2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment information
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.
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