TOKYO (Interstat) — The Yomiuri Giants and Tokyo Yakult Swallows battled for 12 innings Sunday night at Meiji Jingu Stadium, finishing in a 4-4 tie. The game was declared deadlocked after the teams matched each other with 11 and 12 hits, respectively, under NPB rules.

Yakult took an early 2-0 lead in the first inning, but Yomiuri’s Yuta Izuguchi erased it with a two-run homer in the fourth. Yuhei Nakamura answered for the Swallows with a two-run shot in the bottom of the inning. The Giants scored single runs in the sixth and eighth to pull even, and neither team could break the stalemate through four extra frames. The game lasted 3 hours, 56 minutes before 29,380 fans.