Last Thursday night the Hawks were hosting the Marines at Kitakyushu Municipal Stadium. This was one of NPB's "countryside" games where teams will play at ballparks other than their normal homes to promote baseball in areas that don't necessarily have easy access to it. Kitakyushu is about 40 miles northeast of the Hawks' home in Fukuoka.
The game was tied 2-2 going into the top of the sixth inning. With nobody out and a runner on first, Marines first baseman Kyuto Ueda untied it with his first career home run:
Or it would have been his first career home run had nature not intervened. There was a lot of rain in western Japan that day. The Tigers and Buffaloes (who were playing in Kobe instead of Osaka Dome) were both rained out and the Baystars-Carp game in Hiroshima was called after six innings as a 1-1 tie. In Kitakyushu, the rain started falling harder as the Marines extended their lead to 6-2 in the top of the sixth. The umpires eventually halted play and ultimately determined that it was going to be impossible to complete the game. Which meant that the score needed to revert to the last completed inning, erasing the Marines' four run lead as well as Ueda's home run (which is now being referred to as a "phantom" home run).
Here's Ueda's 2024 BBM 1st Version rookie card (#212):
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