Shinnosuke Abe hit a "sayonara" solo homer in the bottom of the ninth inning as the Yomiuri Giants defeated the Yakult Swallows 3-2 on Thursday.

Abe sent a 2-1 fastball off Shugo Fujii into Tokyo Dome's right-field stands to break the deadlock and reclaim a 10-game lead for runaway leader Yomiuri ahead of the second-place Swallows in the Central League.

Hideki Okajima (6-2) earned the win after working the ninth in relief of Yusaku Iriki, who held Yakult to two runs and four hits in an effective eight-inning outing in a duel with Fujii.

Fujii (7-6) bounced back from a first-inning homer to Hideki Matsui and retired 21 straight batters before giving up Abe's one-out, game-winning homer on his 111th pitch.

Roberto Petagine and Matsui, who was hit by a pitch in the right hand in Wednesday's game, traded two-run homers in the first inning as Matsui retained his lead in the CL home run derby with 32 to 31 for the Venezuelan slugger.

"I thought there would be more pain, but I went through normal batting practice and it wasn't as bad as I thought. There's nothing to worry about," said Matsui, who was playing with a swollen hand.

Dragons 8, Carp 6
Pinch-hitter Junichi Jinno hit a go-ahead two-run single in a five-run rally in the fourth inning as Chunichi went on to beat Hiroshima at Hiroshima Stadium for their fifth straight victory.

Rookie Daisuke Yamai (4-1) picked up the win after two innings of relief and Eddie Gaillard tied the league lead with his 24th save.

Ham still moving

The Nippon Ham Fighters, despite being rocked by the parent company's involvement in a beef-labeling scandal, will go ahead with a plan to relocate the Pacific League baseball club's franchise to Sapporo before the 2004 season.

Club president Takeshi Kojima confirmed Thursday that the Tokyo-based Fighters' move will not be affected by the fiasco created after a subsidiary of Nippon Meat Packers Inc. was implicated in abusing the state-run beef buyback program.

"We will continue our work to move to Sapporo as scheduled," said Kojima, who also brushed aside concerns that the running of the baseball team could be hit hard by the labeling scandal which has hurt business operations of the Nippon Meat Packers group.

"The parent company thinks the Fighters are an important part of the group in order to restore consumer confidence in our Nippon Ham brand," he said.

Last month, baseball officials approved the Fighters' move to Sapporo, making them the first professional team to be based in Hokkaido.

In the fraud case that surfaced earlier this month, Nippon Food Inc. mixed imported beef into a consignment of domestic beef and sold it to a government-appointed industry body under the buyback program launched last fall following an outbreak of mad cow disease in Japan.