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.
Hideo Fujimoto the Giants defeated the Hawks for the championship for the third year in a row. After his playing career, he coached for the Giants and managed in the Japanese minor leagues, Later, he managed in the industrial leagues. He also worked as the Los Angeles correspondent for "Yomiuri Shimbun". Fujimoto/Nakagami was elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976. Hideo Fujimoto Fujimoto was born in Busan, Korea, moving to Japan at age eight. He attended Shimonoseki Shogyo High School and Meiji University. In 1943, he enjoyed one of the greatest seasons ever by a pitcher in Japan. He