9.23.2004

Baseball Strike

The Japanese Baseball League was dormant over the past weekend after the players voted to strike in protest to a planned merger of four teams into two. That would significantly reduce the number of professional players, forcing some with now seemingly secure jobs in a sport they have dedicated their entire lives to all of a sudden find themselves a career.

The planned merger between the Orix Blue Wave, based in Kobe, and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffalos is a bad plan. They are big rivals, their cities are as close to each other as Newark is to New York City. That would be like merging the Yankees and the Mets. It is a disastrous plan.

Instead of merging teams they should move them. They moved the Nippon Ham Fighters from Tokyo to Sapporo and they are receiving a huge amount of support up there, much more than they ever got in Tokyo....signing Tsuyoshi Shinjo did not hurt them at all though.

There are so many areas of Japan without a professional baseball team for hundreds of miles in either direction. They should move a team or two to these areas first before merging teams. They only have 12....it would not be that hard.