The Daiei Stars ( 大映スターズ , Daiei Sutāzu ) were a Japanese professional baseball team that was founded in 1946, and played in various incarnations until 1957, when it merged with another team. Overall, the franchise only had three winning seasons, never rising higher than third place. The team was in the second division, or B-class, for seven seasons, including its last four years of existence. The Stars played in Korakuen Stadium in Bunkyo, Tokyo .
27-732: The franchise was founded in 1946 as Gold Star , a new post-war team in the Japanese Baseball League . They were owned by textile manufacturer and Lucky Gold Star Telephones owner Komajiro Tamura , who also owned the Pacific Baseball Club (formerly known as the Asahi Baseball Club). Gold Star consisted mostly of former Asahi players and was managed by Asahi's former manager Michinori Tubouchi . In Gold Star's inaugural season, they won 43 games and lost 60, finishing 22 games out of first place. One of
54-739: A member of the champion Kyojin. Hiroshi Oshita was another Taiwanese player who starred in the JBL. From 1946 to 1949 he played for the Tokyo Senators / Tokyu Flyers . (After reorganization, Oshita stayed with the Flyers until 1951, and then moved to the Nishitetsu Lions , finishing his Japanese professional career with a .303 lifetime batting average, 201 home runs, and 861 RBI.) Harris McGalliard (Japan's "Bucky Harris"), Herbert "Buster" North , and James E. Bonner ("Jimmy Bonna") became
81-428: A number of players in the league both pitched and batted . At first (until after World War II ), the JBL was a " dead ball " league, due to Japan conserving rubber (including inside baseballs) for its war efforts; instead it used Balatá inside the balls. Initially, the league played split seasons, doing so from 1936 to 1938. In the debut 1936 season, it split into spring, summer, and fall seasons, only keeping track of
108-593: Is the Japanese single-season tie record. In 1954, Kawakami hit the first cycle in Yomiuri Giants' franchise history. As manager of the Giants from 1961 to 1974, he was known for his ruthless, tough-love style, but he led the Yomiuri Giants to nine consecutive championships. He went 1,066–739–61 as manager while winning 44 of 62 playoff games, both of which are still the best marks in Giants history. Kawakami
135-675: The Korakuen Eagles ) and the Nishitetsu Baseball Club (originally the Tokyo Senators ). Due to the Pacific War , the 1944 season was truncated to about 35 games, and the 1945 season was skipped entirely. Many players enlisted in the Japanese Imperial Army , with 72 of them losing their lives in the war. The league restarted on November 6, 1945, and a full season of 105 games was played
162-651: The Pacific 's "Taihei" ( tranquility ) began to be used by the press . However, some teams rejected the use of these pet names, so they were never fully adopted. The 1948 season had a 140-game schedule, and the 1949 season had a 134-game schedule. After the 1949 season, the league reorganized into today's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). The four earliest-established clubs formerly in the Japanese Baseball League were placed in NPB's Central League , while
189-510: The Tokyo Senators . The 1940 season featured a 104-game schedule. In October 1940 (responding to rising hostility toward the West due to World War II), the league outlawed the use of English in Japanese baseball. In response, the Korakuen Eagles became "Kurowashi", the Osaka Tigers became "Hanshin", the Tokyo Senators became "Tsubasa", and (eventually) Lion became "Asahi." In 1941,
216-564: The JBL appointed its first president, Jiro Morioka (formerly VP of Dai Tokyo ). Morioka negotiated with the Japanese Imperial Army to keep professional baseball going through the early years of the Second World War. The league played a 90-game schedule in 1941, a 104-game schedule in 1942, and an 84-game schedule in 1943. Two Tokyo-based teams dissolved before the 1944 season: the Yamato Baseball Club (originally
243-417: The Japanese Baseball League era included Haruyasu Nakajima , Tetsuharu Kawakami , and Kazuto Tsuruoka ; pitchers Hideo Fujimoto , Eiji Sawamura , Victor Starffin , and Tadashi Wakabayashi ; and two-way players Fumio Fujimura , Shosei Go , Masaru Kageura , and Jiro Noguchi . Unlike American pro teams, Japanese Baseball League teams were usually named after their corporate owners/sponsors rather than
270-477: The Kokumin League disbanded a few games into the 1947 fall season. The Japanese Baseball League played a 119-game schedule in 1947. That year, baseball personality Sōtaro Suzuki proposed that JBL teams should have pet names like the Yomiuri Giants', whose pet name was "Kyojin", and names such as the Osaka Tigers ' alias "Mouko" ( fierce tiger ), the revived Tokyo Senators ' "Seito" ( bluestockings ) and
297-871: The Pacific League in losses, with 21. In 1958, the Unions merged with the Mainichi Orions (founded in 1950) to form the Daimai Orions . This enabled the Pacific League to shrink from the ungainly seven-team arrangement caused by the 1957 merger to a more manageable six teams. The Orions, after a number of relocations and name changes, are now known as the Chiba Lotte Marines . Japanese Baseball League The Japanese Baseball League ( 日本野球連盟 , Nihon Yakyū Renmei )
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#1732775351302324-664: The area in which they were based. All league championships went to whoever had the best record at the end of the season, without a postseason series being played. The league was established on February 5, 1936, as the Japan Occupational Baseball League , with an initial complement of seven teams. Three of the teams were based in Tokyo, two in Osaka , and two in Nagoya . Due to a lack of position players,
351-405: The championship game, but lost. After the game, Kawakami grabbed a handful of dirt from the playing field of Kōshien Stadium and put it in his uniform pocket as a memento. This became known as the original scooping of "the dirt of Kōshien" (甲子園の土 Kōshien no tsuchi?). Since then, as a memento of their fleeting time on the hallowed grounds of Kōshien, players from the losing teams take home a pouch of
378-586: The cities or regions in which they played. This was because Japanese franchising does not have strong territorial requirements as in the Major Leagues; as a result, the JBL teams clustered in metropolitan areas in Japan's center (Tokyo, Nagoya ) and south ( Osaka ). As a result, teams were notorious for how often they changed their names, often because of changes in ownership/sponsorship (and also because of nationalistic regulations imposed during wartime, such as
405-723: The first Americans to play in Japan's professional baseball league in 1936. (Bonner was African-American , thus beating Jackie Robinson to professional baseball 11 years before Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers .) They were joined by the Japanese-American players Kiyomi "Slim" Hirakawa, Fumito "Jimmy" Horio, Kazuyoshi "George" Matsuura, Yoshio "Sam" Takahashi, and Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi . Season champion in bold. Tetsuharu Kawakami As Manager Tetsuharu Kawakami ( 川上 哲治 , Kawakami Tetsuharu , March 23, 1920 – October 28, 2013)
432-507: The four later surviving franchises went to the Pacific League . Victor Starffin , an ethnic Russian pitcher, was a dominant player of the era and the first professional pitcher in Japan to win 300 games. Shosei Go , nicknamed "The Human Locomotive", was a speedy player from Taiwan who played in the league for the Kyojin and the Tigers. He won the 1943 JBL Most Valuable Player award as
459-568: The next year, with two new teams (both based in Tokyo) joining the league. One of the new teams, Gold Star , was owned by textile manufacturer Komajiro Tamura , who also owned Pacific (formerly Asahi ). A rival four-team league, known as the Kokumin League ( 国民リーグ , Kokumin Riigu ) , played a 30-game summer season in 1947. Unable to compete against the more established JBL, however,
486-553: The outlawing of English team names). (The Yomiuri Giants , the Chunichi Dragons , and the Hanshin Tigers are the only surviving major clubs that have always been based in their respective cities. Additionally, the current Orix Buffaloes are a merger of two clubs which never left their hometowns.) Most Japanese Baseball League teams did not have an "official" home stadium; instead, teams played at any stadium in
513-467: The period he was transitioning from a once-dominant pitcher to a fearsome hitter. His two full seasons with the team were unremarkable, however, and he returned to his original team, the Chunichi Dragons in 1949, where he really hit his stride with the bat. In 1948, the team hired Sadayoshi Fujimoto as manager; he stayed at the helm of the team until partway through their final season, 1956. In 1949, after being bought by Masaichi Nagata / Daiei Film ,
540-446: The precious soil. Kawakami played for Tokyo Kyojin / Yomiuri Giants between 1938 and 1958 (though he missed the years 1943–1945 when he served in the Japanese military). Kawakami signed with the Giants as a pitcher/first baseman, and actually pitched in 39 games between 1938 and 1941, compiling 11 wins against 9 losses, with an excellent 2.61 ERA. He converted full-time to first base in 1942. In 1951, he struck out only 6 times, which
567-484: The standings in the fall season. The league played spring and fall seasons in 1937 (approximartely a 100-game schedule in total) and 1938 (total 75-game schedule), adding one new team each year. The league was renamed the Japanese Baseball League in 1939, playing a 96-game schedule. Before the 1940 season, one of the founding teams, Nagoya Kinko (originally the Nagoya Golden Dolphins ), merged with
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#1732775351302594-602: The team changed its name to the Daiei Stars , with Nagata serving as team president. Outfielder Makoto Kozuru hit .361 for the Stars in 1949, leading the league in hitting and earning Best Nine Award honors. In 1950 the Stars became charter members of the Pacific League when the JBL reorganized into Nippon Professional Baseball and split into the Pacific League and the Central League . Outfielder Shigeya Iijima
621-687: The team's losses that season set the record for highest run differential in Japanese professional baseball history. In 1947 the team became the Kinsei Stars ("Kinsei" meaning made of gold in Japanese) and signed long-time Tokyo Kyojin / Yomiuri Giants pitcher Victor Starffin , who came over from Tamura's other team, the Taiyo Robins (formerly Asahi). Starffin pitched for the franchise for six seasons, winning 80 games and losing 70. The team acquired Michio Nishizawa mid-season 1946, during
648-551: Was a professional baseball league in Japan which operated from 1936 to 1949, before reorganizing in 1950 as Nippon Professional Baseball . The league's dominant team was Tokyo Kyojin (renamed the Yomiuri Giants in 1947), which won nine league championships, including six in a row from 1938 to 1943, when many of Japan's best players were serving in the Imperial Japanese Army . Standout players from
675-538: Was a Japanese baseball player and manager, known for his red bat, and his nickname dageki no kamisama ( 打撃の神様 , "the God of Batting/Hitting") . He was a professional player for 18 years, winning the batting title five times, two home run crowns, three RBI titles, and had six titles for the most hits in a season. He was the MVP of the 1953 Japan Series . He was the first player in Japanese pro baseball to achieve 2,000 hits and
702-555: Was a league Best Nine Award -winner in 1950–1951. He led the Pacific League in batting in 1952, hitting .336, while his teammate Giichi Hayashi led the league in innings pitched, with 269-2⁄3. In 1957, the Stars merged with the Takahashi Unions to form the Daiei Unions . The Unions existed for a single season, finishing last in the Pacific League , at 41-89-2, 43-1/2 games out of first. Pitcher Masayoshi Miura led
729-568: Was named the league's MVP three times. As manager of the Yomiuri Giants from 1961 to 1974, he led the Giants to eleven championships, with nine of them being in consecutive years. He has the most Japan Series championships as a manager. Kawakami was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1965. Born in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto , he played for Kumamoto Tech (Kumamoto) in the 1937 Summer Kōshien . Kumamoto advanced to
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