid effort from his team, which did not create many scoring opportunities but gave away fewer themselves.
  Daiei's best chance to tie the game came in the seventh, but a controversial call and a clutch piece of relief work grounded the Hawks.
  Veteran Koji Akiyama, the MVP of the 1999 Japan Series, started things off by drilling a one-out single to left field. With Tadahito Iguchi at the plate, Akiyama took off for second and apparently beat a wide throw from catcher Shinichi Murata, but was called out.
  The 38-year-old all-star was furious over the call, and emphasized his anger with a few shoves of second base umpire Junichi Sato. Luckily, Japanese umpires are much more tolerant of such behavior than their American counterparts, who would have tossed him.
  That proved big when Iguchi then proceeded to lash a triple into the right-center field gap. That got both benches moving--Daiei manager Sadaharu Oh sent up Koichiro Yoshinaga to bat for Mitsuru Honma, only to have Nagashima bring in the left-hander Okajima.
  Not to be outdone, Oh pinch-hit for his pinch-hitter, bringing in the right-handed hitting Noriyoshi Omichi, the Hawks' leading hitter in the Series with a .455 average (5-for-11).
  But Nagashima would have the last laugh, as Okajima got Omichi to fly out to second base.
  The Giants started the game by producing a run in traditional Japanese fashion. Toshihisa Nishi drew a leadoff walk, was sacrificed to second by Takayuki Shimizu and scored on Kazuhiro Kiyohara's single to center. Neat, simple, effective, sort of the Japan baseball version of Coke Classic.
  What followed, however, was a rally that never really fizzed. Hideki Matsui blooped a single down the left field line, with Kiyohara stopping at second.
  Matsui and Kiyohara were only able to move up one base each when Domingo Martinez drilled a singled to left field, leaving the bases loaded for Yoshinobu Takahashi. But he grounded to second for an easy, inning-ending double play.
  Nieves, inserted into the third spot in the lineup to replace injured slugger Hiroki Kokubo, tied the score in the bottom of the first with a towering home run to right.
  It was Nieves' second homer of the series, following his tie-breaking blast in the ninth inning of Game 1.
  Saito started out strong, striking out the first two batters he faced, Hiroshi Shibahara and Arihito Muramatsu. But Nieves got hold of a low fastball and, when the ball finally plummeted from the rafters of the dome and plopped down in the right field bleachers, tied the score.
  It took only one pitch to put the Giants back on top, with Eto lashing starter Keizaburo Tanoue's first offering of the second inning, a fastball down the middle, into the left-center field stands.
  Eto, who was rumored to be the focus of a scandalous article to published Friday in a weekly gossip magazine and faces disciplinary action by the Giants, had been dropped from the starting lineup in Game 3 as part of Nagashima's shakeup of his slumping forces.
  "I just swung away," Eto said. "All I'm thinking about is staying focused without worrying about the result. It felt like I got my whole body into that hit."
  EXTRA INNINGS...It's not just the foreign players waking up early to watch the World Series. Giants reliever Takashi Kashiwada is greatly interested in following the fortunes of the New York Mets, with whom he played in 1997. Friends with John Franco and Edgar Alfonzo, he said before Thursday's game he shared their pain after they lost Game 4 to the Yankees. "Things are a bit dicey for them now," he said. "I hope they do well."
  --Call it paranoia or playing it safe, but the Giants suspected the Hawks of stealing their signs in Game 3--by watching TV--and went so far as to change them after the third inning as a precaution, a source close to the team said. Any relation between that and the fact that Daiei failed to score from that point on is pure conjecture. 

Ken Marantz Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter

  FUKUOKA -- The day after a veteran sparkled for the Yomiuri Giants, rookie Hisanori Takahashi turned in a glittering performance of his own.
  Takahashi became the first rookie to throw a shutout in his Japan Series debut, tossing a two-hitter to blank the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks 6-0 Friday night and give the Giants a 3-2 lead.
  Yoshinobu Takahashi homered and drove in three runs as the Giants completed a sweep of the three games at Fukuoka Dome. The Central League champs return to Tokyo needing just one win over the final two games to clinch their 19th Japan Series title and first since 1994.
  Akira Eto and Shinichi Murata also homered for the Giants, who dealt Daiei starter Kenichi Wakatabe--like Hisanori Takahashi a graduate of Komazawa University--the loss.
  "His pitching was so much better than during the regular season," Yomiuri manager Shigeo Nagashima said of Takahashi, who finished 9-6. "Our scoring runs early helped his pitching."
  Takahashi, the Giants' top draft choice out of Toshiba of the corporate league, began the season as a Rookie of the Year candidate, winning five of his first six decisions, but ended it fortunate to still be part of the rotation.
  He was the loser in his final three decisions, and his last win came on Aug. 8, a 9-0 blanking of the Yokohama BayStars at Tokyo Dome.
  But, in the wake of veteran Masaki Saito's victory the night before, he looked like an old pro. Takahashi struck out 12, walked none and did not allow a Hawks runner to reach third base in a brilliant 123-pitch effort with an assortment of sinkers, sliders and fastballs.
  He became the first rookie to win a game in the Japan Series since the Seibu Lions' Shinji Mori beat the Yakult Swallows in Game 2 of the 1997 Series. He is the fifth rookie to win in his first appearance and second as a starter.
  In a Series touted as a matchup of Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh, his former teammate and current Hawks manager, the game presented few choices for the skippers to make.
  "It was a total defeat," Oh said. "The three home runs they hit were big, especially Murata's. We didn't hit the ball well. (Takahashi) kept the ball low and was tough to hit."
  Still, Oh doesn't count out his team, the defending champions.
  "You can lose three games," he said. "You can't lose four."
  For the fifth game in a row, the Giants were the first to strike. And for a team that compiled nearly as many home runs (203) this season than doubles (208), it was not surprising that they did it with the long ball.
  After the Giants blew a scoring opportunity in the first inning, Yoshinobu Takahashi led off the second with his second home run of the Series, belting a forkball from Wakatabe into the right-center field seats.
  "I didn't do anything yesterday, so I really wanted to get a hit today," said Takahashi, who was 1-for-4, including hitting into a bases-loaded double play, in Game 4.
  Three innings later, Eto gave the Giants a 2-0 lead by cracking his second solo homer in two nights, depositing a first-pitch slider from Wakatabe into the left field stands.
  "I'm not sure the pitch would have been a strike," Eto said. "But the hit felt perfect. I was a bit low and I wasn't sure (it would go out), particularly in this big stadium."
  Eto seems to have become charged up since his involvement in a scandal during the team's training camp in Miyazaki prior to the Series came to light. In addition to drawing a walk, he beat out a check swing grounder to third in the seventh inning that led to the final nail in Daiei's coffin.
  With one out, third baseman Hiroki Kokubo's throw was too late to catch Eto, who stole seven bases in eight attempts this season. One out later, veteran catcher Murata blasted a two-out, two-run homer, the second of his career in four Japan Series.
  "It was perfect, I got 120 percent on it," Murata said.
  The Giants showed they could still score runs the more traditional way in the eighth. A walk, a single and a sacrifice set the table for Takahashi's high-chopping, two-run single to right that put the Giants ahead 6-0.
  Kazuhiro Kiyohara led off with a walk and Hideki Matsui followed with a single to center. Masahiro Kawai, Japan baseball's all-time leader in sacrifices, was sent in to hit for Domingo Martinez, and he did his job by moving the runners over with a perfect bunt down the third base line.
  Takahashi then chopped a single over first baseman Nobuhiko Matsunaka's head to easily score both runners.
  In the first inning, Toshihisa Nishi led off for the Giants with an infield hit and was sacrificed to second by Takayuki Shimizu. Kiyohara drew a walk, and after Nishi stole third base, Matsui also was walked to load the bases.
  But designated hitter Martinez grounded to third for an easy double play. Martinez singled in three at-bats, leaving him with a .143 average (2-for-14) in the Series.
  Martinez at least fared better than his Latin American counterpart on the Hawks. Melvin Nieves, Daiei's DH who homered the night before, struck out three times in four at-bats.
  EXTRA INNINGS...Giants hurler Darrell May, who returned to Tokyo on Friday night and will likely start Game 6 tonight, has plane reservations on both Sunday and Monday to return to the United States. Which one he uses depends on when the Series ends. What's the rush? He's got another big event planned--his wedding on Nov. 4 to fiancee Heather in Texas, and he wants to help out as much as can with the arrangements...Olympic judo champion Ryoko Tamura, the pride of Fukuoka, was among the crowd at the game.