Hideki Matsui provided much of the offense and Darrell May pitched in with a stellar performance on the mound Saturday night at the Tokyo Dome as the Yomiuri Giants claimed their 19th Japan Series title in emphatic style, blowing out the defending champion Daiei Hawks 9-3 in Game 6.
Matsui, the Japan Series MVP, drove in four runs with a two-run homer and a two-run double while May whiffed nine Hawks over 5 1/3 innings as Yomiuri won its fourth straight game in the Series after dropping the first two in the so-called O-N matchup featuring managers Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh, both former legendary players for the Giants.
"There was a lot of publicity regarding the O-N matchup, but the focus should have been on the players, not the managers, because they went out there and won the games," commented Nagashima, who has now won the Japan Series twice as a manager and 11 times as a player, all with the Giants.