If the sight of Yuki Yanagita holding up his bat while taking a few steps toward first base didn't tell the story, the sound that filled the stadium surely did.
The crack of Yanagita's bat meeting the ball gave way to the immediate roar of the crowd to form a thunderous symphony of inevitability. No one, not the other Pacific League teams or the best the Central League could muster, was going to deny the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks this year.
Yanagita erased an early one-run deficit with a two-run home run in the first, Takuya Kai hit a two-run shot in the second and the Hawks captured their fourth straight Japan Series title by completing their second straight sweep of the Yomiuri Giants with a 4-1 win on Wednesday in front of a crowd of 19,679 at PayPay Dome in Fukuoka.
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