| Orix Buffaloes | |||||
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| League | Pacific League | ||||
| Location | Osaka, Kobe | ||||
| Ballpark | Kyocera Dome Osaka and Hotto Motto Field Kobe | ||||
| Year Founded | 1936 | ||||
| Nickname(s) | Orix (オリックス), Buffaloes (バファローズ), Bs |
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| League championships | Hankyu/Orix: 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1984, 1995, 1996 Kintetsu: 1979, 1980, 1989, 2001 |
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| Japan Series championships | Hankyu/Orix: 1975, 1976, 1977, 1996 | ||||
| Former name(s) | Orix BlueWave: Hankyu Professional Baseball Club (1936–1946), Hankyu Bears (1947), Hankyu Braves (1947–1988), Orix Braves (1989–1990), Orix BlueWave (1991–2004) Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes: Kintetsu Pearls (1950-1958), Kintetsu Buffalo (1959-1961), Kintetsu Buffaloes (1962-1998), Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes (1999-2004) |
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| Colors | White, yellow and dark blue | ||||
| Manager |
Okada Akinobu LogoDesign = "Buffaloes" written in yellow and blue |
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The Orix Buffaloes (オリックス・バファローズ Orikkusu Bafarōzu) are a Nippon Professional Baseball team based in Osaka and Kobe, Japan. They play in the Pacific League. The team is owned by the Orix Group, a leading diversified financial services company based in Tokyo.
The team was formed after the 2004 NPB season by the merger of the Orix BlueWave and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. The merged team began play in the 2005 NPB season, splitting its home games between the Kobe Sports Park Baseball Stadium, the former home of the BlueWave, in Kobe and the Kyocera Dome Osaka, that of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes, in Osaka.
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The Orix BlueWave was founded in 1936 under the ownership of a Japanese railway company Hanshin Kyuko Railway Company (阪神急行電鉄 Hanshin Kyuko Dentetsu, present: Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.), as Osaka Hankyu Baseball Club (大阪阪急野球協会 Ōsaka hankyū yakyū kyōkai). Later nicknamed Hankyu Braves, it was one of the first Japanese professional baseball teams.
The Hankyu Braves were one of the strongest teams not only in the Pacific League but in all of Japan. Between 1967 and 1972, the Hankyu Braves won the Pacific League pennant five times, but lost the Japan Series each time against the Tokyo Giants. Manager Yukio Nishimoto was known as "the great manager in tragedy" because of those losses. But the Hankyu Braves won Japan Series three times in a row from 1975, against Tokyo Giants in 1976 and 1977, led by manager Toshiharu Ueda. At that time many good players in Japanese Baseball history played for the Hankyu Braves.
In the 1980s, the team was still strong but lost the pennant to the Seibu Lions every year except 1984.
On October 19, 1988, Hankyu Railway sold the franchise to the lease company Orient Lease (since 1989 known as Orix Group). That was known as "the longest day of the Pacific League" because it was also the day when Kintetsu Buffaloes played the legendary double-header for the Pacific League pennant (but they could not have got the pennant because of a draw game). The deal had been done with two assurances: the team name would remain "Braves", and the franchise would stay in Nishinomiya. The sale was a surprise, because it was much rarer in those days in Japan for the ownership of a professional baseball team to change, not to mention for a large company to sell one of its parts; Hankyu Railway was thought of as one of the big companies that would never need to do such a thing.
During the first two years of new ownership, the team was known as the Orix Braves and played in Nishinomiya. In 1991, the team became the Orix BlueWave, and moved to Kobe. Longtime fans were shocked by these changes. However, since Nishinomiya and Kobe are close to one another, and the new home field of the team was better than the old one, most fans accepted the move, although with some nostalgia for the historic "Braves" name. The team was sometimes called Aonami or Seiha (青波) by fans and the baseball media, which means "blue wave" in Japanese.
Led by Ichiro Suzuki, in 1995 and 1996 the Orix BlueWave won the Pacific League pennant. In 1996, they also won the Japan Series.
Famous former Orix BlueWave players include Ichiro Suzuki (now playing for the Seattle Mariners of the American League) and Shigetoshi Hasegawa (formerly of the Anaheim Angels and Seattle Mariners), as well as Daryl Spencer, Troy Neel, and So Taguchi.
Other remarkable former players include: Tetsuya Yoneda (350 game winner), Takao Kajimoto, Roberto Barbon, Tokuji Nagaike, Mitsuhiro Adachi (underhand big-game pitcher who defeated the Tokyo Giants), Yutaka Fukumoto, Hisashi Yamada (Japan's winningest underhand pitcher), Hideji Kato, Yutaro Imai (once pitched a perfect game), Roberto Marcano, Yoshinori Sato, Greg 'Boomer' Wells (the first non-Japanese triple crown hitter in NPB history), Masafumi Yamamori, Nobuyuki Hoshino and Yasuo Fujii.
The Kintetsu Buffalo were the first Japanese team to sign an American player. They signed former major league pitcher Glenn Mickens and catcher Ron Bottler for the 1959 season. Mickens had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1953 and Bottler had been a career minor league catcher in the United States.
| First squad | Second squad | ||||||
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Pitchers
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Infielders
Outfielders
Manager
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Pitchers
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Infielders
Outfielders
Updated December 5, 2011 |
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Elected mainly for Hankyu Braves service
Elected for service with other teams, as well as Hankyu and Orix
†For Kintetsu Buffaloes Elected mainly for Kintetsu Buffaloes service
as Orix Buffaloes
as Orix BlueWave
as Kintetsu Buffaloes
as Hankyu (and Orix) Braves
Active:
Retired:
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