Nippon Professional Baseball merged with the Orix BlueWave and were replaced by the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. Until 1993, baseball was the only team sport played professionally in Japan. In that year, the J.League professional soccer league was founded. The new soccer league placed teams in prefectural capitals around the country—rather than clustering them in and around Tokyo—and the teams were named after their locations rather than after corporate sponsors. The wave of players moving to Major League Baseball, which began with Hideo Nomo "retiring" from the Kintetsu Buffaloes, then signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, has also added to the financial problems.
Swift Current 57's a new nickname allows for us re-brand our product and promote the team in a more current and sensitive manner.” On January 10, 2017, the Swift Current baseball club re-branded itself as the 57's. The new brand honours 57 years of Swift Current Indians baseball, although moving away from a name deemed too controversial for the twenty-first century. Swift Current 57's The Swift Current 57's (formerly the Swift Current Indians) are a baseball team based in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada. The team is a member of the Western Major Baseball League (WMBL), a collegiate summer baseball league operating in the