A little over a month ago, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters were an afterthought in the Pacific League.
They've got everybody's attention now.
Masaru Takeda continued his mastery of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, and Yoshio Itoi, Hichori Morimoto and Atsunori Inaba homered as Nippon Ham routed Softbank 7-0 on Thursday night at Tokyo Dome.