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New teams/different names?

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New teams/different names?
Hello. I am a die-hard American baseball fan who has just recently started following NPB. For reasons of simplicity, I chose Orix and Chunichi as my favorite teams (since Nagoya and Kobe were the home cities of my grandparents' families).

A number of things are very disconcerting, however. For one, Orix is painfully bad - ha ha. But more puzzling is that in my history books from the mid 1980s and '90s, there is no mention of the BlueWave. The BayStars seem to be new to me as well.

All of this may just be a result of my poor reading, but even so, I would appreciate a condensed history on the establishment of the Japanese teams and any changes the franchises may have experienced. Such an explanation would be greatly appreciated and clear up some of my confusion.

Benjamin Watanabe
Comments
Re: New teams/different names?
[ Author: westbaystars | Posted: Jun 14, 2003 7:49 PM | YBS Fan ]

I was sure that Albright-san had something that covered this on his site, but I can't find it right now.

Team histories is one thing that I've been wanting to do for the history section here, but haven't yet found the time. Sorry.

A quick run down of the two teams' history, though, can be found in these two tables:
    +-----------+---------------+
    | Years | Team |
    +-----------+---------------+
    | 1936-1946 | Hankyu |
    | 1947-1988 | Hankyu Braves |
    | 1989-1990 | Orix Braves |
    | 1991- | Orix BlueWave |
    +-----------+---------------+

    +-----------+-----------------------+--------+
    | Years | Team | Became |
    +-----------+-----------------------+--------+
    | 1936-1936 | Dai-Tokyo | L |
    | 1937-1940 | Lion | As |
    | 1941-1945 | Asahi | Pa |
    | 1946-1946 | Pacific | TR1 |
    | 1947-1947 | Taiyo Robins | TR |
    | 1948-1949 | Taiyo Robins | SR |
    | 1950-1952 | Shochiku Robins | TSR |
    | 1950-1952 | Taiyo Whales | TSR |
    | 1953-1954 | Taiyo-Shochiku Robins | TW |
    | 1955-1977 | Taiyo Whales | YTW |
    | 1978-1992 | Yokohama Taiyo Whales | YBS |
    | 1992- | Yokohama BayStars | |
    +-----------+-----------------------+--------+

Note that Yokohama is made up of the merger of Shochiku Robins and Taiyo Whales, the Taiyo Whales being a new team in 1950. The kanji for "Taiyo" in the two "Taiyo Robins" and "Taiyo Whales" are all three different (太陽, 大陽, and 大洋 respectively - if your system supports Kanji).

Hope this helps clear some things up until I find the time to present all of this in a better format.

Re: New teams/different names?
[ Author: PLNara | Posted: Jun 14, 2003 8:31 PM | HT Fan ]

I think this was what you guys were looking for Japanese Franchise Histories.

[westbaystars: That's the one! Thanks.]
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