Kansai Indepent League Fiasco

The upstart Kansai Independent Baseball League in its inaugural season has been mired with problems of late. The swine flu which hit the Kansai area the hardest so far has postponed games scheduled for 22-24 May, but the league is facing a tougher challenge.

The expected revenue to be distributed by the league to the 4 teams apparently fell short by 2-oku yen (~$2 million) and the teams were supposed to receive revenue distribution of 3000-man (~$300,000) from the league on 31 March, but that had not materialized. 

This has put the 4 clubs under financial strain, and the initially guaranteed monthly salary of 20-man (~$2000) for the players may not be paid in full by some teams, and some teams may also cut players (if they’re carrying any extra players above the 20 person roster). The player salary payment plans for the 3 teams other than the Kishu Rangers of Wakayama on hold.

The Kansai League is, of course, famous for drafting and playing the first ever professional female baseball player in Japan in Eri Yoshida, the Kobe 9 Cruise sidearm knuckleballer reliever who has appeared in one game so far and is rehabilitating from shoulder soreness.

The 4 teams will form an operating company and take over league operations from the Stella group who started up the league but had defaulted on its revenue distribution payments prompting this dispute. However, the teams will not be taking Stella to court over this issue, and will look for ways to cut costs, delay payments, improve revenue (by recruiting their own sponsors for previously league reserved advertising space on uniforms, etc.), and the full league schedule will be played as the league resumes play after the current swine flu postponement in the schedule. The Kansai League will expand by adding the Mie Three Arrows to the league next season, and has big plans for future expansions that clash with other independent leagues expansion plans, and apparently there’s a plan to start up a Kanto Independent League in 2011 with teams in Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama, but who knows in this economic climate.

Submarine knuckleballer… and it’s a she!

This story is full of goodies for the obscure baseball lover.

The newly formed Kansai Independent League, which will begin play in 2009, has just held its draft. This is the 3rd independent league in Japan to start operation this decade, after the pioneering Shikoku-Kyushu Island League and the Baseball Challenge League (Hoku-Shinetsu region).

 

The Kansai league features the first female owner of a pro ball club in Japan as the Kobe 9Cruise (yes, that’s the team name) is owned by Kazuyo Hirota who runs a local mineral water company. The league held an open combined tryout on 4 November, and the draft on 16 November where Kobe selected Eri Yoshida, a 16 year old high school girl who is a submarine knuckleball pitcher (got all that?), with one of its picks after they saw what they liked in the tryout. Yoshida passed the first and second tests of the tryout, then pitched an inning where she struck out the first batter on a knuckler, walked the second batter, then got the next two batters to ground out to second and pop out to short.

She received a compliment from a former Yomiuri player and new Osaka pitching coach that her knuckler and fastball both have the same delivery. Her fastball is in the high 60s, so I assume she relies almost entirely on the knuckler. It’s reported that she’s considering transferring to a Kobe high school, and indie games tend to be played on weekends, so I guess this could somehow all work out, it’ll an interesting story to follow as Yoshida becomes the first professional female baseball player in Japan (in a men’s league, there was a women’s league for 2 brief years following the war).