Eastern League (Japanese baseball) Eastern League (Japanese baseball) The is one of the two minor leagues ("ni-gun") of Japanese professional baseball. The league is owned and managed by the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Teams in the Eastern League generally play an 80-game schedule every year. In 1954 the six teams of NPB's Central League agreed to form their own minor league — the Shin Nippon League (or "New Japan League") — as a complement to the already extant Kansai Farm League, which had begun play in 1952. The minor league affiliates of the Chunichi Dragons and Hanshin Tigers moved over from
Kanso Yoshida Kanso Yoshida Kanso Yoshida (18951973, known to his friends as Paddy Murphy) was a Japanese-born British seaman. He was related to Japanese Emperor Hirohito by marriage. He was a resident of England for most of his life, specifically in Liverpool from 1938. Yoshida was born in Japan, a second cousin of Princess Chichibu (who had herself been born in England) who in turn became a sister-in-law of Hirohito. He came to England in 1912, but why he left Japan is unknown. He was a ship's fireman and donkeyman by trade, and began calling himself Paddy Murphy when he realized that