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.
Croatia national baseball team Croatia national baseball team The Croatia national baseball team is the national baseball team of Croatia. As of the beginning of 2013 in the IBAF World Rankings, they were the 7th best team in Europe and the 31st men's baseball team overall. The team is controlled by the Croatian Baseball Association, which is represented in the Confederation of European Baseball. Croatia hosted one of the four pools during the first stage of play in the 2009 Baseball World Cup. The Official IBAF 2014 End-of-the-Year World Rankings put Croatia 43rd in the world. Croatia joined the Confederation of European Baseball in