The story so far:

Confronted by declining attendance caused by factors that included a poor economy, competition from a professional soccer league, and the flight of its top stars to the United States, the old guard of Japanese baseball, led by Yomiuri owner Tsuneo Watanabe (photo with cigar), came up with some self-serving solutions. They decided to merge the two Kansai area teams in the Pacific League with poor fan support, push for the merger of two other Pacific League teams, and convert Japanese baseball to a single 10-team league.

The six teams in the Pacific League enthusiastically supported this plan because it would bail out the financially troubled owners and gave the remaining four teams dates on their schedule with the Yomiuri Giants, which would be big paydays. Four of the Central League teams were less enthusiastic about the idea, preferring to keep the Pacific League with five teams instead, but if there had been one constant in postwar Japanese baseball, it was whatever Yomiuri wants, Yomiuri gets.

In the Japan of just 10 years ago, this plan probably would have gone through. But the old guard had not foreseen what would happen next: no one else liked the plan—not the fans and not the players—and this time they were prepared to do something about it.

When the fan support for maintaining two six-team leagues appeared, a new figure emerged on the scene: Takafumi “Horiemon” Horie, the energetic young president of Livedoor, a leading Internet provider in Japan. Horie, shown in the second photo, could not have presented a sharper contrast with the old ways of Japanese business as personified by Watanabe. He offered to buy the financially ailing Kintetsu Buffaloes and make them a going proposition.

Here’s when the old guard made its first mistake. They turned down Horie’s offer without even listening to it. When asked why they were unwilling to consider Horie’s bid, Watanabe of the Giants mumbled something to the effect that Horie’s money didn’t come from old-line businesses such as those of the rest of the owners of Japanese baseball. (As we noted yesterday, they are primarily transportation companies or mass merchandisers, in addition to media conglomerate Yomiuri and a few others.) Also, Kintetsu President Yamaguchi said he didn’t have to listen to Horie’s offer because the deal already was in place to merge with Orix.

But the merger plan had yet to be formally approved by Japanese baseball. Why not at least meet Horie to see what he could bring to the table, especially as fan opposition to contraction was growing? As we’ve seen, these were not primarily Kintetsu fans, because Kintetsu had a small fan base. These were Japanese baseball fans from around the country who wanted to maintain two leagues and who disliked the way the owners were handling the issue.

The refusal to consider Horie’s plan enraged another key segment against the proposal: the players themselves. Opposition erupted from the Kintetsu Buffaloes, one of the teams slated for merger. Kintetsu players’ association president, first baseman Koichi Isobe, said the players were in favor of keeping the team. “If there’s even a one percent chance of keeping the club, we’d like to move in this direction,” Isobe remarked, apparently referring to Horie’s offer. Said pitcher Tetsuro Kawajiri, “Even though someone has offered to purchase the team, I don’t think it’s good for pro baseball that the owner is unwilling to hold talks.”

The owners met on July 7 and tentatively approved the merger plan. Though no public announcements were made, it was widely assumed that a plan to merge two other PL teams was discussed at this time. But the fans responded by launching a petition drive to maintain the two-league system—a response that attracted unlikely allies. The players themselves helped gather fan signatures on petitions, including the players of Watanabe’s own Yomiuri Giants.

When they saw which way the wind was blowing, several of the Central League owners who had originally backed the merger started having second thoughts. The Hanshin Tigers were the first to flip, Tigers owner Shunjiro Kuma at first had come out in favor of the merger, even arguing for a single league with only eight teams, which would have required a third merger. But after Kuma changed his tune, team President Katsuyoshi Nozaki supported Kuma and expressed his objection too. “The merger talks have progressed in a different way from what we thought it should be,” Nozaki said. In fact, Nozaki came up with a plan to boost interest in baseball by playing interleague games. The PL had been interested in the idea before because it gave them dates with the Giants. CL teams didn’t like the idea for the opposite reason—they would give up dates with the Giants. For his part, Watanabe had long been opposed to interleague play.

Then two more CL teams flipped and joined Hanshin, as the Yakult Swallows and Yokohama BayStars came out against contraction. “The image of baseball will be hurt if it contracts,” asserted Swallows President Yoshikazu Tagiku. ”More discussions will have to be held before we go in either direction — expansion or contraction”. BayStars President Susumu Minegishi said he was ready to form an alliance to with the other two teams to prevent contraction.

It was at this point that Yomiuri owner Watanabe began to feel the heat. His own players were helping fans in signature drives, and the other CL teams in his personal fiefdom were forming a bloc against him. In a meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi, he complained, “I am suffering”.

His suffering was only beginning. Opposition forces grew in strength as the baseball players’ union entered the fray. Their move began for the same reason all labor unions around the world take action—to protect the jobs of their members. The reduction by two teams would have put one-sixth of their membership out of work.

The union handled their opposition to the merger brilliantly. Not only did they back the fans’ movement, winning their support and sympathy, but they appeared calm and rational in contrast to Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), Japanese baseball’s ruling body. The union submitted a list of demands that baseball officials rejected. These included postponing the merger, forming a special committee to discuss merger issues, and allowing Kintetsu to sell naming rights, which the league also had dismissed without seeming to give the idea serious consideration.

NPB’s written response stated, “The merger plan came out after every possible option was considered and it cannot be put on a freeze under the current economic circumstances.” In rebuttal, Yakult catcher and players’ union head Atsuya Furuta (picture three, left, and picture four), replied, “It’s extremely regrettable. Not only I but also many other people don’t think it’s acceptable. The merger has yet to receive formal approval. So it’s strange they claim that it cannot be shelved.”

Indeed, it was strange. The whole merger plan was concocted to bail out Kintetsu, yet Kintetsu wouldn’t even listen when a prospective purchaser came calling. The 12 teams had informally decided to contract, accept the Kintetsu-Orix merger plan, and had another merger plan lined up for two other teams. In the face of fan and player opposition, the standing offer of Livedoor President Horie to buy the Buffaloes, and a change of heart by four CL teams, merger plans were moving forward.

That’s when Yomiuri owner Watanabe made his second mistake, and perhaps the biggest mistake of his career. Asked what he thought about the players’ opposition to the merger, he sneered, “Taka ga senshu.” (They’re nothing more than players, after all.) Watanable couldn’t possibly have chosen three more ill-advised words. The condescension oozing from this comment not only summed up the attitude of the owners toward their employees, the players, but encapsulated their belief that sole authority for the course of Japanese baseball resided with them, regardless of how it affected their employees and on-field performers, and the consumers, or the fans. In fact, it symbolized perfectly the attitude of the power structure in the old Japan.

This spurred the entry of the Japan Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) into the fray, which had long before become the primary daily topic of the Japanese media. Rengo planned a protest over Watanabe’s remarks, came out in support of the players association, and proposed a boycott of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, published by the Giants’ owners.

Watanabe’s remark transcended the issue itself by highlighting the differences in attitudes and approach of both sides. In the mind of the public, Watanabe came to symbolize all the negative and unpleasant policies of the past, not only in baseball, but throughout Japanese society, especially in politics and industry.

Meanwhile, the players’ union couldn’t have had a better public spokesman than Furuta. An established star on the field, Furuta maintained his boyish good looks and charm, was a tireless worker on behalf of the fans and players, and conveyed sincerity and good will in every appearance. It also had to help that his wife was a former announcer on the popular TV program broadcast every night after the 11:00 news that provided summaries and film footage of the day’s games. She likely gave him hints on dealing with the media throughout the entire process.

Here’s what Furuta had to say at a meeting of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club:

‘According to a recent survey, the majority of fans are against the merger and against having one league…Everything has been in an uproar since talks (in June) about the merger of the Buffaloes and BlueWave began. The players and the fans have an opinion, but these have been ignored. This is something that should be considered without rushing.

“So many fans will be disappointed if we don’t take a stand,” he said, noting that almost a million fans have signed petitions against the merger and opposing one league. “I don’t know why they rejected (Horie’s) offer (to buy the team). Japanese baseball decided that Livedoor’s bid was inappropriate without even talking.

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission came down on the side of the players and fans by saying that Japanese baseball owed everyone a clear explanation for rejecting Livedoor’s purchase offer. The players’ association kept up the pressure by successfully convincing the Tokyo District Court to consider an injunction to delay the merger, which caused Japanese baseball officials to halt the process for a week. The court eventually turned down the request, and the Tokyo High Court turned down the players’ appeal. After these legal maneuvers, an executive committee from the NPB approved the merger plans just days after Kintetsu and Orix signed the formal merger contract.

At this point in early September, the owners were still considering combining two other teams to create a 10-team league and had yet to give their formal approval to the original merger, though there was no question that’s where they were headed.

As Furuta stated, the players felt they had to take a stand, and the stand they took was a breathtaking one—they threatened the first strike in Japanese baseball history.

On deck for tomorrow: Making history