Asia Series

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The Asia Series is an international baseball competition for club teams in East Asia and Australia.

According to sponsorship contracts, it was officially held as the Konami Cup Asia Series between 2005 and 2008 every November between the national champions from the People's Republic of China , Chinese Taipei (makeshift name in sport for Taiwan ), Japan and the Republic of Korea . After poor audience response and economic losses, the format was initially abandoned in 2009 in favor of a championship only between the champions of the Republic of Korea and Japan.

An Asia Series has been taking place again since 2011; instead of a team from the People's Republic, the Australian champions were invited in 2011 - the Perth Heat as champions of the Australian Baseball League had already been confirmed as a participant in February. The Intercontinental Baseball Stadium was the venue for the city of Taichung ( Chinese  臺中市洲際棒球場 , Pinyin Taizhong-shì Zhouji bàngqiúcháng , Engl. Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium ). For the first time, no Japanese team won the tournament with the Korean Samsung Lions . The 2012 venue will be Busan in the south of the Republic of Korea.

Logos of the Asia Series 2005 and the four hosting leagues.

Asia Series 2005-2008

The competition was played between the winners of the Nihon Series of the NPB (Japan), the Hanguk Series of the KBO (Rep. Korea), the Taiwan Series of the CPBL (Rep. China) and the final game of the CBL (PR China). Until 2007, the China Stars , an all-star team from the CBL, took part in the Asia Series for the CBL.

First of all, all teams played against each other in a round robin round, the two best placed teams then compete against each other in the final. A game for third place did not take place.

The video game manufacturer Konami secured the naming rights through a sponsorship agreement in the early years, which is why the tournament was officially called the Konami Cup Asia Series .

The first four editions were held at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo , Japan. However, it was planned for the future to rotate the venue between the four participating countries.

regulate

  • All games are played with a designated hitter (DH).
  • In the group stage, games are counted as a tie after 15 innings ; there is no limit to the number of innings in the final game. Ties are included in the calculation of the winning percentage as a half victory .
  • In the group phase, if a game is more than ten runs ahead of the end of the 7th inning, it is canceled as a called game .
  • If the winning percentage between two teams is the same, the direct comparison decides. In the event of a draw in a direct comparison or in the case of three or four teams with the same victory record, the following decides:
    • the lower number of abandoned runs,
    • the higher number of runs achieved,
    • the higher team batting average ,
    • a coin toss.
  • In the final game, the first place in the group stage is considered the home team, so first plays on the defensive, plays in home jerseys and takes the host's bank behind first base. (However, a Japanese team also receives the host bench behind first base as runner-up.)
  • The umpires come from the participating countries, but are not used if a team from their own nation is playing.

Goal of the competition

According to the organizers, the aim of the competition was to determine the best team in Asia and to contribute to the internationalization of baseball. For the future it was planned to find a world champion who deserves the name in a duel with the winner of the World Series from the North American Major League Baseball .

Results

year Host country final Third MVP
winner Score Second
2005 JapanJapan Japan Chiba Lotte Marines 5-3 Samsung Lions Sinon Bulls Benny Agbayani
2006 JapanJapan Japan Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters 1–0 La New Bears Samsung Lions Yū Darvish
2007 JapanJapan Japan Chūnichi Dragons 6-5 SK Wyverns University President Lions Hirokazu Ibata
2008 JapanJapan Japan Saitama Seibu Lions 1–0 Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions SK Wyverns Tomoaki Satō

Japanese-Korean Club Championship

In 2009, the Asia Series was replaced by the Japanese-Korean and Korean-Japanese club championships (Japanese Nikkan club championship , 日韓 ク ラ ブ チ ャ ン ピ オ ン シ ッ プ , Korean hanil club championship 한일 클럽 챔피언십 , English NPB-KBO Club Championship ) single game between the masters from Japan and Korea.

In 2009, the Yomiuri Giants defeated the Kia Tigers 9-4 in the Nagasaki Prefecture Ballpark ( Nagasaki-ken-ei yakyūjō ) in the city of Nagasaki . In 2010 the championship took place in the Tokyo Dome, the Chiba Lotte Marines won over the SK Wyverns with a 3–0 shutout.

Asia Series since 2011

When it resumed in 2011, the Asia Series was not held in Japan for the first time. In the preliminary round, the Hawks from Fukuoka reached first place with three wins; but the Samsung Lions, who had lost the direct duel in the preliminary round 0-9, were able to win a 5-3 win in the final with a strong fifth inning in which they scored five runs and bring the title to Korea for the first time. Jang Won-sam, the Lions starter in the finals, where he only allowed one run in 6 1/3 innings, was named an MVP.

year Host country final Third MVP
winner Score Second
2011 Chinese TaipeiChinese Taipei Chinese Taipei Samsung Lions 5-3 Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions Jang Won-sam
2012 Korea SouthSouth Korea South Korea Yomiuri Giants 6–3 Lamigo Monkeys Lamigo Monkeys
2013 Chinese TaipeiChinese Taipei Chinese Taipei Canberra Cavalry 14-4 Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions Jack Murphy

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nippon Yakyū Kikō / Nippon Professional Baseball: Asia Series 2011
  2. ^ Busan to host the 2012 Asia Series. In: Big City [with provincial status] (Gwangyeoksi) Busan. May 29, 2012, accessed August 16, 2012 .