Japanese Baseball League
| Formerly | Japan Occupational Baseball League |
|---|---|
| Sport | Baseball |
| Founded | February 5, 1936 |
| Inaugural season | September 1937 |
| Ceased | 1950 (reorganized as Nippon Professional Baseball) |
| President | Jiro Morioka |
| No. of teams | 11 (overall); 8 at time of merger with NPB |
| Country | Japan |
| Last champion(s) |
Yomiuri Giants |
| Most titles | Tokyo Kyojin/Yomiuri Giants (9) |
The Japanese Baseball League (日本野球連盟 Nihon Yakyū Renmei?) was a professional baseball league in Japan which operated from 1936–1949, before reorganizing in 1950 as Nippon Professional Baseball.
The league's dominant team was Tokyo Kyojin (renamed the Yomiuri Giants in 1947), which won nine league championships, including six in a row from 1938–1943, during the "dead-ball era", when many of Japan's best players were serving in the Imperial Japanese Army.
Unlike American pro teams, Japanese Baseball League teams were usually named after their corporate owners/sponsors rather than the cities or regions in which they played. This was because Japanese franchising does not have strong territorial requirements as in the Major Leagues; as a result, the JBL teams clustered in metropolitan areas in Japan's center (Tokyo, Nagoya) and south (Osaka). As a result, teams were notorious for how often they changed their names, often because of changes in ownership/sponsorship (and also because of nationalistic regulations imposed during wartime, such as the outlawing of English team names). (The Yomiuri Giants, the Chunichi Dragons, and the Hanshin Tigers are the only surviving major clubs that have always been based in their respective cities. Additionally, the current Orix Buffaloes are a merger of two clubs which never left their hometown.)
Most Japanese Baseball League teams did not have an "official" home stadium; instead, teams played at any stadium in the area in which they were based. All league championships went to whoever had the best record at the end of the season, without a postseason series being played.
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