Yomiuri Giants

Yomiuri Giants
Established 1934
Team logo Cap Insignia
League affiliations
Independent (1934–1935) Japanese Baseball League (1936–1949) Nippon Professional Baseball (1950–present) Central League (1950–present)
Current uniform
Retired Numbers	1, 3, 4, 14, 16, 34
Colors	Black, Orange, White
Name
The Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club (1934–1935) Tokyo Kyojin (1936–1946) Yomiuri Giants (1947–present)
Other nicknames
Kyojin (巨人?, giant)
Ballpark
Korakuen Stadium (1949–1987) Tokyo Dome (1988–present)
League titles
Japan Series titles (22)	1951, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1981, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2009, 2012
CL Pennants (33)	1951, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012
Japanese Baseball League titles (9)	Fall 1936, Spring 1937, Fall 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1949
Owner(s): Yomiuri Group
Manager: Tatsunori Hara
General Manager:
2012 Yomiuri Giants season

The Yomiuri Giants (読売ジャイアンツ, Yomiuri Jaiantsu^?) are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top level of professional play in Japan. They play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988. The English-language press occasionally calls the team the "Tokyo Giants", but that name has not been in use in Japan for decades. Instead, the team is officially known by the name of its corporate owner just like the Hanshin Tigers and Orix Buffaloes. The team's owner is the Yomiuri Group, a media conglomerate which includes two newspapers and a television network. The Yomiuri Giants are regarded as "The New York Yankees of Japan" due to their widespread popularity, past dominance of the league, and polarizing effect on fans (baseball fans who feel ambivalent about teams other than their local team often have an intense dislike for the Giants; on the other hand, the Giants have a large fan base even in areas with a local team).

The Giants are the oldest team among the current Japanese professional teams. Lefty O'Doul, a former Major League Baseball player, named the team "Tokyo Giants". Yomiuri Giants name and uniforms were based on the New York (now San Francisco) Giants. The team's 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.

The team is often referred by fans and in news headlines and tables simply as Kyojin (巨人), instead of the usual corporate owner's name or the English nickname.

Players of note [edit]

Former players [edit]

Retired numbers [edit]

• 1 Sadaharu Oh (王 貞治)
• 3 Shigeo Nagashima (長嶋 茂雄)
• 4 Toshio Kurosawa (黒沢 俊夫)
• 14 Eiji Sawamura (沢村 栄治)
• 16 Tetsuharu Kawakami (川上 哲治)
• 34 Masaichi Kaneda (金田 正一)

"Japan's team" and allegations of corruption [edit]

Tokyo Dome, the Giants' home field

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.^[1]

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.^[1] In August 2004, Yomiuri president Tsuneo Watanabe resigned after it was revealed that the club had violated scouting rules by paying ¥2 million to pitching prospect Yasuhiro Ichiba. Ten months later, Watanabe was hired as chairman of the Yomiuri corporation.^[2] In 2012, Asahi Shimbun discovered that the Giants had violated NPB rules by secretly paying pitcher Takahiko Nomaguchi while he was still an amateur playing in Japan's corporate league.^[3]

In 2009, the Giants played the Japan national baseball team in an unofficial goodwill game before the World Baseball Classic.

Contact information [edit]

• Yomiuri Giants, Takebashi 3-3 Building, 3-3 Kanda Nishiki-cho, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8462

MLB players [edit]

Hideki Matsui

Active:

• Koji Uehara (2009-)
• Hisanori Takahashi (2010-)

Retired:

• Takashi Kashiwada (1998)
• Takahito Nomura (2002)
• Masumi Kuwata (2007)
• Ken Kadokura (2009)
• Hideki Okajima (2007-2011)
• Hideki Matsui (2003-2012)

Notes [edit]

Books [edit]

• Fitts, Robert K. (2005). Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2630-2. 
• Whiting, Robert (2005). The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0-446-69403-7. 
• Whiting, Robert (1990). You Gotta Have Wa. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-72947-X. 

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Yomiuri Giants

• (Japanese) Yomiuri Giants Official Website
• NPB Official Website(Yomiuri Giants)