Baseball: Long-awaited win marks Yamamoto's finest hour

After a string of disappointments, Japanese pro baseball's most highly regarded pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, threw a record 14-strikeout gem for the first Japan Series win of his career. Yamamoto held Hanshin to a run by pitching out of a second-inning bases-loaded jam, and his teammates immediately rewarded him with a one-run lead. Yamamoto had allowed 16 runs in his previous three postseason games. For the second straight year, Yamamoto had put the Buffaloes in a hole by losing the first game of the Japan Series, but unlike 2022, when he was hurt in the opener and unable to return, he return...