From TheBestLinks.com
The Orix Blue Wave (オリックスブルーウェーブ) is a baseball team in Kobe, Japan, that plays in the Pacific League. The team is owned by the Orix Group, a leading diversified financial services company based in Tokyo.
Orix Blue Wave was founded in 1936 as Osaka Hankyu Baseball Club (大阪阪急野球協会) and later nicknamed Hankyu Braves(阪急ブレーブス) under the ownership of a Japanese railway company Hankyu Dentetsu (Hankyu Electric Railway). In October 11,1988 Hankyu Dentetsu sold the ownership to a lease company Orient Lease(since 1989 Orix Group) with two assurances to keep the team name Braves and its franchaise in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. During first two years under a new ownership the team were the Orix Braves, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo. Since 1991 the team however has been Orix Blue Wave in Kobe. Old fans were shocked by these changes but fortunately Nishinomiya and Kobe are not so far from each other. And the new home ground of the team are better than the former, most of fans are content to moving but there are some who have nostalgia for the name of Braves. Today the team is sometimes called Aonami(青波) by fans and baseball mass media, which means Blue Wave in Japanese.
In 1995 and 1996, the Orix Blue Wave won the Pacific League pennant and in 1996 won the Japan Series also.
Famous players who have played include Ichiro Suzuki, Shigetoshi Hasegawa (both of whom now play for the Seattle Mariners of the American League), Fukumoto Yutaka, and So Taguchi.
External links
ja:オリックスブルーウェーブ
Related links
Top visited
0 of
0 links
[no links posted yet]
>> place link >>
Discussion
Last posted
0 of
0 messages
[no messages posted yet]
>> post message >>
Watch
You can
add this article to your own "watchlist" and receive e-mail notification about all changes in this page.
