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.
First Flight Baseball Complex First Flight Baseball Complex The First Flight Baseball Complex is a baseball venue in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina at First Flight High School. It is the home of the Outer Banks Daredevils of the Tidewater Summer League, a collegiate summer baseball league. The team, which was founded for the 1997 season, began playing at the field in the 2006 season. Prior to this, the Daredevils had played at Coy Tillett Memorial Field in Manteo, North Carolina. The field street address is 111 Veterans Drive, Kill Devils Hills, North Carolina. The field's dimensions are 355 ft. down the foul lines,