C.J. Nitkowski pitched for several major league teams from 1995-05. He’s now playing his second year in Japan for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks and will file periodic updates for The Associated Press on his experience. His stories will be archived on his Web site, www.cjbaseball.com
By C.J. NITKOWSKI
For The Associated Press
FUKUOKA, Japan (AP) -Interleague play began in Major League Baseball in 1997. You would think with its early success, they would’ve immediately tried it in Japan.
That was not the case and it wasn’t until 2005, for a host of different reasons, interleague play got launched here.
Our versions of the American and National leagues – the Pacific and Central leagues – operate independently. Although they come together for an All-Star game and playoffs, it seems they are rarely on the same page.
You also get the sense as a player here that the Central League believes it is the better league, most likely because the CL is home to Japan’s two most popular teams, the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers. Both have historic ties to professional baseball in Japan that run much deeper than any Pacific League teams.
The Central League began its 2008 season seven days after the Pacific League held its Opening Day, unusual with no apparent logical reason. Also, up until 2007, the leagues ran their playoff systems differently – the CL regular-season winner would go directly to the Japan Series while the PL’s top three teams participated in a playoff system.
So the CL champion would idly sit by for about two weeks while the PL decided who would advance. It wasn’t until 2007, after losing four straight Japan Series to Pacific teams, that the Central wised up and joined in on the three-team playoff format.
Interleague play also took a while to develop. In 2004, there was a two-day players’ strike that resulted in the merging of one Central and one Pacific team – that club stayed in the CL while an expansion team was put in the PL. To boost interest in this new team that would be playing its game in Sendai, a somewhat rural part of Japan.
That’s when Japanese baseball approved interleague play. The idea was to give these new fans in Sendai an opportunity to see not only the PL teams, but the more popular drawing teams like the Giants and Tigers. It was viewed as more of an economic stimulus plan for not only the new team in Sendai (the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles) but also the entire “weaker” Pacific League.
The format has been slightly tweaked since the 2005 inception. Currently, the six teams in both the CL and the PL play each other four times. Those games are held during a window of about six weeks – the leagues leave off four days at the end to make up any rainouts.
Now this is where it gets fun.
Interleague play in Japan means more than fans and players seeing different parks and opponents. There is actually something at stake. The team with the best record at the end of interleague play wins a prize put up by Japanese baseball of about $500,000.
Half of the money goes to the corporation that owns the team (all teams are owned by companies here) and the other half is split between the players and staff.
The thorn in the CL’s side is that the PL has won interleague play every year since it began.
Going into the final day of interleague play, there was a four-way tie for first place among two PL teams and two CL teams. My team, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, was tied with the Nippon Ham Fighters and the mighty Tigers and Giants.
Like so many other things here in Japan, the tiebreaker rules are quirky. Rather than head-to-head results or runs allowed, ties are decided by the previous year’s interleague play standings.
To make it more interesting, it just happened to be the Hawks were playing the Giants in the Tokyo Dome and the Fighters were playing the Tigers in historic Koshien Stadium. The way the tiebreaker situation was set up, we needed to win and also needed the Tigers to win.
Then we got the news: The Tigers had won 5-3.
Going into the ninth inning of our game, we were tied with the Giants 2-2. In true Japanese-style baseball, we squeezed out a run on two infield singles and two sacrifice bunts.
I got the call from the bullpen with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, trying to finish off the victory against a lefty pinch-hitter. Never in my life have I had to face one hitter for $500,000.
It was like something from halftime of the NBA finals or the Super Bowl – do what the pros do once and win a big prize.
Fortunately for me, on a 1-2 count, the hitter rolled over a cutter and grounded out to second base. The Hawks were interleague champs and to be honest, it was a lot more exciting than I expected it to be.
After all, it is only the middle of the season. But in front of a sold-out and extremely loud Tokyo Dome crowd (it’s like international soccer every night), it felt like the playoffs.
Midseason excitement is never a bad thing. And although it took them a while, Japanese baseball came up with a way to make interleague play not only interesting for the fans, but interesting for the players.
Hoisting up a trophy and a lottery winner’s-sized check for 50 million yen in front our approximately 10,000 cheering road fans in the Tokyo Dome was an absolute blast.
You’ll never hear me argue that Japanese baseball has a better product over MLB, they don’t. But I might give you an argument that they put on a better show.
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