Samurai Japan stepped into a new era on Thursday night, and one of the team's future stars helped make it a winning start.
Shota Morishita broke a scoreless tie with a solo home run in the seventh inning, and Japan went on to earn a 4-0 win over Taiwan in its first game in the Asia Professional Baseball Championship at Tokyo Dome on Thursday night.
“We got the first run on the home run by Morishita and that helped get us started and we began to get hits and we scored some runs,” Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata said. “Overall, I think we had a good performance. I hope we can start (scoring runs) earlier tomorrow.”