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.
Philip Humber's perfect game the Mets to go on to throw a no-hitter for another team. The other six are Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Mike Scott, Dwight Gooden, Hideo Nomo, and David Cone. The New York Mets, at the time of Humber's perfect game, had never had a no-hitter thrown by a player in the 50-year history of the franchise (Johan Santana has since accomplished this feat). The Mariners went hitless for the third time in franchise history and this was the first time that no Mariner reached base. However, they went on to pitch two no-hitters in 2012, both of which took place