Tokyo Yakult Swallows
| Tokyo Yakult Swallows | |||||
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| League |
Nippon Professional Baseball (1950–present)
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| Ballpark | Meiji Jingu Stadium (1964–present) | ||||
| Year established | 1950 | ||||
| Central League pennants | 7 (1978, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2015) | ||||
| Japan Series championships | 5 (1978, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2001) | ||||
| Former name(s) |
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| Colors | Blue, Red |
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| Retired numbers | 1, 8, 27 | ||||
| Ownership | Yakult | ||||
| Manager | Mitsuru Manaka | ||||
Nippon Professional Baseball (1950–present)
The Tokyo Yakult Swallows are a professional baseball team in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League.
The Swallows are named after their corporate owners, the Yakult Corporation. From 1950 to 1965, the team was owned by the former Japanese National Railways (known as Kokutetsu (国鉄) in Japanese) and called the Kokutetsu Swallows; the team was then owned by the newspaper Sankei Shimbun from 1965 to 1968 and called the Sankei Atoms. Yakult purchased the team in 1970 and restored its original Swallows name in 1974. Then it was renamed the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2006.
The franchise was established for the first time in 1950 when the team was created by the owners of former Japanese National Railways. The team name was decided to be the Kokutetsu Swallows. The team never finished with a winning record in the entire decade of the 1950s. In 1961, the team ended up being third in the league for first time in their team history.
Pitcher Masaichi Kaneda, nicknamed "The Emperor", starred for the team during this era and was the league's most dominant pitcher. Kaneda holds numerous career records in the Japanese leagues. For the Swallows, he went 14 straight seasons with at least 20 wins, led the league in strikeouts 10 times, wins three times, ERA three times, and won the Eiji Sawamura Award three times. Kaneda pitched for the Swallows from 1950 to 1964.
The team won its first Japan Series championship in 1978.
In 1990, Katsuya Nomura became the new manager of Swallows, making drastic changes in the team. Although his first year with the Swallows resulted in them finishing in fifth place, the Swallows improved to third in the league the next year for the first time since 1980. From 1992 to 2001, the team won five Central League championships, prevailing in the Japan Series in 1993, 1995, 1997, and 2001. (Nomura managed the team to the first three of those championships.)
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