The Nippon Professional Baseball! The highest level of baseball in Japan.

Today’s topic is about the Nippon (Japanese) Professional Baseball!

The Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) consists of 2 leagues, the Central league and the Pacific league, and each league has 6 teams.

They compete for the league title in the regular season which is about 140 games, including 24 games of the interleague games. (The number of games changes every year.)

The top three teams advance to the playoff called the Climax series. The winners of the Climax series from each league will compete in the Japan Series for the national championship.

Yomiuri Giants, the leading team in the central league, has won third consecutive league title.
This season, all teams are being very closely fought with a small game behind in the Central league. 
Now ４ teams are trying to get the places for the Climax series. It's exciting. 

In the Pacific league, on the other hand, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks is leading the pennant race with overwhelming strength. They won the league title with the record of fastest league champion in the history of the Pacific league.  

Throughout the season, a lot of fans are excited about supporting their favorite teams.

And  I am one of those fans, too!  

So, I will introduce the all 12 teams of NPB.

The Central League

Team	Home Stadium	Home City
Yomiuri Giants 読売ジャイアンツ	Tokyo Dome	Tokyo
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 東京ヤクルトスワローズ	Meiji Jingu Stadium	Tokyo
Yokohama DeNA BayStars 横浜DeNAベイスターズ	Yokohama Stadium,	Yokohama(Kanagawa prefecture)
Chunichi Dragons 中日ドラゴンズ	Nagoya Dome	Nagoya (Aichi prefecture)
Hanshin Tigers 阪神タイガース	Hanshin Koshien Stadium,	Nishinomiya (Hyogo prefecture)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp 広島東洋カープ	MAZDA-ZoomZoom Stadium	Hiroshima

The Pacific League

Team	Home Stadium	Home City
Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 北海道日本ハムファイターズ	Sapporo Dome	Sapporo (Hokkaido prefecture)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 東北楽天ゴールデンイーグルス	Rakuten Kobo Stadium Miyagi	Sendai (Miyagi prefecture)
Saitama Seibu Lions 埼玉西武ライオンズ	Seibu Prince Dome	Tokorozawa (Saitama prefecture)
Chiba Lotte Marines 千葉ロッテマリーンズ	QVC Marine Field	Chiba
Orix Buffaloes オリックス・バファローズ	Kyocera Dome Osaka	Osaka
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 福岡ソフトバンクホークス	Fukuoka Yafuoku! Dome	Fukuoka

This blog will be scheduled to introduce features of each team. Don't miss it! 

By the way, have you been interested in what the professional baseball players use?

Don’t you think you want to use the same equipment as the player you like?

The number of Japanese professional baseball players is about 800. Popular Japanese baseball makers of equipment used by them are Mizuno, Asics, SSK, and ZETT. 


Mizuno is also popular in the Major League Baseball and many players, including Ichiro Suzuki of the Miami Marlins and Masahiro Tanaka of the New York Yankees,  use its gloves and bats!

※Picture from Nikkan Sports

※Picture from Nikkan Sports

Munenori Kawasaki of the Toronto Blue Jays is Asics’s advisory staff so all of his equipment for the baseball is Asics. 

※Picture from Nikkan Sports

Swallow Sports deals with a lot of baseball items which is the model and collaborative products of professional players. 

Please check them out!

http://www.4860.jp/special/mizuno_promodel/

http://www.4860.jp/sub/asics/

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