Sho Nakata hit a two-run homer to key a four-run sixth inning, Hokkaido Nippon Ham’s defense got the team back in the ballgame, and the Fighters rallied to beat the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 5-1 in Game 2 of the final stage of the Pacific League Climax Series on Thursday night.

The Hawks, who received an automatic one-win advantage in the series as the PL champions, lead the series 2-1 against third-place Nippon Ham.

“One of our themes of this series is go out and win one and then another,” said Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama. “Our cleanup man (Nakata) did it, he’ll do everything to help the team win. The point is we want to play as many games as possible. Tomorrow we’ll come out to get another one, so we can play until the end.”

In the decisive inning, Keiji Obiki led off with a single to shortstop and after Haruki Nishikawa drew a one-out walk, the runners moved to second and third on Takuya Nakashima’s groundout.

Yang Dai-kang hit a sharp grounder up the middle which shortstop Kenta Imamiya got to but threw wildly past first, pushing across both runners for a 2-1 lead in front of a crowd of 29,775 at Yafuoku Dome.

Nakata was up next.

He crushed Shota Takeda’s hanging 1-1 slider over the wall in straight-away left to make it 4-1. Nakata went 2-for-4 with three RBIs, featuring an RBI double that cushioned the lead in the eighth.

“Our opponent made a mistake and we took advantage. I just wanted to get on base and wasn’t thinking of anything else. I wanted to give us a chance and I got a slider over the plate that I could drive. The home run was by chance,” said Nakata.

“Now that we’ve come this far we want to go out and crush them. We have a lot of young guys on the team and they’re pumped up after tonight’s win. The thing about a short series unlike the regular season that’s so scary is you don’t know when you’re going to get hot or not.”

Seiichi Uchikawa put his team in the driver’s seat early with a two-out, solo blast in the bottom of the first, catapulting Masaru Nakamura’s 1-0 slider into the stands in left for a 1-0 Softbank lead.

Nakamura’s control issues started early and got worse in his short 3-1/3 inning outing. He loaded the bases in the third with two outs on a hit and pair of walks and was everywhere but in the strike zone.

A hard-hit line drive by Nobuhiro Matsuda was snagged by Obiki for the final out of the inning, preventing any more damage, but it was only a matter of time before the Hawks had Nakamura crying uncle.

He loaded the bases again on two walks and a hit with one out in the fourth, and Fighters skipper Hideki Kuriyama had seen enough. Reliever Keisuke Tanimoto struck out Yuki Yanagita swinging at a forkball and got Imamiya to fly out to left to end the threat.

Takeda made an excellent start as he retired the first six batters he faced, but got out of a jam with a strike-him-out, throw-him-out double play in the fourth, and his undoing came two innings later.

Left fielder Nakata showed some fine defensive reflexes in the second inning.

Akira Nakamura, who had reached on a leadoff walk, took off running after it appeared as if Yuki Yoshimura’s shallow fly might fall but Nakata caught it and fired to first for the double play.

Center fielder Yang was also impressive. He made a gutsy sliding catch on Yoshimura’s line drive leading off the sixth to stamp out any hint of a rally.

Five Fighters relievers got the job done after Nakamura was sent to an early shower.

Hawks manager Koji Akiyama, who announced Tuesday he will step down at the end of the season, admitted his team made costly errors.

“When we could score, we didn’t, and where we should’ve had solid defense, we didn’t,” Akiyama said. “These were our mistakes. There was no reason to rush on that play (Imamiya’s error). Takeda also missed his location on the homer. Tomorrow we’ll be back at it again.”