Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters by 2
Get out your calculators, sports fans, because this one is going to be a brain-teaser. This is a march between two titans from the Nippon Professional Baseball league, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and the Chiba Lotte Marines, and it's promising to be a close one.
Now if you're looking for a founding member of the 'Been there, done that' club, you'll find him in the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, who have been a consistent force in the league with victory often echoing through their halls. You can draw a straight line between their recent winning run against the Chiba Lotte Marines and their overall impressive record for the season.
Flipping the coin, we get to the Chiba Lotte Marines, who might as well carry the tagline 'persistence personified'. Their lukewarm performance against the Fighters does not reflect their recent spree of victories. They've been giving a shake to the magic eight ball and it's been coming up 'Sunshine, lollipops, and daisies' time and time again. For those who're not fluent in idioms, they've been pretty successful.
However, Hunger Games fans will know that in a fight, precedent prevails. The Nippon-Ham Fighters have been a recent nightmare for the Marines, and they're more than likely to come out of this fight with a couple of fresh scratches rather than a victory.
But as the great Yogi Berra once said, "Predictions are hard, especially about the future", or wasn't it Yogi? Anyway, with everything considered, I'd lean towards the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters for this particular joust.
Albert’s Prediction: Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters by 2