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.
Cleveland S. Harley Baseball Park Cleveland S. Harley Baseball Park Cleveland S. Harley Baseball Park is a baseball venue in Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA. It is home to the University of South Carolina Upstate Spartans college baseball team of the NCAA's Division I Atlantic Sun Conference. It opened on February 1, 2004, when Upstate swept a double header against Tusculum College. The facility has a capacity of 500 spectators. The park is named for Cleveland S. Harley, a Spartanburg-area businessman and philanthropist. Harley played a role in both the university's founding and the development of its athletic programs. The venue also features a press box,