Seibu slugger Alex Cabrera hammered a couple of solo homers, in the fourth and the sixth innings, to improve his tally to 47 as the Lions edged the Nippon Ham Fighters 7-6 at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday night.
Cabrera is now just eight short of the Japanese pro baseball single-season home-run record of 55, shared by Tuffy Rhodes and Sadaharu Oh.
Tom Evans hit a game-tying single in the sixth and Hiroshi Hirao singled in a tie-breaking run in the eighth, helping Seibu cut its PL pennant-clinching magic number to 14.