2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment

After the injunctions were denied, the players association decided that the players would refuse to play in all scheduled Saturday and Sunday games for the final three weekends in September unless three conditions were met by September 10: suspension of the BlueWave/Buffaloes merger for at least one year, assurance that there would be no further team mergers, and reduction of the fees required for setting up a new NPB team.

In late September, two Internet services companies, Livedoor and Rakuten, submitted applications to form a new team based in Sendai that would fill the void left by the merger.

With prime-time advertising spots being expensive in Japan, corporations bought NPB teams for the primary purpose of keeping themselves in the public eye for the entirety of a baseball season.

"[7] A month later, as Livedoor continued to struggle to buy the Buffaloes for reportedly up to 3 billion yen ($27.5M in 2004), Horie expressed interest in starting a new team if he was unable to complete the purchase.

[15] Watanabe even outlined a plan for a new championship competition he dubbed the "Emperor’s Cup" that would replace the Japan Series if NPB was contracted to one league.

His idea involved reducing the number of regular-season games to allow for a tournament that would pit teams against each other based on their geographic location.

[16] Meanwhile, senior adviser to the Hanshin Tigers Senichi Hoshino, who was manager of the club when they won the CL championship the previous year, argued to keep the current two-league format.

[18] Soon the last two CL teams, the Chunichi Dragons and the Hiroshima Carp, both expressed support for maintaining the two-league system, at least through the next season.

These comments came after meeting with Democratic Party of Japan policy chief Yoshito Sengoku and other lawmakers to discuss the state of Japanese professional baseball.

Sengoku himself also opposed the shift to a single league and was leading a campaign to put forward a proposal to keep the two-league system.

[27] Not long after, Buffaloes players began voicing opposition to the plans as well, stressing that all possibilities of keeping the team intact should be explored before a merger is decided upon.

Buffaloes and BlueWave fans also assembled near the stadiums hosting the All-Star Series to collect signatures, with the intention of presenting petitions opposing the Kintetsu-Orix merger to baseball officials.

[31] Days later, JPBPA members voted overwhelmingly for the right to strike as part of a bid to maintain the two-league system and prevent team mergers.

The Japan Trade Union Confederation (RENGO) also supported the association by giving advice on how to set up a strike as well as labor-management negotiation strategies and how to effectively circulate petitions.

The suit was filed by the JPBPA head Atsuya Furuta as well as Koichi Isobe and Takashi Miwa, who represented the players of Kintetsu and Orix, respectively.

The association decided to take legal action after NPB officials either turned down or ignored a series of demands made by the JPBPA.

The documents filed with the court outlined the association's demands to establish a special committee that would meet and adopt resolutions before any decisions were made and to allow the JPBPA to conduct collective negotiations on a range of merger-related issues, as a large number of players would be expected to lose their jobs should the merger go through.

He also stated that no decision had been made concerning whether Japanese baseball would contract to one league or keep the two-league system in some form, but that both options were being explored.

And finally, while they also agreed to reconsider the requirements for new teams to enter the leagues, they decided that they could not put off the merger plans for another season because of the dire financial circumstances of the Buffaloes, thus setting the stage for a player strike.

[41] On the following Thursday, during on-going negotiations, team officials definitively told the JPBPA that a one-year freeze on the BlueWave/Buffaloes merger, one of the three demands set by the association to avoid a strike, was impossible.

Negotiations continued into Friday and lasted four hours past the 5 pm deadline, however, no agreement was reached and the players proceeded to stage the first and only strike in Japanese professional baseball history.

[46] The two-day strike caused economic losses totaling approximately 1.89 billion yen (17.2 million in 2004), according to researchers from Osaka Prefecture University.

[48] One week later a second Internet services company, Tokyo-based Rakuten, also submitted a formal application to Japanese professional baseball to form a team.

The panel consisted of Central League chairman Hajime Toyokura and the head officials of the Yomiuri Giants, the Yokohama BayStars, the Seibu Lions and the Chiba Lotte Marines.

[57] A telephone survey conducted by Kyodo News during the selection period of 300 people living in the Tōhoku region indicated that Livedoor was the early fan favorite to win the right to start a new team in Sendai.

Rakuten president Mikitani had extensive connections in established Japanese business circles and already operated another sports team, the soccer club Vissel Kobe in Japan's J.League.

It was the first time a new team, excluding cases of mergers or acquisitions, joined NPB since the creation of the now-defunct Takahashi Unions in the Pacific League in 1954.

[59] On Orix's list of protected players was Hisashi Iwakuma, the Kintetsu Buffaloes' pitcher who led the league in wins the previous season.

He insisted that Orix team president Takashi Koizumi live up to his pledge that he would sincerely listen to the players involved in the merger regarding their futures.

[60] Days after the players' strike, owners met on September 2 and approved a plan to hold interleague regular-season games during the 2005 season.