October 12, 2013, Fukuoka, Japan, Fukuoka Mizuho PayPay Dome.
There's less than an hour left before the start of the first round of the 2013 Pacific League Climax Series.
In the locker room of the Yahoo Dome, the head coach of the SoftBank Team, Akiyama Koji, is giving a final pep talk to his players.
"This season, our start wasn't ideal, and our ranking within the Pacific League even fell to the bottom of the league at one point; even though later on we warmed up a bit, it was hard to maintain it for long, usually winning three or four games only to lose again, and so the cycle continued."
"I still remember those times when we lost consecutively, those incompetent baseball media analyzed our problems in all sorts of ways, saying this or that about us, as if our three Pacific League victories and one Japan's Number One title in the past five years were all due to luck."
