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
Timeline of women's sports in the United States , with a 303 lb (137.5 kg) clean and jerk. 1985 - The United States national soccer team was formed. 1986 - Ann Bancroft was the first woman to reach the North Pole by foot and dogsled, "...she became the first known woman to cross the ice to the North Pole." 1986 - Nancy Lieberman joined the United States Basketball League (USBL), thus becoming the first woman to play in a men's professional basketball league. 1987 - Tania Aebi completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a 26-foot sailboat between the ages of 18 and 21, making her the