Yomiuri Giants

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* [http://english.baseball-museum.or.jp/baseball_hallo/detail/detail_008.html] , [http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_news.jsp?ymd=20021106&content_id=171904&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp]
* [http://www.starffin.com/]
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*player| 4|JPN|Toshio Kurosawa (黒沢 俊夫)
*player|14|JPN|Eiji Sawamura (沢村 栄治)
*player|16|JPN|Tetsuharu Kawakami (川上 哲治)
*player|34|JPN|Masaichi Kaneda (金田 正一)

The Giants as "Japan's team"

Due to the Yomiuri company's vast influence in Japan as a major media conglomerate, the Giants are successfully marketed to the Japanese people as "Japan's Team." In fact, for some years the Giants' uniforms had "Tokyo" on the jersey instead of "Yomiuri" or "Giants," seeming to imply that the Giants represent the vast metropolis and geopolitical center of Japan, even though the Yakult Swallows are also based in Tokyo and three other teams play in the Greater Tokyo Area. This bandwagon appeal has been compared with the marketability of the New York Yankees and Manchester United, except that support for the Giants nearly exceeds 50% of those polled, while in the United States and England, support is judged to be between 30 to 40 percent for the New York Yankees and Manchester United, respectively. Correspondingly, fans of other professional baseball teams in Japan are often openly derisive and contemptuous of the Giants' bandwagon marketing tactics, and an "anti-Giants" movement exists in protest of the near hegemony established by the Yomiuri Giants. [Whiting, "You Gotta have Wa".]

It has also long been alleged that the Giants rely on underhanded tactics to recruit the best players, involving bribes to players and amateur coaches, or using their influence on the governing council of Japanese professional baseball to pass rules that favors their recruiting efforts. This may be one explanation for the Giants' abundance of success in league play. [Whiting, "You Gotta have Wa".]

Trivia

* Yomiuri Giants name and uniforms were based on the New York (now San Francisco) Giants. Lefty O'Doul, a former Major League Baseball player, named the team "Tokyo Giants". The teams colors (orange and black) are the same colors worn by the National League's Giants, both in New York and San Francisco. The stylized lettering on the team's jerseys and caps is similar to the fancy lettering used by the Giants when they played in New York in the 1930s, although during the 1970s the Giants modernized their lettering to follow the style worn by the American Giants.
* The Giants' main rivalry is with the Hanshin Tigers, a team especially popular in the Kansai region.
* It has been said because of the lengthy MLBPA strike in the United States, and because of Japanese lore of the meaning of 60th anniversaries, the 1994 60th Anniversary Yomiuri Giants were the luckiest team in professional baseball. Many journalists called the 1994 team the World Champions of Professional Baseball.
*Contact information: Yomiuri Giants, Takebashi 3-3 Building, 3-3 Kanda Nishiki-cho, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8462

Notes

Books

*cite book
last = Fitts
first = Robert K.
authorlink =
year = 2005
title = Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game
publisher = Southern Illinois University Press
location =
id = ISBN 0809326302
*cite book
last = Whiting
first = Robert
authorlink =
year = 2005
title = The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan
publisher = Grand Central Publishing
location =
id = ISBN 0446694037
*cite book
last = Whiting
first = Robert
authorlink =
year = 1990
title = You Gotta Have Wa
publisher = Vintage
location =
id = ISBN 067972947X

External links

*ja icon [http://www.giants.jp/top.html Yomiuri Giants Official Website]