This season’s Lions Classic games have begun with Seibu wearing its home uniforms from the dynasty era. (Koji Akiyama #1 and Hisanobu Watanabe #41 flanking Kazuhiro Kiyohara #3.)
Well, the uniform design was used until quite recently as it can be seen here with a young Daisuke Matsuzaka wearing it.
However, the Lions were unable to replicate their success of the awesome uniforms as the team has lost its first two games wearing it against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks managed by former Lions star Koji Akiyama. Incidentally, another former 80’s Lions star, Hisanobu Watanabe, is currently managing the Lions, so the ceremonial first pitch for Sunday’s game was old teammates Watanabe facing off against Akiyama, and Koji fouled the pitch off to the third base side.
Saitama Seibu Lions looking great (except for the lack of stirrups and addition of the Nike logo) in losing the first two games wearing these classic uniforms 3-10 and 5-7.
You can see the ceremonial first pitch here, Akiyama’s front foot slips but he still makes contact with NabeQ’s pitch.
An idea to replace the money losing Asia Series (since it lost its title sponsor Konami, the Series lost 2-oku yen (approx. $2m) last year, yeah small change for a Hanshin Tigers import suketto) has been floated.
Japan used to host Korea in an all-star series (similar to the now defunct NPB-MLB all-star series) format back in the 90’s but it got cancelled due to lack of fan interest. But the champion clubs meeting each other in this manner will be a first.
The problem with this newly and severely reduced format is the exclusion of Taiwan. The Uni-President 7Eleven Lions made it to the Asia Series final last year and only lost to the depleted Saitama Seibu Lions in a sayonara walkoff fashion. The Taiwanese clubs have been putting up solid efforts, so it’s a shame to lose them. Maybe once Taiwanese baseball is back in order from its current post-scandals shambles, they can host an NPB-KBO-CPBL championship, as their climate suits November ball the most.
The one game showdown idea will be put forth in July for approval.
I’m sure many people noticed this, but some WBC uniforms are alarmingly similar to MLB uniforms. Guess that’s template at work (and lack of creative colour schemes due to flag colours, though not every nation adheres to their flag stripes). Anyways, without further ado, here they are:
Australia
South Africa
It was difficult to tell them apart on quick glance, especially since they played in the same pool in Mexico City.
Oakland Athletics
Different font, obviously, but pretty similar otherwise.
Canada (home)
LAnaheim Angels
Canada has the faux vest thing going.
Canada (away)
Arizona Diamondbacks
Reverse the font colouring, and you’re basically there.
Dominican Republic
Future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez pitching for his homeland, earning a job with the Mets in the process.
Texas Rangers
There’s that annoying underarm panel in many WBC jerseys, and the helmet bill’s different colour, but otherwise…
Italy
LA Dodgers
(Immortal Manny at work)
Obviously. Was this done because of the Piazza-Lasorda connection from the first WBC?
Netherlands (the Cinderella!)
Baltimore Orioles
Cap colours need to be reversed, and MLB teams seem to be fond of cursive fonts while WBC unis tend to use block fonts.
Now for the more far fetched connections after this jump
Whenever Ichiro was at bat, the camera flashes went crazy like fireworks in the stands. This video doesn’t quite do justice as the campact digital camera’s video mode’s not sensitive enough to capture all the flashes. There were at least 2-3x more visible than what is captured here.
As for the WBC warmup games themselves. Saitama Seibu Lions beat down the Japanese national team 7-2, and the Yomiuri Giants barely lost 1-2 in extra innings on a wild pitch. And both club teams were lacking a few regulars to the national team, and were in full spring training mode by the latter half of the games, with lineups full of bench players and minor leaguers taking the mound. Needless to say, Samurai Japan looked horrible on both days, but hopefully this (and the opening game against China on Thursday) serves as a wakeup call for the team, otherwise they may not even make it out of the 1st round held at home in the Tokyo Dome. Notorious slow starter Ichiro is also having a horrible lead up to the WBC with only 3 hits in 23 at bats (and at least 2 of them were of the infield kind).
They have officially been unveiled in the camp opening ceremony held yesterday. The navy looks much closer to Nishitetsu black than the old Seibu sky blue. I like the simple design, though the minimalist simplicity of the home uniform (right) with just the L looks almost like a high school team uniform 😛 The away uniform (left) is pretty much straight up Nishitetsu throwbacks from last season. And here’s yetanother team going to an off white (or light gray) colour for their road uniform (Giants ditched their ugly black tops and used their interleague off white unis as road uniforms for most of last season, not sure what’s happening with them this season). NPB’s gonna look a lot like high school baseball in 2009. What’s up with this trend?
Illustration of the 2009 Saitama Seibu Lions away uniform has been leaked. It’s base colour is gray, spells out “LIONS” across the chest in the Nishitetsu Lios era font (or in the 2008 Nishitetsu throwback uni style), and the font is the “legend blue” navy colour that is supposed to be a mixture of Nishitetsu era black and Seibu era light blue. The uniform will be unveiled on 28 January at the training camp opening press conference, and will be worn first in the season opener against the Chiba Lotte Marines at Marine Stadium on 3 April.
So, it’s official, the Saitama Seibu Lions changing the team logo and colour are both official, new uniforms will be announced at a later date. The explanation for the new navy colour is that it’s a mixture of the Nishitetsu Lions black and the Seibu Lions sky blue. The new “Lions” font comes from the Nishitetsu throwback uniforms the team used in 2008, and that’s nifty, but the franchise could have paid respect to their Nishitetsu days without messing with the classic Tezuka Osamu Leo logo (were the royalty payments getting too high?) and the Lions sky blue that is associated with the franchise’s golden era in the 80’s (the Leo logo will remain on the club flag). And the navy just means that there’s yet another NPB team with navy as its team colour, after Chunichi, Yokohama, Orix, and Tokyo Yakult.
The new logo with the paw grabbing a baseball looks minor league as well. The team had obviously planned all this big change for the franchise’s 60th season in 2009, but it ended up being timed horribly because the Lions had just won it all, the Pacific League, Japan Series, and Asia Series and created goodwill with a reboosted and reconnected fanbase. Oh, and “legend blue” is a pretty lame name for the colour as well.
Posted by japanstats on 2008 December 27日 Saturday
A couple of Seibu uniform announcements for both their baseball and hockey teams.
First the Saitama Seibu Lions baseball team is apparently completely overhauling its uniform next season with new colours, logo, and uniforms. This may or may not be their primary logo, colour, and uniform, but this photo was taken at Tokorozawa station (home of Lions) but before a public announcement. Weird, but Seibu has never been good at marketing. Personally, moving away from the Tezuka Osamu designed Leo logo to a generic claws and baseball logo is a huge mistake, along with darkening the skyblue that has been the Lions colour since the team moved to Tokorozawa some 30 years ago, the new navy makes them similar to Chunichi Dragons, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and Yokohama BayStars. Then again, I suppose this move in the new direction is probably meant to signal their new attachment to their hometown “Saitama”, but just seems like a bad move right after winning it all (Japan Series and Asia Series champions).
Now onto the Seibu Prince Rabbits hockey team that has just announced that they will be folding (or hopefully selling) the team after this season. The team will play in throwback Seibu Railway (Seibu Railway and Kokudo teams merged to form the current Seibu team a few years back) uniforms. The ads take away from the mood, but a classy move nonetheless as it’s a classic uni that I should’ve bought while the Railway team was still alive. The throwbacks will be worn in the game on 11 January 2009 against long time archrivals Oji Eagles at the Dydo Drinco Ice Arena home game (Higashifushimi, Tokyo). The ceremonial faceoff will be taken by the brothers Mel and Herb Wakabayashi who led Japanese hockey through the 70’s and beyond as player and coach on Kokudo, Seibu, and the Japanese national team.
By the way, Seibu wore this uniform for a while after the SEIBU era:
Either way, much better than the Kokudo bunny donchya think?
I used to be a fun of the rough and exciting Seibu Railway team, but could never support the team after it was merged into Kokudo even though many of my favourite players like Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita (the Theo Fleury of Japan, he led the Japanese league in PIM and goals once or twice, I think) play on the team. Just for good measure, here’s Ryan who’s been playing in Japan since 1995 and played on the 1998 Nagano Olympic team:
Japan, Hockey, Baseball, etc. 