Favorite Teams and Players?

I like the Softbank Hawks who are located in Fukuoka. Their best players are Toshiya Sughichi, Tsuyoshi Wada, and Nobuhiko Matsunaka. Their manager is the world all-time home run leader Sadahuru Oh. Also, Softbank, along with Rakuten and Chiba Lotte, broadcast their games over the Internet. Though Chiba's games are only available in Japan, which are available for you.

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough, the Hanshin Tigers are currently the most popular team in Japan, with the largest fanbase. Hanshin is located in Nishinomiya, which is in Hyogo Prefecture. The Yomiuri Giants are also right up there as a popular team, just not as popular as Hanshin.

- The Yomiuri Giants are also right up there as a popular team, just not as popular as Hanshin.

It think there'd be a few Tokyoites out there who would strenuously disagree.

Maybe so, but the Giants have been neglecting their Tokyo fan base for a long time. They haven't woken up to the regional model at all, and their support has fallen very much from its glory days. In the past the Giants supporters would fill half of Koshien but now are limited to small blocks. Tigers fans still fill half of Tokyo Dome.

- Yomiuri Giants are also right up there as a popular team, just not as popular as Hanshin.

I would agree with this, but would argue that it's a relatively recent thing (in Kanto at least, I can't speak for Kansai). I have been attending baseball games regularly in Japan since 2001 and back then the Giants were by far the most popular team, filling up stadiums wherever they went. Hanshin on the other hand, could barely fill the left field bleacher seats at Jingu when they played Yakult back then.

These days the situation is reversed, with Hanshin packing out stadiums all over the country wherever they go. The plight of Yomiuri has been marked in my opinion. This year, at the first Giants game of the season at Jingu, for the first time since I have been attending Tokyo derbies at Jingu, the Swallows fans actually outnumbered the Giants fans.

As I said, I'm sure Koshien was consistently full even back when Hanshin were perpetual cellar dwellers. But certainly in Tokyo, there have been a heck of a lot of Tigers fans come out of the woodwork since their recent revival.

Well, of course popularity isn't just measured by the number of fans coming to the stadium. Sure, the Giants have had a few lean years, but I suspect the club's popularity is more deep-seated than that indicated by the Tokyo Dome attendance figures.

- but I suspect the club's popularity is more deep-seated than that indicated by the Tokyo Dome attendance figures.

This is also true. I think the Giants support has become more apathetic in recent years. Probably due to them having everything their own way for so many years.

The Giants have a huge resevoir of popularity, but are just not tapping it. They need to reach out to their regional base in Kanto like the Tigers have in Kansai. One thing is that their marketing needs to drastically improve to the level the Tigers are able to market themselves. Another is that they need to be more aggresive in promoting their links to the region. Finally they need to abandon the moribund "team for Japan" approach which is still influencing their strategy.

- Finally they need to abandon the moribund "team for Japan" approach which is still influencing their strategy.

Agreed - those days are long over. In fact, it was after they emphasised the "Yomiuri" over the "Tokyo" that their decline began. You're right, they need to get back to marketing themselves as a Tokyo team.

But to be honest, I'll be happy if they continue along the same path. I much prefer the more vulnerable Giants of now as opposed to the invincible organisation of old.

Agreed - but I think that we need not worry about the invincible Giants returning. They don't have the power they used to.

To answer the topic's question, I love Kosuke Fukudome!

Kosuke's MVP numbers thru 35 games: 10 HR, 22 RBIs, .999 OPS.

And my favorite team? Chunichi Dragons. They've got the best closer in Iwase, and the best starting pitcher in the game, 5-0 Kawakami!

I also like The BayStars' power hitting Murata and Tamura.

As for The PL, Matsunaka - the guy is always on base, an excellent hitter, and never strikes out.

All they need to get back to the glory days is a steady pitching core. They have Uehara, and now it seems like Powell and Utsumi are really stepping it up. In the 1980s and '90s, it was Saitoh and Kuwata carrying the rotation. The Giants basically need a second Uehara and they'll be set. Hehe.

Unfortunately for the Giants, Hanshin has a very strong group of players. The bright side for them are the ages of Kanemoto, Shimoyanagi, and Yano. Once they lose that production, Hanshin could be in the same situation that Softbank were faced with when Johjima and Batista left.

I work in the sports merchandise field and I have some figures in front of me that you guys might find interesting. It's from a sports store in the Kansai region and gives a percentage breakdown of merchandise sales for each team for fiscal years 2004 and 2005. Remember, this is outside Tokyo, so it indicates clearly how popular the Giants are outside the capital - at least at this particular store.

Team          |   2004  |  2005   | Both years
----------------------------------------------
Giants        |   29.2  |  27.5   |  28.3
Tigers        |   21.5  |  28.2   |  24.9         
BlueWave      |   12.7  |   0.6   |   6.6 
K. Buffaloes  |    9.2  |   3.1   |   6.1
Fighters      |    5.7  |   4.3   |   5.0
Hawks         |    2.6  |   6.4   |   4.5
Marines       |    3.0  |   5.9   |   4.4
Dragons       |    3.9  |   4.7   |   4.3        
Carp          |    4.1  |   3.3   |   3.7
Orix Buffaloes|     --  |   6.8   |   3.4
BayStars      |    3.3  |   3.1   |   3.2
Swallows      |    3.1  |   2.5   |   2.8
Lions         |    1.7  |   1.4   |   1.6
Eagles        |     --  |   2.2   |   1.1

Interesting figures - you are right, it only indicates how popular the Giants are in your particular store. Tigers fans tend to buy Tigers goods from Tigers shops. If you look at, for example, the Hanshin Department store on match days you can barely move. These shops are where the massive Tigers goods sales come from. Furthermore, if you look at the sheer number of shops selling Tigers goods and offering Tigers related products, you see a massive imbalance. Your shop, being one of the few places which sells Giants goods in Kansai, probably shows an inflated percentage which is not indicative of the actual levels of support in the region.

A story, near where my parents in law live is a Yomiuri outlet. It advertises Giants goods for sale. We visited it because we wanted to buy presents for a friend of ours back in Tokyo and were told it would take two weeks to order them! The number of shops selling goods is important, and ease of obtaining them as well. That is not to say the Giants have no support, but that they don't have much in Kansai.

By the way where is your shop located? We still want to buy presents for our friend.

[LOL] Christopher, I knew you'd try to find some way to downplay the figures.

Of course you misunderstand the main point here. It's not that the Giants are more popular than (or even as popular as) the Tigers in Kansai - that idea is ludicrous, and I never made that suggestion.

What the figures clearly show is the extent of the Giants' popularity compared to all the other teams. Considering that it's extremely difficult to buy merchandise for any of the non-Kansai-based teams, you might expect the numbers for all those teams to be inflated, not simply Yomiuri's.

But as I said - it's just one store and may not be a reflection of the whole picture. But unless you've got some other data we can compare it with, that's all we have to base our opinions on.

^ [LOL] Christopher, I knew you'd try to find some way to downplay the figures.

Of course. But seriously, there are many possibilities as to why you have this spike in favour of the Giants. What I would like to see are figures from other cities in Japan (I don't suppose your shop is a chain?). Then we can begin to make some suppositions. As they stand your figures don't even indicate that the Giants are more popular than other teams. All they might indicate is that more Giants fans know about and buy from your shop than fans of other teams. Or even that more Giants fans travel to Osaka. Currently we have too many variables to really begin to draw conclusions from the figures.

IMO, once the Giants start winning again, the number of Hanshin fans will drop in half. I've met many a Tigers fan in Kansai who used to support Kyoujin but were riding the bandwagon.

I'm a Chunichi fan living in Hanshin territory, and while I dislike Hanshin, I dig their stadium/fans. All that said and done, once the power shifts back to Tokyo (and it will), a large amount of Hanshin fans will turn back to Tokyo or to soccer.

No disrespect to Tigers fans, but you can sense that Kyoujin support lurks under the surface of a lot of HT fans. It may have to do with fans' parents' hometown, where they grew up, or whatever. But besides the real deal Hanshin fans, I feel like being a fan of the Tigers is a fad in Western Japan for many that will soon fade.

Just my two cents.

Well, Giants sales are more than five times those of the next highest non-Kansai team, the Fighters. And for the Fighters you've got to take the Shinjo factor into account. I know for a fact that Tigers fans are responsible for a sizable portion of that 5%.

Now I suppose you could exclude the most likely explanation for such a huge difference in sales - popularity - if you wanted to, and try to scratch around for something else. Maybe the store is indeed a magnet for hordes of Yomiuri fans sweeping down the archipelago on their way to Koshien, although I'm not exactly sure why they wouldn't already be equipped with the right gear (or if they weren't, why they'd visit a store nowhere near Koshien to get themselves equipped). Or why they'd act any differently to, say, Yakult fans, or Seibu fans. As far as I know there's no particular spike in sales when the Giants are in town, so I think we can safely disregard the "Tokyo swarm" theory.

But let's not try to over-analyze these numbers. Obviously they show only part of the story. I'm not trying to say that they prove anything other than there are a lot of people parting with their hard earned cash to buy Giants merchandise. Who they are or where they come from, I have no idea. But in most industries, sales levels generally have some connection with popularity.

Believe me, this is simply an honest attempt on my part to provide some hard data that may help the discussion. On this site we sometimes make assertions (myself included) without backing our opinions with facts or stats. Well I'm just trying to do something about this in an area I know something about. I could provide more, but I'm not going to post the store's full sales report just to satisfy Christopher's extreme skepticism.

I was frankly surprised at how high the numbers were for the Giants. I'm intrigued myself to see whether there's a longer term trend, so I might collect some numbers for other years and see where they lead.

Please do collect more as this is potentially very interesting. Also please do not see my posts as sceptisism - the kind of thing you are trying to do needs more explanation and qualification. The raw figures you show may indicate popularity, but they do need other variables excluded. For example, how many purchases are by repeat customers? Where is your shop located, and how does this affect your sales? How many other shops sell Giants or other teams goods? Do fans of other teams mostly go to your shop or to other shops? These sort of questions need to be answered before conclusions can be drawn. To be honest I have never seen people wearing Giants goods in Osaka, but I have seen plenty of people wearing Hawks goods, so what to make of that? However, I have seen visiting Giants fans.

With regard to fair weather Tigers fans, yes there are quite a lot even in Kansai. 50% is too high a figure though as part of being from Kansai is supporting the Tigers. It is an aspect of regional differentiation and regional pride and as such very deep seated.

OK, here are the figures from 2002 to the end of April 2006. Make of them what you will.

Team          | 2002  | 2003  |  2004  |  2005  | 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------
Giants        | 22.5  | 23.1  |  29.2  |  27.5  |  28.5 
Tigers        | 21.3  | 31.5  |  21.5  |  28.2  |  21.8          
BlueWave      | 13.9  |  8.1  |  12.7  |   0.6  |   --  
K. Buffaloes  | 17.9  | 12.9  |   9.2  |   3.1  |   -- 
Orix Buffaloes|  --   |  --   |   --   |   6.8  |  12.1 
Fighters      |  6.4  |  2.9  |   5.7  |   4.3  |   4.9 
Hawks         |  --   |  3.8  |   2.6  |   6.4  |   9.2 
Marines       |  2.9  |  1.6  |   3.0  |   5.9  |   5.9 
Dragons       |  1.2  |  3.4  |   3.9  |   4.7  |   5.0         
Carp          |  5.9  |  4.3  |   4.1  |   3.3  |   1.8 
BayStars      |  4.7  |  2.4  |   3.3  |   3.1  |   1.6 
Swallows      |  --   |  2.7  |   3.1  |   2.5  |   3.5 
Lions         |  3.2  |  3.3  |   1.7  |   1.4  |   1.6 
Eagles        |  --   |  --   |   --   |   2.2  |   4.2 

I'm a huge Hawks fan. I lived in Kitakyushu for a big part of my life, and my parents and grandparents (on mother's side) were already Hawks fans as well.

Matsunaka is my favorite player currently playing in NPB, though I've always had a soft spot for Shibahara (his teammate at Softbank).

As for the Tigers-Giants debate, I do agree that once the Giants reassert themselves as a power in the CL, the Tigers will lose a big chunk of their fanbase. No disrespect to the Hanshin fans, but some of their fans remind me of Red Sox fans in the U.S. Before 2003, I hardly saw anybody wearing Red Sox caps or jerseys; now, I can't walk two blocks without seeing a Sox "fan" wearing their new team's caps, shirts, or other apparels.

Unlikely. What is more likely is that you will see less Tigers fans if this happens. They will stop displaying themselves so openly, but won't necessarily abandon the team. This is why you are not seeing so many Giants fans - three years of Horiuchi was too much. The fans didn't stop liking the Giants - they just didn't show it.

- What is more likely is that you will see less Tigers fans if this happens. They will stop displaying themselves so openly, but won't necessarily abandon the team.

I should have worded my statement better, because that was the idea that I was trying to get across. Their hardcore fans (and they have a massive hardcore fan base) would never consider ditching them. The fair-weather fans, well, that's another story, even though they make up a reasonably large amount of their fanbase.

- The fair-weather fans, well, that's another story, even though they make up a reasonably large amount of their fanbase.

Yes, I understand exactly what you mean. I know a family of former Giants "fans" in Kawanishi (Hyogo) who switched their allegiance in 2003 when the Tigers began their historic drive for the pennant. They're the type who will probably switch right back if it becomes fashionable to do so. People like that really exist.

I'm a die-hard Hanshin-Fan.

I have been living in Hyogo. But I'm very sure that's not the reason I became their fan. I belong to a team where fans are crazy not accepting their team's loses. I have started watching baseball and I liked the Tigers team for their crazy fan base.

Like every die hard fan, I will not even watch the sports news on the day they loose. This I have confirmed with so many other Japanese Tigers fans.

And this is also true that I would not show up when my team doing poorly.

I lived in Okayama for six months as part of a teaching internship, and in that region of the country the Tigers were huge. The Giants fans I met were mostly people who didn't follow baseball as much, which led me to think that the Giants popularity seemed to be similar to the Yankees here - everybody sees the Giants on TV and people usually think of all the pennants and championships.

A friend seemed in Kurashiki to equate the Tigers to the Red Sox - "real" baseball fans liked the Tigers more, they're a scrappier team, and they represent a Japan closer to the real "Japan" (his words, not mine). I appreciate passionate fans, so I have a sort of an affection for Tiger the faithful.

I gave English lessons to an older gentleman that was a big Tigers fan and he told me a story about being in a hostess bar and seeing a backup catcher with the Giants there (I don't know who this was, apparently the event happened about 5 years ago) and when this older gentleman and some friends saw the catcher they started throwing glasses and beer bottles at him. I think only fans that love a team that much, combined with a team that gets close but hasn't won in a while, is someone I can sympathize with better than Giants/Yankees fans that complain about their team.

Back to the topic at hand, though, I have to say I like the Carp. I grew up a big Reds fan and I taught once a week in Hiroshima. They got the fish-hook 'C' and they're team's plagued with a small park and shoddy pitching. Plus Marty Brown reminds me of Lou Pinella a little bit.

I'm from Spain. I'm a Chunichi Dragon fan. And I like many players, like Fukudome, Morioka, Alex, Kawakami, ...

I hate Giants and Tigers. I don't like popular teams.

Chiba Lotte all the way. My favorite players are Toshiaki Imae, Kazuya Fukuura, and Soichi Fujita.

In the Central League, I like the Tigers, though I hate their fans who ruin the All Star voting every year. My favorite players in the Central League are Makoto Kosaka and Kyuji Fujikawa.

Chiba Lotte is great thanks to Bobby Valentine. His constant shuffling of the batting order and unusual choices for #4 batter are great. Chiba fans are lucky to have such an exciting manager. I'm hoping Marty Brown gets enough time in Hiroshima to do the same for them.