Nippon Professional Baseball (a primer)
“If I ever saw myself saying I was excited about going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’d be lying.”
20 points if you can recall who is responsible for that quote. That’s right, it was Ichiro (your 20 points are in the mail). Everyone knows who Ichiro is. Why? Because he’s arguably the best position player to have ever played the game of baseball. And that includes all the professional Dominicans, Cubans, Chinese, Australians, Costa Ricans, South Koreans, Americans, Venezuelans, Dutch, Taiwanese, Canadians, Mexicans, and Japanese that have ever endeavored to be the best in the sport.
Maybe the people in Cleveland don’t like Ichiro so much, but the rest of us do. And everyone knows that Ichiro started his professional baseball career in Japan. He played for the Orix Blue Wave in Nippon Professional Baseball’s (NPB) Pacific league. Huh?
Yes, that’s a fair question. Technically, the Orix Blue Wave do not exist anymore. They are now half of the Orix Buffaloes (the other half being the team formerly known as the Kintetsu Buffaloes), and were Ichiro to one day return to Japan to play out the twilight of his career, he probably wouldn’t have any idea as to where his loyalty is anchored.
But I digress: Ichiro is partly the product of the NPB, and even though there has been (and will continue to be) a steady depletion of the brightest talent produced by Japan (think both Matsuis, Matsuzaka, Nomo, Iwamura, Iguchi, Hasegawa, Johjima, and on and on), it is still a league that generates a lot of interest and a wealth of good baseball.
Since the signing of Matsuzaka by the Boston Red Sox (they paid more than 50 million dollars just for the right to negotiate with the Seibu Lions for him), not only has Boston become a virtual mecca for Japan-based tourism, interest in Japanese baseball has redoubled its upward tack. Standing side-by-side with the MLB, NPB is often referred to as a AAAA level professional baseball league (i.e. right in between the “Bigs” and MLB’s highest level farm league, AAA). Major distinctions between the two leagues can be found in many areas, but some of the simpler ones are: the Japanese affinity for old-school baseball (sacrifice bunts are as integral to the game as fat guys are to sumo); the different approaches to developing pitchers (the majority of pitchers in Japan can throw more than six different pitches and locate most of them reasonably well while pitchers in the MLB focus on just three or four and are able to locate them very well); and the cost of a beer in North America is generally in the seven to twelve dollar range, whereas the cost of a cold one in a Japanese baseball stadium is between four and seven.
The NPB is comprised of two leagues. The Central and Pacific Leagues hold six teams apiece. The Central League has historically been the stronger league, but recently the Pacific League has been dominating everything in Japan (including the last three Japan Series titles.)
Since everyone in the media still seems to favor the Central league, I will take this opportunity to detail Japan’s best league first—the Pacific league.
Pacific League
The defending Japan Series champions are the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, and they are managed by Trey Hillman (manager since 2003). The Fighters are kept on their toes by perennial contenders such as the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, Chiba Lotte Marines, and Seibu Lions. The Hawks are managed by Sadaharu Oh—the man who holds the Asian home run record and coached team Japan to glory at the inaugural World Baseball Classic last year. The Marines are skippered by Bobby Valentine and won the Japan Series in 2005. The Lions are headed by manager Tsutomu Ito and won the Japan Series back in 2004. The two teams that are in the middle of rebuilding cycles, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles and the Orix Buffaloes, are managed by Katsuya Nomura and Terry Collins, respectively.
The current Pacific league standings following games played on August 19th look like this:
Fighters: 60 wins, 45 losses, 4 ties, 0 games back
Marines: 53 wins, 46 losses, 7 ties, 4 games back
Hawks: 55 wins, 49 losses, 3 ties, 5 games back
Lions: 52 wins, 53 losses, 2 ties, 7 games back
Buffaloes: 48 wins, 58 losses, 4 ties, 11.5 games back
Golden Eagles: 48 wins, 57 losses, 2 ties, 11.5 games back
Central League
The Central League, home to the prevalent Yomiuri Giants (which happens to be the last Central League team to have won the Japan Series, in 2003), is rounded out by the Chunichi Dragons, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Hanshin Tigers, and Yokohama Baystars. The Giants are coached by Tatsunori Hara and are enjoying a robust 2007 season thanks to a power-packed lineup filled with players purchased from Pacific League baseball teams (they’re basically a “shadow” Pacific League all-star team). The Dragons are run by Hiromitsu Ochiai and are perennial contenders. The Carp, Swallows, Tigers, and Baystars are managed by Marty Brown, Atsuya Furuta (actually, Furuta is a player-manager), Akinobu Okada, and Akihiko Ohya, respectively.
The current Central league standings following games played on August 19th look like this:
Dragons: 57 wins, 46 losses, 2 ties, 0 games back
Giants: 60 wins, 49 losses, 1 tie, 0 games back
Tigers: 54 wins, 48 losses, 3 ties, 2.5 games back
Baystars: 50 wins, 50 losses, 1 tie, 5.5 games back
Swallows: 42 wins, 60 losses, 0 ties, 14.5 games back
Carp: 43 wins, 61 losses, 1 tie, 14.5 games back
A revised playoff system has been put into place in both leagues this year. The top three teams in each league will enter a playoff round to decide which team heads to the Japan series. This system will hopefully help to keep things interesting down the home stretch as more teams have a mathematical chance to be involved in the postseason picture as the season winds down. For example, the Central League currently has four teams that could easily grab a berth in the playoffs, and virtually all of the teams in the Pacific could be considered contenders at this point.
In conclusion, I’d like to thank Ichiro, and all the other fine ball players in North America who have ventured there from Japan, for making this piece not only possible, but necessary. Our sympathies go out to the good people of Cleveland, who have to deal with Ichiro every time he grudgingly comes to town.
The bare bones of Japanese Professional Baseball have been slightly unearthed in this piece, and in future posts I will focus individually on the Pacific and Central Leagues. Additionally, there will be periodic posts on the movers and shakers in the NPB with occasional attention paid to the similarities and differences between the North American and Japanese games.
In the Podcast: Wondering how to pronounce Daisuke Matsuzaka? Chris and Garrett do it properly a couple of times in this podcast. In addition to giving you the correct pronunciation of Daisuke Matsuzaka, they chat about some of the topics covered in this post and many others that are not. Hints of the history of NPB, baseball anecdotes, pet peeves about baseball in Japan, and more.
Instant Errata: Daiei had financial trouble, which was a precipitating factor in their sale of the Fukuoka Hawks, but did not, in fact, go out of business. We apologize for the error.
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