Sometimes, a tweet is not enough, so here is a list I was fiddling around with, the longest number of seasons without a pennant in Japanese baseball history.
This was not as easy as it looks to compile because of Japan’s seasons, and I don’t mean the four seasons everyone tells you about until you get to June and then add on that there’s another one — the rainy season. Japan had two seasons a year in 1937 and ’38 with separate champions, and the Pacific League pennants were decided by playoffs (first half/second half) from 1973 to ’82, and (1st, 2nd, 3rd) from 2004 to ’06. From 2007, both leagues adopted playoffs, given the jizzy new name of the “Climax Series” that copied the PL format, but WOULD NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM determine the pennant winner. How about that for anti-climactic? It would, however, select the teams to compete in the Japan Series.
So we figure in all those little pearls, we get the following list of the franchises with the longest suffering fans.
- 37 seasons: The Taiyo Whales / Yokohama Taiyo Whales / Yokohama BayStars. After winning their first CL pennant in 1960, the franchise didn’t win another until 1998.
- 31 seasons: The Hankyu Braves. Before they became manager Yukio Nishimoto’s “Golden Braves” and the annual postseason whipping boys of the V9 Yomiuri Giants, the Braves went without a pennant from their inception as one of Japan’s first teams until 1967.
- 30 seasons: The Lotte Orions / Lotte Marines. The Orions, who won the first PL pennant and Japan Series as a brand new team in 1950, won the most games in the PL in 1974 despite playing only 50 percent of their home games in their main park, Sendai’s dilapidated Miyagi Stadium in the days before the Rakuten Eagles took it over and turned it into an amusement park. They wouldn’t win again until they had relocated twice and become the Chiba Lotte Marines. They finished second in the league behind the Daiei Hawks in 2005 but beat the Hawks in Fukuoka to grab the pennant.
- 29 seasons. The Kintetsu Buffaloes. Another hard luck story. The Buffaloes led the PL in over winning percentage in 1975 but Nishimoto’s Buffs were knocked out of the playoffs, by the Braves, now managed by his apprentice and future fellow Hall of Fame skipper, Toshiharu Ueda. The Buffaloes would have to wait until the arrival of Charlie Manuel in 1979 to win their first PL pennant. They then won two in a row but were beaten both times by another previous hard-luck team: The Hiroshima Carp.
- 28 seasons. The Kokutetsu Swallows / Sankei Swallows / Yakult Atoms / Yakult Swallows. The Swallows began with the CL in the 1950 expansion and didn’t win until Tatsuro Hirooka came in to manage a club that won in 1978 with the help of Charlie Manuel and won the Japan Series over Ueda’s Braves with the help of a controversial home run.
- (tie) 25 seasons. Hiroshima Carp and Nankai Hawks / Daiei Hawks. The Carp were underfunded but never underloved by the their loyal but cantankerous fans. A foreign manager, Joe Lutz, was brought in to make huge changes and he did. But his lack of control saw him quit early in the season over constant disagreements with umpires and one showdown with team executives. Lutz made two huge moves, moving Sachio Kinugasa to third base — where he became a Hall of Famer, and using ace (and another Hall of Famer) Yoshiro Sotokoba exclusively as a starter.
The Hawks won in Katsuya Nomura’s first year in charge as nominal player-manager in 1973, but fired him because he was married and news of his girlfriend, his current wife, surfaced. The Hawks went from competitive to being doormats and that wouldn’t change until Rikuo Nemoto, the man who laid the foundations for both the Carp and Seibu Lions dynasties was brought in, and used his personal skills to gain as much of the best amateur talent as he could through a wide variety of means. In 1999, under Sadaharu Oh, the Daiei Hawks finally broke through.
7. (tie) 24 seasons. Nippon Ham Fighters (1982 – 2005) and Hiroshima Carp (1992-2015) or so it seems.
