"Strikeout looking! Lin Guanglai is off to an excellent start in this game!"
Together with the excited commentary from the studio, there was also the sound of cheers from more than forty thousand SoftBank fans at the scene; as the cheers gradually subsided, what followed was a fervent round of applause, like waves crashing – and the recipient of these cheers and applause was none other than Lin Guanglai, who had just struck out Yakult's third batter, the foreign player Milledge.
Unlike his previous matchup with Yakult, today's Lin Guanglai maintained his usual high-performance standard: after striking out Yamada Tetsuro with a changeup in the top of the first inning, he continued to dispatch the following batters, Morioka Yoshiaki and Milledge, one after another. Particularly when facing Milledge, Lin Guanglai, in a 2-2 count, threw a fastball right into the inside corner of the strike zone, not giving Milledge a chance to swing the bat, striking him out looking.
