What Happens to the Uniforms?

If you find out, let us know. I'd really like to find some old Taiyo Whales merchandise. The uniforms were pretty bad - they looked like old beer league softball uniforms.

Steve, if you don't mind paying a big premium for a famous player, you've got until 11:33 PM Japanese time on October 31 to bid on this: Taiyo Whales' Murata Tatsumi's Uniform (Yahoo! Auctions Japan - in Japanese - will not ship overseas).

One way to get a uniform is to contact a current or retired player.

A creepy and unethical acquaintance of mine contacted Carlton Hanta and "pretended" to be a "fan." Carlton was so overjoyed that someone showed interest in his Japanese baseball career that he gave him his old uniform. The "fan" promptly sold them uniform!

Thanks for the heads up. 80,000 yen is a little rich for my blood!

The uniforms are issued to the players at the beginning of the season and then the players keep them after the season ends.

I work for a team here in Japan in a different sport and what happens is that, after the season, the players keep the uniforms themselves or they end up giving them away to their friends or family. I collect memorabilia and paraphenalia from all sports, so I ask the players on our team for their uniforms, and unless they don't have any left, they'll usually give me their jerseys.

So, the best way to get uniforms from Japanese baseball is to get to know someone who works for one of the teams and ask that person to get you a uniform or two. Even if you can't get a jersey, you might be able to get some practice gear or a warmup jacket or something like that as the players are issued all kinds of team gear before the season starts.

Speaking of uniforms, did you all see the "new" Orix Buffaloes' uniforms? They are just the Orix BlueWave uniforms that look like they've been recycled. The road unis are the same and the only thing that's been altered on the home unis is the "BlueWave" part on the front. It's been changed to "Buffaloes" - Wow! They're using the same lettering style and everything. Even the hats look the same, except the BW has been changed to Bs. At least they got that right - it is BS, pardon my language.

Even Muramatsu, the outfielder who modeled the uniforms, had this to say: "I thought they would change them (the uniforms) more than this."

I guess Orix and Kintetsu really wanted to save money by not hiring a designer to design some new threads.

Yeah. I thought they would do something to merge the symbols - maybe like this (visualize the lines as horns). I know it's simple, but it merges the OB from the Orix BlueWaves with the horns and eyes of the Kintetsu Buffaloes. In 5 years they'll probably name it something else - whatever.

    I             I
    I             I
    I   OOOOOOO   I
    I   O     O   I
    I   O     O   I
    I---OOOOOOO---I
     BBBBBBBBBBBBB
     B     I     B
     B  O  I  O  B
     B     I     B
     BBBBBBBBBBB
     B           B
     B           B
     B           B
     BBBBBBBBBBBB

The uniforms for Orix were terrible to begin with. It just goes to show how pathetic the ownership really is there. They have no sense of marketing a professional sports team at all. I would not let these guys run a T-ball team for 3 year olds.

You can see the uniforms here [Kobe News - in Japanese], including a quote from Mizuguchi saying that he wanted to see bigger changes. I really liked the black Osaka uniforms (and the red ones which seem to be gone now).

But in fairness to Orix, they used to make up all kinds of T-shirts and caps and stuff for fans to wear, all with different designs. A lot of them were navy blue and green like the Mariners.

For those of you interested in game-used jerseys, right now you can buy Yomiuri Giants' outfielder Gabe Kapler's game-used uniform on eBay. I just noticed it today. It's his 2002 Colorado Rockies' road uniform (#19) and it's going for $395. I'm sure that Kapler would be surprised if someone here in Japan wore it to a Giants' game next season.