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.
Italy national baseball team Italy national baseball team The Italy national baseball team represents Italy in international baseball competition. The Italian national team is as of 2013 ranked 11th in the world. Team Italia competed in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in , though with a much more Americanized roster than the team ordinarily uses in international play. Of the thirty players on Italy's roster, at least 23 were born in the US. A player is eligible to participate on a World Baseball Classic team if: Italy competed in Pool D, which included Venezuela, the Dominican Republic & Australia. All games during round one