Mickens had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1953 and Bottler had been a career minor league catcher in the United States.

[1] It took 30 years for the franchise to win its first Pacific League title, in 1979, but it lost the Japan Series to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp 4-games-to-3.

The franchise's most notable player was pitcher Keishi Suzuki, who played for the Buffaloes from 1966 to 1985, compiling a won-loss record of 317–238, a 3.11 ERA, and 3,061 strikeouts.

American outfielder Ralph Bryant starred for the Buffaloes from 1988 to 1995, in the process becoming one of the best left-handed power hitters in Japanese baseball history.

He won the season MVP award that year, and also tied Sadaharu Oh's career record for hitting three home runs in a game five times.

Bryant also struck out countless times, and holds the top four spots on the single-season strikeout records in Nippon Professional Baseball.

Pitcher Hideo Nomo starred for the Buffaloes from 1990 to 1994 before he exercised a loophole in his contract and "retired," allowing him to sign with MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers.

While he had terrible pitching, he was noted for being the only Mexican player in NPB history as of 2022 to throw a no-hitter, and only allowing 4 walks.

The Buffaloes are the second team to make the Japan Series but never win it, the first being the short lived Shochiku Robins, who only made the Japan Series in NPB's inaugural season, losing to the Mainichi Orions (now Chiba Lotte Marines) before folding at the end of the following season and being merged with the Taiyo Whales (now Yokohama DeNA BayStars).

This caused Buffaloes legend Tuffy Rhodes to sign with the Yomiuri Giants as Kintetsu was not able to strike up the multi year deal he wanted.

[4] The proposed merger of the teams led to the biggest crisis in the traditional two-league structure in NPB and finally caused the first baseball player strike in Japan.

As part of the agreement, the Rakuten Golden Eagles were newly created (at a reduced "entry fee") to keep the former six-team league structure.

All 4 were designed by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and their backstory was that they lived in a fantasy world of dreams and adventures named "Buffalo Valley", as described in the club's 1997 supporters' handbook.