Given the circumstances, the majority of baseball fans — the notable exception being Chiba Lotte Marines supporters — around the nation were probably rooting for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles to win their first game of the season on Tuesday so as to instill some sense of joy in the disaster-hit Tohoku region.
In the ninth inning of the opener, all that was needed was for Ryan Speier, making his NPB debut, to get a pair of outs against the Marines for the Eagles to have their story-book ending.
Talk about pressure.