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 Nomo brought in to start the seventh inning of a game while the Yankees were leading 4-1. Nomo loaded the bases, but was able to retire his native countryman, Hideki Matsui, to strand all three runners. However, he later surrendered back-to-back homers to Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada in the ninth inning. On April 20, Nomo was designated for assignment. The Royals released him on April 29, 2008. On July 17, 2008, Nomo officially announced his retirement from Major League Baseball. Prior to the 2016 season, the San Diego Padres hired Nomo as Advisor, Baseball Operations, to assist the club with