The 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment was a series of events that occurred during the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball season that changed the landscape of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In June of that season, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave announced that, due to financial difficulties, the two teams planned to merge into one for the start of the 2005 season. Both teams were in the Pacific League (PL), and a merger between the two would result in a team imbalance with the PL's opposing league, the Central League (CL). Soon, it was announced that a second merger was being explored between two of the remaining four PL teams. With the possibility of the PL losing a second team, discussion about possibly restructuring NPB's two-league system into one ten-team league began. PL and CL executives continued to discuss the merits of both systems until it was finally decided that the two-league system would remain intact and interleague play would be introduced in the 2005 season.
When the BlueWave and the Buffaloes first announced their merger plans, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association (JPBPA) pledged to do everything possible to block the merger in order to protect the rights of NPB players. Leading up to a merger vote by team owners, the JPBPA filed two injunctions in an attempt to block the proposed merger and also began making preparations in anticipation of a labor strike. After the injunctions were denied, the players association decided that the players would refuse to play in all scheduled Saturday and Sunday games for the final three weekends in September unless three conditions were met by September 10: suspension of the BlueWave/Buffaloes merger for at least one year, assurance that there would be no further team mergers, and reduction of the fees required for setting up a new NPB team. Days later, the owners voted to approve the team merger. The Friday before the first planned weekend strike, the two parties reached a last-minute agreement that allowed the players to play through the weekend. The following week, team officials definitively told the JPBPA that a one-year freeze on the merger was impossible. Negotiations continued into Friday, however, no agreement was reached. A two-day strike occurred on Saturday and Sunday, September 18–19, 2004. All twelve games scheduled for that weekend were cancelled as a result of the strike. The following Thursday, with the strike set to continue during the upcoming weekend, players and team management came to an agreement. Players agreed not to stage a strike for the second straight weekend after team representatives eased the rules of entry for new teams into the professional leagues and that one would be allowed to join the following season.
In late September, two Internet services companies, Livedoor and Rakuten, submitted applications to form a new team based in Sendai that would fill the void left by the merger. As the selection process progressed, both companies were given time to discuss their team and budget propositions before a panel of NPB executives. Livedoor, who had unsuccessfully attempted to purchase the Buffaloes from Kintetsu earlier in the year, announced that their new baseball club would be named the "Sendai Livedoor Phoenix", with former MLB and NPB player Tom O'Malley attached as manager and Katsunori Kojima as general manager. Rakuten's new team planned to employ Marty Kuehnert and Yasushi Tao as general manager and manager, respectively, of their newly named "Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles" baseball club. In November, NPB selected Rakuten over Livedoor to create a new Pacific League team to be based in Sendai. It was the first time a new team, excluding cases of mergers or acquisitions, joined NPB since 1954.
Background Unlike Major League Baseball (MLB), Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) does not require teams to participate in any revenue sharing strategies that would help correct revenue imbalances between teams because of game attendance and television broadcasting contracts. These issues are problematic because the Yomiuri Giants, the league's most popular team, generates revenue much easier than any other team. Daily Yomiuri baseball reporter Jim Allen, for example, estimates that the Giants account for 40% of all NPB television broadcasting revenue, while the eleven remaining teams account for the other 60%. Compounding this issue, NPB employs a "reverse designation" draft system. Instead of teams choosing players, as in MLB, players can choose what team they would like to play for. According to former Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles general manager Marty Kuehnert, the teams with the most money could offer amateur players money under the table in exchange for their pledge. Traditionally, NPB teams existed to advertise their parent company, unlike MLB teams that are businesses attempting to maximize their profits. With prime-time advertising spots being expensive in Japan, corporations bought NPB teams for the primary purpose of keeping themselves in the public eye for the entirety of a baseball season. For years, potential profits were secondary.Klein 2006, pp. 148–149 The recession of the 1990s and 2000s started to change this mentality.Klein 2006, p. 152
BlueWave/Buffaloes merger For several years leading up to 2004, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes reported yearly losses of approximately $40 million due to a drop in home-game attendance, rising player salaries and an annual $10 million charge for the use of the Osaka Dome, their home field. Kintetsu Corporation, the railway company that owned the Buffaloes, announced in January 2004 that it was planning to put the team's name up for sale after the 2005 season in an effort to make the team more profitable. However, NPB commissioner Yasuchika Negoro denied Kintetsu's request and the plan was abandoned. Later that year, Masanori Yamaguchi, president of Kintetsu, stated that the team had "no prospect of paying dividends (to the parent company)" in its current state. Meanwhile, the Orix BlueWave was also struggling to post a profit. The BlueWave's home-game attendance had been steadily declining after star player Ichiro Suzuki left the team to play in MLB in 2001, and the team finished the previous two seasons in last place. In June 2004, believing no one had any interest in purchasing the team, Buffaloes officials announced plans to merge with the BlueWave for the 2005 season. Yamaguchi saw the merger with Orix as the most realistic solution to both teams' financial problems. Later that same month, a panel of NPB executives accepted the proposed merger.
Livedoor attempts to purchase the Buffaloes
Shortly after Kintetsu and Orix announced their plans to merge their two clubs, details emerged that Livedoor Company, an Internet services company, proposed purchasing the Buffaloes. Livedoor President Takafumi Horie confirmed that if Livedoor was to purchase the team, the Buffaloes would be kept independent in order to leave the current 12-team, two-league system intact. Kintetsu quickly issued a statement, however, stating that they had turned down the proposal from Livedoor. Days later, Kintetsu emphasized this sentiment at a press conference by categorically refusing to sell the Buffaloes to Livedoor. Even though the team's players favored the proposed purchase, Yamaguchi refused to even meet with Horie to discuss the proposal and stated that, “I wouldn’t accept such an idea” and “There isn’t even a 1% [possibility of selling the team to Livedoor]."
A month later, as Livedoor continued to struggle to buy the Buffaloes for reportedly up to 3 billion yen ($27.5M in 2004), Horie expressed interest in starting a new team if he was unable to complete the purchase. He acknowledged how difficult it was for a new owner to break into Japanese professional baseball but he vowed to do "whatever [he] could" to make it happen.
One-league system proposed Since its creation in 1950, NPB teams had been divided into two leagues: the Central League (CL) and the Pacific League (PL). The CL is the more popular of the two leagues thanks largely to the popularity of the Yomiuri Giants. In 2004, each league had six teams; both the Buffaloes and the BlueWave were Pacific League teams. The potential merger between the two clubs would drop the number of PL teams from six to five, which would then create a team imbalance between the two leagues. During a July 7 owners' meeting where the twelve team owners approved the Orix-Kintetsu merger, talk of a second pair of PL teams merging arose. At the meeting, Seibu Lions owner Yoshiaki Tsutsumi stated that another merger between two of the remaining four PL teams was being explored. Rumors then surfaced about an ongoing merger plan between the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks. Marines owner Akio Shigemitsu denied these rumors, however he made it clear that his team was open to the possibility. Eventually, it was revealed that Daiei had explored merger possibilities with both Seibu and Lotte and talks advanced with Lotte, however no agreement was ever reached. Eventually, Daiei struck up a deal with multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group, who purchased all 14,432,000 of Daiei's shares in the team (accounting for approximately 98% of the team's shares) on November 30, 2004, for 15 billion yen. This purchase was approved at an NPB owners meeting on December 24, 2004, and came into effect on January 28, 2005.
With the possibility of the PL losing a second team, discussion about possibly restructuring NPB's two-league system into one ten-team league began. Tsutsumi and Yomiuri Giants owner Tsuneo Watanabe favored the idea of combining the Central and Pacific Leagues into one league. Watanabe even outlined a plan for a new championship competition he dubbed the "Emperor’s Cup" that would replace the Japan Series if NPB was contracted to one league. His idea involved reducing the number of regular-season games to allow for a tournament that would pit teams against each other based on their geographic location. The regular-season winner and the tournament winner would then play each other to determine a champion.
Meanwhile, senior adviser to the Hanshin Tigers Senichi Hoshino, who was manager of the club when they won the CL championship the previous year, argued to keep the current two-league format. He heavily criticized team owners for ignoring the voices of the players and fans, and it is believed that this criticism helped cause some team owners to abandon the movement toward one league. Not long after Hoshino's comments, Tigers team president Katsuyoshi Nozaki suddenly declared he was in favor of keeping the Central and Pacific League set-up and the team became the biggest supporter of the idea. Soon, the majority of the other CL teams also favored the current two-league system. After garnering the support of fellow CL teams the Yakult Swallows and the Yokohama BayStars, Tigers' executives planned a meeting with all of the Central League teams excluding the Giants to attempt to draft an agreement against the move to a one-league system. Tigers' president Katsuyoshi Nozaki proposed interleague play as a possible solution. He claimed that interleague play would allow Central and Pacific League teams to play each other an equal number of times so that it would seem that it was a one-league system, however the All-Star Series and the Japan Series could be saved. In the past, interleague play had been rejected by the CL teams because they did not want the PL teams to cut into the money they would receive from games played against the hugely popular Giants. Soon the last two CL teams, the Chunichi Dragons and the Hiroshima Carp, both expressed support for maintaining the two-league system, at least through the next season.