Hideto Asamura homered twice and had an RBI single for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, who maintained their Game 1 mastery of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks with a 5-3 win to open the Pacific League Climax Series' first stage on Saturday.
Asamura may be new to the Eagles after joining them over the winter as a free agent, but the result was all too familiar for the Hawks, who fell to 0-3 in postseason series openers against Rakuten.
The Eagles now need one win over the next two days at Yafuoku Dome to advance to the final stage against the PL champion Seibu Lions. The Eagles previously played the Hawks in the 2009 first stage and won both games in Sendai. Rakuten then won the first two games of the 2017 best-of-seven final stage in Fukuoka before falling 4-2.