Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters

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The Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters ( Japanese 北海道 日本 ハ ム フ ァ イ タ ー ズ , Hokkaidō Nippon Hamu Faitāzu ) are a Japanese professional baseball team. You play in the Pacific League . Their home is Sapporo in Hokkaidō since 2004 , the home stadium is the Sapporo Dome . Before that, they played in Tokyo .

The main owner of the team has been the Osaka- based food company Nippon Ham KK since 1973 .

history

Placement of Flyers and Fighters in the Pacific League since the League was founded. Red dots mark victories in the Nippon Series .

The team was founded in 1946 as Senators in Tokyo. The founder was Yokozawa Saburō , who had been the manager of the Tōkyō Senators before the war . A year later, the railway company Tōkyū Kyūkō Dentetsu got on , the team was called Tōkyū Flyers in the seasons 1947 and from 1949 . In 1948, the Daiei company - later owner of the Daiei Hawks - also took part in the team that played as Kyuei Flyers for one season .

Since the establishment of the current league structure in 1949, the team has played in the Pacific League , initially with only moderate success. After the team was transferred to the Tōei company in 1954 , they played as Tōei Flyers . In 1959 she achieved a winning season for the first time with more wins than losses. It was not until the 1960s that she had some successes with the Korean outfielders Isao Harimoto , Paek Incheon and first baseman Katsuo Ōsugi under the former Giants manager Mizuhara Shigeru . However, the Flyers could only win first place in the Pacific League in 1962 and then played the Nippon Series against the Hanshin Tigers . After two initial defeats and a draw, they won the next four games and thus their first championship title.

After Mizuhara left the Flyers after the 1967 season, a new dry spell set in. The 1968 season ended with a win rate of .392 in last place, and until 1978 the team finished every season in the lower half of the table. In 1973 the real estate company Nittaku Home had taken over the team, which now played as Nittaku Home Flyers . In November 1973 it was sold to Nippon Ham and after 27 years as Flyers it was called Nippon Ham Fighters .

Under manager Keiji Ōsawa (1976-84, 1993-94) the Fighters get five winning seasons between 1979 and 1983 and a first place in 1981 when they lost the Nippon Series 2-4 against the Giants. In 1993, when he took over the team again, it finished second, just one game behind the Seibu Lions, who were dominant at the time . However, the Fighters fell to last place in the next season, and weaker years followed with only three second places in 1993, 1996 and 1998. The team's greatest weakness since the 1970s has been pitching regularly : between 1970 and 2000 the team ERA was twelve times above 4.00 and only four times below 3.50. The offensive was intensified by many foreign batter with heavy power hitting ( extra base hits , especially home runs ), including Bobby Mitchell (OF, 1976–79), Tony Solaita (DH, 1980–83) and Matt Winters (OF, 1990– 1994).

In 2003, Trey Hillman , a former coach in minor league baseball , was hired as a manager. A year later, the team moved to Sapporo, the name of the place name Hokkaidō was introduced. In the same year, 2004, the strong batter began Fernando Seguignol in the Fighters and scored the most home runs in the league, in the fall of the Persian-Japanese pitcher was Yu Darvish ge draftet . After a poor 2005 season, the team was first in the Pacific League twice in a row . In 2006 she won the Nippon Series 4-1 against the Chūnichi Dragons and so her second championship title. She then beat the LaNew Bears , Samsung Lions and China Stars in the Konami Cup Asia Series . In 2007 the Fighters lost the new edition of the previous year's Nippon Series 1-4, decided by a perfect game in the fifth game. Hillman left the Fighters after the 2007 season, his successor was Nashida Masataka , until 2004 manager of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes .

Since its inception, up to and including 2010, the team achieved a win rate of .476 with 3952 wins, 4347 defeats and 318 draws.

Famous players and managers

Yū Darvish in the jersey of the Fighters.

Currently the team's most famous player is pitcher Yū Darvish , who dominated the league in his third season in 2007 and won the Sawamura Award . Other well-known past and current players are:

The shirt numbers 100 of the owner Ōkoso Yoshinori (1973-2005) and 86 of manager Keiji Ōsawa (1976-84, 1993-94) are no longer awarded in honor of their services to the team.

Stadion

The interior of the Sapporo Dome during a home game against the Orix Buffaloes .

The home stadium of the Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters is the Sapporo Dome with around 40,500 seats (for baseball), which was designed as a combined baseball and football stadium for the 2002 World Cup with a retractable playing field. The operating company is 55% owned by the city of Sapporo.

Before moving to Hokkaidō, the Fighters played in the Tokyo Dome , completed in 1988 , before (also as Senators and Flyers) in the Kōrakuen Stadium at the same location. From 1953 until it was closed in 1961, the team played in the Komazawa baseball stadium ( 駒 澤 野 球場 , Komazawa Yakyūjō ) with 20,000 seats in the Komazawa Olympic Park in Setagaya , then in 1962 and 1963 in the Meiji Jingū Stadium in Shinjuku .

organization

The team has been organized as a stock corporation since 2003: The Kabushiki-gaisha Hokkaidō Nippon Hamu Faitāzu ( 株式会社 北海道 日本 ハ ム フ ァ イ タ ー ズ ), based in Toyohira-ku in Sapporo, is mainly owned by Nippon Ham as a "Grand Partner", they are involved as a "General Partner" also other large companies such as JR Hokkaido , Sapporo Beer or Hokkaidō Shimbun .

Second team

Kamagaya Fighters, Eastern League , Kamagaya Fighters Stadium, Kamagaya , Chiba Prefecture

Web links

Commons : Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.sapporo-dome.co.jp/company/080626b.pdf
  2. ↑ KK Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters: Sponsors, Supporters and Investors ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Japanese) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fighters.co.jp