Unions (Takahashi- 1954, Tombow- 1955, Takahashi-
1956, Daiei-1957)
The Takahashi Unions made their appearance
in the Pacific league in 1954.
The Pacific league had had seven teams
since
they were divided into Central league
and
the Pacific league, but having an odd
number
of teams was inefficient for playoffs
and
tournaments. Therefore, the league
told all
the teams that the team whose winning
percentage
is below .350 would be disbanded. However,
all the teams played really hard during
that
season and as a result no team had
a winning
percentage below .350.
Then, the Pacific league came up with
the
idea that they could add one more team.
The owner of the new team was Ryutaro
Takahashi,
who was the president of the former
Dai Nippon
Beer Company (Asahi Beer and Sapporo
Beer
now) and a former Minister of International
Trade and Industry. He was well known
as
a big fan of Baseball. Indeed, he was
dedicated
enough to support the Eagles team,
which
had serious financial trouble, with
his personal
funds during World War II. Every Pacific
league team offered their players to
the
new team. The team was named the Takahashi
Unions in honor of Ryutaro Takahashi.
At the beginning, people thought the
team
name would be the Takahashi Eagles,
since
he had supported the Eagles so faithfully.
Actually, one of the magazines, Yakyukai
(Baseball World), used the name Takahashi
Eagles at first. Nevertheless, the
new team
was nicknamed "Unions". The
name
came from the name of the beer. Dai
Nippon
Beer used to make beer before World
War II.
After Dai Nippon Beer was divided into
two
companies, Asahi Beer made the beer
for export
only until 1953. Mr. Takahashi was
reluctant
to discard the brand name that he had
established.
The company invited the public to vote
for
the name and they got about 20,000
votes.
In 1955, Tombow became the team sponsor,
and the team became the Tombow Unions
after
they paid 30,000,000 yen for the name
for
a year. However, the team became the
Takahashi
Unions again in the next year because
the
team played poorly and Tombow withdrew
as
the team sponsor. As a result, the
team financially
reached a dead end and combined with
the
Daiei Stars on February 26, 1957. It
was
actually a merger by Daiei. The name
Unions
remained and the name of the new team
became
the Daiei Unions. In 1958, Daiei combined
with Mainichi Orions and the team became
Omai Orions and the nickname, Unions,
was
finally gone. Therefore, the Pacific
league
only had six teams after that.
|