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The story
Panasonic’s storied corporate baseball team suffered a walk-off loss to NTT West in the quarterfinals of the Japan Championship, bringing its 76-year history to a close. Manager Takaharu Inoue fought back tears, saying, “It’s my responsibility that I couldn’t get them the win.” With the team disbanding after this tournament, two-thirds of the roster will retire while one-third will keep playing by transferring to other teams. On 5ch, commenters debated the merits of corporate baseball’s employment system — which lets retired players stay on as regular full-time staff — against the reality that many former athletes struggle to adjust to office life and end up quitting anyway.
<Corporate Baseball Japan Championship: NTT West 5-4 Panasonic> ◇Nov. 8 ◇Quarterfinal ◇Kyocera Dome Osaka
Panasonic (Osaka), which is disbanding its team after this tournament, closed out 76 years of team history with a walk-off loss. In an all-Osaka showdown against NTT West — runner-up at this summer’s Intercity Tournament — Panasonic clawed back from a 3-run deficit at one point, only to fall in the bottom of the 9th. The winning run came home on a wild pitch by 24-year-old right-hander Seiya Kakimoto, a 152 km/h (94 mph) flamethrower who was taken by the Seibu Lions with their second-round draft pick.
Manager Takaharu Inoue, 35, didn’t second-guess himself for calling on Kakimoto — who had started two games this tournament and helped the team reach the final eight — out of the bullpen: “I had him pitch in a crucial spot, and I have absolutely no regrets. If Kakimoto couldn’t pull it off, there was nothing more to be done.” His eyes welled up as he added, “It’s painful to see it end here, but everyone fought without giving up right to the finish. It’s my responsibility that I couldn’t get them the win.”
Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
That's exactly why some parents say 'no going straight to the pros, but corporate ball is fine' — though in the end that player got drafted this year and is heading pro anyway.
Most of them are just contract employees, and even the full-timers often can't adjust to office life and end up quitting. It's awkward being surrounded by highly educated coworkers. Even Shohei Ohtani's dad quit Mitsubishi Heavy Industries right after retiring from baseball.
Well, that's one way to look at it, but you could also call it a dark future for soccer, volleyball, and rugby as professional sports — if their pro leagues end up operating at the same level as baseball's corporate teams, now and going forward.
Because the teams represent their cities.
For people who claim baseball is popular — what's the excuse for why NPB's farm teams, the independent leagues, and corporate ball have zero popularity?
In the Osaka area, the Hanshin Tigers are huge! But there's a group of fans who couldn't care less about Ohtani — Tigers for life, nothing else!
The Kansai TV ratings for the Climax Series against Yokohama were low, and last year's Japan Series against the Hawks was down too.
I bet there isn't a single person in Japan who actually thinks baseball as a sport is interesting in itself.
Gamba Osaka's average salary is actually higher than the Orix Buffaloes'. And the gap in the median is overwhelming. Pro baseball has a high Gini coefficient — same deal in the US. Among the four major US pro leagues, MLB stands out as having by far the highest Gini coefficient, the most unequal of them all.
That's all just fantasy, lol. Orix gets covered during contract-renewal negotiations so we get estimated salary figures, but soccer has nothing like that at all, lol. And after all the bragging about 300 or 400 million yen, when the actual rankings of every Japanese athlete's income come out, those supposed 300-400 million yen J.League guys don't even make the list, lol. Even table tennis and badminton players rank in!
Don't you think that income ranking itself might just be wrong?
>we get estimated figures
That's exactly what 'fantasy' means.
Apparently even if you get cut from SoftBank's developmental roster, SoftBank the telecom company will hire you, so it might not be that different from going to an amateur team like NTT East/West. Telecom companies also hire plenty of staff with just a high school diploma for on-site work, so you probably wouldn't feel too out of place.
SoftBank's developmental cast-offs mostly just end up working at company-run phone shops, lol.
The ones doing fieldwork go to subsidiaries or telecom construction contractors.
Soccer's probably going to keep losing out to Ohtani alone again next year. With Matsui now a manager on top of Ohtani, even Japanese baseball overall gets a boost.
Most of the crowd at the Intercity Tournament is just employees the companies mobilized. Corporate baseball genuinely has no popularity.
It's in the J.League Club Management Guide.
With such a long history, they've only won the title or been runner-up a handful of times… And this is supposedly top-tier corporate baseball in the Kansai region?
Is that a dig at Hanshin? Even competing in a league of just 6, then 12, teams, they've been matched in championship count by Vissel Kobe — a club with far less history and way more rivals to beat, lol.
At my company, before they disbanded the team, guys would just become regular employees once they retired. Some even became top salesmen. That's because they were already doing company work during the off-season anyway.
Background and Talking Points
Corporate baseball teams are run by companies mainly for advertising and employee-welfare purposes, and the fact that most players get full-time employee status rather than contract status is a major difference from how professional sports employ athletes. That’s the basis for the thread’s view that players “can stay on with the company after retirement” — though some commenters also note that many don’t adjust well and leave anyway, so stability isn’t necessarily guaranteed. The thread drifted away from the actual disbandment news into comparisons of NPB and J.League attendance and salaries, and debates about “baseball’s declining popularity” — a separate issue from the realities of corporate baseball itself. The thread never actually addresses the direct reasons behind the disbandment, such as the company’s management decisions or cuts to team funding.</parameter>
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*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisports Speed+) thread “[Corporate Baseball] Disbanding Panasonic Sees Two-Thirds of Players Retire and One-Third Move On via Transfer for a Second Baseball Life.”
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