Baseball: Former Fighter Kondo delivers knockout punch for Hawks

Kensuke Kondo drove in five runs and hit a tie-breaking home run against his former club, powering the SoftBank Hawks to an 11-6 Pacific League win Saturday over the Nippon Ham Fighters. Kondo, who signed with SoftBank as a free agent in the offseason, put the visitors in front with a first-inning RBI single off Japan World Baseball Classic teammate Hiromi Ito and narrowed the Fighters' lead to two with a two-run fifth-inning double at Es Con Field Hokkaido. "I had a lot of runners on base ahead of me, and I wanted to get a hit and bring in at least one run each time," Kondo said. After Hawks ...