Japanese

"What Japanese professional baseball achieved by the strike"

Japan Professional Baseball Players Association (NPBPA)conducted a strike during the weekend of September 18-19. They say that it was the first time ever in the 70-year history of Japanese professional baseball. The origin of the affair was that the team owners made an announcement of the merge between the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave without making prior notice to the NPBPA. Moreover, the team owners suggested that they were aiming further contraction from two 6-team leagues to a single 8-10 team league, which will be brought on by further mergers.

The Japanese Professional Baseball community has relied on the Yomiuri Giants in terms of popularity for the long time and most of the teams except Giants, especially the teams belong to the Pacific League have suffered bad deficit. The intention of the team owners was to provide match up with the Yomiuri Giants also to the Pacific League teams so that they can generate more revenue by bringing more attendance and TV money. Since a merger of the teams is the recognition matter of the owner's meeting, it should have been resolved easily as they planned. However, an unexpected ambush appeared. Mr. Takafumi Horie, 31- year old Internet millionaire declared bid for taking over the Kintetsu Buffaloes. He also offered to set up a new team in case the acquisition of Kintetsu would not be accepted.

The team owners, that place a professional baseball team as an ad pillar of a company and plans to maintain present order in an exclusive organization, fear that outsiders that have different sense of values enter their organization as they refused a foreign funding to take over the Daiei Hawks. To the owners of the older generations, people like the presidents of Live Door or Rakuten who earns billions of yen from the virtual world at the tender age of 30's should seems to be aliens. Therefore, Mr.Tsuneo Watanabe, the former owner of the Yomiuri Giants declined their proposal and said, "We cannot let someone unknown person in, someone even I did not know". The official reason was that there was no time in carrying out fair examination. But don't you think it is ridiculous that those who failed management of professional baseball teams primarily examine an entry person's management capability? Another miscalculation for the team owners was that they underestimated the capability of the NPBPA as a negotiating partner. The NPBPA player's rep Mr.Atsuya Furuta, who concerns the unemployment to be created by merger, and a downsizing of the professional baseball, asked the owners for the meeting to maintain present two-6 team league system. However, Mr. Watanabe, dismissed his request and said, "He's just a ballplayer, He should know his place". However, as the players association continued to express their opinion consistently, without flinching, they could attach the public opinion. They exposed the exclusivity and various inconsistencies to the light of the day and finally succeeded to obtain a concession. The noteworthy thing in the course of the negotiation was that Mr.Furuta played a remarkable leadership role. For the future development of a professional baseball, new entry should be urged and community based league management style shall be required. There are still many problems to be solved, such as change the mentality of sponsor companies, strengthening commissioner's authority and escalating annual salary of the players. But it seems to me that it is clear that this strike have open the crack in the conventional management method. (End)