2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment

The 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment was the cause of the first and only work stoppage in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) history. The dispute resulted from the proposed realignment of Japan’s professional baseball into a one-league format, and the proposed mergers of four of the ball clubs. The two-day strike occurred on the weekend of September 18–19, 2004.

Unlike Major League Baseball (MLB), Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) does not require teams to participate in any revenue sharing strategies that would help correct revenue imbalances between teams because of game attendance and television broadcasting contracts. These issues are problematic because the Yomiuri Giants, the league's most popular team, generates revenue much easier than any other team. Daily Yomiuri baseball reporter Jim Allen, for example, estimates that the Giants account for 40% of all NPB television broadcasting revenue, while the eleven remaining teams account for the other 60%. Compounding this issue, NPB employs a "reverse designation" draft system. Instead of teams choosing players, as in MLB, players can choose what team they would like to play for. According to former Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles general manager Marty Kuehnert, the teams with the most money can offer amateur players money under the table in exchange for their pledge. Traditionally, NPB teams existed to advertise their parent company, unlike MLB teams that are businesses attempting to maximize their profits. With prime-time advertising spots being expensive in Japan, corporations bought NPB teams for the primary purpose of keeping themselves in the public eye for the entirety of a baseball season. For years, potential profits were secondary. The recession of the 1990s and 2000s started to change this mentality.

For several years, the Kintetsu Buffaloes reported yearly losses of approximately $40 million due to a drop in home-game attendance, rising player salaries and an annual $10 million charge for the use of the Osaka Dome, their home field.Kintetsu Corporation, the railway company that owned the Buffaloes, announced in January 2004 that it was planning to put the team's name up for sale after the 2005 season in an effort to make the team more profitable. However, NPB commissioner Yasuchika Negoro denied Kintetsu's request and the plan was abandoned. Later that year, Masanori Yamaguchi, president of Kintetsu, stated that the team had "no prospect of paying dividends (to the parent company)" in its current state. Meanwhile, the Orix BlueWave was also struggling to post a profit. The BlueWave's home-game attendance had been steadily declining after star player Ichiro Suzuki left the team to play in MLB in 2001, and the team finished the previous two seasons in last place. In June 2004, believing no one had any interest in purchasing the team, Buffaloes officials announced plans to merge with the BlueWave for the 2005 season. Yamaguchi saw the merger with Orix as the most realistic solution to both teams' financial problems. Later that same month, a panel of NPB executives accepted the proposed merger.

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