Orix BlueWave

The Orix BlueWave (ja: オリックスブルーウェーブ) was a Japanese baseball team based in Kobe, Japan, which played in the Pacific League and was owned by the Orix Group, a Tokyo financial services company. Kobe is the hometown of the owner of the group and club, and was a reason that Orix BlueWave franchised in Kobe. Another reason was its former incarnation, Hankyu Braves (阪急ブレーブス), had franchised in Nishinomiya, a neighboring town of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture.

After the 2004 season, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes were acquired by Orix Group and were merged with the BlueWave to form the Orix Buffaloes.

History

Orix BlueWave was founded in 1936 as Osaka Hankyu Baseball Club (大阪阪急野球協会) under the ownership of a Japanese railway company Hankyu Electric Railways (Hankyu Dentetsu), which was one of the oldest Japanese professional baseball team. Later the team was nicknamed Hankyu Braves.

The Hankyu Braves was thought to be one of the strongest teams not only in the Pacific League but in all of Japan. In the 1970s, the Hankyu Braves won the Pacific League three times, but lost the Japan Series against the Tokyo Giants. In the 1980s, the team was still known as strong but lost the pennant to the Seibu Lions. The manager Ueda Toshiharu was known as "the good manager in tragedy" because of those losses.

On October 11, 1988, the final day of that year's baseball season, Hankyu Electric Railways sold the franchise to the lease company Orient Lease (since 1989, known as Orix Group) with two assurances: the team name would remain "Braves" and the franchise would stay in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. This was a surprise to everyone, because it was much rarer in those days in Japan for the ownership of a professional baseball team to change, not to mention for a large company to sell one of its branches; Hankyu Electric Railways was thought of as one of the big companies that would never need to do such a thing.

The BlueWave

During the first two years of new ownership, the team were known as the Orix Braves in Nishinomiya, Hyogo. In 1991, the team became the Orix BlueWave, located in Kobe. Longtime fans were shocked by these changes. However, since Nishinomiya and Kobe are close to one other, and the new home field of the team was better than the previous field, most fans became content with the move, with some nostalgia for the "Braves" name. The team was sometimes called Aonami (青波) by fans and the baseball media, which means "Blue Wave" in Japanese.

In 1995 and 1996 the Orix BlueWave won the Pacific League pennant. In 1996, they also won the Japan Series.

Famous players

Famous players who have played for Orix BlueWave include Ichiro Suzuki and Shigetoshi Hasegawa (both of whom have played for the Seattle Mariners of the American League), as well as Daryl Spencer, Yutaka Fukumoto, Troy Neel, Masafumi Yamamori and So Taguchi.

A recent addition to the Seattle Mariners from the Blue Wave was Kenji Johjima, the first Japanese catcher to play in the MLB